Word: dire
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...invoked formal power priorities for the first time. The victim was Carolina Aluminum Co., which was ordered to reduce its deliveries of firm power to nearby Duke Power Co., stop drawing down reservoir water, in effect keep its power for itself. To help explain the South's dire straits, FPC had already turned to an old Government scapegoat, Aluminum Co. of America (Carolina Aluminum's parent). Alcoa, said FPC, had too long relied on cheap seasonal dump power. Smart management in peace, this practice now meant that Alcoa had to drain 150,000 kw. from other customers...
...money spent for this nonproductive work has shown results. In spite of dire predictions, Britain is extremely healthy after a year of total war. Deaths from many diseases have dropped sharply (partly, doctors think, because of healthier diets enforced by rationing) and only cerebrospinal fever, the '"disease of overcrowding," has shown a heavy increase. The big job of cleaning up bomb damage, demolishing Blitzed houses, repairing buildings and roads, is full-time work for 80,000 men, with the result that the country shows far fewer scars than it might after nearly a year of air raids...
This emergency is so dire, so immediate and so pressing that no effort we could conceivably make would be more than just enough. The very best we can possibly do . . . will be just good enough, with nothing to spare. . . . Such was the judgment passed on the U.S. defense problem last week by OPM's Director Donald M. Nelson...
Some of the most aristocratic schools in Britain backed the bill: Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse. Their existence depended on its passage. Financial troubles had already forced one public school, Weyrnouth, to close down (TIME, April 28.) The rest were in dire straits, attacked on one flank by fading revenues, on the other by reformers who think the public schools are undemocratic...
...help along "collaboration" Vichy last week was invaded by a propaganda army from the Occupied Zone. For three days hatless, raincoated members of the pro-Nazi National Popular Assembly stayed in the new French capital breathing dire but incoherent threats until they were bounced out by the Garde Mobile. Since France already is so completely under Germany's thumb that an estimated 90% of her industrial production goes to the Third Reich, "collaboration" could mean only one thing-acquiescence to the passage of German troops to Spain and Africa, permitting Germany to use France's African colonies...