Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Wednesday's Word

Verboten / ver-BOHT-n / adjective:
Forbidden, as by law; prohibited.

I'd observed several people taking photographs of these with their camera-phones, although a sign on a tripod just inside the door announced that all photography was verboten.
-- Stephen King, Duma Key: A Novel

Small assemblages by Hermann Glockner, for example, should come as a revelation even to Germans. Glockner, who died in 1987 at 98, concocted little sculptural gems in his studio, jus for himself: elegant Constructivist improvisations, talismans of verboten modernism, made by folding, twisting and tying together discarded matchboxes, cut-up soap containers, tin pots, wood blocks and newspaper.
-- Michael Kimmelman, "How art connected 2 sides of the Berlin Wall", New York Times, February 16, 2009

The girls eyed one another conspiratorially: the verboten pastry, stuffed with preservatives and refined sugar, offered without even the minutest of moral struggles; to what do we owe this great pleasure? "Yes!" said Daisy, running toward the house, not waiting for me to change my mind.
-- Deborah Copaken Kogan, Between Here and April

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