The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

ååååå W å
Wackford Squeers See dotheboys hall.
Wacky Races A chaotic car race or other disor ganized
scramble of some kind. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to a
pop u lar long- running children’s cartoon series of
the same title fi rst broadcast in 1969–70. Featuring
such outlandish characters as dick dastardly,
Penelope Pitstop and the Slag Brothers, it was
loosely based on a 1965 movie starring Jack Lemmon
and Tony Curtis, <strong>The</strong> Great Race. “Roger, however,
had a few tricks of his own to counter with
and a long hot summer season in Yarmouth was
turned into ‘<strong>The</strong> Wacky Races’ ” (Marti Caine, A
Coward’s Chronicles, 1990).
wages of sin Suffering of some kind as a punishment
for the sins that a person may have committed.
<strong>The</strong> phrase comes from Romans 6:23, in
which Paul writes, “<strong>The</strong> wages of sin is death; but
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord.” In modern usage the suffering or punishment
under consideration may be no more than
a slight sense of guilt. “ ‘<strong>The</strong> wages of sin, Watson—
the wages of sin!’ said he. ‘Sooner or later it will
always come. God knows, there was sin enough,’
he added, taking up a brown volume from the
table” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet,
1887).
Wagnerian (vargnereebn) In a manner reminiscent
of the musical works of the German composer
Richard Wagner (1813–83). Wagner’s operas
are well known for their grandiose and melodramatic
nature as well as for their epic length, hence
the application of the term Wagnerian to anything
that seems overlong or larger- than- life. <strong>The</strong> project
was Wagnerian both in its scope and its duration.
wag the dog syndrome <strong>The</strong> strategy of doing
something to distract attention from something
else. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the 1997 movie Wag the Dog,
in which a U.S. president sanctions war with Albania
in order to divert the attention of the press
from a sex scandal. <strong>The</strong> ultimate source for the
name of the syndrome is presumably the expression
“the tail wags the dog,” which refers to a situation
that is dominated by a relatively unimportant element.
Call me an old cynic, but this looks to me like a
prime example of wag the dog syndrome.
wailing wall A place where people gather to
lament their woes. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the Wailing
Wall (also called the Western Wall ) in Jerusalem, supposedly
the only part of Herod’s Temple left intact
after the building was destroyed by the Romans in
a.d. 70 and thus the focus for lamentations over the
fall of Israel. This holy site is revered by Jews, who
493