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Discover meanings you've been missing! MerriamWebster's J Dictionary of ALLUSIONS Understand the creative and colorful references that add richness and vitality to our language ELIZABETH WEBBER & MIKE FEINSILBER AGE OF AQUARIUS C I T Y ON A H I L L ENDGAME GRASSY KNOLL HAT T R I C K IRON T R I A N G L E KEYSTONE KOPS MICKEY F I N N OCTOBER S U R P R I S E ROSETTA S T O N E SEA CHANGE WITCHING HOUR Merriam-Webster's Mem Dictionary of Wcbsi ALLUSIONS DISCOVER COLORFUL REFERENCES TO LITERATURE AND MYTHOLOGY, HISTORY AND POLITICS, SCIENCE AND SPORTS Discover the hidden meanings you've been missing Offers clear, concise definitions for more than 900 allusions, from Achilles'heel and alpha male to Zen and Zuzu's petals Increase your knowledge beyond the definition Provides the term's history, pronunciation, and contemporary examples of the word or phrase used in context Learn correct usage from the experts Examples come from works by leading authors, including John Updike * Nat Hentoff * Cynthia Tucker * Joe Klein * Camille Paglia * Molly Ivins * Jane Bryant Quinn * Henry Louis Gates, Jr * Anna Quindlen * Dave Barry * George Will Learn the terms that are used today Features thousands of examples taken from today's top publications, u including The New York Times * The Atlantic Monthly * Life * Rolling Stone * Smithsonian * Vanity Fair * The Wall Street Journal FASCINATING FOR READERS, LANGUAGE LOVERS, AND ESL STUDENTS S14.95 ]-fl?77 c 1-bBÔ- c l 90000 Merriam-Webster Inc Springfield, MA 01102 www.m-w.com AOL keyword: MERRIAM '81413"00628" 780877"796282 Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of ALLUSIONS Elizabeth Webber & Mike Feinsilber Merriam-Webster, Incorporated Springfield, Massachusetts reface The legendary editor Harold Ross, founder of The New Yorker, is said to have once expressed plaintive bewilderment to his magazine's star writer, James Thurber: "Is Moby Dick the man or the whale?" This book is for people like Ross Like him, we're not so dumb, we readers, but we don't know everything about everything We might know what's flotsam and what's jetsam, but not what manner of mammal was Moby Dick This book will help All of us run into (and sometimes use) these sideways references that are intended to add color and vigor to language But they are lost on us if we have forgotten or never knew what they mean We could stop reading and hope to find it in a dictionary More likely, we just make a guess from context and read on in a fog This book is a collection of those tricky allusions that appear without accompanying explanations in our daily reading When your dictionary can't help with silent spring, the Dreyfus affair, lounge lizard the artful dodger, turn to these pages Our collection isn't exhaustive, but it aims to cover much of what an active reader will encounter The terms come from literature, sports, mythology, Wall Street, history, headlines, Shakespeare, politics, science, standup comics and the Sunday comics, and venues from the locker room to the board room We've tried to convey solid information without being stuffy about it We show how these terms are used, with examples from magazines, newspapers, books and the odd bit from radio or film And even if you are familiar with an expression, you are likely to be delighted with the artful, eloquent or humorous uses in our examples Oh: the whale was Moby Dick The man was Captain Ahab And Ishmael was the narrator, who lived to tell the tale Elizabeth Webber Mike Feinsilber TTonunciation Symbols d anoint, collide, data *d, ,9 cut, conundrum immediately preceding \ \ , \n\, \m\, \n\, as in battle, mitten, eaten, and sometimes open \'ô-p3n\, lock and key \-n\; immediately following \ \ , \m\, \r\, as often in French table, prisme, titre a rap, cat, sand, lamb way, paid, late, eight a opt, cod, mach French chat, table ar air, care, laird au out, loud, tout, cow b bat, able, rib ch chair, reach, catcher d day, red, ladder e egg, bed, bet 'ë, ,ë eat, reed, fleet, pea ê penny, genie ei Dutch eieren, dijk f fine, chaff, office g gate, rag, eagle h hot, ahoy hw wheat, when i ill, hip, bid ï aisle, fry, white, wide j jump, fudge, budget k kick, baker, scam, ask k loch, Bach, German Buch lap, pal, alley m make, jam, hammer n now, win, banner n shows that a preceding vowel is nasalized, as in French en \a n \ n ring, singer, gong oak, boat, toe, go hawk, bawl, caught, ought œ French neuf, German Kôpfe œ French deux, German Lohne ôi oyster, toy, foil ôr core, born, oar P- • pet, tip, upper r rut, tar, error, cart s sink, bass, lasso sh shin, lash, pressure t top, pat, later th third, bath, Kathy th this, other, bathe û ooze, blue, noon ù wool, took, should U3 German Bùnde, fûllen Û3 German kuhl, French vue V veer, rove, ever W well, awash y youth, yet, lawyer y shows palatalization of a preceding consonant, as in French campagne \kân-'pàny\ z zoo, haze, razor zh pleasure, decision \ V reversed virgules used to mark the beginning and end of a phonetic respelling mark preceding a syllable with primary stress: boa Vbô-9\ mark preceding a syllable with secondary stress: beeline