Word: hit-or-miss
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...weak, its name can be an important factor in sales. If the car is strong, you can call it the Dodo and it will still sell strongly." But despite the advice of an army of research specialists, cars continue to be christened pretty much on a hit-or-miss basis. "We call in the advertising agency," explains one insider. "They come up with a list of suggested names. They go out and survey them, then report back. We pare the list down and take it to our top executive. He doesn't like any of them. Next morning...
...tells her own story, her unique perceptivity gives the admittedly limited world of her contacts a special freshness. Josephine has a penchant for questioning the connections ordinarily drawn between different aspects of everyday experience. An invitation bearing her name inspires the following reflection: "It was the hit-or-miss of these words that struck me most. I knew the collocution was supposed to represent me and no one else, but it always seemed odd that so loose an approximation as a name could have a claim on you, could intervene in your life, could summon you to the gallows...
Burei. The keynote is burei (no manners). While employees in the U.S. may get drunk at office parties and tell the boss off, employees in Japan are virtually required to; that is considered an improvement on the hit-or-miss American tradition. Afterward, everyone politely forgets all that happened...
Because Soviet-bloc projects are offered on a hit-or-miss basis, the Reds often make costly mistakes. Some examples...
...extraverted salesman-impatient with details or lengthy briefings, a man who shrinks from offending a friend or customer, who agonizes over difficult decisions. In his 26 months as Defense Secretary, which began so dramatically only five days after the first Sputnik soared into history, McElroy has had a hit-or-miss record (TIME, June 22). As a salesman, succeeding rough-handed "Engine Charlie" Wilson, he did a brilliant job of persuading Congress to accept his budgets-and then some. Congress, in fact, gave him some $806 million more than he asked for. But he could not choose between proliferating, billion...