The headache … had never completely gone away. He'd been ascribing the lingering throb to anxiety, but now there were new symptoms. He had a vague sore throat accompanied by mild coryza. There was still a chance it was all psychosomatic, but he was still worried.
– Robin Cook, Contagion

You can occasionally see wild birds going through their courting dances. In Germany and Austria there is a folk-dance that mimics this bird ritual! It's called Schuhplattler, or shoe-slapping, and it is an imitation of the male Austrian auerhahn, a grouselike bird that beats its wings loudly and rhythmically against its body and on the ground.
– Rick Luttmann and Gail Luttmann, Chickens In Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide

… good breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures

A pair of women whose paint & tournure advertised their ancient calling peered at me & crossed themselves.
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

. . .Francesca took a deep breath. There was a certain, indefinable scent, she noted. Not just the old calf-leather bindings or the parchment – but something more, something indefinably mysterious, almost mystical. Like incense on an altar. "How old are they?"
. . ."They range from good first editions of early twentieth-century classics … to medieval Latin and Hebrew manuscripts dating back to 1210."
. . ."Actually, Uncle Alex," Marius interrupted, "we had one scroll that was a Greek translation of the Bible dating from 900 A.D."
. . ."Ah, yes. How could I forget? That was a find! Marius got it from an Egyptian trader who'd found it in the genizah in Alexandria ... but that's a different story. We didn't have it long. Museums all over the world began contacting us as soon as the rumor got out."
. . ."Genizah?" Francesca inquired.
. . ."Hebrew books, which contain the sacred name of G-d, cannot be thrown away when they get torn or old. They must either be buried in a cemetery, or put in a safe resting place, usually the attic of a synagogue. Such a repository is called a genizah, and it is a gold mine for rare-book hunters.
– Naomi Ragen, The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

Robin suddenly and brilliantly announces … that the gardener will allow us to have a picnic in the hen-house. Everybody says The Hen-House? Except Vicky, who looks enchanted, and Mademoiselle, who also screams, and refers to punaises, which she declares will abound.
– E. M. Delafield, Diary of a Provincial Lady

… Alaska, where the Sierra Club has long been considered a netherworld force and [Jack] Hession the resident Belial.
– John McPhee, Coming into the Country

quote:

Originally posted by Myth Jellies:
Punaise.

That sort of brings up some questions. When does a French word become an English word? Should the above text count as an example since Mademoiselle is presumably French and could very likely in her excitement be using words in her native tongue?

Few can look down from a great height without … vertigos and that aerial calenture which prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing.
– Wellsboro (PA) Agitator, Jan. 10, 1888

'Tis but the raging calenture of love.
… To walk, plunge in, and wonder that you sink.
– Dryden, The Conquest of Granada (1670)

Oh what spiritual Calenture possesses you, to make this hard shift to destroy your selves?
– John Donne, Pseudo-Martyr [etc.]

[The theater-spectator is] passing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, … in the days of Anthony and Cleopatra. … He … can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. … There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field.
– Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare

It were not easy to overestimate the astounding sensation which was caused by this story [Byron's The Vampyre] … which promised infinite possibilities in the way of that sensation and melodramatic calentures which the period craved.
–Montague Summers, Vampire: His Kith and Kin

Isn't life, after all, pretty much a matter of imagination? Do we not lend to many things, to many happenings, in order that we may enjoy them more, charms which they do not really possess? … some calenture of the brain at all times
– G. Allison Phelps, Tides of Thought

I had several men died in my ship of calentures. – Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

… I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the excessive heat of the climate … – Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

John presumed she was a cold fish, but Ian saw a fire and vitality that were vigilantly banked. There was passion bubbling just below the surface …. He wanted to be present when all that pent-up calenture came tumbling out.
– Cheryl Holt, Complete Abandon

The calentures of music … – Lord Byron, Don Juan

quote:

Originally posted by neveu:
I can't let this thread die without pointing out that the winner of the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, Evan O’Dorney, 13, from Danville, California, was another dangerous insufferable homeschooler, the third in the last six years.

quote:

However, homeschoolers winning international spelling bees, for me, conjures up images of kids at the mercy of eccentric parents who encourage them to study dictionaries 10 hrs a day instead of getting a well-rounded educational experience.

quote:

There must be a word for those who use one isolated example (the spelling-bee winner) as evidence for condemning a vast, popular system (home schooling).