Vbë-,lïn\ - mark indicating syllable divisions Ô Ô 2L in theory the [independent counsel's] task is nothing less than to cleanse the Augean stables of sin and corruption and restore the national innocence —Gene Lyons Abelard and Héloïse Va-ba-làrd •a-la-.wëz, 'e-l9-\ Tragically romantic lovers Peter Abelard, a great scholar and teacher in France in the Middle Ages, became infatuated with Héloïse, the beautiful, intelligent young niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame Abelard talked himself into a job as her tutor and seduced her The two fell deeply in love, and in time Héloïse discovered she was pregnant Héloïse was packed off to the country to have the baby, after which she and Abelard were married in secret (although Héloïse thought marriage and philosophy were not compatible) Abelard's in-laws were not happy and arranged for ruffians to attack and castrate him Héloïse was sent tô a convent and eventually became a nun and an abbess, and Abelard became a monk Héloïse was one of the most literate women of her day, and her duties as an administrator gave her a successful career as a nun and abbess Abelard, though brilliant, was a maverick, and his writings were frequently denounced and sometimes burned After their separation, he and Héloïse corresponded through letters of love and suffering, which they later collected and published They are said to have been buried together; they were reburied in the famous cemetery of Pere LaChaise in Paris in 1817 (Jim Morrison of the Doors was there, too, but his body was recently removed because of the damage tourists visiting it had done to other graves Abelard and Héloïse not have as many 20th century fans.) The term in use, by R.Z Sheppard, Time, May 22, 1995, reviewing Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel Love and Other Demons: Cayetano is sent as an exorcist, but after one look at the girl's blue eyes and cascading copper hair, all that gets exorcised is his own inhibition A Latin American Abelard and Héloïse? Not quite Another example, also from Time, by Nancy Gibbs, April 3, 1995: Penn thus becomes the latest school to turn itself inside out over an issue that dates back to Abelard and Héloïse Through the years so many professors have romanced and often married their students that it seems a quaint, even hypocritical exercise to suddenly try to stop them Achilles' heel Achilles' heel \3-'ki-lêz\ A vulnerable point In Greek mythology, the hero Achilles was invulnerable to mortal wounds because his mother, Thetis, had dipped him as an infant into the magical waters of the River STYX, which flows around Hades, the underworld But she held baby Achilles by the heel, and, inevitably, in the war against Troy, Achilles was killed by an arrow which struck him in that one vulnerable spot Achilles also gave us his tendon, which joins the calf muscle to the heel bone, and the Achilles reflex, prompted by a sharp tap on the Achilles tendon The term in use, by Maj Gen William L Nash, commander of U.S forces in Bosnia, quoted by Rick Atkinson in the Washington Post, April 14, 1996: If my Achilles' heel is the low tolerance of the American people for casualties, then I have to recognize that my success or failure in this mission is directly affected by that Another example, from Peter H Lewis in the New York Times, March 21, 1989: The key to a fax machine's power, and also its Achilles' heel, is that it works over regular telephone lines Any boor with a fax machine and your phone number can deluge you with unwanted documents And from Rick Wartzman, the Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1989: Some think it's the DC-10's Achilles' heel: a cluster of hydraulic lines that, if cut, can send the plane plummeting Acton, Lord Originator of the maxim, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (George Bernard Shaw's view, as reported in Days with Bernard Shaw by Stephen Winsten, was: "Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.") A brilliant and quotable Victorian, Acton's full name was John Emerich Edward Dalberg, and he lived in the last two-thirds of the 19th century As a Roman Catholic, he couldn't attend Cambridge University but later was appointed a professor in modern history there A friend of de Tocqueville and other prominent intellectuals of his day and celebrated as one of the most learned men of his age, Acton was an ardent Liberal and a close friend of Gladstone (See GLADSTONIAN.) In addition to his observation on the corrupting nature of power, this comment on secrecy is attributed to him: "Everything secret degenerates; nothing is safe that does not bear discussion and publicity." His lordship evoked, by Elizabeth Janeway in her review of Jonathan Yardley's Our Kind of People in the New York Times Book Review, March 19, 1989: Adonis The WASP group (and I speak from experience since my own kind of people are much like Mr Yardley's) has combined the comfort of belonging with long dominance of American power and culture This assumed entitlement naturally infuriates many people It also complicates its members' lives and visions: reality itself, not mere wishful thinking, has seemed to