| Ads (noun) | Short for "advertisements."
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| Ain't (verb) | An ungrammatical form of "isn't," sometimes used to emphasize a point although the speaker knows that "isn't" is the correct form.
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| All the Rage (descriptive phrase) | Extremely popular, but the popularity is likely to be transitory.
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| Andy Warhol (proper name) | American artist who flourished in the period 1960–1980. He was immensely popular and successful with art critics and the intelligentsia, but, above all, he gained worldwide recognition in the same way and of the same quality as movie stars and sports athletes do. His renown has continued even after his death.
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| Armada (proper noun) | Historic term for the Spanish navy. Now obsolete.
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| Automatic Pilot (noun) | To be on automatic pilot is to be acting without thinking.
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| Baby Boom (noun) | Any period when more than the statistically predicted number of babies are born. Originally referred to a specific group: those born in the years 1945–1964.
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| Baby Boomers (descriptive phrase) | Americans born in the years 1945 through 1964. An enormous and influential group of people whose large number is attributed to the "boom" in babies that occurred when military personnel, many of whom had been away from home for four or five years, were discharged from military service after the end of World War II.
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| Back to the Drawing Board (descriptive phrase) | To start all over again after having your plan or project turn out to be useless.
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| Backfire (verb) | To injure a person or entity who intended to inflict injury.
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| Bailed Out (descriptive phrase) | To be rescued. It has other colloquial meanings as well, but they do not appear in this book.
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| Balloon (verb) | To expand enormously and suddenly.
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| Bear Market (noun) | Stock market dominated by people who are not buying (i.e., are hibernating). Opposite of a bull market, where people are charging ahead vigorously to buy.
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| Bedlam (noun) | Chaotic and apparently disorganized activity. Today the word is not capitalized. A few hundred years ago in England, the noun meant the Hospital of St. Mary's of Bethlehem, an insane asylum. The hospital was not in Bethlehem; it was in London. "Bedlam" was the way "Bethlehem" was pronounced by the English.
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| Beluga Caviar (noun) | Best, most expensive, caviar.
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| Benchmark (noun) | A point of reference from which measurement of any sort may be made.
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| Better Mousetrap (noun) | Comes from the proverb, "Invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."
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| Bidding (or Bid) (verb sometimes used as a noun) | Has two different meanings. (1) Making an offer, or a series of offers, to compete with others who are making offers. Also the offer itself. (2) Ordering or asking a person to take a specified action.
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| Big Bucks (noun) | Really, really large sum of money.
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| Big Mac (proper noun) | Brand name of a kind of hamburger sold at McDonald's restaurants.
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| Blow It (verb; past tense: blew it) | To do a poor job, to miss an opportunity, to perform unsatisfactorily.
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| Blowout (noun) | Serious release of pent-up emotions or of control over one's actions.
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| Boost (verb and noun) | To give a sudden impetus, or boost, to something or someone.
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| Botched Up (adjective) | Operated badly; spoiled.
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| Bottleneck (noun) | Situation in which no action can be taken because a large number of people or actions are confronted by a very small opening or opportunity.
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| Brainteaser (noun) | Question or puzzle that intrigues the brain, thus "teasing" it to answer the question or solve the puzzle.
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| Bring Home (verb) | To emphasize or convince.
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| Broke (adjective) | (1) To "go broke" or to "be broke" is to become insolvent, to lose all one's money and assets. (2) Usually not as bad as to have gone broke—just to be (hopefully) temporarily out of money or short of funds.
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| Bucks (noun) | American slang for "dollars."
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| Buffalo (adjective, as used in this book) | "Buffalo chicken wings" are a variety of tempting food developed in, and hence associated with, the city of Buffalo. (Not all chicken wings are Buffalo chicken wings.)
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| Bus Person (noun) | Has no relation to transportation. It's a term for the person who clears the tables in a restaurant.
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| Call (verb) | In sports refereeing, one meaning of "to call" is for the referee to announce his or her decision on a specific point.
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| Calvin Coolidge (proper name) | President of the United States 1923–1928.
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| Carriage Maker (noun) | Person or firm that makes carriages, a type of horse-drawn conveyance almost never seen any more except in films. Members of the British royal family ride in carriages on important ceremonial occasions, such as weddings.
