Word: bootless
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Suppose you wanted to modernize Shakespeare, pull him up by his Elizabethan pantoffles and bring his 37 plays into our more streamlined age. Do not ask why you would want to engage in such a bootless enterprise; just assume it was your task. Well, first you would change the thees, the thous, the thys and the thines. Instead of "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"-one of the Bard's most famous questions-you would have Juliet ask, "Wherefore art you Romeo?" The archaic verb must go as well, of course, and what you wind up with...
...Carter discovered, a unilateral policy of weapons-sale restraint can be bootless. But a policy that exalts a lack of restraint can likewise reap a whirlwind of unwanted, unpredictable challenges. If Reagan abandons any serious attempt to seek controls for the flow of weaponry, he will have given in to a danger that threatens American interests, with only the poor excuse that others...
...bootless cries...