confirm the rightness of their beliefs and behavior Here, I suspect, lies the root of that corruption by established power which Lord Acton, a White Anglo-Saxon Catholic, told us humans to fear And by columnist Suzanne Fields in the Washington Times, April 20, 1997, on the character of Vice President Albert Gore: Bland ambition quickly becomes blind ambition To paraphrase Lord Acton: Blind ambition corrupts blindly and absolute blindness corrupts absolutely It's possible that Al Gore, who begins to see the presidency through a glass darkly, can no longer make distinctions between personal integrity and MACHIAVELLIAN strategies of a politician [See SEE THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY.] Another example, from Charles Paul Freund in his column "Rhetorical Questions" in the Washington Post, April 11, 1989: Never mind Lord Acton; in Washington, power homogenizes Look at Newt Gingrich Adonis A figure in Greek mythology, so handsome that his name is a metaphor for youthful male beauty And like most characters in Greek mythology, his family background was complicated, and his love life was, well, messy He was the product of the incestuous union of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, and his daughter He grew up to be beautifully handsome, and Aphrodite, goddess of love, fell in love with him Beng loved by a goddess was hazardous, however, and Adonis was killed while boarhunting (the boar was reputed to be the jealous war god Ares in disguise) In one version of the story, Zeus arranged for Adonis to spend part of the year with Aphrodite and part with Persephone, queen of the underworld, whose eye he had also caught This custody arrangement explained the cycle of the seasons The term in use, by Brad Hooper in Booklist, May 1, 1991, reviewing Paradise by Judith McNaught: When young, Meredith Bancroft was burned in love A poor little rich girl, the daughter of the owner of a famous department store, she fell for a hometown Adonis who wasn't interested Then she met Matthew, a mechanic putting himself through school They had a brief, sour marriage And by Ron Fimrite in Sports Illustrated, March 18, 1991: Most players at that time wore at least rudimentary helmets, but not Hobey, who considered headgear too confining Although agitprop there was no contesting the genuineness of his modesty, there, there was a streak of narcissism in being known as "The blond Adonis of the gridiron." His golden hair became his ensign When joyful spectators cried out, 'Here he comes!' there could be no doubting the object of their excitement And they could count on Hobey to deliver the goods And from the Springfield (Mass.) Union-News, August 15, 1990: Cyndy says if ever there was a relationship addict, she's one She found herself overwhelmingly attracted to "an Adonis type, really brutally handsome." "It was major love at first sight," she said "Failed relationships became a habit." agitprop Va-j3t-,prap\ Political propaganda, and, more specifically, propaganda spread by means of literature, drama, music, or art A marriage of agitation and propaganda, it's a tactic to arouse the people, and it works through selective and manipulative use of facts and falsehoods The term comes from the old Soviet Communist Party Lenin used it through the agitatsia propaganda section of the Central Committee secretariat set up in 1920 Its function was to control the ideological conditioning of the populace In English, and generally in Europe and the United States, it is usually a pejorative term used to characterize slanted, prejudicial arguments— often those used by someone on the other side of an issue The term in use, by television critic Phil Kloer in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 11, 1996: Either it's blatant agitprop or a courageous take on a subject normally taboo to television Evaluating If These Walls Could Talk, HBO's new all-star drama about abortion, may depend on which side of the picket line or pew you sit From Blanche McCrary in the Village Voice, October 12, 1993: Bertha refused to obey any of the rules She was a true believer, and literature, for her, was about refusing all categories She could no more write agitprop than she could give up women and start raising rug-rats for some macho stud And from Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal, February 14, 1991: This splendid film is searing in its delineation of Depression-era hardship hitting a farm family It veers off, to be sure, into a kind of old-fashioned simple agitprop about bosses and migrants now and again Nevertheless, its social echoes are true and deep agonistes ^ag-a-'nis-tëzX Being in a struggle, and especially contending with inner conflicts From a Greek word, meaning combatant or contender agora The root is agon, meaning "a gathering place, especially for contests and competitions," and hence the competition itself Agonistes is attached to the name of someone who is a protagonist in a contest or struggle, as in the most famous usage, Samson Agonistes, a 1671 poem by John Milton about the blinded Samson and his struggle to renew his faith Today, the word is usually a reference