Word: aback
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Every now and again, Father Spagnolia said something that really took me aback. He said that Cardinal Law, whom he had been criticizing from the pulpit for weeks, was not a Christian. He said that when Law's delegate, Father Charles J. Higgins, confronted him on Feb. 20 with the allegation that 31 years ago he had twice sexually molested a 14-year-old boy, "I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. My reaction was, I think, 'You're s____ing me.'" When we discussed his 19-year hiatus from the active priesthood, a time when...
...looking for fresh material. A friend of the promoter's comes backstage wearing a shaggy black coat, and immediately Williams is all over her, making barking noises, "look, she is wearing a poodle," then becoming a haughty French grande dame giving fashion commentary. The woman is taken aback and then starts laughing. The stagehands are laughing. Williams is loosening up the only way he knows how: by cracking other people...
...Some of you were taken aback by the cover image of the White House illuminated against an apparently ever darkening shroud of dusk. "I had to double-check the date on the cover," wrote a Colorado reader after experiencing a sense of deja vu. "For a minute there I thought we were back at the Clinton White House." "Your cover would have passed the bias test if it had substituted the Capitol building for the White House," suggested a New Jerseyan, "as both Democrats and Republicans were beneficiaries of Enron's greed." A Nebraskan pressed her charge more bluntly...
DeFotis wasn’t the only one who expressed surprise. Several student leaders of Holden Choirs—composed of Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society (RCS)—say they were taken aback by the decision...
...really taken aback,” Wood said after being asked about his reaction to the award. “It’s not your typical honor...