tumbrel

If commoners' living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before—they accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels.

Obama’s failure to go big and to send the tumbrels rolling down Wall Street certainly greased the runway for Donald Trump.

Yet — while reserving the right to change my position should the tumbrel come for me — I’m not sure this is the Khmer Rouge moment that it’s made out to be.

“Mr Thomas the careers man came and he thinks I should do economics,” my diary records in tumbrel dread.

I was the condemned young aristocrat holding my head high in the tumbrel.