to Milton's work T.S Eliot used it this way in the title of his poem Sweeney Agonistes (1932), as did Gary Wills in the 1970 Nixon Agonistes The term in use, by John Anderson in Newsday, July 28, 1995, reviewing Double Happiness, a film about young Chinese in Canada, caught between two cultures: Assimilation agonistes: Young, cheeky Chinese-Canadian actress is cast in a drama of family, career, sex and culture, but never gets to play herself And by Carlin Romano in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviewing Democracy on Trial by Jean Bethke Elshtain, January 15, 1995: No, this is not an instant book about Russia in turmoil, Haiti agonistes, or Italy twisted once again into a political pretzel And by Jack McCallum in Sports Illustrated, April 10,1995, in a profile of UCLA basketball coach Jim Harrick: When he didn't get UCLA to the Final Four, and when he complained publicly that his financial compensation was not in line with that of coaches at other high-profile schools, and when he appeared apoplectic on the sidelines when things went wrong, the coach became an almost tragic figure, Harrick Agonistes, the vise of UCLA pressure tightening year after year as he died a slow death on the bench, one hand on his throat, the other in the air to protest a call agora Va-gd-reX A gathering place, especially the marketplace in ancient Greece In Greek cities, the agora was an open square surrounded by shops and important public buildings It is this type of open space and bustling commercial activity that the word connotes today The term in use, by Robert Plunket in commentary in the New York Times, August 17, 1997, on the special status of the Devil in the American South: Any Southern politician knows he must always stand up to the devil, unless, of course, the two of them already have a prearranged pact, i.e., tobacco And not just any politician The other day I was in that agora of Southern life, the 7-Eleven, and when the woman in front of me had her purchases totaled up, they came to $6.66 She became hysterical The whole store became hysterical We all had to chip in and give her enough money to 581 wunderkind Sex, lies, and videotape is inspired chitchat, a barefaced Louisiana gabfest written and directed by Steven Soderbergh, a 26-year-old wunderkind preoccupied with l'amour And by Bill Vilona, Gannett News Service, December 6, 1996: Six years ago, Chris Weinke was Florida State's first wunderkind quarterback prospect, before being lured away by a professional baseball contract X In his lonely Xanadu on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Citizen Nixon is left to contemplate what history has in store —Janet Maslin Xanadu Vza-n3-,dû, -,dyu\ An idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place It is a poetic idealized version of the city of Xandu, or Shangtu, in Mongolia, which is celebrated in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1797 poem, KublaKhan The city was founded by Kublai Khan (1215-1294), a Mongol general and statesman who became emperor of China Stories of the wealth and power of Kublai Khan were brought to the West in the (now suspect) writings of Marco Polo Here are the opening lines, themselves often alluded to or imitated: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea Coleridge—poet, essayist, critic, free spirit, and drug addict—claimed to have dreamed the poem in an opium-induced sleep He began to write it down when he awoke, but was interrupted; when he returned to the work he could no longer remember it The unfinished poem is nevertheless considered one of his best Coleridge is also remembered for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner {See ANCIENT MARINER.) The term in use, by Janet Maslin in the New York Times, December 20, 1995, reviewing the film Nixon: In his lonely Xanadu on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Citizen Nixon of Oliver Stone's sprawling new biography is left to contemplate what history has in store And by Hilary DeVries in the Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1983, describing a luxury Florida hotel: This is the Boca Raton Hotel and Club, one of the oldest grand hotels in America And it is indeed a Xanadu among the trailer parks—a pink stucco pleasure palace left over from the jazz age Also by Susan Ram, a British writer, in a New York Times travel article on Nepal, October 15, 1995: 583 Xanthippe Mass tourism has also left its stamp A quarter of a century ago, it was the drug-seeking counterculturalist who came here in search of Xanadu Xanthippe \zan-'thi-pë, -'ti-\ An ill-tempered woman Xanthippe was the wife of the Greek philosopher Socrates, and a shrewish nag furious at his indifference to her and to earning a living The term in use, in the Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1994: Electric woodworking tools turn at furious speeds and are less forgiving than Socrates' wife, the ultimate shrew Xanthippe And by Francine Du Plessix Gray in the New Yorker, August 8, 1994: For many decades, there was a tendency to see the marriage exclusively through Leo's eyes and to denigrate Sonya as a shrewish Xanthippe, who was the