Word: aback
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Abu Qaqa al-Tamimi's 9-year-old son asked for his help in becoming a suicide bomber, he was, to say the least, taken aback. "This is not what you expect to hear from a little boy," says al-Tamimi, an Iraqi man in his late 40s with close-cropped hair and a thin beard lining a round face. "I didn't know what to say." The son had even come up with a proposed target. "There was an American checkpoint near his school, and he said, 'They won't suspect me because...
...party the other night, I was taken aback when a guy who I had never met before pointed at me and said, “You’re philosophy, right? Yeah, um, I kind of facebooked you.” Although impressed that he actually had the guts to admit this, I was also slightly petrified. The ironic thing is that after he told me that he had facebooked everyone in his philosophy class, I found this less creepy and was completely understanding. Why? Because I have also gone through lists of names and facebooked unknown individuals?...
...were taken aback by their problems with getting out,” said Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and management and director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy. “More than 10 percent of these people slept outside for a day. More than half were trapped for three days...
...wise thing to do. I was even slightly taken aback by my own sensible actions, and tried to figure out what had prompted me to achieve this new, profound level of astuteness...
Casey B. Mulligan ’91, a professor in the University of Chicago’s economics department, said that he found Hoxby’s work convincing, but added that he was taken aback by what he called “irrelevant rhetoric” in her response...