Word: banter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...world's highest-paid star; in Capri, Italy. Born Grace Stansfield in the mill town of Rochdale, she sang at age eight in the local cinema. Though never a beauty and hardly a diva, she set music halls roaring in the '20s with her cheeky Lancastrian banter, stouthearted warbling and flea-scratching, "low-but-clean" brand of clowning. Her 1931 film debut in Sally in Our Alley gave her a theme song, Sally, and endeared her to all England as "Our Gracie." During World War II she toured wherever there were Allied troops and then raised $1 million...
...interrupt the order of the scene, the guardsmen ask you firmly, not nastily, to leave. "No one goes past here," one says, drawing an invisible line. Obey, and you can banter all you want. Cross the mark, though, and suddenly the guard looks more imposing...
...told that Chou En-lai needed to see me urgently in the reception room. Without the usual banter he said: "Chairman Mao would like to see the President." The President and I set off for the first encounter with one of the colossal figures of modern history...
Last to arrive in Vienna was the summit's centerpiece, the 78-page SALT II treaty. Its remaining details were still being negotiated for most of the week in Geneva by teams of U.S. and Soviet diplomats. The final issue was minor, and the butt of much diplomatic banter. The chief CIA man on the U.S. delegation had presented his KGB counterpart with a T shirt emblazoned: FREE THE TYURATAM EIGHTEEN! The gift was one of those arcane jokes that are best appreciated by SALT technicians. It referred to 18 heavy-missile launchers at the Soviets' Tyuratam test site...
...literary jazz band. His most exuberant characters-a department store owner, a bail bondsman, an itinerant radio announcer-combine the energy and appetites of the Middle West with the legendary qualities of Sholom Aleichem's villagers. Elkin makes much joyful noise unto the Lord, but there is also banter to deflect the wrath, and complaining because it might do some good. There are no booming Faustian bargains in his work; just fast, uneasy verbal agreements between small businessmen and their omnipotent Wholesale Supplier...