Word: cocoon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their private lives, the aristocratic cocoon was not entirely protective. After her parents' messy divorce when she was eight, Diana, her brother and two sisters shuttled back and forth between separate households. Charles was not caught up directly in such marital maelstroms, but he saw at close range how the marriage of his aunt Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon cracked, then tottered and finally fell into little gaudy bits...
...offer more radical solutions. Of Morgana, mistress of mandrake and sulfur, Mirren makes an armored, camp enchantress. Swathed in purple veils and seaweed capes, intoning Merlin's dread spells as if they contained the dirtiest and most sacred words in any world, incarcerating the wizard in a cocoon of cotton candy as she proclaims victory over her mentor, Mirren convinces that she could charm a kingdom-or a film- with her perfidy...
...reads through the copy with a stopwatch, addresses a question over his shoulder to whoever should know the answer ("Don't we have any more on this?"), occasionally turns to the typewriter to rephrase a sentence. Nobody speaks to him unless spoken to. The same sort of invisible cocoon isolates a professional football coach on the sideline from the players around him. Someone unobtrusively places Cronkite's jacket behind him. He stands up, puts it on, sits again, shoots his sleeves, exposing those large cufflinks. The CBS Evening News, to be watched by 18.5 million people...
Runners-up for Miss Tacky, 1980: Elizabeth Taylor ("Not one movie star has worse taste"); Suzanne Somers (a fashion plate of "recycled spaghetti") and Bo Derek ("a butterfly wearing her cocoon...
With the evident approval of Deng, Zhao pioneered many of the programs that have now been approved as policies for all of China. "We must adopt whatever is most effective," he said. "We must never cocoon ourselves like silkworms." He favored practically everything that Chairman Mao Tse-tung had opposed-free markets for agricultural products, competition among enterprises, bonuses and higher salaries for workers to spur productivity. He introduced experimental measures into some 100 factories, allowing profits to be used in part for reinvestment or for better working conditions. So successful were Zhao's policies that...