Shakespeare Saw Trump Coming

Sort of

It's "a slush fund, pure and simple," says Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark -- referring to the million bucks you're expected to chip in if you're a billionaire and you hope to be blessed, or not unduly cursed, by the Trump Administration.

Odd to associate slush with purity.

Even snowy slush is nasty. And according to etymonline.com, slush fund "is first attested 1839, from an earlier sense of slush: 'refuse fat from the cooks gallery of a ship.' . . . The extended meaning 'money collected for bribes and to buy influence' is first recorded 1874, no doubt with suggestions of 'greasing' palms."

When Tallulah Bankhead, the uneven actress and bad-girl media personality of the 1940s and early '50s, described herself as "pure as the driven slush," she was playing off the expression "pure as the driven snow." We might think that phrase goes back directly to Shakespeare, say, but the closest the Bard came to it was twice.