Synonym a Day

[This term comes from Augeas, a legendary Greek king who did not clean out his stable for thirty years, until it was cleaned by Hercules]. A federal judge ruled Thursday that the nearly bankrupt International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) must absorb at least $6 million of the estimated $7.4 million cost of its rerun election scheduled for this spring. Last week, U.S. District Judge David Edelstein ruled, “The time has come when the IBT must bear its own costs of cleansing its Augean stable. . . . In plainer words, [the Teamsters] made the mess. It is their job to clean it up at any price.” (Washington Times, “The Teamsters’ Augean Stables,” 12/22/1997.)