Word: racket
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...This here is the best racket in the college," said Clark last night of the $25 a week Yard food-distribution company, started by room-mate Roger L. Kitfield, '51, at the beginning of the year. "Damn near runs itself...
...Terrible Racket. The human ear, Dr. Davis observes, is a miraculous instrument. It is normally so finely tuned that...
...wonder," says Davis, "is not that our ears sometimes fail us, but rather that they stand the racket as well as they do." At 120 decibels (the noise of a nearby plane engine), the ear begins to feel uncomfortable; at 130 decibels, it tickles; at 140 decibels (near a powerful air-raid siren), it hurts, and grows temporarily deaf. But even a shattering noise rarely causes complete deafness. The commonest causes of deafness (besides old age) are 1) inflammation of the middle ear (otitis media), usually due to a head cold; and 2) a bony growth in the middle...
Little sound waves are deadlier than big ones. Last week the U.S. Army Signal Corps described (with dark reticence) some experiments at State College, Pa. on sound waves too short (high-pitched) for the human ear to hear. The inaudible racket killed mice in one minute. The insidious little waves also killed cockroaches and mosquitoes...
Newshawks must be alert-as courts are-to the changing meanings of words. "Racket," which once meant a mere trick-and was not libelous-now means an illegal business-and may be. The greatest danger, Wittenberg points out, is that newspapers, with no ready means of checking many of the stories they print, must rely on the accuracy of the wire services and news syndicates. Yet in 47 states (only Florida excepted), newspapers cannot avoid libel suits by blaming news services for mistakes. Wittenberg thinks a change is due, along the lines of a 1932 Florida decision, which ruled that...