Word: aura
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
NATIONAL CONVENTIONS have had a habit of running wild--the idea of a people assembled has historically given them an aura of political legitimacy. A national assembly toppled the ancien regime in France, and it was a national convention to revise the Articles of Confederation that decided 200 years ago to start from scratch instead and create a whole new law for the land...
...could not single-mindedly fight the Depression and the Axis as did Franklin Roosevelt. He could not push through a major civil rights act and wage a war on poverty as did Johnson. Few unexpected gestures seemed to offer themselves. The first opening to China gave Nixon an aura of authority in foreign affairs, and the Cuban missile crisis offered John Kennedy the chance to prove his courage...
...Ellello*u out of fiery words and fanatic ideas, Updike has created a supporting cast of splendid variety. Ellello*u's foppish political opponents, his wispy and wisely degenerate king, his seductive and bitchy and monstrous wives, all create an atmosphere of debauched craziness tempered by childlike seriousness. This aura is, in turn, scientifically punctured by the sickeningly helpful middle-Americans and mysterious vodka-guzzling Russians who emerge from the shadows to help separate the dictator from his people. Blending caricature and truth, Updike thus manages a type of satire that helps heal over with humor what it has just...
...Hear ye! Hear ye!" (Oyez! Oyez! in the Supreme Court, which prefers Old French), judges understandably take an exalted view of themselves. An Indiana judge, sued for authorizing in 1971 the sterilization of a 15-year-old girl without her knowledge, proclaimed in his plea for judicial immunity: "An aura of deism is essential for the maintenance of respect for the judicial institution." The judge's claim of something like divine right worked: last March, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 3, that a judge could act maliciously, exceed his authority and even commit "grave procedural errors" and still...
...about the Far East. All that gets pretty far removed from discos; certainly Revlon's admen would not dream of suggesting that a woman go disco dancing in a veiled hat. But if disco lights dictate dark lips and eyes, and that suggests an exotic aura of which veils are a symbol?well, who gives a damn about logic...