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| Caveat (noun) | In English, this noun means "caution" or "warning." It comes from Latin, where it is a whole little sentence: "Let him beware."
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| Cellophane (noun) | A transparent wrapping material. It differs from plastic wrap in that it is made of cellulose, not plastic.
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| Center Stage (noun) | A dominant position.
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| Central Park West (proper noun) | A fashionable and expensive street in New York City.
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| CEO (noun) | Abbreviation of "chief executive officer."
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| Charade (noun) | A pretense, usually designed to convince someone that you are doing something that you are definitely not doing.
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| Chit (noun) | Type of IOU (which see) or coupon with a designated value that can be turned in toward the purchase or acquisition of some item.
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| Chump Change (noun) | Insignificant amount of money earned by or paid to a person who is not alert enough to realize that more money could rather easily be earned.
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| Clear-Cut (adjective) | Precisely defined.
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| Clip Coupons (verb) | To cut coupons out of newspapers and magazines. The coupons give you a discount on the price of the item when you present the item and the coupon at the cashier's counter in a store. Sometimes you are directed to buy the item and then send the coupon and an identifying code from the item's package to the manufacturer, who will mail you the discount.
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| Clout (noun) | Influence or power.
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| Coffer (noun) | A box or trunk used to hold valuable items; hence, "coffers" has come to mean a vault or other safe storage place to hold money or other valuable items.
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| Coined (verb) | Invented or originated.
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| Coldhearted (adjective) | Without any sympathy; aloof; inhuman.
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| Come Through (verb) | Satisfy someone's demands or expectations.
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| Come Up Short (descriptive phrase) | To be deficient.
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| Co-opted (adjective) | Overwhelmed.
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| Cornrows (noun) | Hair style in which hair is braided in shallow, narrow rows over the entire head.
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| Corvette (noun) | A type of expensive sports car.
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| Couch (verb) | To construct and present an argument.
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| Crack (noun) | A strong form of cocaine.
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| Cry Over Spilt Milk (verb) | To indulge in useless complaint or regret. Note that there is a departure from standard English spelling in this phrase, which uses the spelling "spilt" instead of "spilled." Either is correct, but "spilt" is seldom used. (Another such variation is the rare "spelt" for usual "spelled.")
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| Cut and Dried (descriptive phrase) | Simple, obvious, and settled.
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| Deadbeat (noun) | Lazy person who has no ambition, no money, and no prospects.
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| Deadweight (noun) | Literally, the unrelieved weight of any inert mass (think of carrying a sack of bricks); hence, any oppressive burden.
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| Decent (adjective) | One of its specialized meanings is "of high quality."
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| Doodle (noun and verb) | Idle scribbles, usually nonrepresentational and usually made while actively thinking about something else, such as during a phone conversation or sitting in a class.
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| Down Pat (descriptive phrase) | To have something down pat is to know it precisely, accurately, and without needing to think about it.
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| Drop in the Bucket (noun) | Insignificant quantity compared to the total amount available.
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| Dyed-in-the-Wool (adjective) | Irretrievably convinced of the value of a particular course of action or of the truth of an opinion. Literally, wool that is dyed after it is shorn from the sheep but before it is spun into thread.
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| 'Em (pronoun) | Careless way of pronouncing "them." Written out, it reproduces the sound the speaker is making.
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| Energizer Bunny (noun) | Character in a television commercial for Energizer batteries. Just as the batteries are alleged to do, the Energizer bunny keeps going and going.
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| Esperanto (noun) | An artificial language invented in the 1880s, intended to be "universal." It is based on words from the principal European languages, and the theory was that all speakers of these European languages would effortlessly understand Esperanto. It never had a big following and today is almost unknown.
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| Establishment (noun and adjective) | As a noun, the prevailing theory or practice. As an adjective, something that is used by people whose views prevail over other people's views.
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| Fake (verb) | To fake is to pretend or deceive; to try to make people believe that you know what you're doing or talking about when you don't know or aren't sure.
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| Fire (verb) | To discharge an employee permanently. It's different from "laying off" an employee, an action taken when a temporary situation makes the employee superfluous but the employer expects to take the employee back when the temporary situation is over.
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| Fit to a T (verb) | Suit perfectly.
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| Fix (verb) | To prepare, as in "fixing a meal." This is only one of the multiplicity of meanings of this verb.
