"I simply can’t believe a blonde white woman would have been yanked around by a cop in this way. She’d have threatened to sue, other passengers would have come to her aid, and the whole flight would have been deplaned before she’d been assaulted like that."
Biden Said to Apologize to Obama for Forcing Hand
By MARK LANDLER and MARK LEIBOVICH
Vice President Biden on Wednesday expressed regret to President Obama for airing his views on gay marriage days earlier.
Babylon (BAB-uh-luhn, -lawn)
noun: A place of great luxury and extravagance, usually accompanied with vice and corruption.
Etymology
After Babylon, an ancient city of southwestern Asia, on the Euphrates River. It was the capital of Babylonia and known for its opulence and culture. It was the site of Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Usage
"Tsuyoshi Morimoto said that when the economic crisis hit the international market, many big companies turned to Iraq in hopes that it would save them. 'Big companies talked a lot about Iraq and paid a huge amount of attention to it. It is just like we suddenly built a Babylon, and now the Babylon is collapsing.'" — Qassim Khidhir; "Don't Expect Too Much From Iraq"; Kurdish Globe (Arbil, Kurdistan); Jan 16, 2010.
Shanghai eyes free exchange of yuan and New Taiwan dollar
Shanghai Daily
By Winny Wang | 2009-10-26 | NEWSPAPER EDITION SHANGHAI has applied to regulators to launch a free exchange between the yuan and the New Taiwan dollar to ...
Shanghai (verb)
Pronunciation: ['shæng-hI]
Definition: To kidnap, steal, or remove in the most egregious manner, especially by drugging or force, an unfortunate misuse of the beautiful name of a lovely Chinese city by the English language.
Usage: The forms of today's word are: (he/she) shanghais, was shanghaied, is shanghaiing. A person who shanghais would be a shanghaier. (I suppose the route taken by shanghiers would be a shanghaiway—but dictionaries haven't discovered this word yet.)
Suggested Usage: Today's word is no longer as applicable to forcible naval recruitment as it was during the days of the Gold Rush (see Etymology). Today it is used mostly as metaphor, "I didn't want to go to the pizza parlor but the guys shanghaied me and forced me off my diet." If you wish to push it a bit further from its original sense, you might try, "We mentioned our new product idea to a mail clerk from another company that shanghaied it and put it into production before we could."
Etymology: When San Francisco was a small frontier town, it was difficult for shippers to find sufficient crews to man the ships that sailed in and out of San Francisco Bay, especially for the long voyages to China. Shippers turned to "crimps," men who would kidnap others from the dock area by drugging them in bars or elsewhere and taking them out to ships in the harbor. The practice was so rampant at one point that the area of bars and brothels around the San Francisco harbor was called the "Barbary Coast," after the infamous refuge for pirates on the North African coast. At first, when men disappeared from the Barbary Coast, people would simply say "he's sailing to Shanghai." Later the phrase was reduced to today's verb. "Shanghai" in Chinese comes from shang "above" and hai "sea."
force someone's hand,
Compel someone to act or speak prematurely or against his or her will. For example, He didn't want to decide just then, but the board forced his hand. This expression probably alludes to the hand (the cards) held in a game such as whist or poker, in which a player is compelled to play some card from his hand or to reveal his hand. [Mid-1800s]
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