[Comedian Sandi Toksvig has to go off] to do her bit for the literary festival, which, it turns out, is less a book plug, more an hour of stand-up, which the audience absolutely loves. I don’t spot a single agelast. (Deborah Ross, For a National Treasure, the Comedian and Author Sandi Toksvig is Not Terribly Conventional, The Independent, 07/16/2001.)…
Blogs
lavish adj.: Lucullan
Whited, a … psychic experimenter [swears that she has been getting recipes from the late noted chef James Beard]. … [A]nybody could lose weight following the recipes Whited says Beard has been dictating to her. Far from the Lucullan feasts for which he was renowned, they include such prim nibbles as tofu pudding pie, rye sesame sticks and carob cookies. (Mary Huzinec, The New Soup-to-Nuts Cookbook: A Channeler Says She’s Getting Recipes From the Late James Beard, [Christina Whited], People Weekly, 03/7/1988.)…
predicament (as in choice of taking what is offered or nothing; i.e. no real choice at all) n.: Hobson’s choice
[This term derives from Thomas Hobson (1544-1630), English liveryman, who required his customers to take the horse nearest to the stable door or no horse]. ❚ Most of the land in Sumatra is not legally registered or titled, so the people working it often do not have rights of ownership. If a corporate bigwig can negotiate a land-use permit from the central government in Jakarta, the farmer faces a Hobson’s choice: sell to the only available buyer, or try to stay and be harassed and forced to sell anyway. (Author not given, Sumptuous Sumatra: Indonesia, The Economist, 09/24/1994, p. 33.)…
prude (like a …) adj.: missish
In the ballet Don Quixote, Kitri’s costumes (by Barry Kay) are outright disasters. What senorita of her mettle would be seen dead in that dreary, long-sleeved raspberry day dress, more suitable for English autumns than Spanish heat? Rojo, like Kitri, is a girl made for dangerous colours, not missish ones. (Ismene Brown, Stretton’s Arrival Marred by a Damp Squib, Daily Telegraph [London], 10/25/2001.)…
question (closely) v.t.: catechize
Uma [Thurman] is beautiful, but if you bring it up, she was mildly cross, as I suppose we all would if we were continually being catechized about our appearance, as Uma is. (Mim Udovitch, An Alternate Umaverse [Actress Uma Thurman], Esquire, 03/1/1998, p. 70.)…