Word: grimness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...grim zeal of many of the most talented students today, eager to do well in high school in order to do well in college in order to do well in law school and, presumably, in later life...reduces professors to functionaries; their knowledge is less important than their certifying function...the best students don't consider academic careers; indeed they tend to think their teachers weren't very bright to have decided against medical school. Their doubts only exacerbate the professors' self-doubts...
Kennedy no longer looked grim or dejected, as he did after his loss in Iowa, nor was he talking about withdrawing from the race if he loses in New England. After Iowa, he said that he had to beat Carter in Maine and New Hampshire to stay in the race, but now he claimed to be ready to go all no the contests...
This scenario is not the product of an avid Hollywood scriptwriter. It is a grim projection by British experts who know only too well that the apparently placid Thames can turn with little warning into a terrifying torrent. To forestall the disaster that a "worst case" Thames flood would produce, British engineers are rushing to complete by the end of 1982 an extraordinary project: a giant, movable steel and concrete flood barrier that in normal circumstances will allow the passage of large ships but rise up during flood threats to block the menacing waters...
...because there is much here that is morally acute. As in much of his other work (notably the scripts of Taxi Driver and Old Boyfriends), Schrader simply refuses to face the grim, climactic consequences of his essentially tragic vision. He manages to contract conjunctivitis just when he needs to be most clear-eyed. -Richard Schickel
Vernon Jordan, head of the National Urban League, regularly uses the President's State of the Union message as an occasion to offer his own report on the state of black America. Last week's installment, like its predecessors, was grim. Describing blacks as "boat people without boats," Jordan said that their average wages had shrunk from 61% of white wages in 1969 to 59% in 1978. And despite the reports of a growing black middle class, the number of blacks in that category remained stationary at about 25% throughout the 1970s; so did the larger number...