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> Did you know Vocab Vitamins Complete is just $16.50/year? > Subscribe > Account Settings To UNSUBSCRIBE, click here and follow the instructions on our simple form. Fire Escape Partners 3465 25th Street, Suite 17 San Francisco, CA 94110 | noun [foe-PAW] plural: faux pas [foe�PAWZ]
1. a socially awkward act; an embarrassing blunder in manners or conduct: "Grace's silverware screeched hideously across her plate, a faux pas that momentarily stopped all conversation in the restaurant." Origin: In Action: "Here are three good examples of pilot faux pas as told to me by flight attendants or the pilots themselves:
During a cross-country all-nighter, a particular DC-10 captain (we'll call him Capt. Spaz) stepped out of the cockpit to relieve himself in the first-class lavatory. But when he opened the door and stepped inside, a woman let loose a scream that woke the dead and nearly killed a few startled passengers. Sitting on the toilet with her pants around her ankles, the woman had apparently forgotten to lock the lavatory door.
Capt. Spaz -- startled by a succession of screams that brought flight attendants scurrying from their posts -- immediately backed out of the lavatory. In the process of stepping in, however, he had somehow managed to hook his foot through one leg hole of the poor woman's panties...By the time he extricated himself, by the time her panties had snapped back into place and the door had been mercifully shut and locked, Capt. Spaz had lost most of his self-esteem and one of his uniform shoes. He retreated into the cockpit and was incommunicado for the entire 30-hour layover that followed the flight."
Elliott Neal Hester. Salon.com, Out of the Blue (January 11, 2000) | |
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