source of most of Tolstoy's torments stocks that could have sent you on the Yellow Brick Road to Riches —Steve Sakson yahoo A boorish, crass, or stupid person The word comes from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels; Gulliver visits the country of the Houyhnhnms, rational, intelligent, civilized horses who had tamed the bestial men they called Yahoos Today the word, uncapitalized, means someone who is a PHILISTINE The capitalized term in use, by transplanted English writer Jonathan Raban, in Harpers, August 1, 1993, writing about his new home in Seattle: My own car, a low-slung, thirsty, black Dodge Daytona with a working ashtray, marked me out as a Yahoo among the Houyhnhnms—too old, dirty, and wasteful to pass as a member of Seattle's uniquely refined middle class And by Sid Stapleton in Motor Boating & Sailing, October 1, 1995: Recreational skippers don't enjoy the best of reputations among commercial captains, many of whom consider us ignorant yahoos Another example, quoted by Kurt Shillinger, in the Christian Science Monitor, January 11, 1991: "Artificial walls have produced a generation of very skilled climbers who can not climb safely," says Paul Casaudoumecq, who learned to climb in Yosemite Valley in California "You get some yahoo who jumps on a real wall who doesn't know what he's doing, there are a potential number of problems," says [a second climber] Yardley Yalta Decisions about the fate of the many made by the few under circumstances that suggest duplicity Yalta, an old Russian resort on the Black Sea, gained fame as the site of the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt in February, 1945 The World War II Allied leaders met to determine the shape of the postwar world Many analysts contend that an ailing Roosevelt—who died two months later—gave too much to Stalin, allowing Soviet influence to prevail in postwar eastern and central Europe Roosevelt biographer Nathan Miller, on the other hand, notes that Soviet armies were already 585 yellow brick road in the region and that Churchill and FDR could have done little to change that overwhelming fact Stalin also agreed to enter the war against Japan in exchange for the Kurile Islands and concessions in Manchuria lost in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) As it turned out, Russian entry into the Pacific war was of little consequence; it came two days after the atomic bomb was dropped As MUNICH stands for appeasement of rapacious dictators, so Yalta connotes naïve trust in treacherous opponents The term in use, by the prime minister of Poland, quoted by Barry Schweid of the Associated Press, February 23, 1990: It is unthinkable in today's democratic world to have this form of Yalta, where one group of countries could decide about another And by Peter Gammons in the Boston Globe, August 8,1993, on a meeting of major league baseball team owners: While last week the auction of the Orioles jacked the price $18.5 million in 10 minutes and in Pennsylvania Vince Piazza has begun another challenge to the anti-trust exemption, Sheboygan is baseball's Yalta yawp See BARBARIC YAWP yellow brick road A path that leads to the end of troubles, an end that may not be as expected at the outset The term is from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L Frank Baum's story published in 1900 and made into a movie musical in 1939 In the story, Dorothy, a little girl from Kansas, is transported to the magical land of Oz by a tornado She sets out to find the Wizard of Oz, who she hopes will help her return home To get there she is told to follow the "road paved with yellow brick." In the movie, she and her friends sing "follow the yellow brick road" as they set out The term in use, by Laurent Belsie and Scott Armstrong, in the Christian Science Monitor, January 13, 1994: America's Information Superhighway is a lot like the Yellow Brick Road Everyone sees the bricks already in place They know the direction the road-builders are taking But Oz is still distant, and nobody has seen the Wizard Another example, from Bob Herzog, Newsday, June 2, 1996, recalling the 1972 Olympics in Munich: Soviet Olga Korbut, nicknamed the "Munich Munchkin," followed the yellow brick road to gold in three events, added a silver and was one of the most popular athletes of the Games [See also MUNCHKIN.] And from Steve Sakson of the Associated Press, January 1, 1995: yellow journalism 586 What follows is a by-no-means definitive list of the stocks that could have sent you on the Yellow Brick Road to Riches or the Garden Path to the Poorhouse in 1994 yellow journalism Sensationalism and irresponsible, inventive reporting in the press The term was born in the newspaper circulation wars of the 1890s To bolster street sales, big city papers, especially William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, engaged in flashy, exaggerated reporting, lavish illustrations, and screaming headlines The term comes from the color and comics added to further pique interest In 1896, Pulitzer's New York World experimented with printing the color yellow for the first time According to A History of the Comic Strip (1968) by