Word: cavil
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...judge is pensive, his whole person droops into downcast repose-except for the eyebrows. When he is annoyed, his face never comes to life with sudden anger; it freezes. When at last he speaks, his voice is slow and controlled, and what he has to say is reasonable beyond cavil. His slightest point is sustained with enough logic to swing the fate of an empire...
...Mikado-though it seems rather like Bartlett's Familiar Quotations set to hurdy-gurdy tunes*-still holds up. Almost all of Gilbert's lyrics are beyond cavil, and the best of them are beyond praise, while Sullivan's music has more to boast of than a string of lively tunes. The first-act finale of The Mikado is not less a triumph of operatic brio for being also intended as a travesty...
...Need we cavil at the small price we have paid for a bloodless revolution which has affected the destinies of millions of our peoples?" With this eloquent plea, Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel last year won over reluctant Congressmen to his plan for pensioning off India's princes. In return, the princes peacefully turned over their 587,888 square miles and 88 million subjects to republican administration. Last week in a white paper, Patel's Ministry of States disclosed the "small price": 56 million rupees (some $2,600,000) a year in "purses" paid out to 283 princes...