The chefs never cooked before, the cashiers never cashiered before, the dishwashers never dishwashed before, the waitresses never waitressed before, and the managers never managed before.

As a youngster in The Bronx in the early 1930s, I would occasionally take my windfall of a few pennies to the local candy store and buy a strip of cockamamies, ‘comic-style cartoons in brilliant colors, each about an inch by an inch and a half, transferable to forearm or forehead by wetting’, preferably with saliva to make things agreeably messy.

The German syntax is replete with irregularities , one of the means by which that too indegestible language , as the Italians term it , is difficilitated.

a cathedral of commerce