Word: worde
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Americans have used the word for only about 60 years. It is frequently applied on the basis of fashion, folklore and snobbery. An invisible admissions committee rules out most conservatives-except, perhaps, a William F. Buckley or a Milton Friedman. "Liberal" and "intellectual" are thought to meld nicely. Among scientists, for example, Liberal J. Robert Oppenheimer met the test, but Conservative Edward Teller did not. If nothing else, Viet Nam has provided a handy screening device. Opposition to the war has clinched the intellectual standing of Senator J. William Fulbright and perhaps even of Dr. Spock. War supporters who have...
...divest themselves of an unwanted wife by simply repeating "I divorce thee" three times. The conference also took a surprisingly moderate stand on the Middle East. It refused to consider the demand of the El Fatah guerrillas for a jihad (holy war) against Israel - and pointedly explained that the word jihad also meant sacrificing one's self for the good of mankind...
Most foreign words visit the English language with a limited visa; a few stay on for life. Very likely, the word guru is a temporary resident, booked for a return trip to India. Some future etymologist studying the phrases of the '60s will do well, then, to examine the content of the film The Guru. It provides a more acute and melancholy definition than any current dictionary...
...Grand Hotel on wheels swiftly degenerates into a bus of fools, overpopulated with drooling Babbitts and hatchet-faced moms. Humor centers around the foreign John with its mysterious bidet and its waxy toilet paper. A sleazy double-entendre occasionally surfaces, as when the tour guide observes that the cockney word for sausages is (smirk) bangers...
...specialty is interrupted coition. The woman's homosexual husband, Beppo, interrupts this time to seduce Fidelman from his wife -and from art. Beppo is a truly queer dens ex machina; yet Malamud clearly intends him for the role. It is Beppo, in fact, who finally gives Fidelman the word on his "painter's progress": "After twenty years if the rooster hasn't crowed she should know she's a hen." And it is Beppo who points instructively to the future: "If you can't invent art, invent life...