Mystery Theme V by KlionskyG

What word can refer both to a dike and to the act of abandoning something?

Fill in the blank:

English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, describing the life of man, says that it is "solitary, poor, nasty, _____, and short."

Tokyo is the capital city of a country with 430 inhabited islands. Manila is the capital of a country with an estimated 2000 inhabited islands.

What is by far the largest ethnic group in the country that has the most inhabited islands?

What word can either describe a possible outcome of a shot taken by, e.g. Clint Capela, or can refer to an action sometimes performed as part of one's oral hygiene regimen (though in theory you could also do it with Lindt chocolate)?

In New York City in the late 1920s, baseball fans had two "Babes" to root for, and, oddly, both also had the same other name as part of their given name.

Babe 1 is the Yankees' well-known Babe Ruth, who homered three times off Tony Welzer in 1927 among his 714 career home runs.

Babe 2, playing for the Dodgers, is still tied for the MLB record by having hit three career cycles. Many of his 1930 numbers (.393 batting average, .678 slugging percentage, 241 hits, 416 total bases) remain Dodgers franchise records.

What is Babe 1's middle name, which is also Babe 2's last name?

Give the last name of the person who wrote this, excerpted by your Smith. The writer surely would have had much to say about tax havens and online gambling, as well.

This productiveness is determined ... by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production... and by physical conditions. For example, the same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four.

Camellia sinensis is called laphet and miang in two southeast Asian languages, but in almost every other language, its name derives from, broadly, one of three similar etymologies. (All three etymological lineages have resulted in a related English word.)

Which of the three pan-linguistic names for the species comes to English likely via Hindi and Persian? This was the same name (same spelling, at least) that Giovanni Battista Ramusio used in 1559, publishing the first reference to this species in Europe.

A certain company, named after its founder, started in Vineland, New Jersey in 1869, and is currently based in Concord, Massachusetts. It is the manufacturing and marketing arm of an organization named the National [redacted] Cooperative Association.

If you possess the knowledge to give this company's founder's last name, type it in the box below.

Neither of the next two questions is an endorsement of the sentiments expressed within the images, nor of the subjects or speakers.

As seen in this (unverified) quote, what two words, referring to the nationality of the speaker, fill in the blue space?

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This is a meme your Smith first saw during the 2016 United States primary elections. What two words, referring to a relevant familial nationality, fill in the orange space?

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Provide either answer:

What national demonym refers to a person from Banjul?

What national demonym refers to a person from Lusaka?

What is the theme of this quiz?