Words

rehnquist, n.

AMONG THE well-read, breasts always arouse thoughts of an eminent Powell - not the novelist or the late politician, but the Supreme Court justice whose name was used for them by Gore Vidal in Myron (1975). It was a protest against censorship. Those two full syllables were well chosen. Meanwhile, Myra wakes to find that Myron "has not only removed the delicate honeypot of every real American boy's dream but replaced it with A Thing! A ghastly long thick tubular object . . . This rehnquist has got to go!"

In 1987, Vidal replaced it with "cock" - less prescient than usual, for this crony of Nixon and Reagan, William Rehnquist, is now Chief Justice: such is destiny, his star's progress, that he deliberates over President Clinton's errant rehnquist.