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| Fleeting (adverb) | This word's usage is elegant and correct, but rare. It means transitory or short-lived.
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| Flop (noun) | A dismal failure.
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| Follow Suit (verb) | To do the same thing you see others do. Comes from card games where if a card of a certain suit is played, the other players must play a card of that suit, if they have one.
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| Follow the Flag (verb) | To be committed to doing business only with firms that produce in your own country or in your "colonies"—that is, territories that belong to your country.
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| Follow the Leader (noun) | Name of a children's game. Metaphorically, it means to do what others are doing, usually without giving it much thought.
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| Forest for the Trees (descriptive phrase) | To be so focused on details that you don't see the overall situation.
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| Free Lunch (descriptive phrase) | Something you get without paying for it in any way. Usually applied negatively: There is no "free lunch."
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| Funky (adjective) | Eccentric in style or manner.
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| G.I. Joe (noun) | A toy in the form of a boy (as "Barbie" is a girl). Original meaning was "government issue"—i.e., an item, such as a uniform, issued by the U.S. government to a member of the U.S. armed forces, and, by extension, the person to whom the item was issued.
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| Gadget (noun) | Generic term for any small, often novel, mechanical or electronic device or contrivance, usually designed for a specific purpose. For instance, the small wheel with serrated rim and an attached handle used to divide a pizza pie into slices is a gadget.
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| Gee (expletive) | Emphatic expression signaling surprise or enthusiasm.
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| Get Across (verb) | To convince.
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| Get You Down (descriptive phrase) | Make you depressed about something or make you dismiss something altogether. (Do not confuse with "get it down," which means to understand fully.)
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| Glitch (noun) | Trivial difficulty.
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| GM (noun) | The General Motors automobile company.
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| Go-Cart (noun) | A small engine-powered vehicle that is used for racing and recreation.
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| Gold Mine (noun) | Metaphorically, any activity that results in making you a lot of money.
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| Goldilocks (fictional character) | In a children's story, Goldilocks is a beautiful little girl with blonde curls who emerges unharmed from an encounter with three bears because she is so good and charming.
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| Good and Ready (descriptive phrase) | Really, really ready.
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| Good Cop/Bad Cop (noun) | Alternating mood shifts. It comes from the alleged practice of having two police officers interview a suspect—one officer is kind and coaxing while the other is mean and nasty. This is supposed to make the suspect feel that the nice cop is a safe person to confide in.
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| Good Offices (descriptive phrase) | An expression common in 18th-century England, meaning "services."
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| Gooey (adjective) | Sticky or slimy.
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| Goofed (verb) | Past tense of the verb goof, meaning to make a careless mistake.
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| Got It Made (descriptive phrase) | Succeeded.
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| Grind (noun) | Slang for necessary intense effort that may be painful but will likely benefit your understanding.
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| Groucho Marx (proper name) | A famous U.S. comedian (1885–1977).
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| Gung-ho (adjective) | Full of energy and eager to take action.
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| Guns and Butter (descriptive phrase) | Metaphor describing the dilemma whether to devote resources to war or to peace.
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| Haggling (noun) | Bargaining, usually in a petty and confrontational manner.
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| Handout (noun) | Unearned offering (as distinct from a gift); charity.
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| Handy (adjective) | Convenient.
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| Hard Liquor (noun) | Alcoholic beverages with a high content of pure alcohol. Beer and wine are not "hard liquor" but most other alcoholic drinks are.
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| Hard Up (adjective) | Seriously worried.
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| Hassle (noun) | Unreasonable obstacle. As a verb, to hassle means to place unreasonable obstacles or arguments in the way of someone.
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| Hawking (adjective) | Selling aggressively and widely.
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| Heat (noun) | Anger, blame, outrage, and pressure to change.
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| Hefty (adjective) | Large; substantial.
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| Hero Sandwich (noun) | A type of very large sandwich.
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| High Horse, Getting on Your (descriptive phrase) | Adopting a superior attitude; looking down (from your high horse) on other people's opinions or actions.
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| Highfalutin (adjective) | American slang term meaning pretentious, self-important, supercilious.
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| Hog Bellies (noun) | Commercial term for the part of a pig that becomes bacon and pork chops. (Also called pork bellies.)
