Word: blunt
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...office, if not the title, of the Lord Chief Justice goes back to 1268, few of its occupants have become so much of a legend in their own lifetime as Rayner Goddard. Unlike one famed predecessor. Sir Edward Coke, he made no great contribution to English law, but his blunt style and sharp knowledge of the law made him one of the most feared and respected men in England. The son of a London solicitor who had heard law around the house since childhood, Goddard, after Oxford, once stood for Parliament as the "Purity Candidate" against...
...Calvinist insistence on quoting Biblical chapter and verse that he thought supported racial segregation won him the derisive title of "the Messiah of Waterberg." His opponents of the largely English-speaking United Party were all much wittier and smoother than Strijdom, but they could find no defense against his blunt, brutal singleness of purpose. "With Hans," said Afrikaners happily, "you know where...
...more U.S. ground troops were pouring ashore. But there beneath the peaceful, sunlit icecap, the 116 U.S. Navymen were making more pages for the history books than anybody else. They were setting a new sea tradition for their countrymen, to rate alongside Jones, Farragut, Peary, Byrd. The submarine was blunt-bowed Nautilus, world's first nuclear-powered ship. Nautilus' position: under the ice at the North Pole...
This month, when the Air Force's Atlas sped 2,500 miles over the Atlantic, pictures of its virtually blunt nose seemed strange to the streamline-minded. But current Atlas and Thor noses are likely to stay blunt for good reason. Developed by General Electric, they are made mainly of heavy copper, which helpfully spreads and diffuses the heat. But the main design trick is to keep the nose from ever getting too hot. The bluntness creates a shielding shock wave out front that cuts the velocity of the air actually hitting the nose to subsonic speed, then slows...
...this tidy re-entry solution may soon be due for obsolescence. The trouble is that a blunt nose falls too slowly to evade sophisticated countermissiles, and even gusty winds can mess up its accuracy. Future nose cones will have to fall much faster...