Word: impromptu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last week, anxiously awaited the finals between its women's volleyball team, world champions in 1982, and the U.S. Factories and offices came to a stop for a live telecast. When China clinched the gold, the country erupted in joy. Fireworks rocketed into the sky. In Peking an impromptu convoy of bicyclists waving flags headed for the U.S. embassy; security guards kept them from getting too close, but the crowd was in a jubilant mood. Even matters of state were momentarily put aside: the volleyball result was passed on to Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang in the midst...
...said Nabila Khalil, 23. "Some soldiers stopped him and said they wanted to ask him a few questions. I haven't seen or heard from him in 14 months." One episode occurred often enough to become a sort of national nightmare: militiamen would set up an impromptu checkpoint, stop a car and discover the driver belonged to an enemy sect. Sometimes the motorist would be shot, sometimes he would be hustled away and executed later...
...small (estimated 10,000 members) Black Muslim sect. Eleven weeks ago Jackson demoted Farrakhan from "surrogate" to "supporter," and the two men have not appeared on the same platform since. Nonetheless, Nation of Islam bodyguards still appear at Jackson rallies, and they served as security on a recent impromptu trip to Tijuana, Mexico. By failing to repudiate Farrakhan and his inflammatory rhetoric, Jackson continues to raise questions about his claim to be a conciliator and peacemaker...
...spirit of the late '60s did make a fitting appearance. For a little while, one saw again the era's genius for street theater, for impromptu enactments of political and moral emotion...
...talks are not connected discourses but collections of applause lines that bring shouts of "All right! . . . Talk it up, Jesse! . . . Yessir!" building steadily. He begins slowly, his voice strong but not strident, his phrases short. He gathers speed and volume, often breaking into a cadence that scans well as impromptu free verse...