verb
to make a crunching sound, as in walking over snow, or as snow when trodden on.
Crump was first recorded in 1640-50. It is imitative of the sound of something crunching underfoot.
With the new snow flattening sounds he felt almost deaf or dreaming. His boots crumped down into it.
The horses’ hooves crunched in the snow, the wagon wheels creaked through it and, behind, the march of several hundred feet crump–crumped along.
adjective
complex or intricate: a deal requiring Byzantine financing.
The English adjective Byzantine originally applied to the city of Byzantium (later Constantinople) and the art, architecture, and history of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. The most common current sense “complex, intricate” dates from the first half of the 20th century. Byzantine entered English in the 18th century.
“We’ve had the process referred to as byzantine, shrouded in secrecy, opaque. Yet this is the process that Congress designed, a process that not only demands confidentiality, but strict confidentiality. This is the system we’re tasked to administer,” Grundmann said.
Over the course of two hundred pages I had improvised a byzantine system involving highlighter, underlines, and marginal punctuation marks.
noun
Slang. courage; nerve; determination.
Moxie originally was the trademark of a carbonated soft drink that was created by Dr. Augustin Thompson, a homeopathic physician who was born in Maine and spent his professional life in Massachusetts. Dr. Thompson patented his beverage in 1885 and promoted it as a “nerve tonic” or “nerve food.” Moxie, the drink, has always been associated with New England: Calvin Coolidge liked it; Ted Williams endorsed it on the radio; the state of Maine made Moxie its official soft drink in 2005. Moxie’s lowercase sense “courage, spirit, vigor” entered English in the 20th century.
“The only safe thing is to take a chance,” she told Nichols, who was both amazed at her moxie and inspired by her trust in him.
He’s not a natural singer … but like the kid in the school play who sells the thing by sheer force of moxie, Crowe handily wins us over.
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