Word: chameleonic
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Growing Up. The reason probably lay with Conductor von Karajan, 47, who was suffering from an old back ailment, and who is perhaps not his best self in French music anyhow. For the Philharmonia is a chameleon-like instrument that almost too easily adapts to its conductor. It was formed of Britain's choice musicians primarily as a recording orchestra, which, unlike Toscanini's NBC Symphony, never had a permanent conductor. Its founder: Walter Legge, London impresario and record executive (Electrical & Musical Industries Ltd., which successfully launched Angel Records in the U.S.). In order to keep the orchestra...
...Attlee is certainly tough," taunted Sir Winston Churchill, "or he would not have kept the lead of his party for so long," but since Labor is so divided, "the best he can do is be a piebald." Replied Clem Attlee: "Sir Winston has always been a bit of a chameleon, a funny little animal that changes color. He began as a Conservative, was a Liberal for 18 years, then an Independent and ... a Conservative again. I don't know whether that makes him piebald, skewbald* or what." Tempers Down, Issues Blurred. Piebald, skewbald or spavined, Britain's first...
...Chameleon. Britain's best contemporary critic, V. S. Pritchett, who likes more delicately flavored cups of tea than the ones Joyce Cary pours, nevertheless admits Gary's sturdy authenticity. Pritchett calls him "the chameleon among contemporary novelists. Put him down in any environment or any class, rich, middling or poor, English, Irish or foreign, and he changes color and becomes whatever his subject is, from an English cook to an African delinquent, from a ten-year-old Irish hoyden to an English army wife or an evangelical lawyer. The assimilation is quick, delectable, sometimes profound. Many novelists have...
...patients follow certain general rules in their response to an operation (which is itself an injury). "After operation," says Dr. Moore, "the patient responds with hormones to heal his wound, to get new energy from fat, to conserve sodium for maintenance of blood pressure. The surgical patient is a chameleon adapting his responses to his back-ground,whether healthy or malnourished...
...Like a chameleon on a piece of Scotch plaid, the patient has a complex pattern of response. Several of the endocrine (ductless) glands go to work. The adrenals pump out both adrenalin and cortisone-like hormones. Both lobes of the pituitary step up their activity. So, probably, does the thyroid. Triggered by these hormonal reactions, about which much is yet to be learned, the body's chemistry changes in a dozen ways...