Word: gummier
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Initial heating of the phenol and formaldehyde (in the presence of an acid or base to get the reaction going) produced a shellac-like liquid good for coating surfaces like a varnish. Further heating turned the liquid into a pasty, gummier goo. And when Baekeland put this stuff into the bakelizer, he was rewarded with a hard, translucent, infinitely moldable substance. In a word: plastic...
Students of her art will remember that Novelist Metalious interleaved the gummier passages of her first book with hearty descriptive exercises celebrating the passage of the seasons among the granite hills, and that in the second book all this rhetoric was removed. The excision not only left the characters squirming about with an embarrassing lack of privacy, like residents of a motel whose walls had suddenly been plucked away, but it robbed the reader of the harmless delusion that the author was attempting literature. The present work reinstates a page or two of classy nature-walk prose, but cuts...
...this case, Harvard has nothing to worry about. Dean Bender, who soon takes over the Admissions Office, is the best possible successor to Richard Gummier. The Office will continue under completely competent direction. Presumably the alumni program will operate through Bender, and he, of all people, is the least likely to let anything get out of control. His ability for calm, strong administration is unsurpassed. He will draw the lines of policy over which there will be no stepping as long as he holds the post...
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