Word: aback
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Talk about strange bedfellows. Even David Duke, the blow-dried Louisiana legislator and former Ku Klux Klansman, must have been taken aback when a black Pentecostal church in Memphis invited him to speak at a rally to raise money for a gymnasium to serve inner-city black youths. "Duke draws a crowd, he has a message and he says he's a Christian," explained Jimmy Boyd, the owner of a local gospel radio station, who arranged the event...
...even Walt, ambitious social engineer that he was, might have been taken aback by the adoption of his commercial vision as Orlando's urban-planning model. Many new arrivals value the place because it offers the virtues of an escape: it is a suburban sprawl that strives to eliminate every kind of vexatious complexity. "People come here because they know it's going to be safe," says Thomas Williams, head of Universal Studios Florida. "They don't have to worry about the weather. They don't have to worry about the car getting broken into. They don't even have...
Never having traveled out of Japan before, both men were taken aback by American casualness. "I was puzzled by the name Lazy 8," says Harry. "To us 'lazy' means only 'lazy,' as in sleeping off the saki. Now I know that 'lazy' can also mean 'laid-back.' " Kaz, for his part, found the relationship between boss and worker hard to fathom. Used to bowing when meeting a superior, he now greets John Morse, the third-generation Montanan hired to run the Lazy 8, by shouting "Hi, John!" "Yeah, Kaz, you guys gotta get rid of that junk," says Chaffin, offering...
...asked, somewhat taken aback...
Dole spoke last. He put forward his withered right arm, injured in 1945 by German mortar and machine-gun fire, and looked Saddam in the eye. "I have a daily reminder of the futility of war," Dole said. Recalls Simpson: "Saddam didn't respond to that. He was taken aback...