Word: floridity
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...Cities luxuriates with bizarre effects that probably symbolize very little. Actors clang bells when they go on and off the set; scene changes are announced on a sign bordered with flashing yellow lights, and furniture is made out of boxes lettered with the words "love," "hate," "cat," and "die." Florid, epigrammatic dialogue matches the props, with lines like "Security is a pipe dream until the next ice age comes...
Dream of Bagatelle. The World Wide Wicket Company has become the Tourniquet Transcontinental Trusting Company, in order to avoid a shabby French tendency to say Vorld Vide Vicket Company. When its president, J. B. Biggley, tells his florid mistress that few people know it but he is an extremely emotional man, she says (in the American version): "God damn...
...small square man with a large head and florid face slid his glasses onto his nose, squinted at the lights trained on him from the audience, and began to speak softly. "It is an honor to participate in this Law School Forum at a great university," he intoned slowly. Then his voice began to rise, to speed up, and soon he was hurtling through his speech, ignoring punctuation, and catching breath as he needed it. A bell rang behind him in Rindge Tech, his glasses slid down his nose, but the man continued to talk strenuously about what he knows...
...Building Revived. In West Berlin, the Reichstag once again became habitable. A huge, florid structure of Silesian sandstone-since 1894 the home of whatever democracy Germany knew from the days of Bismarck through the Weimar Republic-the building had bulked vacant and lifeless ever since it was gutted by fire on Feb. 27, 1933. The Nazis claimed the fire was kindled by Communists as the signal for a Red uprising, and a confused Dutch boy named Marinus Van der Lubbe was be headed for his alleged part in the crime. Since the Reichstag fire gave Hitler a pretext to gain...
...clouds picked up in the 1930s, Low's views assaulted the conscience of all England. He created the character of Colonel Blimp, a florid beefeater with a walrus mustache who symbolized British complacency in the teeth of the 20th century's storms. From a Turkish bath, the colonel sprayed his nonsense at a mute companion who looked suspiciously like Cartoonist Low. "Gad, sir," said the colonel, "Hitler is right. The only way to teach people self-respect is to treat 'em like the curs they are." Japan was right, too, in the Blimpian Olympus: Keeping the white...