Word: direful
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Nothing is less susceptible to scrutiny than reputation. Put to the test, the savoir faire, savoir dire of the hardiest drollo in our midst would be hard put to it to approach this standard of imperfection. We can't attempt to be Casanovas without certain detection. And once let the folk of the watering-places get wind of our being neither more nor less than pretty average fellows whose urges are no more picaresque than the norm, we sink in the eyes of the world...
...owner of a pipe line must buy all oil offered, whereas for shipment by rail a company needs buy only what it wishes. Perhaps an additional reason was the rumor that oil in this prodigious new field is coming in at increasingly high temperatures. To oilmen, that is a dire warning of water's approach, boom...
...letter clearly foreshadowed a Hoover veto. But upon Congress it acted as no deterrent. Speaker Longworth pronounced the Bacharach bill "sane, sensible and conservative" and "one guess as good as another" on its cost. Secretary Mellon was loudly flayed for painting too gloomy a picture, was reminded that his dire prediction about the effects of the original Bonus act in 1924 had never materialized. The Ways & Means Committee in its report on H. R. 17054 argued that "there is no way to determine accurately just what the cost 'will be." Against Secretary Mellon's "potential liability...
...antagonists of the House Plan greeted the announcement of the change with a number of dire pictorial representations of the future characteristics of Harvard, the individual houses, and the individual students. Some said that the plan was a gross pampering of romantic democracy. Others predicted houses separated by social rank and a tendency toward snobbishness, or perhaps a superficial imitation of Oxford and Cambridge with a super-imposed paternalism...
Likewise in Amsterdam were representatives of Visp (Vereenigde Javasuiker Producenten) the Dutch sugar trust which controls 90% of Java's sugar industry. Intrigue and plotting marked the conferences. From the Cuban Nationalist party came dire messages warning the Dutch that soon a revolution will overthrow the Cuban Government, repudiate all of last week's deals. Busily hurrying around was Ivy Ledbetter Lee, famed Wall Street publicist. Mr. Chadbourne fought off bronchitis to attend the meetings. Java at first was recalcitrant. Production would be restricted next year, said the Visp men, but the future depended on consumption...