Word: whacking
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More economies were in the offing as the week went by. Postmaster General John Gronouski emerged from a ranch-house session to announce that his department's budget request had been cut back by $200 million, and that measures were afoot to whack $100 million off the Post Office's chronic deficit next year, thus effecting an equivalent $100 million saving in the federal budget. Johnson himself disclosed that several hundred million dollars each had been pared off next year's budgets for the Agriculture Department, Atomic Energy Commission and National Aeronautics and Space Administration...
...century astronomer-monk Dionysius Exiguus tried to find out in what year Jesus was born according to Roman reckoning, misread his sources, and threw the dating of the Christian era out of whack...
...tongue at the Establishment; Kops throws a whole coster's barrowful of dead haddock. Both have produced fascinating documents and useful items for those who like to plot the course of British society now that the imperial ballast is gone, and the old class compass is out of whack. Both work in the theater; Delaney's A Taste of Honey was a hit play when she was 19, and Kops is resident dramatist at the Bristol Old Vic. Both are virtuosos at the art of self-dramatization...
...then water-ski or ride full-blooded Arab stallions seven miles before breakfast. He owns a whole fleet of sports cars, a 75-ft. yacht, and homes in London and Beirut. In Kuwait, such conspicuous wealth is no longer unusual. One sheik bought 63 new American cars at a whack, and another recently departed for a European holiday armed with a cool $800,000 in traveler's checks. The check charges alone came...
Sophomoric Sycophants. Sir Frederick Ashton, slated to succeed Dame Ninette de Valois as the Royal Ballet's director, knew that everyone from Verdi to Garbo had taken a whack at Dumas' story since it first appeared in 1848. He redistilled it in his own mind into a prologue and four concentrated scenes. Still he could not decide on the music. Then he heard Liszt's B-minor sonata. To most classicists, the piece is sadly second-rate, but it was the answer to Ashton's yearning. He assigned the orchestration to Humphrey Searle, got Cecil Beaton...