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| Holds Its Own (descriptive phrase) | Refuses to give up, even in the face of adversity or opposition.
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| Home Free (descriptive phrase) | Safe and successful.
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| Hot Air (descriptive phrase) | An empty promise. Also, bragging.
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| Hot Dog (noun) | A type of sausage.
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| Hot Potatoes (noun) | Slang term for anything that everyone wants to avoid confronting.
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| How Come (expression) | Why? That is, "How has it come about that . . . ?"
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| "In" (preposition sometimes used as an adjective) | Placed within quotation marks to show it is used with a special meaning. Here it is used as an adjective, to indicate: "fashionable or popular, usually just for a short period." Compare, in this glossary, all the rage.
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| Incidentals (noun) | Blanket term covering the world of small items a person uses on a daily basis as the need happens to arise—that is, needed per incident occurring. Examples are aspirin, combs, and picture postcards.
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| IOU (noun) | A nickname applied to a formal acknowledgment of a debt, such as a U.S. Treasury bond. Also an informal but written acknowledgment of a debt. Pronounce the letters and you will hear "I owe you."
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| Iron Curtain (noun) | Imaginary but daunting line between Western Europe and adjacent communist countries. After the political abandonment of Communism in these countries, the Curtain no longer exists.
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| It'll (contraction) | "It will."
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| Jolt (noun) | A sudden blow.
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| Junk Food (noun) | Food that tastes good but has little nutritional value and lots of calories. It is sometimes cheap, sometimes expensive, and it's quick and easy to buy and eat.
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| Just Say No (admonition) | Flatly refuse. This phrase became common in the 1970s after Nancy Reagan, the wife of the then-president of the United States, popularized it in a campaign against the use of addictive drugs.
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| Ketchup (noun) | Spicy, thick tomato sauce used on, among other foods, hot dogs.
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| Kick In (verb) | To activate; to start or begin. (Can also mean "to contribute to.")
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| Kickback (noun) | A firm's giving part of the price it has received for its product or service back to the firm or individual who authorized the purchase of that product or service. In effect it is a type of bribe or blackmail demanded or expected by a purchaser's agent.
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| Klutz (noun) | Awkward, incompetent person.
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| Knockoff (noun) | A cheap imitation.
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| Laetrile (noun) | Substance derived from peach pits, thought by some people to be a cure for cancer.
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| Laid Back (adjective) | Casual; calm; free from worry and feelings of pressure.
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| Late Victorian (adjective or noun) | Embodying some concept typical of the late period of Queen Victoria. Also, a person from that period or who acts like someone from that period. (Queen Victoria was queen of England from 1837 to 1901.)
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| Lay Off (verb) | To discharge a worker temporarily.
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| Lead Banker (noun) | Primary or principal bank or banker in a joint undertaking.
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| Leads (noun) | Persons or institutions that you think will be interested in whatever you have to sell. Also the information you have that makes you think someone or something is worth pursuing.
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| Left the Nest (descriptive phrase) | To have left one's parental home, usually because one has grown up and become self-sufficient.
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| Levi's (noun) | Popular brand of jeans.
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| Like Greek to You (descriptive phrase) | Incomprehensible (because in the United States, classical Greek is considered to be a language that almost no one learns).
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| Limbo (noun) | To be "in limbo" is to be in a place or situation from which there is no escape.
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| Lion's Share (noun) | By far the best part of a bargain.
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| Lobby (verb and noun) | To lobby is to attempt by organized effort to influence legislation. As a noun, a lobby is an organized group formed to influence legislation. A lobbyist is a member of a lobby.
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| Lord Tennyson (proper name) | Alfred Tennyson, 19thcentury English poet who wrote a poem, Ulysses, about the nobility of effort ("To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield").
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| Losing Ground (verb) | Regressing.
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| Lousy (adjective) | Incompetent or distasteful.
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| Make It (verb) | To succeed in doing something; for instance, "make it to the bank" means to get to the bank before it closes.
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| Mall (noun) | Short for "shopping mall." A variety of stores grouped on one piece of land, with ample parking for all the mall's shoppers and often with many amenities such as covered walkways, playgrounds for children, fountains, etc.
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| MasterCard (proper noun) | Brand name of a widely issued credit card.
