Word: dubious
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this year and could allow Smith to claim a $33,000 deduction. Deductions so large relative to the investment, especially when made at year's end, have been disallowed by the Internal Revenue Service. Although no one has charged Smith with violating the law, his use of a dubious tax shelter of a type that the IRS has contested suggests insensitivity on the part of the top Government official responsible for the prosecution of criminal tax dodgers...
...opens with a bespectacled attorney reading a last will and testament. Incongruously present are the not so dear departed, hugely enjoying themselves as the lawyer tells the grieving heirs: "To Ronald Reagan we leave a recession, inflation at 12.4% and rising, gas prices sky high." Chortling merrily at the dubious bequest are-could it be? - Democrats Jimmy Carter and Tip O'Neill...
...emotional vocabularies is not invariably a dubious practice. In the first place, words do not always get loaded by sinister design or even deliberately. In the second, that sort of language is not exploited only for mischievous ends. The American verities feature words-liberty, equality-that, on top of their formal definitions, are verily packed with the sentiments that cement U.S. society. The affectionate banalities of friendship and neighborliness similarly facilitate the human ties that bind and support. The moving vocabularies of patriotism and friendship are also subject to misuse, of course, but such derelictions are usually easy to recognize...
McCurdy was dubious about the offer and even considered quitting after his first year...
...after the sinking of the Argentine cruiser, the Irish government declared that it was "appalled by the outbreak of what amounts to open war" in the South Atlantic, and said it was "imperative" that the U.N. become involved in settling the dispute. Irish Defense Minister Patrick Power went a dubious step further and declared that "obviously, the British are very much the aggressors now." For that, Power received a public reprimand from Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey, but the change in feelings was clear. Explained one Irish diplomat: "The level of casualties is getting so high that somebody...