Word: defiant
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Gusto is not a common characteristic of present-day writers. Their most notable common trait is resignation-a resignation that sometimes dresses itself up in a splendid refusal to surrender, a defiant rejection of the unconditional terms that life demands. Hemingway, Faulkner, Graham Greene, J. P. Marquand, Elizabeth Bowen, Evelyn Waugh-they all record, in their various manners, the hopeless valor, the quiet desperation of a rearguard action, a doomed though indomitable next-to-last stand...
...Squanto, the Indian who acted as interpreter for the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts, had learned some of his English in Newfoundland. *Since 1869 a song with the defiant punch line "Come near at your peril, Canadian wolf!" had become an unofficial national anthem of Newfoundland...
...President got up the next day and worked stubbornly at a pile of congressional bills. He did the same thing the day following. But the fever continued, and on the morning after that, shaved, dressed and with a faintly defiant air, he allowed himself to be driven to Walter Reed Hospital...
Then the delegates climbed into their buses and drove to the convention hall. The roll call began. One by one, the voices spoke for the states of the Union: flat Midwestern twangs and Southern singsongs, quiet voices and hoarsely tense voices, defiant voices and triumphant voices, and voices that tried to cram a message into the simple business of voting. ("I vote for Eisenhower, the winner." "I proudly vote for Bob Taft." "Louisiana casts 13 hard-earned votes for Eisenhower...
...with the illusion that he can still swing a bail-out deal with the U.S., is worse than useless. En route now to Buenos Aires is a different kind of ambassador, a capable but little-known careerman who is unlikely either to sass or salute a defiant neighbor. Even Perón should be able to grasp that Albert Nufer, 57, a longtime State Department deskman whose only previous ambassadorial assignment was in El Salvador, is likely to ask nothing, offer nothing. For the present, U.S. policy toward Perón will be to maintain correct surface relations...