{"id":2513,"date":"2025-06-23T15:21:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2513"},"modified":"2025-06-23T16:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T20:42:10","slug":"word-of-the-week-brinkmanship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2025\/06\/23\/word-of-the-week-brinkmanship\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Brinkmanship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Checkpoint<\/a>With such a tense situation in Iran currently, I decided to trot out a Cold-War term. I recall how often the USSR and US nudged each other in my childhood and teen years. Matters often seemed “on the brink” of a catastrophe. The 1961 Berlin Crisis, shown above, illustrates how close matters came at times. I was barely alive then.<\/p>\n

Being a snarky youth in the 70s and 80s, and a wee tyke when Hippies roamed the Earth, I did not recall Boomers’ air-raid drills or fallout shelters. We had a board game (still have it) called Nuclear War<\/em> by Flying Buffalo Games, as well as one of the sequels, Nuclear Escalation<\/em>. Hint: lots of games ended with us all being losers.<\/p>\n

Whatever, Xer. “Whistling in the dark” will soon be a Metaphor of the Month.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, where did our current term come from? The OED is acting up today, despite my using the university’s account and VPN, but I see from their fact page that our word dates to a 1956 New York Times<\/em> story and means advancing to the brink of war without necessarily intending to start one. Etymology Online<\/a>, which never acts up for me (there being no paywall), states that our term comes from the policies of John Foster Dulles<\/a>, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. Being “on the brink of war,” meanwhile, dates back to 1829.<\/p>\n

I always liked Ike. Dulles? Used to be my favorite airport (BWI is, now). I never studied his work, beyond a book on the Suez Crisis.<\/p>\n

Brinkmanship seems canny and wise, when used by the wise. Dulles was wise, by all accounts I have read.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope that happens again today.<\/p>\n

As Richmond simmers like a bowl of chili con carne, send cool (and cooling) words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image: Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, 1961. Via Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With such a tense situation in Iran currently, I decided to trot out a Cold-War term. I recall how often the USSR and US nudged each other in my childhood and teen years. Matters often seemed “on the brink” of a catastrophe. The 1961 Berlin Crisis, shown above, illustrates how close matters came at times. … Continue reading Word of the Week! Brinkmanship<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Ex","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2513"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2519,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions\/2519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}