Word: clench
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...credit, clench-jawed Netanyahu could have used the re-election of Israel's favorite bogeyman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Iran to raise the usual security alarms and resort to time-tested fear-mongering. But in his speech, he mentioned Iran only briefly. (See a story about how Tehran's streets have become a battleground...
There's a chance that eventually we'll return all this kindness with the profligate spending the government once decried but now would like to harness to restart the economy. But human nature is funny that way. In dangerous times, we clench and squint at the deal that looks too good to miss, suspecting that it must be too good to be true. Is the store with the supercheap flat screens going to go bust and thus not be there to honor the "free" extended warranty? Is there something ... wrong ... with that free cheese? Store owners will tell you horror...
...TIGHT SQUEEZE When you're halfway to the target, clench to prep for landing...
That night made the next morning seem all the more terrible. When I learned that Peter Cai, a student I had never met, had passed away, it sent me reeling. I felt a reflexive clench in my chest and I suddenly wanted to hold everyone around me to keep them safe. In that one instant, I felt a lot of things for which there are no words. How do you put into words the fact that you’re sorry for all the times you were petty, every time you were sullen, and every minute that passed...
...wasn't all sweetness and klieg lights. I was always thirsty. I was often hungry. When I walked down the street I would involuntarily clench and unclench my fists, as if I were the Thing. I woke in the wee hours so often I no longer bothered to wake my husband to tell him about it. And Ritalin made my toes hurt. O.K., technically it was the wall I was kicking that made my toes hurt. I was trying to get my kids downstairs to school, and they were moving with the speed of treacle on asphalt. This is their...