Word: dismalness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Marx & Butter. The kind of man Khrushchev is had been case-hardened in the crucible of what Communism is-and both underlay every play of last week's drama. Khrushchev learned his Bolshevism out of his dismal early life-born and bred in a mud-and-reed hut, boy shepherd, child laborer in the coal mines, whipped unforgettably with a knotted nagaika while caught fishing on a princely estate. He was semiliterate until his mid-208, when he was sent, along with other Red army civil war veterans, to Lenin's Rabfak (workers' school). He learned...
Last year the team had a dismal record of two wins, four defeats and a tie. This season things could well be worse, and they may never get better, for the idea of recruiting a solid tackle or slithering halfback is out of the question. But the U.S. Coast Guard Academy's new coach was content. "Believe me," said Otto Graham, "I couldn't have picked out a better spot if I had sat down and studied offers for two or three years...
...Merit. This system sought to place students in their proper academic positions with mathematical certainty: 8 points for attending class, a loss of 16 points for missing Sunday chapel, etc. Quincy himself took Puritanic glee in toting up the figures weekly. The Scale of Merit, however, proved a dismal failure, for it placed a premium upon attendance and not upon learning. Perhaps the system fitted well with Quincy's preconceptions of the ideal college course, which he described as "thorough drilling." Again, the president's personal notions triumphed over common sense...
...European press-and especially the British press-was still painting Dwight Eisenhower as a weak President, racked by illness, sapped by age and barely able to carry on. Indeed, long after it should have known better, part of the U.S. press had been describing Ike in similar terms. The dismal picture of President Eisenhower had its basis in the three major illnesses he suffered in three successive years, illnesses that could only detract from his energies and subtract from his performances. But the image of the sick and dispirited Eisenhower lingered on long after the reality of dramatic recovery...
From the first, Tallent saw dismal Cabazon as a promised land. He bought a dilapidated parcel of land, divided it into lots, became publisher of the local weekly and president of the Chamber of Commerce. Then he waited. In 1954 came the sort of man that Tallent had been waiting for: Jerry Kosseff, a glib, messianic promoter from Hollywood. On the speaker's stand Kosseff was a Bible-quoting spellbinder. Recalls one Cabazonian: "Kosseff told us, 'Look around us. This is the Sinai Desert. All we have to do is stretch out our hands and the manna will...