hardball
• peppy | Typically, when you read the 31 m.p.g. city/38 m.p.g. highway rating (34/41 with standard 5-speed manual), you are quickly alerted to the fact that mileage takes precedence over performance. Yet the 4-banger is alert and lively and surprisingly peppy. [car review article]
• finagle | My initial interest in Frontier (a computer language) is to finagle some easy way to randomly rotate ads through a web page.
• grousing
• whodunit
• gumption | you've mustered the gumptions to do her...
• lemon | that car turned out to be a lemon.
• tipster
• highfalutin | Not that the stars [actors] buy all the highfalutin analyses of their work.
• bamboozle | “The potential for being bamboozled,” writes Brand, “is total.”
• hooligan | hood, hoodlum, ruffian, thug
• gripe | ...European vacations, accompanied by a younger spouse who gripes about their erratic driving. | You know, a guy by the name of Mark has recently posted a series of gripes to this group. After all, we all got gripes of one form or the other, don't we?
• big-wig | ...written by Larry Tesler (former Xerox big-wig, now Apple big-wig).
• dud | Other countries have replaced small bills with more durable coins — the British pound is one exmple. But the $1 Susan B. Anthony coin — introduced in 1970 — was a dud with U.S. audiences. [Time Mag?].
• snooty | She was, they said, too remote, too snooty.
• tony | All will offer revolving credit at rates expected to rival American Express' less tony rivals.
• kaput | ... the film had not begun shooting. Last week, in fact, it looked kaput.
• flip-flop | now that he may have to flip-flop on the issue, he doesn't want to look as if he's flip-flopping.
• wishy-washy | That bookstore sells wishy-washy new-age stuff.
• fizzle | One hates to see ambitious artists [filmmaker] fail, even if their fizzles can be more provocative than the minor films that become major hits.
• cluck | the critics cluck.
• grill | he is grilling a suspect.
• swig | ...then began cheering and toasting one another with swigs from champagne bottles.
• bird-dog | ...to bird-dog Congress for funds.
• cutups | one of the cutups.
• boondoggle | Nobody's calling it a boondoggle now. (referring to Hubble Space Telescope)
• spiel | I made my spiel about how I could add to this company.
• gaga | ...doing what he does best — rationalism gone gaga.
• scream | This scene from the [movie] Mask is a scream.
• chuck | finally it looks like the IBM world will chuck DOS.
• clout
• scad | There are scads of curve-fitting techniques.
• raft | asked a raft of questions.
• one-up | ENTPs [a type of personality] are the most able of all types to maintain a one-up position with others.
• one-upman ship | ... this offends their joy in being masters of the art of one-upmanship.
• no-frills | ...because of competition from the no-frills (airline) carriers.
• wheel-and-deal | Her world was far from the wheel-and-deal politics that her future husband cut his teeth on.
• fly-by-night
• panhandle | ...And the baby-faced heroin addicts panhandling in Seattle.
• hanky
• scadskedaddle
• bandwagon | Why is everyone suddenly jumping on the antismoking bandwagon?
• iffy | ...although this sort of timetable tends to be iffy.
• jiffy
• blowhard | Unless they adjust to the new medium, professional writers can come across as self-important blowhards in debates with more nimble networkers. (about the clash of writing style of writers and internet writers)
• fritz | repairing VCRs that went on the fritz.
• powwow | has convened a celestial powwow of her most talented psychic colleagues.
• leastwise
• upper-crust
• fishbowl | she came to terms with bringing up (her children) in the proverbial fishbowl
• grit | every gangster, gunslinger and G.I. used cigarettes to emblematize their suavity, maturity, grit.
• daffy | Who the heck is the author? The developers seem okay, but she [author] seems quite daffy.
• hang-ups
• druthers
• togs
• pick-me-up
• hard-boiled
• bench-warmer
• war-horse
• foul-up
• warmed-over
• go-go | How can you not love and hate a city (Las Vegas) so crazily go-go that ... [Time Mag.]
• umpteen
• hijack