The car was serviced at 12,000 miles in Caithness in March 1994 before I moved to Lincolnshire. Then, noticing severe wheel judder, I took the car to a Skegness dealer, who greased the suspension and told me to bring the car back if it got worse. (Answers by Honest John, Letter to Motoring: When Rust Remains Hidden, The Daily Telegraph, 09/12/1998.)

At age 30, Ben became a Jeopardy! Champion.  He also became an internet meme when the clips of his extreme frustration with the buzzer—he pressed the button so rapidly and so often that the little joystick juddered in his hand—landed on the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. (Adrienne Raphel, Thinking Inside the Box, Penguin Press [2020], p.140.)…

 Today, we’re starting with a dispatch by Manny Fernandez from Montecito, the edenic Santa Barbara County enclave where the interview [between Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markel] took place. [It is] one of the most high-end places in America. (Priya Arora, “Montecito’s Reaction to the Spotlight? Chill,” The New York Times, 3/11/21.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for paradise, picturesque and scenic.…

[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.…

[This word, while common as a noun, can also be used as a verb.] Black heroines at the Museum of Modern Art . The museum presents more than a century of films that have foregrounded African-American women, often defying the discriminatory attitudes of the times. (Ben Kenigsberg, “Four Films to Catch in N.Y.C,” The New York Times, 2/20/2020.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for highlight, accentuate, and underscore.…

The house where her parents have kept the girl and her six siblings hostage is isolated and remote. … I kept wanting to read “Girl A” as a fairy tale or parable, to cauterize some of the suffering in its pages, but Dean resists that impulse at every turn. (Flynn Berry, “What Happens to Siblings Who Survive a House of Horrors?” The New York Times, 2/2/2021.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for dull, dampen, soften or reduce.…