Word: confound
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Iacocca's tough-guy face and intense, you-gotta-believe-me manner are not supposed to work well on the cool medium. Perhaps Americans permitted him to confound the rules because he seemed like almost no one else in the limelight: he is, after all, the apotheosis of the regular guy. To a viewing public ordinarily soothed and stroked by carefully inoffensive spokesmen, Iacocca's bluntness was electrifying. In addition, of course, there has been the sheer quantity of exposure over the past five years. In all, Iacocca's 30-second spots have reached 97% of American households an average...
Even some who admire Jahn's use of form wince at the materials, like the strips of aluminum and the tacky-looking colored panels, "popular" elements that confound his gestures toward the ideal. Jahn protests descriptions like "cheap" and "glitzy." "The materials look unusual, but they are not cheap," he says. "This is the type of building that takes time to digest and to understand." Indeed, the architect feels confident that he has designed a landmark. "Just wait 20 years," he grins. "Someone will try to replace the blue panels, and it won't be allowed...
Difficult Loves may further confound the unwary. All of its 28 stories date from the 1940s and '50s. Their language (some pieces have been translated by William Weaver, the rest by Archibald Colquhoun and Peggy Wright) is straightforward, with nary a hint of narrative nudging. A few seem little more than sketches; in A Ship Loaded with Crabs, for instance, a group of young boys explores a half-sunken hulk, repulses a boarding by a rival gang and then swims off. But that is not quite all. A resonance lingers; the sound of splashing and the play of light...
...storms that are too far away to be seen, changes its course, and you are left in a desert, all alone. These irrational changes, of course, produced by a political vengefulness that is alien to American life, are a great danger. They confuse our friends, mislead our adversaries and confound our own plans for a more manageable world...
...anyone who has attended these wondrous chilblain festivals will testify, can be counted on for natural and man-made disasters of a kind unmatched since the early days of polar exploration. The arresting uncertainty every four years is not whether a pickup team of U.S. hockey players can confound the world by winning again, or even whether the Olympic committee can exceed its previous stuffiness in the matter of amateurism (it can: two champion skiers, Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark and Liechtenstein's Hanni Wenzel, were ruled out of this Olympics for accepting their loot too directly). No, what is fascinating...