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| Mazuma (noun) | U.S. slang term for money. It was used in the first half of the 20th century but is now rare, to say the least.
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| MBA (noun) | An academic degree: master of business administration.
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| Medicaid (proper noun) | Health insurance program for low-income people. It is administered jointly by the U.S. government and the individual states.
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| Medicare (proper noun) | U.S. government health insurance program for people who are disabled or age 65 and over. There is no means test.
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| Messed Up (adjective) | Damaged or badly managed.
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| Mind Your Own Business (admonition) | Don't meddle in other people's affairs; don't ask intrusive questions.
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| Mind Your Ps and Qs (expression) | Pay close attention to distinctions. It comes from the similarity of the small printed letters "p" and "q" where the only visual distinction is the location of the downstroke. Also, the letters are right next to each other in our alphabet.
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| Mob (noun) | Organized criminal activity. Also, the group to which organized criminals belong.
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| Moot (adjective) | Irrelevant because the issue in question has already been decided.
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| Mousetrap (noun) | Producing a better mousetrap is part of the saying, "Make a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." Metaphorically, producing a better mousetrap stands for doing anything better than it has previously been done.
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| NA (abbreviation) | "Not available."
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| NASDAQ (also sometimes spelled "Nasdaq") (noun) | Stock market operated by the National Association of Securities Dealers. The "AQ" stands for "Automated Quotations."
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| NATO (noun) | North American Treaty Organization. Western alliance for joint economic and military cooperation. It includes the United States, Canada, and several European nations.
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| Nature of the Beast (descriptive phrase) | Character of whatever you are describing (need not have anything to do with a "beast").
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| Nicholas Apert (proper name) | Nineteenth-century French experimenter who discovered how to preserve food by canning or bottling it.
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| Nirvana (noun) | This word is adopted from Buddhism. Its religious meaning is complicated, but it is used colloquially to mean salvation, paradise, harmony, perfection.
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| No Way (exclamation) | Emphatic expression denoting refusal, denial, or extreme disapproval.
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| Not to Worry (admonition; also, when hyphenated, used as an adjective) | Don't worry; or, it's nothing to worry about.
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| Nudge (noun and verb) | A little push (noun); to give a little push (verb).
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| Off the Books (descriptive phrase) | Not officially recorded (and hence it's an untaxed transaction).
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| Off-the-Cuff (adjective) | A quick, unthinking answer for which the speaker has no valid authority (comes from the alleged practice of writing an abbreviated answer on the cuff of your shirt, to be glanced at during an examination).
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| Oliver Wendell Holmes (proper name) | A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, famous for his wit, his wisdom, his literary ability, his advocacy of civil rights, and his long life (1841–1935).
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| On Her (His) Own (descriptive phrase) | By herself (himself); without any help.
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| On Their Toes (descriptive phrase) | Alert; ready for any eventuality.
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| Op-Ed (adjective) | Describes an article that appears on the "op-ed" page of a newspaper, which is OPposite the EDitorial page.
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| Pain, Real (noun) | This real pain is not a real pain; rather, it is something—anything—that gives you a lot of trouble and that you dislike intensely. For instance, some people think balancing a checkbook is a real pain.
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| Park Avenue (noun) | Expensive and fashionable street in New York City.
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| Pass the Buck (descriptive phrase) | Evade responsibility by forcing someone else to make the relevant decision.
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| Peanuts (noun) | Slang for a small amount, usually money but sometimes anything with a small value.
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| Pecking Order (noun) | Hierarchy.
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| Peer Pressure (descriptive phrase) | Push to do what everyone else in your particular group is doing.
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| Penny-Pincher (noun) | Person who is unusually careful with money, sometimes to the point of being stingy.
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| Perks (noun) | Short for "perquisites."
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| Philharmonic (adjective) | A philharmonic orchestra is an orchestra that specializes in classical music. Sometimes used as a noun, as in "I heard the Philharmonic."
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| Phoenix from the Ashes (descriptive phrase) | Metaphor for coming to life after having been thought to be dead. In ancient Greek mythology, the phoenix was a bird said to (really) rise from the ashes after a fire. (Phoenix, Arizona, was so named because of the hot climate that prevails there.)
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| Pick Up Steam (verb) | As steam pressure increases, the speed of a steam engine increases. When this happens, we say the engine has "picked up steam."
