Perhaps [Donald Trump and Melania Trump] are happy. Or perhaps each has so much kompromat on the other that they live like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the married assassins in the Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie movie, each waiting for a chance to fire a kill shot. (Dwight Garner, “Focusing on the First Lady,” The New York Times, 06/16/2020.)
This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for incriminating, blackmail, extortion, coercion, or discrediting.…
[Starting with] the 27th letter [of Dr. Seuss’s “On Beyond Zebra”], “yuzz,” I was surprised, enchanted and immediately freed from the limits of penmanship and reading circles. Every new letter (“floob,” “zatz” and more!) was a delight and a possibility. Who knew you could break the rules like that? It was satori in the second grade. [Harold Heft, “The Book That Changed My Life,” The New York Times, 01/19/2020.)
This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for insight, understanding, comprehension, awareness, consciousness, recognition or knowledge.…
[This word often, but not necessarily, refers to a journey to escape an undesirable situation, and can refer both to a physical journey or to a figurative journey, such as a change of position. Examples of both kinds of journeys are given here.]
[Fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan, journalist Hassan Fazili and his family] packed up everything they could carry and fled … what turned out to be a 3,500 mile hegira across some of the most perilous borders in the world. (Peter Keough, “Fleeing the Taliban,” The Boston Globe, 10/13/2019.)
In Blinded by the Right, his account of his ideological hegira from conservative button man to liberal media critic, David Brock describes a hilarious scene at an Arkansas bait shop. (Charles Pierce, “Sure, They Love Her Now….” Esquire, June, 2013.)
This word can also be a synonym for trip, voyage, trek, expedition, or migration.…
Many bass anglers may hang up their tackle and park their boat until better weather. But tournament anglers don’t have that option and working stiffs have only a day or two before heaving to head back to the salt mine. (Charles Johnson, “Battling Spring Cod Fronts for Bass,” The Anniston Star, 2/17/2013.)
This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for tedium or monotony.…
[Yiddish. Also shanda. The phrase “shonda fur di goyim” refers to shameful behavior by a Jewish person in front of non-Jews, which may discredit all Jews.]
[Jaclyn, who was suffering from postpartum depression and who was embarrassed to be taken to the psychiatric ward, told me:] “My whole life, I’ve seen a psychiatric facility as something that was just such a shonda. … Only crazy people went there, people who tried to kill themselves. (Sarah Menkedick, Ordinary Insanity, Pantheon [2020], p. 250.)
This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for shame, disgrace, dishonor or scandal.
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