Word: fathoming
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...clues to reality. In each case Graves appears to believe that he has actually conjured up out of the past, by a kind of detective work of the imagination, real events-or as good as real events-which no one before him has really been able to fathom. Thomas Mann, in his wisdom, makes no such claim for his great and subtle Biblical Joseph and His Brothers. But in King Jesus Robert Graves, bright and solemn as a Quiz Kid, again implies that he has at last discovered the "valid explanation"-this time of the New Testament story...
West Europe, Ltd. Connolly's less agreeable qualities include a tone of pettish portentousness into which he falls when writing of philosophical or religious matters that he can taste but cannot fathom. At Eton little Cyril preserved a pious air in chapel, though reading his blackbound Petronius instead of the prayer book; in more adult ways he has continued...
...four years, National League batsmen had been trying to fathom Rip Sewell's pet pitch. Rip called it an ephus ball after an old crap-shooting phrase, ephusiphus-ophus; sportswriters called it a blooper. Whatever its name, it was lobbed up to the plate, fat and inviting, with lots of backspin-and, if hit, usually popped up high in the air to the second-baseman...
...Japanese were finding the trappings of Western democracy hard to learn, but it was not for lack of trying. And how were Orientals ever to fathom the inscrutable Western mind? Fifteen long blocks from the Diet Chamber, in the courtroom where Jap war criminals were being tried, spectators stood stiffly at attention as the judges filed out for the noon recess. The marshal of the court, Captain Donald S. Van Meter, rose and solemnly announced: "For the benefit of English-speaking persons, Louis won over Conn by a knockout in the eighth round...
Intuition and tact made an indispensable formula. At first the Special Envoy could not fathom General Chou's insistence that the Communists needed more time to reorganize their army. Then he got a flash. Would it speed things up if U.S. officers taught the Communists the fundamentals of modern military staff work? General Chou leaped at the suggestion, hurried to Yenan and hurried back with approval. What had held the Communists back was the fear of fumbling and losing face in the process of streamlining their unwieldy forces...