Word: abracadabra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...think, President Seymour who first used that rather mealy-mouthed phrase, "the indefinable something that is Yale." The meaning of these six unctuous words is ephemeral and open to whatever interpretation the listener may be disposed to make; usually, for the outlander, they mean about as much as abracadabra. But to us Elis, who glibly parrot this phrase, it leaves an impression of abstract vapidity that often passes for profundity. A catchword that rolls neatly off the tongue, it is used with equanimity both for accepting praise and for repelling criticism. What, then, does it mean...
...Take It With You. The last act wobbles all over the place. This is not miscalculation on Odets' part. It springs from a pretentious-side of him that wants to make every common dentist's office widen out into the universe. Sometimes he mistakes abracadabra for revelation...
...study and an unintended indictment of the forms & symbols that circumscribe its people, The Dybbuk is important. As cinema it is tedious, technically crude, lacking in coherence. Here and there are pictorial groupings, interesting enough in themselves, but poorly related in the general clutter of hyper-religious abracadabra and the familiar hocus-pocus of third-rate melodrama. The mere mention of Kabala brings on thunder-and-lightning overtones; a departing soul is the signal for banging casements, flickering candles, fluttering curtains. Valiantly pushing its way through is a slender story of a boy (L. Libgold) and a girl (Lili Liliana...
...that should lodge in the hands of men who wish to do and act has moved strangely into the hands of men who had no vision but that of the past, and of men whose political hatred for the direction of American life made them believe that through some abracadabra of legal learning they could turn it backward. ... In this contest of power between a handful of men and a Nation, no longer lethargic but vocal and tense, there can be no question as to the final outcome...
...arrangement and has substituted clarity and logic. Many sensitive heartstrings may quiver at the thought of corrupting English 2 into English 22; to some the progression from the Anglo-Saxon of 3a through the Elizabethan of 32 and the Alexandrian of 50b to the Georgian of 26 may spell abracadabra. Nevertheless, hoary-headed tradition must retire to its armchair when faced with a definite improvement...