A character whose name truns up everywhere but is otherwise unknown.
During World War II, the graffito "Kilroy was here" was found wherever American troops went. One particular explanation for the phenomenon has it that a shipyard inspector named Kilroy in Quincy, Mass, chalked the words on all the materials he inspected, and that the entire US military picked up the habit.
kill the messenger:
To punish the bearer of bad news, even though the person has done no more than deliver the information. While the messenger is not the cause of the bad tidings, he or she is the one within reach. The phrase has been offered by the news media as an explantion for public hostility to them; the media merely report bad news, but the public blames them for it.
The concept come from Sophocles, the Greek tragic poet who wrote in Antigone (ca. 442 B.C.), "None love the messenger who brings bad tidings".
kindness of strangers,the:
An allusion to the parting words of the mentally broke Blanche Dubois as she is taken away to an institution. When the doctor and the matron arrive, she flees to her bedroom; Stanley Kowalsky taunts her and the hospital matron pins her arms. The doctor intervenes and directs the matron to release Blanche. He speaks gently to her, and she leaves, supported on his arm. She tells the doctor: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
kinder,gentler, nicer:
A term used by George Bush in accepting the Republican presidential nomination at the GOP national convention in New Orleans on August 18,1988. Speechwriter Peggy Noonan, on loan from President Ronald Reagan, coined the term. It's apparent purpose was to distance Bush from his mentor, whose popularity had softened and whose image, as unsympathetic to the plight of the poor, had hardened.
"Where is it written," Bush asked, "that we must act as if we do not care, as if we're not moved? Well, I am moved. I want a kinder, gentler, nation."
The phrase caught on, and was soon widely used, sometimes ironically, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes with a wink.
