double-cross Left for dead after a heist double-cross, bad, bad man Mel Gibson returns for revenge in this gritty-yet-glossy remake of John Boorman's...
strung-out Sam has to contend with managing the bosses' skim going out the back door, cheats at the tables, the law breathing down his neck, and strung-out...
in-kind ... About 60 % of all poor households receive in-kind transfers ... in-kind = Given in goods, commodities, or services rather than money: cash and...
stage-struck In her girlhood and before her marriage with Tom Willard, Elizabeth had borne a somewhat shaky reputation in Winesburg. For years she had been...
fuddy-duddies [synthetic language as an lingua franca] have the disadvantage that they are associated with fuddy-duddies possibly a book on Esperanto↗. ...
run-ins Mitnick's run-ins with the law began as a teenager ... ? On computer hacker Kevin Mitnick↗. run-in = a angry dispute. have-nots City grocery stores...
hanger-on Attempting to portray Shipp as a mendacious hanger-on and frustrated actor with a drinking problem, attorney Carl Douglas accused the witness of ...
ad-lib When he was showing how a NeXT workstation could be used to query a database that ran on another company's server, the NeXT machine crashed. Jobs...
mock-up so the champion of Framemaker sat down and said that he would work on a mock-up. ? mock-up = full-scale working model of something built for study...
washed-up As the manacled prisoner came face-to-face with justice for the first time, he strove to uphold the swaggering image he had so carefully cultivated...
last-ditch A last-ditch effort gets food to orbiting cosmonauts, saving their mission from a disastrous early end. Title summary for news article: “Close...
blue-chip Like their American counterparts, Japanese executives cheerfully overpaid for their late-'80s acquisitions. But the Japanese made another fundamental...
booby-trap Allegations of Gunrunning in Australia and money laundering in Canada and Europe. A suicide note addressed to the French Interior Minister. Two more...
roly-poly a roly-poly guy who resembled the cop in the film ? roly-poly = a rotund individual; pudding made of suet pastry spread with jam or fruit and rolled...
far-fetched you theory is a bit far-fetched. far-fetched = Brought from far, or from a remote place. Not easily or naturally deduced or introduced; forced;...
hunky-dory She suggested it should have had environmental advice or a website link during the end credits, adding it was “troubling” that by the end...
heavy-handed The heavy-handed marketing campaign, as any business-school student can testify, worked for a while and then backfired. After an initial spurt of...
witch-hunt was that Oppenheimer had been railroaded and ruined by the witch- hunters. ? railroad = (informal) To convict (a accused person) without a fair ...
grass-roots The grass-roots campaign to slip prayer back into school is aimed at a chink in the Supreme Court's rulings: the court has never expressly stated...
skinny-dipping skinny-dipping with her. skinny-dipping = swim in the nude. Skinny dipping↗ cloak-and-dagger Lined up on one side are the three-letter...
cul-de-sac cul-de-sac is a passage with only one outlet, as a street closed at one end, or in anatomy, any bag-shaped or tubular cavity, vessel, or organ, open...
gavel-to-gavel So are hundreds of lawyers, journalists and an armchair judiciary of ordinary viewers who have abandoned Luke and Laura on General Hospital↗...
free-for-all During the Middle Ages, tournaments often contained a mêlée consisting of knights fighting one another on foot or while mounted, either divided...
go-for-broke With the go-for-broke enthusiasm of youngsters trying out new toys, scientists are uncovering the mysteries of the brain with technology. ? go for...
avant-garde the Joker character in Batman (1989 film)↗ considers himself to be an avant-garde artist. Xah Lee avant-garde = Characterized by the use of...
pell-mell soldiers retreat in a pell-mell fashion pell-mell = with undue hurry and confusion. ☄ pell-mell soldiers retreat in a pell-mell fashion pell-mell =...
underfoot It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard...
verisimilitude Verisimilitude in its literary context is defined as the fact or quality of being verisimilar, the appearance of being true or real; likeness or...
gadfly Here he plays Cyrano↗, gadfly and rabble-rouser, man about town, friend of some, envied by many, despised by a powerful few, and hopelessly, oh, most...
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