Greek for "no place" and the title of a book (1516) by Sir Thomas More, chancellor to Henry VIII, in which Utopia is an island paradise where people and institutions are governed by reason. It is a society without crime, poverty or injustice---free of the social, moral,physical evils of the England of More's time.
"A Utopia" has come to mean any ideal, perfect society.
George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" deal with purely imaginary but hardly perfect worlds. Bitter, sardonic, frightening by turns, they qualify as dystopias, or "utopias in reverse".
Untouchables:
Nine incorruptable, unbribable agents assembled by Eliot Ness (1903-57), head of a special prohibition unit, to fight the Al Capone gang of bootleggers in Chicago in the 1920's. Dubbed "The Untouchables" by the underworld itself, their adventures formed the basis of a TV series and then of a 1987 movie, The Untouchables, with Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness.
Upper:
A drug (e.g., amphetamines) that stimulates and provides a temporary feeling of exhilaration of elation.
By extension, "upper" has come to mean a pleasant, stimulating experience, condition or set of circumstances or events.
Ugly Duckling:
Hans Christian Andsersen's tale of "The Ugly Duckling" tells of a sad "ugly duckling" that was actually a cygnet and, to it's mother's surprise, grew up into a magnificent swan. Soon after the story was transalated into English in 1846 the expression ugly duckling became part of the language, usually meaning an unpromising child who grows into an admirable adult.
Ugly American:
The term comes from "The Ugly American", a 1958 collection of stories by William J.Lederer and Eugene Burdlick, and is used to describe any overbearing American being offensive to the people of a foreign country.
In the book however, the ugly American, was so called because of his appearance. In fact, he was a compassionate man who went into rural areas and wooed Asian peasants away from Communism. But the theme of the stories was the alienation caused by the ignorance, greed and arrogance of Americans in foreign places. And not only Americans have earned the title. The ability to be an obnoxious visitor in a foreign land may be universal.
