Word: dourness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crossexamination, the dour Mardian came on strong. He tried to overwhelm Assistant Special Prosecutor Jill Wine Volner by sneering contemptuously at her questions. To one, he replied: "Go ahead and make a speech, Mrs. Volner." When she asked a follow-up question, he shot back: "Do you want me to say yes-yes?" Ignoring rebukes from Judge Sirica, Mardian frequently turned to the jury to deliver his own version of the evidence...
...Resources, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, suggested a historic reversal of national roles. Yamani proposed that Saudi Arabia be permitted to spend its increasing oil revenues by buying into refining and marketing facilities in the U.S., which has always prided itself on exporting capital, technology and management. His idea provoked a dour response from Washington, but it was at least followed by a rash of American humor. Cartoons showed robed Arabs manning Stateside gas pumps and a camel replacing the tiger in the tank...
...first press conference in July, France's President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing fielded questions while standing behind a lectern. At his second conference last week he somberly remained seated, in perhaps unconscious symbolism of the dour words to follow. Sounding like a Spengler with a French accent, for much of the conference he all but prophesied the decline of the West...
...side of the law as defendants in a Washington federal courtroom, separated by a vacant chair-and a frosty silence. For 45 awkward, painful minutes, during a courtroom lull in the jury selection process, John Ehrlichman, baggy-eyed and subdued, bent purposefully over a yellow legal pad. The normally dour H.R. Haldeman, his crew cut turned sleekly long, glanced tentatively at his onetime friend, but got no encouragement. Before stepping out to smoke his pipe, a pale, drawn, considerably older-looking John Mitchell, 61, had sat aloof. Once the nation's chief law enforcer as Attorney General...
...talent, allowed Nicholson not only to turn on his own bursting temper, but to flash the charm that has its greatest single emblem in his smile, which seems to be cordially unsettling and made mostly of radium. David Staebler, on the other hand, required Nicholson to master a more dour, slippery confessional mode, to hide his character's feelings from himself under a barrage of autobiographical patchwork. Nicholson was equal to the task. It is his most daring performance, and one of his favorites...