Word: wording
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...some that do their cutting by "sparking" discharges and ultrasonics. In the electrical discharge field (TIME, Nov. 10), U.S. experts guessed that the Russians are ahead of the U.S. In the more conventional machines and in the automatic ones operated by magnetic tapes (including a machine that cuts the word peace in a metal slab), the guess was that the U.S. is ahead...
...earth business details plus the bargaining excitement of a Turkish bazaar, a fictional cast of heroes, villains and gulls-and even a bit of suspense. If a million dollars is not forthcoming in the author's promised 20-year span, one has the publisher's semi-facetious word for it that the price of the book will be refunded...
...managerial lore, Nickerson is perhaps most fascinating in discussing the semantics of the trade. In what might be called Nickerson's Law of Apartment Ad Copy, it turns out that "redecorated" and "spacious" will make a prospective tenant's mouth water more longingly than any other words. "Owner" is the O.K. word today for landlord ("The New Deal fostered a bitter reaction to 'Landlord' "). An accomplished owner delegates most of his work to his "manager" ("Avoid the word 'janitor' ... a higher-class manager can be hired by referring to the dirty work...
...boggle is, among other things, the gurgle made by quicksand as it closes over its victim. Such febrile considerations flash through the boggled minds of readers as they sink out of sight in Author Wallach's pun-swampy prose. The man is popping with word-foolery. He interrupts his narrative-and a more interruptible narrative would be hard to find-to inform the reader that a tirade is "a sneak attack on a haberdashery," and a syndrome is "a large amphitheater where the ancient Romans used to sin." He dreams moodily of going to Canada and establishing a police...
They are, and it is just as well, If the little monsters were to breed, perhaps with the four-headed puns of Peter (The Tunnel of Love) De Vries, the printed word might never be the same. Still, considering the general run of summer fiction, Wallach's fable is funny enough. He tells of a soulful young swimming-pool salesman who leaves Manhattan because "inside stuffy little apartments a million parakeets mess up their cages and refuse to say an intelligent word"-a conception subtle with the flavor of Zen-Zen, the West Coast's cultural mouthwash...