Word: aback
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Mahmoud Abbas is not in the business of doing favors for his bitter rivals in Hamas, which is why the Islamists may have been more taken aback than anyone else at the massive political gift presented to them on Oct. 2 by the Palestinian Authority President. At the instruction of Abbas, the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Council withdrew support for moves to pursue war-crimes charges over Israel's January offensive in Gaza, effectively shelving U.N. action on an inquiry led by former international war-crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone that accused both Israel and Hamas...
...CEOs and essentially ambushed them with advice. How has that worked out for you? I'm very passionate about what I do. I will approach the CEO directly, I'll look them straight in the eye and say, "You're doing this wrong." They're always taken aback initially, and the people around them freak out. But I have gotten more business by being direct and honest than I ever got being obsequious and sycophantic...
...Even President Obama, who had just dismissed conservative claims that illegal immigrants would be able to take advantage of health-care reform, was taken aback. He looked to his left, adjusted his arm, part nervous twitch, part macho posturing, and shot back at Wilson, "That's not true." And there, for a moment, the nation watched two men, elected to lead, call each other the worst thing in politics - dishonorable deceivers. (See 10 players in health-care reform...
...taken aback by Jack Swigert's opinion: "The very things that qualified the men to go to the moon ... disqualified them to describe their journey with any lyricism." Perhaps Swigert has never heard of Antoine de St. Exupéry, the French aviator, explorer and writer, whose internationally loved fictional creation, the Little Prince is from the planet B612. Somehow I believe St. Exupéry would have fulfilled NASA's requirement "for pilots who were made of tough physical stuff" in spite of his many other talents. NASA should broaden its scope. Jeanette F. Huber, KINSALE, IRELAND...
...some of which mirror challenges the polo team has faced. "I think it's going to be bad for Harvard's image," he said. "We already have an image that all of our students are aristocratic, preppy bastards, frankly. So as an undergraduate student I'm kind of taken aback a little bit that that's going to be happening, and I almost want to laugh...