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| Pickle (noun) | Dilemma.
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| Picky (adjective) | Indulging in fine distinctions when making a decision.
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| Pie (noun) | Metaphor for the total amount of a specific item that exists.
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| Piece of Cake (descriptive phrase) | Simple; easy to achieve without much effort or thought.
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| Pitt, (Sir) William (historical figure) | Chief financial officer and prime minister of Britain in the 1780s. He is usually designated "the younger" to distinguish him from his father, who was also a high British government official.
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| Poorhouse (noun) | Public institution where impoverished individuals were housed. These institutions were purposely dreary and unpleasant. They no longer officially exist, but they have a modern manifestation: shelters for the homeless.
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| Pop-Tart (noun) | Brand name of a type of junk food. It's a sweet filling enclosed in pastry that you pop into the toaster and when the pastry is hot, it pops out of the toaster.
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| Populist (noun and adjective) | As a noun, this means a member of a political party that purports to represent the rank and file of the people. As an adjective, it means a political party, a group, or an individual that purports to represent rank and file opinion.
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| Pound (noun) | Unit of British currency.
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| Practice Makes Perfect (expression) | The grammar of this phrase is illogical but the meaning is clear.
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| Premium Tires All Round (descriptive phrase) | Premium tires are tires of superior quality. When all the tires on your vehicle are premium tires, you have them "all round."
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| Presto! (exclamation) | Immediately.
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| Proxy (noun) | A stockholder can give a "proxy" to the firm. It is an authorization that permits the firm's officials to vote for the proposition that the stockholder directs them to vote for. By extension, proxy means a substitute.
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| Ps and Qs | See under Mind.
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| Pub (noun) | Short for "public house," a commercial establishment where alcoholic drinks are served, usually with refreshments and occasionally with light meals.
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| Queen Elizabeth (proper noun) | Here the author means Queen Elizabeth the first (reigned in England from 1558 to 1603).
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| Quote (noun) | Seller's statement of what he or she will charge for a good or service.
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| R&D (noun) | Research and development.
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| Rainy Day (noun) | Period when you (hopefully) temporarily have an income shortage.
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| Rainy Day Fund (descriptive phrase) | Money set aside when you are doing well financially—i.e., in a financially sunny period—to use in case you have a period when you are doing less well financially—i.e., when you run into a financially rainy period.
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| Raise Your Eyebrows (verb) | To express surprise, usually by a facial expression rather than vocally.
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| Red Flag (noun) | A red flag warns you to be very alert to a danger or perceived danger. (Ships in port that are loading fuel or ammunition raise a red flag to signal danger.)
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| Red-Handed (adjective) | Indisputably guilty. Comes from being found at a murder or injury scene with the blood of the victim on one's hands.
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| Red-Lined (adjective) | On a motor vehicle's tachometer, a red line that warns at what speed an engine's capacity is being strained.
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| Right On! (exclamation) | Expression of vigorous, often revolutionary, approval and encouragement.
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| Ring Up (verb) | Before the introduction of computer-type machines that record each payment a retail customer makes—say at the supermarket or a restaurant—a "cash register" was used. When you pressed the keys representing the amount offered by the customer, a drawer sprang open and a bell rang.
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| Ritzy (adjective) | Very expensive, fashionable, and ostentatious. Comes from the entrepreneur Caesar Ritz, a Swiss developer of expensive hotels, active in the first quarter of the 20th century.
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| Robin Hood (proper name) | Semifictional English adventurer of the 12th or 13th century. He "stole from the rich and gave to the poor."
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| Rodeo (noun) | Entertainment where a person rides a bull that is wildly trying to throw the rider off. Horses are often exhibited similarly.
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| Rolodex File (noun) | Manual—as opposed to electronic— device for organizing names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-numbers.
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| Rule of Thumb (descriptive phrase) | An estimate that is quick and easy to make and is reliable enough for rough calculations. Comes from using the space from the tip of your thumb to the thumb's first joint to represent an inch.
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| Sacred Cow (noun) | An institution or practice that social and/or political forces dictate is absolutely protected from change of any kind.
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| Saks (proper name) | A midsize department store that sells expensive, fashionable items. There are very few stores in the Saks chain, and Saks stores are considered exclusive.
