Word: aback
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...usually emphatic. She is asked as she sits there whether her storied who's-running-for-second-place? confidence has been overhyped. Her answer is delivered without a trace of meanness, but it is definite: "I do see it like that - that I'll win. When people are taken aback by that, I'm surprised. I would hope those women you saw racing against me last night are going to the Games to win. I don't know how realistic it is for everybody...
...deal with on a non-emotional basis." Putin also displayed a certain wry sense of irony. He had just come from North Korea, where he was greeted by an outpouring of 1 million citizens - not all there voluntarily, he allowed to Clinton. Putin told the President he was taken aback by the whole strangeness of the isolated dictatorship, which Putin said reminded him of Stalinist Russia in the 1950s. (When it was pointed out to a Clinton aide that Putin once worked for the KGB, which admired Stalinist Russia, the aide said with a laugh, "People can change...
...hate that girl," one apparently said to the other. Hancock was taken aback; she didn't even know them...
While joking about O'Brien's odd first name (he is named for Gaelic priests, not barbarians), Reiss says he was taken aback by the new president's quick...
...known among my friends as "The Bear" in honor of his imposing stature, a full 15 inches taller than me, which made for interesting conversations! At some point, a mutual friend confronted me, insulted by my neglecting to tell her that Jeff and I were dating. I was taken aback since, I knew nothing about it. Apparently all of Jeff's Princeton friends did though . . . Our contact lagged as he pointedly refused to stay in touch on a friendship basis. This was the first time I'd seen him since, and in spite of a series of changes, I recognized...