Word: downrightness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plight of U.S. passenger travel is downright humiliating when it is compared with the superb services of, say, Japan, France and Britain. British trains run so close to the mark that passengers carp about a five-minute overdue arrival. Japan's celebrated bullet trains, at up to 130 m.p.h., make the U.S. counterparts seem like earthworms. Naturally such service does not come free. Britain subsidizes its trains at a yearly rate of $728 million, Japan (with less than half the U.S. track mileage) at $4.1 billion and France at $930 million...
...Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Standard Oil of Indiana, one of the nation's largest retailers, are heavily dependent on business in the U.S., where prices are federally controlled. They had large increases that only seemed puny when compared with the others, which enjoyed gains that ranged from impressive to downright startling: SoCal's ARRIS earnings rose 43% over the past year, Gulfs profits increased 61%, and Texaco's were up 81%. Marathon Oil had a rise of 108%, while Amerada Hess jumped 279%. Standard Oil of Ohio, holder of a large and profitable stake on Alaska's North Slope, increased...
...Carter noted with unusual fervor. Sadat had made a startling gesture for peace and Israel still quibbled. The Arabs were growing more hostile, richer, and they have enormous manpower. Western Europe, thirsting for oil, was irritated, and some of its leaders, like France's Giscard, were downright contemptuous of Israeli behavior. Nobody, continued the President, knew what would happen to American sentiments if another oil crisis developed...
...Shakespeare still didn't begin his career writing masterpieces, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona gives proof to that. In the past, critics spent a good deal of time trying to prove that "someone else" had written the parts of this play that are confusing, stiff, or downright silly. But even Shakespeare was once young and fallible, and this play is generally accepted now as a very early--if not the first--work of a great writer still marshalling his powers...
...using your bed for a trampoline and pillow fights with your sister were now suddenly unimportant, no, downright boring. Little League tryouts were in four weeks, and you didn't make it last year because you didn't work hard enough, and aw heck if the pros can start...