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| Savvy (adjective) | Slang term meaning very knowledgeable. Adaptation of the French verb savoir, meaning "to know."
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| Scab (noun) | Person who takes a job, or continues in a job, even though workers at that firm are on strike.
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| Scraps (noun) | Little pieces of leftover food. Also little pieces of anything that is left over: for example, steel that is salvaged from a wrecked car.
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| Sears Catalog (noun) | Sears, Roebuck and Co. is a large chain of stores that sells a wide variety of goods. Before shopping malls, interstate highways, and the Internet, Sears used to have a huge mailing list to which it sent enormous catalogs. A person receiving such a catalog would have information about, and access to, thousands of items, many of which the person might not have known existed before the catalog provided the prospect.
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| Set Up Shop (verb) | To go into business.
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| Shell Out (verb) | To pay money, often somewhat more than you want to pay for the item in question.
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| Shivering in Their Sandals (descriptive phrase) | Adaptation of standard English idiom shivering in their shoes, which means being afraid.
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| Shorthand (noun) | Any of several systems of abbreviated writing or writing that substitutes symbols for words and phrases. Shorthand was widely used in business until the introduction of mechanical and electronic devices for transmitting the human voice gradually made shorthand obsolete. Today it means to summarize very briefly or to substitute a short word or phrase for a long description.
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| Show Up (verb) | To put in an appearance, to arrive.
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| Shy Away (verb) | To decisively refrain from something. (Comes from the world of horses, who are said to "shy at" things that startle them.)
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| Silk Stockings (noun) | Silk stockings for women denoted luxury and extravagance, almost like caviar or pearls. With the development of nylon in 1940, silk stockings for anyone, let alone the queens or factory girls mentioned in this book, joined the dinosaurs in oblivion.
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| Sixpence (noun) | A British coin that is no longer in use. It represented six British pennies and its U.S. equivalent in the 2000s would be about a nickel.
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| Skin of One's Teeth (descriptive phrase) | To succeed by the skin of one's teeth means to just barely succeed. A micromeasure less and one would not have succeeded.
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| Skyrocket (verb and noun) | To rise suddenly and rapidly. As a noun, it means the type of fireworks that shoot into the sky and explode suddenly in a shower of brilliant sparks.
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| Slow as Molasses (descriptive phrase) | Very slow. Molasses is a thick, sweet syrup made from sugar cane (known as "treacle" in the United Kingdom) that pours with agonizing slowness from its container.
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| Small Potatoes (noun) | An expression meaning insignificant or trivial.
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| Smoke Screen (noun) | Metaphorically, anything used intentionally to hide one's true intentions.
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| Smoking Gun (noun) | This term has come to stand for any indisputable evidence of guilt or misdeeds.
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| Snitch (verb) | To engage in petty theft. (This verb has another meaning, which is to betray a person by divulging a secret about that person. If you do that, you are not only snitching, you are a snitch.)
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| Snowball (verb) | To increase rapidly, like a ball of wet snow that grows and grows when it is rolled rapidly in more wet snow.
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| Soft Drink (noun) | Nonalcoholic beverage.
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| Sourpuss (noun) | Dour; sulky; humorless. Derives from sour, which is self-explanatory, and puss, a slang word for "face."
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| Spending a Penny (descriptive phrase) | Spending any money at all. Do not confuse with usage in England, where the phrase means to go to the bathroom.
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| Squash (verb) | To crush or ruin.
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| Squirrel Away (verb) | To hide or conceal in a handy but secret place (as a squirrel stores nuts).
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| Star Trek (title) | Famous U.S. TV series about life in outer space.
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| Steady (noun) | A person to whom you are romantically committed and with whom you spend a lot of time, especially in social activities.
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| Sticky (adjective) | Resistant to change, as if glued on.
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| Strings Attached (descriptive phrase) | A gift that comes with strings attached comes with certain conditions set forth by the donor.
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| Strongarm (adjective) | Repressive and violent.
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| Sucker (noun) | A gullible person.
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| Super Bowl (noun) | Important football game played annually that attracts million of viewers (most of them see the game on TV).
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| Tables Were Turned (descriptive phrase) | The advantage of one side over the other reverses so that now the winner is the loser and the loser is the winner.
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| Tacky (adjective) | In very poor taste.
