Word: afoul
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Even flying much slower than sound, airplanes can run afoul of shock waves. The air crowding past them has to go faster to get around their curved surfaces. If, in its hurry, the air hits the speed of sound, shock waves form locally. Good design has steadily raised the speed at which an airplane can fly without trouble from local shock waves. But there is a limit: the speed of sound itself.* At this critical speed, an airplane's motion is sure to generate shock waves...
...implications were bigger than the mere loss to the Communists of a valuable commander. Markos, it appeared, had run afoul of Moscow, and of the Moscow-liners in his own councils, by maintaining close contacts with Yugoslavia after Tito's break with the Cominform. Like Tito, Markos had fought his own battle for power, and having achieved it, he liked to run things his own way. As a soldier, he believed that his army needed the crossing points on the Yugoslav border, and the training and supply bases behind it. For a while, he made this view prevail...
Elliott Roosevelt's one-man crusade to "make Christians out of Christmas-tree dealers" by underselling them (TIME, Dec. 13) ran afoul of some belligerent apostasy in Manhattan. "Let him sell his skunk spruce," snorted one dealer. "But the buyers will be getting stung-unless they like their needles on the floor instead of on the tree...
...plot moons over the rise of a young ballerina (Moira Shearer) and a young composer (Marius Goring) in Impresario Anton Walbrook's celebrated ballet troupe. Having spent what seems like a feature-length lifetime in making the two youngsters famous, it runs them afoul of the impresario's deadpan dictum that marriage makes a career in ballet impossible...
That left Claxton to do the honors, and he had an unhappy time. In mid-speech, a gust of wind ripped away the sheet that veiled the plaque, wrapped it around the master of ceremonies. After this diversion, Claxton ran afoul of a rain squall that sent most of his audience scurrying. He still had five minutes to go, and he went right on talking...