Word: conformal
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...layout doesn't tempt outsiders to poke around in places like Central Square. The buildings form a jarringly uncomplementary string of facades. Each business has developed independently. There isn't an architectural plan, historic tradition, emotional ambience or standard of quality to conform to. The smattering of fast-food franchises with their corny and tediously familiar fronts in Dunkin'-Donuts pink, Brigham's blue, white and red, and Jack-In-the-Box orange is accepted without any qualms. The only required feature seems to be functionality. A store that can supply "reliable shades and screens" is going to come...
...even though its 24 million people are fractured into 100 tribes, speak dozens of dialects, and are spread over 895,000 square miles, much of it primitive jungle. That achievement, however, has been bought at the expense of democracy; Zaïreans' are expected to conform strictly to "Mobutisme," an often eccentric notion of nationalism propounded by Le Guide, as the President calls himself. Among other matters, Mobutu in recent years has ordered that all Zaïreans adopt African rather than Christian names. Setting a national example, the President in 1971 changed his name from Joseph Mobutu...
...stand a lower-court decision upholding the Social Security legislation. The court's decision means that the Federal Government may now order the formation of Professional Standards Review Organizations (P.S.R.O.s) to review medical procedures in individual cases and decide if the treatments prescribed by physicians receiving federal payment conform to generally accepted standards. Though doctors will be unhappy about P.S.R.O.s, they will probably not pull out of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which provide a major share of some physicians' incomes...
Gitl makes a valiant effort, but cannot conform to her husband's new ways. With his American values, Jake claims that he is twice as good a man as their boarder, Bernstein, because he makes twice as much money. Perhaps the sweatshop boss best summarizes the differences between the Old and New Worlds when he observes that in America, "the peddler becomes the boss and the Yeshiva student sits at the sewing machine." At one point, as her neighbor Mrs. Kavarsky is squeezing a groaning Gitl into a corset for that sleek American look, she tells her, "You wanna...
...episode illuminates one of the subliminal aspects of the play. It is concerned with Southern European codes of male honor and pride, and the warping indignities suffered by those who try to conform to American codes of success and middle-class etiquette...