Word: elicit
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...helplessly fascinated and regularly appalled by the physical appearance of things. There is, for instance, the "hideous" building in Manhattan where her husband works. "When you see this building you can think only one thing. 'WHY?' is the thing. 'Why? Why? Why?'" A Nantucket neighbor's exercise pants elicit the same befuddlement: "Why wear anything like that on these hot summer days...
...profusion of all too recogniz- able cliches may elicit a grimace or two during a screening of "Star Wars," but there's no denying that the film ultimately wins you over. Lucas' mission is to entertain, and if such an end involves resorting to a few old standards of dialogue and theme, then so be it. "Star Wars" neither poses nor answers any metaphysical questions that will keep the moviegoer scratching his head. Lucas merits a nod of the cap for a refreshing change of pace
...unaware that education is good and drugs are bad. Future candidates, however, will take away meaning. For instance: Don't discuss entitlements in the heat of a campaign. It's like putting metal in a microwave. Small fires break out, and dousing is not only exhausting but may also elicit promises that cannot be kept and make serious reform even more difficult. This is why Washington invents commissions...
...imagined the response The Book of Virtues would elicit, with 2.3 million copies sold to date. Bennett followed with an illustrated Children's Book of Virtues; a separate anthology aimed at adults, The Moral Compass; and the PBS cartoon series in which a buffalo named Plato (who bears a strong resemblance to Bennett) leads a pair of children through animated moral tales...
Twist any paleontologist's arm and you'll eventually elicit a fantasy about meeting long-extinct animals in the flesh. That's understandable enough, for fossil bones and teeth are frustratingly mute about so many of the things that made them the living organisms they once were. This is never more true than with the fossils of early hominids. But few paleoanthropologists have actually had the nerve to go public with their most imaginative musings, at least partly because they are so conscious of the gulf between what can and cannot reliably be said...