Word: formful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...seemed too familiar. It looked as if the rabbit might save the consumer some money on his bills, but it also seemed inevitable that he would have to pay it back to the Government on income-tax day-and a great deal more besides, if bureaucracy ran true to form...
...doctor asked the crowd to leave. As the last figures disappeared, Bill Yancey was hauled slowly up the shaft. In his arms was a small, blanketed form. Tenderly he laid the bundle on a white pillow in the back of a black car. In silence, the car rolled slowly past the derricks and the piled dirt, past the gaping hole and the steel casing, past the rows of exhausted, grimy workmen...
When a body moves with the speed of sound, the air does not yield smoothly. Instead, hard shock waves (sound waves) form. These are no gentle whispers; they are tough, speeding shells of compressed air, powerful enough under certain conditions to tear an airplane to bits...
Even flying much slower than sound, airplanes can run afoul of shock waves. The air crowding past them has to go faster to get around their curved surfaces. If, in its hurry, the air hits the speed of sound, shock waves form locally. Good design has steadily raised the speed at which an airplane can fly without trouble from local shock waves. But there is a limit: the speed of sound itself.* At this critical speed, an airplane's motion is sure to generate shock waves...
While not so lively or lightly spun as its predecessor, Herself Surprised (TIME, Sept. 20), To Be a Pilgrim has a vibrant life. Together, the two novels form part of a first-rate trilogy covering 20th-century English manners & morals in a half-serious, half-picaresque vein; the last and best of the three, The Horse's Mouth, has yet to be published...