Word: figment
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Digging in White House mail suggests that the Nancy problems may always have been more media figment than real. Of the 60,000 letters addressed to Mrs. Reagan in the year, 90% are supportive or inquisitive, not negative. The great dress loan episode, believed by writers to be the most scandalous, drew 50 letters, barely a public nod. Decorating the White House with money donated by millionaires was supported 10 to 1. The new dishes were approved 3 to 1. With those results in, it is not much fun for the press to be against nesting...
Thank you for your article "Coping with Eve's Curse" [July 27]. I've suffered for ten years with menstrual pain, and let me assure you, it's not just a figment of my imagination. Ironically, some of the most unsympathetic responses I've heard have been from other women; from the high school nurse who offered me a peppermint, to the nurse at the hospital emergency room who told me that I'd just have to wait until I had my first baby. She advised that then maybe the pain would subside. Simple acceptance...
That ain't just a figment of fancy from the John Travolta movie. All across the country, from the canyons of Manhattan to the chic watering holes of Beverly Hills and, of course, the salons of the Southwest, it is Lone Ranger and Tonto time. City dudes are sporting wide-brimmed cowpoke sombreros (often with Indian accents of feathers and turquoise-inlaid headbands), yoke shirts, off-the-range Levi's, brass- or gold-buckled belts and high-steppin' boots of alligator or snakeskin. Some real rootin' tooters tote leather holsters (empty) and cartridge belts. The lady...
...Benjamin Disraeli really exist, or was he the figment of somebody's imagination? He was a dandy at a time when people were wearing black. He was a romantic in a prosaic age. He wrote best-selling novels while everyone around him was writing political tracts. Most important of all, he was by birth a Jew in an era when practicing Jews were legally barred from entering the British Parliament. Yet he was twice Prime Minister, a favorite of Queen Victoria's and a dominant figure in British politics for almost four decades...
Most of these signs--what the South Africans call "petty apartheid"--have been removed in the last few years, as white South Africa tries hard to give its drooping image a facelift. But enough remains to remind you that apartheid exists, that it is not a figment of some fevered radical's exaggeration, that beneath Pretoria's familiar exterior there is something very wrong indeed...