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My kids eat Spam because I ate it, and I eat it because my mother ate it: two generations and counting of comestible nostalgia, a sort of legacy. (Sabina Muray, “Letter of Recommendation: Spam,” The New York Times, 08/06/2109.)…

Middlescence can be a time of confusion and frustration for many workers, especially those whose identity is tied directly to their jobs. But it is also a time of growth and reinvention. (Randall Hansen, “Working Beyond Retirement,” The Journal News (White Plains, NY), 04/22/2018.)…

Taylor really wants to show that the [American] Revolution was anything but the “good, orderly, restrained and successful” event usually depicted “in popular history books and films.” [He] aims to desacralize the Revolution, … to  rip aside the mantle of nobility, dignity and heroism that he believes has too long covered up its sordid and bloody reality. (Gordon Wood, “How the American Revolution Worked Against, Blacks, Indians and Women,” The New York Times, 06/16/2016.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for discredit.…

There was enough interest, though, for Sky Germany’s coverage of the first round of [soccer] games in this bleak new [Coronavirus] world to draw in six million viewers, a record, each of them watching from home, atomized and all but alone, a tribe still bound by its colors but unable to gather under its standard. (Rory Smith, “This is What Watching Soccer Looks Like Now,” The New York Times 05/18/2020.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for fragment, divide, segregate, split or alone.…

Those preparations do not mean that China wants war with the United States. To the contrary, they seem intended mostly to overawe its neighbors while dissuading Washington from coming to their aid if there is ever a clash. (Aaron Friedberg, “China’s Challenge at Sea,” The New York Times, 09/22/2011.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for scare, frighten or alarm. …