Word: doltish
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Seventeenth-Century Moliére (real name: Jean Baptiste Poquelin) might have been a little startled at what has happened to his doltish M. Jourdain, who was already an outrageous enough butt. Everybody swindled and snickered at him-the dancing masters and fencing masters hired to teach him the graces; the count who was to present him at court; the marquise with whom he craved a modish liaison. But Moliére's butt-who suddenly learned with rapture that he had been speaking prose all his life-was a passably solid character. When Zany Clark gets through with...
...taken to be moral slobs, mental deficients, and fools; and if Europeans now seek to milk us, we have only "Our Boys" to blame. It will take years to repair the widespread distrust of the U.S. produced, not by bombs or diplomatic deals, but by our half-educated, doltish youth...
...peasants scratched their lice and wallowed in filth unmatched since the Middle Ages. Degraded courtiers wasted themselves lewdly in fashionable excesses copied from the French court of Louis XVI. The harlot Queen Maria Luisa, a green-complexioned, toothless masterpiece of stale flesh, wore herself out with dissipation, while her doltish husband hunted serving wenches and rabbits. (Of Maria Luisa Napoleon said: "Her character is written on her face; it surpasses anything you dare imagine.") Spain's strong man was Don Emmanuel Godoy, a half-educated, country-born ex-guardsman, who had become Prime Minister through his prowess as Queen...
Last week U. S. readers of the Illustrated London News were apprised of Dr. Thoma's success in being the first man to hypnotize a chimpanzee. Not wishing to waste time on aloof or doltish subjects...
...when Star is haled to the village school to take an examination. Here, while Captain January and his friend Nazro (Slim Summerville) stand on a rain barrel and peer through the schoolhouse window, Star distinguishes herself. She makes the young nephew of the truant officer, being questioned simultaneously, appear doltish by comparison, gains credentials for the third grade. As lighthouse inspector, Captain Nazro has the sad duty of telling Captain January that, because his light is being mechanized, he must join the unemployed. This means that poor little Star is likely to be turned out doors...