Word: shibboleth
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What happens when two regions face off, determined to subdue the other? In the Old Testament, the men of Gilead asked fugitives if they were from Ephraim, demanding they utter the now-legendary word “Shibboleth.” Those who pronounced anything different became the enemy; 42,000 were slaughtered in the River Jordan...
...befits a tradition that reached its height during the Nixon years, flag lapel pins have - fairly or not - become to many a shibboleth of America's War on Terror, and a symbol of the "either you're with us or against us" ethos that has often prevailed since September 11, 2001. And while the country hasn't yet reached anything close to a consensus on what a flag pin says about its wearer, Barack Obama seems to have discovered that symbols matter - even if one doesn't agree with the way they are used...
...several houses, previous designs and current proposals have shown a distinct tendency to veer towards the phallic in their attempt to inspire house pride. Mather house, for example, last year clothed its troops in a design featuring the blockish Mather Tower in a phallic shape with the witty shibboleth, “Nice Unit,” underneath. This trend is perhaps understandable. As feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949, “The individual’s specific transcendence takes concrete form in the penis and it is a source of pride…It is easy...
...when presidents or CEOs are pushed out, it happens for a reason. Either they have crossed some ethical or moral line or, far more commonly, they haven’t accomplished what they were hired to do. Nobody can seriously claim that Summers’ performance violates the first shibboleth. And, reviewing the 2001 reportage about the Corporation’s goals for a new president—stronger leadership, higher standards, an aggressive curricular review, and Allston expansion—it is hard to argue that, in terms of substance, Summers has not lived up to expectations...
...Arnold were less ambitious for the Republican presidential nomination (28th Amendment, here we come!), he would also violate the right-wing shibboleth against ever seeking more revenue and fight for a fairer, simpler, and less capital-gains-dependent California tax code. And he would cash in October’s Ohio campaign trip and demand that President Bush return some of the $60 billion a year in federal taxes that California fails to get back in federal spending...