Pierre Couperie, et al., (translated from the French by Eilleen [sic] B Hennessy), a rascally character in the strip "Down Hogan's Alley," drawn by Richard Outcault, always wore a long white shirt On February 16, the printers colored the shirt yellow The gambit was a great success; the character immediately became the "Yellow Kid." Colored comic sections soon developed in the competing papers Various intriguing theories are advanced for the term's origins As Coulton Waugh describes it in The Comics (1991), the success of the Yellow Kid began a series of raids, counter-raids, and lawsuits between Pulitzer and Hearst Hearst hired Outcault; Pulitzer bought him back, and Hearst bought him back again Pulitzer then hired another artist to draw a competing Yellow Kid, and the resulting competition between the two strips excited so much attention that the rivalry between the two newspapers was referred to as yellow journalism Bill Blackbeard rebuts the Outcault theory in his introduction to R.F Outcault's The Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics (1995) Several weeks before the Outcault raid, Hearst's California and New York newspapers sponsored a coast-to-coast bicycle marathon: the "Journal-Examiner Yellow Fellow Transcontinental Bicycle Relay." A relay of cyclists dressed head-to-toe in yellow carried a yellow dispatch pouch from the Examiner office in San Francisco to the Herald office in New York It was promotion, of course, but Hearst's papers covered it as big news More respectable newspapers fumed, and Ervin Wardman of the New York Press used the expression in an editorial on September 2, 1896 The term in use, by Bob Sussman, Deputy Director of the Environmental Protection Agency in a letter to the editor of Mother Jones, March 1, 1994, objecting to an article in the magazine: The Mother Jones article on the East Liverpool incinerator adds heat, not light, to an already heated situation Your study in blackand-white is, in the end, merely yellow journalism And by John Huey in Fortune, December 13, 1993, reviewing Porter Bibb's biography It Ain 't As Easy As It Looks: Ted Turner's Amazing Story: 587 Young l u r k Like [Citizen] Kane, Turner manages along the way to build one of the world's great media empires, combining his incredible stomach for risk with a gut instinct for what the public really wants: in Kane's case, yellow journalism; in Turner's case, old movies, wrestling, and lots of baseball yin and yang In Chinese philosophy, two cosmic forces that combine to produce all that comes to be Yin is the passive, feminine principle—dark, cold, wet; yang is the active, masculine principle—light, warm, dry These forces are not opposites as we understand them in the West but more like a continuous cycle of balance and harmony The symbol of the two forces is a circle divided into light and dark fields by an S-shaped curve, as seen on the South Korean flag The terms in use, by Richard Harrington, in the Washington Post, September 25, 1989, on Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: They have inspired much definition—Siamese twins with two strong heads pulling in opposite directions, a ship with two mastheads plowing into the sea, the rock-and-roller and the superstar, the warrior and the dilettante, one taking the high road, one the low—but in the mid-Eighties, Yin/Yang became Yin vs Yang, the Glimmer Twins slid to Grimmer, RIFFS turned to rifts And by Orlando Ramirez, in the Portland Oregonian, April 16, 1996, on Thai cookery: The recipes are similar in their use of coconut cream and salt The latter addition seems odd in terms of Western desserts, but Thai cooking seeks a balance of flavors—a yin and yang, as it were—and the salt helps balance the sweetness of the sugar and the cream Also, from Michael Brus' review of A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bissinger in the Washington Monthly, December 1997, in a description of Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell and his chief of staff David Cohen: The impulsive pol and precise, punctual chief of staff are the yin and yang of the mayor's office, one handling the rhetoric, the other the details Young Turk An insurgent in a political party; a radical One who advocates changes within an established group The original Young Turks were young Turks who, at the beginning of the 20th century, sought to reform and modernize the decaying Ottoman Empire (see SICK MAN OF EUROPE) The movement was largely supported by students, and in 1908 they deposed the sultan, replaced him with his brother, and introduced a number of reforms, hoping to prevent the breakup of the empire That hope proved futile; territories were lost in the Balkan wars and World War I Massive changes came with the Young lurk 588 proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (who took the name Ataturk, or "father of the Turks") The term in use, in its most familiar and hackneyed form, from Jeffrey Birnbaum in the Wall Street Journal, March 21,1989, describing the fight among Republicans in the House of Representatives over the position of minority whip—between old-line Republican Edward Madigan and upand-coming