Word: habited
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While liberals love the Boston Globe, others think it is more like the smoking habit. You know it is bad for you, but you cannot give it up. Two Boston papers are superior: the Herald, with better columnists and editorials, and the Christian Science Monitor, which ranks higher overall...
...made his appointment impossible. TIME has learned that Bloomingdale had been investigated by the FBI as early as the late 1960s, when his name came up in connection with organized-crime figures in Las Vegas. About 15 years ago, Bloomingdale shelled out $5,000 in blackmail because of his habit of beating up prostitutes. Yet despite that record, he was chosen by Reagan as an appointee to the sensitive Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 1981. Bloomingdale fell ill shortly afterward...
...askance at the woman who had given her account of the courtship of Joseph and the Virgin Mary: "It is difficult to know what, if anything, she had in mind when she decided to tell the Age-Old Story with nothing new to add." He deplored Trevanian's habit, in The Eiger Sanction, of hauling such celebrities as the Burtons and Jackie Onassis into the action: "There is nothing wrong with this if you have a point to make about them. But he has nothing to say." Vidal twitted Frederick Forsyth for piling facts into "freight-car sentences...
Many computer buffs find these pleasures habit forming: about 200 CB users tune in every night. Others have trouble separating computer-mediated fantasy from reality. One 35-year-old woman grew so addicted to CompuSex that her husband walked out, complaining that she was neglecting him for her machine. She then hooked up with a series of online lovers who were either disappointing or disappointed when she met them in the flesh. Now, complaining that her life is a mess, she is organizing a support group for women having similar difficulties...
...human propensity to test the worthiness of a thing by seeing how well it stands up to abuse-the instinct to kick the tires on a used car-is an ancient and, if Yeats is to be trusted, occasionally charming habit. It can also be painful. Trial by ordeal, the venerable and once widespread practice by which fire or poison or some other divining element is used to determine a person's guilt or innocence, is the kick-to-test instinct applied to living subjects. It used to be a popular method for deciding whether or not someone...