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Mind your language

Whipsmart: a new cliché that’s beginning to smart

22 October 2015

2:00 PM

22 October 2015

2:00 PM

A friend of my husband’s asked me to explain why the usually impeccable critic Francine Stock had recently used the term whipsmart. That I cannot tell, but I do know that he has identified a cliché in the casting. Everyone is suddenly using it.

Joaquin Phoenix gave a ‘whipsmart performance as a genius philosophy professor’.

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