Word: meaningless
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...carelessly awarded and worn by men of small abilities can do nothing but cheapen the university that gives them. While the tawdy publicity-hunting described by Tunis does not motivate Harvard, this university has had its part in the movement which has made of honorary degrees an insincere and meaningless farce...
Thunder in the City (Columbia) is the meaningless title of a story about a U. S. ballyhoo artist who turns England topsyturvy promoting a new metal named magnalite. Gash-mouthed Edward G. Robinson plays the role in his customary Napoleonic manner. As genial Dan Armstrong, he lands penniless in London, bluffs his way into an option on the magnalite mines, installs a duke as board chairman, sends fleets of blimps over London carrying magnalite signs, soon sells all his stock to enthusiastic herds of subway riders. At this point another capitalist gets his hands on the only process that makes...
Aside from rather meaningless titles, the two films at Keith's Memorial this week-end present the best rounded twin bill we've witnessed this season. "The Woman I Love", starring Paul Muni and Miriam Hopkins, tells the story of the usual love triangle against a background of the front line trenches on the Soissons sector in 1917, while "We Have Our Moments", a gay and riotous farce of twenty years later, put the audience in giggles the moment the news reel before it subsided and left many in the aisles exhausted at the end of the hour...
Your story of the resuscitated Jefferson, Tex. Jimplecute in the March 22 issue may be responsible for giving the eternally lively American language a much-needed new word. From such otherwise meaningless terms, applied to simple and yet characteristically American phenomena, have come such good Americanisms as gerrymander, stogie, greenback, O.K., and boondoggle. They have appeared when need arose for describing a practice or an article not described with sufficient patness by any word of the standard language. Now if Mr. Foster's Jimplecute takes hold and flourishes again, the national tongue may be enriched with a useful word...
...guests do not know their ready acceptance of invitations to the Conference. The hearty support and critical thinking, contributed by busy men in government and private business, have infused life into an institution that otherwise would be, by the second year of its existence, little more than a meaningless shell...