Word: downplay
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sedaris reserves his highest, most poetic register of speech, the one in which wheelchairs are called "electric chariots," to downplay the danger he faced, on and off the road, from a larcenous, knife-wielding stud to a dildo collector...
...been disqualified in an earlier ballot. The NF already rules three other cities in southern France: Toulon, Orange and Marignane, another Marseilles suburb. Record unemployment and a large North-African immigrant population made all cities susceptible to the NF's anti-foreigner campaign. While mainstream politicians tried to downplay the most recent victory of Jean-Marie Le Pen as an aberration, TIME's Bruce Crumley calls the development worrying: "This concentration of power in the south provides the party with the base to launch a major offensive in the run up to next year's national elections." Scandal-ridden Socialists...
Fortunately, they freely confess to fallibility. Indeed, such is their concern over being misperceived as color mafiosi that at conference end, a dozen CMG officers gathered in the press suite to downplay their own significance to the assembled media. That the assembled media consisted of a local reporter, a trade journalist and myself proved no deterrent to their earnest onslaught. CMG only forecasts, insisted our briefers; it doesn't dictate; the consumer is the ultimate arbiter...
White speaks for all the winners when he says, "The goal in my column and in other stories is to examine and expose some of the nonsense that Americans continue to believe about race. Generally, whites tend to downplay the extent of their racism--and blacks tend to overplay it. We could use a lot more openness and honesty...
Since then, of course, she has been at pains to downplay her role in the Administration, retrenching into a more traditional First Lady persona. But as Bill Clinton was successfully learning to inhabit the role of President, Hillary's role-playing was less consistent. Very often in public she is smiling but remote, her eyes concealed by dark sunglasses. Even when she is having fun, as she clearly was last week, there is an unmistakable sadness to her, a pensive, fragile air that reflects four bruising years in Washington and the bone-deep weariness that campaigning brings. She speaks...