Word: humdrum
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...play as a tale of claustropohobia, of slow stifling, of atrophy. The three sisters, Masha, Olga, and Irina want to join the whirl and bustle of life in Moscow, but instead they remain in their small town, their hopes and expectations gradually shrinking to fit the confines of their humdrum existence. Directors typically use elaborate, crowded Victorian set designs to suggest the cramped nature of life in the Prozorov household...
...play begins in the humdrum way with which Ionesco likes to put his audience at false ease. The middle-aged Choubert is reading a newspaper and his wife Madeleine is darning socks. A knock on the door brings in a detective. Shyly he asks if Choubert knows a man named Mallot whose name ends either with a t or a d. Soon the questioning and the tone turn inquisitional...
Natasha Pearly '82 believes in fate. It was her destiny, she says, to inject democratic principle into Harvard's humdrum bureaucracy, even though powerful deans objected to the pain in their backsides. She couldn't help it. It had to be done...
Helms spent the next seven years in a happy humdrum, working as executive director of the North Carolina Bankers Association. The job paid well, and it also introduced him to the state's corporate Establishment, which found Helms a right-thinking young apprentice. (A curious pattern: small-town boyhood, radio sports reporter, business p.r. man. Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms...
...everyday maintenance tasks and other humdrum assignments facing new draftees, however, are not as easy to fill as when the forces were smaller. To help staff the jobs, the I.D.F. has begun to accept young people with criminal records, whom it once rejected. That has served to aggravate a decline in discipline, which bothers army commanders. Israeli troops have always been informal, but at the core they were tough and ready to fight. The new disregard of discipline has prompted the I.D.F. to emphasize symbols of obedience. Signs have gone up on military bases: SOLDIER, IMPROVE YOUR APPEARANCE...