Word: gruff
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Poor little Orphan Connie (Deanna Durbin) is endowed with nothing in this world but a lyrical larynx and a gruff, rich uncle, who has supported her through the hardships of a swank finishing school. She is disappointed when he does not come to her graduation, but climbs bravely into the limousine he sends in loco parentis. She needs all her courage when it deposits her among his screwy family. Auntie is horoscopic, Cousin Barbara is spoiled, Cousin Walter just asks apprehensively: "Does she still sing?" Bulb-eyed, bulgy Uncle Jim (Eugene Pallette, who has had experience as father...
Huge crowds stood in Berlin streets, in Hamburg beer gardens, in Magdeburg restaurants listening to a speech over the radio. It was artful-alternating historical review with hysterical threat. The speaker's voice was deep, gruff, staccato as that of a Prussian drillmaster...
From such a countryside not yet at war, but grimly preparing for the worst, did Finland's gruff, humbly born, dark-bearded and deeply beloved President Kyosti Kallio last week depart. He left Helsinki by air for Stockholm to confer in desperate earnest with the three tall, umptigenarian Kings of Scandinavia, all markedly democratic, each a devout Lutheran and all keenly aware that the unleashed might of ruthless, un-Christian Bolsheviks and Nazis now menaces the peaceful Nordic States...
...Gruff old Rear Admiral Emory Scott Land, chairman of the U. S. Maritime Commission, barked on the White House steps: "It's a nice idea, but what are you going to do if somebody sticks his nose inside the zone?" If the U. S. Navy, with what help its weak sisters to the South can give, actually throws a line of peace police around the Americas, can the 22 German merchantmen now holed up in Latin American ports return to coastwise trade-lanes, cruise without fear of British men-o'-war? What if British and German raiders meet...
...Gruff-voiced Professor Bull found only one important improvement in the new grading rules: cow meat can no longer be graded as choice beef (because cow beef is not as good as steer beef of the same grade). Professor Bull advocated another refinement: Since housewives can't tell the sex of meat in the butcher shop, beefsteaks and other cuts should have their sex stamped on them...