Newt Gingrich: The 45-year-old Mr Gingrich, though gray-haired and a 10-year veteran of the House, considers himself the GURU of the insurgent "Young Turks." And by Alice LaPlante in Computerworld, June 1, 1996, describing the new generation of computer experts: Indeed, Cuccia is only echoing what seems to be the universal MANTRA of these so-called Young Turks: Don't bore me And by John Heilemann of the Economist, in a column appearing in Newsday, March 21, 1995, on the conflicts between senior congressional Republicans and their recently elected colleagues: The GOP's Old Bulls need their Young Turks to help pull off the revolution But tensions between the generations are growing fast and getting ugly Finding C-SPÂNfully restored in your neighborhood is a little likefindingZuzu *s petals A magical moment of disbelief, relief renewal and ecstasy —Michelle Malkin Zelig \'ze-lig\ A seemingly ordinary person who nevertheless constantly turns up near famous people or in fabulous contexts A chameleon Zelig is a fictional character created by Woody Allen in his 1983 movie Zelig Special effects in the film show Zelig batting for the New York Yankees, as a Chicago gangster, and with Calvin Coolidge, Pope Pius XI, and Adolf Hitler The term in use, in the Deseret News, October 18, 1996: After Kemp's uncharacteristically brief remarks, Gore tickled the dinner crowd of about 1,200 with a slide presentation that attempted to show how he has "tried to break the vice presidential mold." It featured images of Gore popping up like Zelig in photographs: carrying injured Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug; as a New York Yankee baseball player, celebrating a victory; in the football field with Kemp; and in the now-famous photograph of a young Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy And in Newsday, Richard Eder reviews Calvin Tomkins' biography of artist Marcel Duchamp, November 24, 1996: Since 1942 he was a permanent resident here—his friends, his many affairs, two or three real loves and a late, flowering marriage, he is a kind of Zelig His face is in every gathering, but who is he? Zen A sect of Buddhism that aims at enlightenment by direct intuition through meditation Zen Buddhism developed in China in the 6th century and spread to Japan in the 12th and 13th Zen strives for truth or enlightenment through a stroke of insight called satori, rather than through ritual or good works The breakthrough often comes through meditation, including concentration on problems, called koan, usually paradoxes such as, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Thinking about such problems is a way for the mind to break free of the constraints of conventional logic Recent western interest in eastern cultures and religions has brought the word into the English language as a conceptual breakthrough, a spiritual elevation, or a state of euphoria zero-sum game 590 The term in use by Steven S King in the Washington Post, September 2, 1988: When conditions approach ideal, though, biking can transcend the realm of mere physical endeavor and affect mental or even spiritual planes For lack of formal terminology, I call this experience the Zen bike ride And by Jim Molnar in the Seattle Times, November 19, 1997: The name itself seems to be a Zen-like enigma: Point-No-Point A place that simply is, and a place where people can shed all their concerns about the past and the future and simply be In use again, by Benjamin J Stein in the American Spectator, December 1988, writing on the success of the Disney company: If the Disney managers are in Zen synch with their audiences and attendees, they are in even greater synch with their stockholders, who have gotten rich, despite a stock market crash, off Michael [Eisner] and Mickey [Mouse]'s efforts The Zen bond between stockholder wishes and management wishes is truly profound zero-sum game A situation in which a gain for one side entails a corresponding loss for the other side A term from game theory, a branch of mathematics that analyzes competitive situations by looking at the decision making of each player The theory assumes that the players will act rationally but also considers such factors as conflicting interests, incomplete information, and chance, and is now applied in many fields, from economics, business, and law to strategic planning for national security In a zero-sum game, the winner wins at the expense of the loser(s) In the politics of the nuclear age, policy makers try to avoid this situation; it is much safer to introduce face-saving factors so both sides can back away from confrontation and claim gains The term in use, by President Bill Clinton, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1997: "This new NATO will work with Russia, not against it," the president continued, adding that the goal is to "create a future in which European security is not a zero-sum game where NATO's gain is Russia's loss and Russia's strength is our alliance's weakness." And by Russ Dondero in the Portland Oregonian, February 19, 1996, on the political landscape in Congress: In this environment, congressional politics may become more