"Our big bugaboo out there is Medicare," said Dr. Brent C. James, who leads Intermountain's quality initiatives.

The big bugaboo is the P.L.O. itself.

After a few seconds, he spotted what he calls his "big bugaboo," a cellphone talker.

Consumer fears about on-line credit card security have been the biggest bugaboo for the rapidly expanding Internet travel industry, but this is changing.

"We're born, we live, we die, it's just not a big bugaboo," said Mrs. Hobler.

They say the real estate industry is on an even keel, in part because its biggest bugaboo - overbuilding - seems at rest for now.

She talked knowledgeably about carbon dioxide scrubbers, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, about the heating and cooling systems, and our biggest bugaboo, radiation.

There's Really a Surplus' "The business of taking a theater out of circulation is not a big bugaboo to me," Mr. Landesman added.

She'd twigged him from a block away, climbing down from her cabriolet - a big gold-braided bugaboo, lurking on the hotel's marble steps under great dolphin-wreathed lamps.

After Hasidism, Deinard's biggest bugaboo was Christianity.