Word: wager
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...There is a street-car conductor in Chicago who is a college graduate, and can also converse in all the modern languages. He might, you know, be a college graduate and still be ignorant of French, German, etc. This conductor (and he is not, it would be safe to wager, the only one of his kind in the country) does not agree that his education has been of important service to him in his struggle for existence. When in need it did not secure for him a better place than that of car conductor, and as a car conductor...
Teacher: "Why, how stupid you are, to be sure! Can't multiply 88 by 24. I'll wager that Charles can do it in less than no time." Pupil: "I shouldn't be surprised. They say that fools multiply very rapidly now-a-days." [University Press...
...crew there is considerable confidence, more so in fact than is either necessary or good for them. The college at large is very non-committal on the subject, and no one seems to have such a decided opinion one way or the other as to lead him to wager much money. There has been no perceptible tendency on the part of the college faculty to spend sleepless nights in concocting schemes to make life happy to the members of the crew. This is, of course, strange...
Some literary wags were once assembled at a late dinner in London, when one of them made a large wager that he would invent a word that would soon be recognized as one of the most expressive. The next day the city was placarded with huge posters containing the strange-looking word "humbug," and it is needless to relate that it travelled like wildfire, was accepted by even the most fastidious, and is today understood wherever the English language is spoken...