of a zero-sum game of winner take all, not a search for the political center Coalition building gives way to the demands of partisanship and ideology 591 Zuzu's petals And quoted by Keith Ervin in the Seattle Times, October 14, 1997, on the highways vs mass transit arguments in the region: For many transportation advocates, there is a middle ground Transit and roads needn't be an either/or choice, says Mike Vaska, an attorney who spent several years working through the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce to craft a more cost-effective transit plan "There has been an assumption that it's a zerosum game where you improve transit at the expense of roads or vice versa," Vaska observes "That's wrong." And by Wendy Kaminer in the Atlantic, October 1993: Feminism and the careerism it entails are commonly regarded as a zero-sum game not just for women and men but for women and children as well, Ellen Levine believes: wage-earning mothers still tend to feel guilty about not being with their children and to worry that "the more women get ahead professionally, the more children will fall back." Zurich See GNOMES OF ZURICH Zuzu's petals \'zu-(,)zuz-\ Restored contact with reality; a symbol of the real, normal world This phrase comes from It's a Wonderful Life, the 1946 film by Frank Capra (See CAPRAESQUE.) In the film, hero George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) is overwhelmed by the difficulties of his life and on Christmas Eve wishes he had never been born At this, his guardian angel whisks him into a world as it would have been without him George's daughter Zuzu had brought a flower home from school under her coat The flower had dropped some petals, and Zuzu had asked her father to put them back He had pretended to so while stuffing the petals into his pocket After his encounter with the angel, he discovers that the petals are no longer there and realizes that he has truly been removed from his own life Shocked by the grim vision of the world without him, George begs to return; he sees that he really did have a wonderful life He knows he is back when he find's Zuzu's petals in his pocket Overflowing with joy and relief, he rushes home through the snow, delighted with every familiar face and landmark, and at home he finds that friends from far and wide have rallied to help him The term in use, in an editorial by Michelle Malkin, in the Seattle Times, February 11, 1997: Finding C-SPAN fully restored in your neighborhood is a little like finding Zuzu's petals It happened here in Seattle last Thursday evening A magical moment of disbelief, relief, renewal and ecstasy: Brian Lamb! Booknotes! Moscow Nightly News! You're back? Are you real? Zuzu's petals 592 And by Phil Kloer, previewing Christmas television fare—"A Beavis and Butt-head Christmas"—in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 19, 1995: In "It's a Miserable Life," Butt-head's guardian angel shows him how the town of Highland would have fared without him—far better than it did with him, in fact You've got to hand it to B&B that they haven't gone all Capracorny just because it's Christmas Their SHTICK is so limited, however, it's gotten tiresome—and as familiar as Zuzu's petals In our research, we relied constantly on the updated editions of these classic reference works: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, and MerriamWebster's Encyclopedia of Literature Other invaluable sources included The Facts on File Dictionary of Classical, Biblical and Literary Allusions, by Lass, Kiremidjian and Goldstein; An Incomplete Education, by Jones and Wilson; William Safire's Political Dictionary; The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, by Hirsch, Kett and Trefil; Le Mot Juste: A Dictionary of Classical & Foreign Words & Phrases, Buchanan-Brown, et al.; The Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten; The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, by William and Mary Morris; The Barnhart Dictionary Companion and The Barnhard Dictionary of New English Since 1963; Black's Law Dictionary; I Moyer Hunsberger, The Quintessential Dictionary; Bartlett's Familiar Quotations; George Seldes, The Great Thoughts; Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia J\$out the authors Elizabeth Webber is a native of Ottumwa, Iowa, transplanted to Washington, D.C A lawyer by training but not inclination, she worked several years in Congress, but managed to make a clean getaway She is now a freelance writer and editor and devotes her time to the basics: reading, writing, and rowing on the Potomac River Mike Feinsilber, a Pennsylvanian, has been putting words in print ever since the 5th grade when he established The Daily Stink, which partially lived up to its name although it did not come out every day Feinsilber, assistant chief of bureau for news with The Associate Press in Washington, has been a newsman for more than 30 years, first in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Harrisburg, Newark, New York, Saigon, and Washington for United Press International and since 1980 in Washington for The AP He is married, bicycles, gardens and bakes bread