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| Take the Heat (verb) | To accept all criticism of one's action or inaction, whether or not one is actually the person that should be blamed.
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| Take Title (verb) | Legal term meaning to acquire ownership.
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| Tea Control (noun) | A method of resolving differences by informal but powerful social mechanisms, such as inviting your opponents to tea and settling matters while passing teacups and plates of cake around.
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| Temp (noun) | Worker whose job is temporary and who accepts the job with that understanding.
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| Time-and-a-Half (noun) | In labor law, 150 percent of the normal hourly wage.
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| Tombstone Ad (noun) | Newspaper advertisement announcing the completion of a stock or bond offering.
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| Ton (noun) | A ton weighs 2,000 pounds and an English ton (often spelled "tonne") weighs 2,240 pounds. In this book the term is used most frequently to mean simply "a large quantity."
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| Tough (adjective) | Very difficult.
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| Trendy (adjective) | A phenomenon that is slightly ahead of traditional ways and indicates a trend. Something trendy may turn into something traditional, or it may fade away without ever becoming mainstream.
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| Truck (verb) | To exchange one thing for another. This was Adam Smith's definition in 1776 and it is still one of the meanings of the verb.
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| Turf (noun) | Territory, especially the figurative territory of a firm.
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| Turn of the Century (expression) | The few years at the end of an expiring century and the beginning of a new century. For example: 1998–2002.
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| Turn Up One's Nose (verb) | To reject.
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| Twinkies (noun) | Brand name of an inexpensive small cake.
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| Under-the-Counter (adjective) | Secret or concealed by an unscrupulous person. Also see under the table below.
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| Under the Table (descriptive phrase) | To accept money surreptitiously in order to avoid paying taxes on it or to conceal the income for other reasons. Also, to proffer such money to avoid having it known that you are making a particular deal.
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| Union Jack (noun) | Nickname for the British flag.
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| Up in Arms (adjective) | Furious and loudly protesting. Comes from the use of arms to stand for firearms.
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| Vanity License Plate (descriptive phrase) | One-of-a-kind motor vehicle license plate issued to your individual specification. It might have your name, your profession, or any individual set of letters and numbers you choose that will fit on the plate.
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| Village Watchman (descriptive phrase) | Before modern communication technology, in small communities local news was gathered and reported by an official, the village watchman or town crier, who walked around collecting facts and gossip.
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| Wadget (noun) | Term used by economists to stand for any manufactured good except goods designated as widgets, which see.
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| Wal-Mart (proper name) | A very large store that sells thousands of inexpensive items. There are hundreds of Wal- Marts in the United States and the company is beginning to expand into foreign markets.
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| Wampum (noun) | String of beads made of polished shells, formerly used by North American Indians as money.
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| Whatever (noun) | Designates an unspecified generic item or action when the speaker wants to let you know that it doesn't matter whether you know the exact item or place.
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| Wheaties (proper noun) | Name of a brand of dry breakfast cereal.
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| White Elephant (noun) | Something large and useless that you can't get rid of.
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| White Knight (noun) | A company that comes to the rescue of another company. The term comes from the game of chess—some chess sets have white pieces and black pieces—and from the children's book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, where the story is structured as a game of chess and a chess piece, the white knight, tries to rescue Alice.
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| Whiz (noun) | An expert.
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| Whopper (proper noun) | Brand name of a kind of hamburger sold at Burger King restaurants.
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| Widget (noun) | The opposite of a wadget, which see.
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| Wild About (descriptive phrase) | Extremely enthusiastic about undertaking a particular action or admiring a particular object or person.
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| Wind Up (descriptive phrase) | To discover that you have reached a particular conclusion or destination.
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| With-It (adjective) | Current in one's knowledge.
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| Wodget (noun) | A made-up term for a produced good. Variation of widget, which see.
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| Working Off the Books (descriptive phrase) | Being paid wages or fees that are not reported to the tax or other authorities by either the payer or the payee.
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| Wound Up (past tense of verb "wind up") | To have found oneself in a particular situation after having taken particular actions.
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| Writing on the Wall (descriptive phrase) | To see the writing on the wall is to realize that a situation is inevitably going to end badly. It comes from the Biblical story that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, saw a fatal prediction written on a wall.
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| You Bet! (exclamation) | Expression meaning "It certainly is!" or "Absolutely!"
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