Word: droits
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...used as tourist attractions and given free board and lodging in return for affording the rest of us some entertainment. You may remember how the old kings -- like Henry V -- used to spy on their subjects; now it's the subjects who spy on their rulers. Dieu et mon droit...
Equally noteworthy has been Mobutu's quest for sexual favors among the wives of political associates. "The President enjoys an almost feudal droit du seigneur," explains a former Cabinet minister. "He uses sex as a tool to dominate the men around him. You get money or a Mercedes-Benz, and he takes your wife and you work for him." Says a former longtime resident of Gbadolite: "The complaints of those he has cuckolded only add to his mystique as a virile and powerful ruler...
...snide, pejorative language. From Latin comes the disapproving sinister (on the left, inauspicious) and the flattering dexterous (on the right, skillful). The Spanish word for left-handed, zurdo, means malicious. If you are gauche (left) in France, you are tactless and unsophisticated. Adroit comes from the French a droit (to the right), and we know what maladroit means -- especially when we see a left-handed violinist bowing northwest while the rest of the string section is northeast. A left-handed compliment is not nice, but a right-hand man is indispensable. If you get up on the wrong (left) side...
Like most operatic plots, that of The Marriage of Figaro is tortuous and ultimately unnecessary. Suffice to say that it involve the feudal privilege known as droit de seigneur and, some hours later, reunites one character with an unlikely set of parents. Unity comes not from the storyline but from the voices, which without exception stay well in control of a difficult and lengthy score--especially Knowles, who must awkwardly sing the show's first notes from his knees...
...Christine Papin killed their employer, Mme. Lancelin, and her daughter. Kesselman has retained the names of the sisters, but otherwise the play is very much her own. The playwright focuses on mother-daughter relationships, intimate sisterly affection and a rigid class structure that borders on the feudal droit du seigneur...