Word: feint
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fencing has contributed many useful words to the language, but the average American cannot tell a feint from a foible or a parry from a riposte. This ignorance is heartbreaking to fencers, who delight in giving ten-minute explanations of the attack, parry, return and continuation, which make up a "fencing conversation," but which, to the untrained eye, are only a millisecond flash of two blades. In America, fencing competitions are incomprehensible to outsiders. "We are a small, poor, truly amateur sport," says Stephen Sobel, secretary of the U.S. Olympic Committee and a saber fencer. "We all know each other...
When he did get up and hear the news, he persisted in believing that the Normandy invasion was just a feint, that he still had to guard against the real invasion that would occur at Calais. Not until ten hours after the Normandy landings did the first tanks of the 21st Panzer Division go into action against the British, and the British beat them back. When Rommel finally returned to his headquarters that night, he found his chief of staff, Lieut. General Hans Speidel, listening to Wagnerian opera records. One of Rommel's aides protested, but Speidel coolly
Last week it was Washington's turn to throw a somewhat ungraceful feint that left all involved feigning outrage. On the very day he was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles, the State Department rejected the visa application of Oleg Yermishkin, Moscow's designated attaché to the Summer Games. Yermishkin, who served as a first secretary at the Soviet embassy in Washington from 1973 to 1977, was later tabbed as having been an intelligence agent during that period. Washington read Moscow's attempt to place him for a six-month stay in Los Angeles...
Unfortunately, Winston Churchill, the most persuasive of the Allied leaders, loved feint and diversion. "Periphery pecking," the Americans called it, a strategy they felt wasted lives, time and matériel even as Germany rushed ahead with new weapons, including a possible atomic bomb. Churchill got his way in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, but Wedemeyer's heartland strategy was what focused Allied might in the decisive battle. To this day Wedemeyer believes that the Allies squandered a splendid opportunity by not invading in 1943. Had they occupied Europe and stopped the Soviets at their border, he says...
...already set a date for a leadership convention in March, but rather than cobble together a hurried convention to choose a new leader, the party caucus and national executive decided that they would be better off drafting Trudeau. Some viewed his decision to quit the leadership as only a feint designed to lull the Tories into a false sense of security. But one friend insists that "he very genuinely was out, and only with very great difficulty made up his mind to come back...