empretzeled

[Benjamin Zimmer]

>From A.O. Scott's review of "Terminator Salvation" in the New  York Times:

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http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/movies/21term.html
A detailed recap of the franchise’s empretzeled chronology will not be
possible here.
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The word has been used a couple of times by Time Magazine columnist
Joe Klein. He used it in a 2004 column and again last year on the
Swampland blog (though he spelled it "empretzled" that time):

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http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,692822,00.html
"Tearing Kerry Down" (Sep. 4, 2004)
The attacks on Kerry ranged from the reasonable—he certainly has
empretzeled himself on Iraq—to the outrageous: Zell Miller's assertion
that Kerry would take his orders from Paris.
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/10/06/embarracuda/
"Embarracuda" (Oct. 6, 2008)
I mean, don't the hateful doings at Palin's church and Hannity's
perfidy deserve a lengthy exegesis from Pete Wehner or Jennifer Rubin
or one of the other empretzled ideologues over at Commentary?
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Norman Mailer also once used the word, in his preface to _First
Flowering: The Best of the Harvard Advocate_ (1977) -- republished in
_The Harvard Book_ (William Bentinck-Smith, ed. 1982) and the Mailer
anthology _The Time of Our Time_ (1999):

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It was only on the next day, after the claims of liars had been
checked against the quiet evidence of reliable witnesses who had found
themselves analogously empretzeled in every room and on the stairs,
that the news came back.
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--Ben Zimmer

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