moodle n.— «Ms. Pivovarova is just one of many women from the former Soviet Union who now dominate the catwalks, women with the customary tiny heads, attenuated limbs, near absence of emotional affect and identical back story. (Like all...
gist v.— «Twenty-or-so years ago, I was a young airman maintaining the Transportable Ground Intercept Facility-II (TGIF-II) at Metro Tango, a site located about 10 klicks north of the former Hahn Air Base (now Frankfurt-Hahn International...
hollow army n.— «“Right now, we have a hollow Army,” responded Gen. E. C. Meyer, Army chief of staff, in what turned out to be the bluntest response. “I don’t believe the current budget responds to the Army’s needs for the...
toe-popper n.— «Nearly a quarter-century of fighting has left Bagram littered with mines and unexploded ordnanc, from the tiny, flesh-shredding toe-popper land mines to rusting 500-pound Soviet bombs sticking out of the fields just beyond...
fanjinshi n.— «The central festival topic is named by a peculiar coinage-Fanjinshi, a portmanteau word made of the English “fanzine” and “dojinshi,” Japanese analogue of “Samizdat,” Russian word for an...
refu-jew n.— «We are Soviet Jewish refugees in America (“refu-Jews,” the joke would go).» —“The Mother Tongue Between Two Slices of Rye” by Gary Shteyngart Threepenny Review (New York...