Word: zilch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Then Anthony made his big killing with a flash success called Ballyhoo (top circ. 2,000,000), which was full of pretty good and not so good humor based on the repetition of the name Zilch. Ballyhoo satire on American advertising made so much money for Editor Anthony during the depression that he had a hard time staying broke. But he did: he blew it on a Broadway revue, on a trip to Europe (which bored him), on openhanded loans, on the horses, on bigger-than-ever drinking bouts...
...cited for contempt of court-for failing to testify in a divorce suit in which a Detroiter's wife charged that her husband associated with a "Miss X" of Hollywood. Snapped the judge: "Martha Raye doesn't mean any more to this court than Joe Zilch...
Parodies of TIME writing usually begin like "Outraged was snaggletoothed, bilious, ambidextrous Herman Zilch ..." But nowadays TIME editors do not think highly of backward syntax except as an occasional way of emphasizing a point. Spacesaving sometimes forces us to use a string of adjectives to give a thumbnail sketch, but we prefer nouns that make adjectives unnecessary...