Word: liven
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Toward the end Author Costain tries to liven things up a bit. Félicité is dragged by her ankles, with her pretty thighs exposed, by her brutal nobleman husband whom she has been forced to marry, is beaten by him with a cudgel "not thicker than a man's thumb," and is kidnaped by Indians. This, presumably, is what readers of this kind of novel have been waiting for, but it is a long wait, and they are in for further dull stretches before virtue and justice at last prevail...
While Dick Harlow's gridders are changing their attack to the T-formations for his squad. Plans call for tumblers to liven up the proceedings with acrobatics. The only thing lacking now, said Spear, are the tumblers. He urged all men possessing acrobatic ability to come out for the squad...
With an embryonic staff it is excusable, yet regrettable, that the first issue of the Advocate seems to be thrown together haphazardly. IIad the criticism been used to liven up the back pages of the book, and the bold black headlines been changed to something more fitting a literary magazine, the effect of the professional-looking drawings would have been increased greatly...
...Hollywood's better wits, find themselves stymied by some of the feeblest of material. Garbed in the inevitable technicolor. "The Time, The Place, and The Girl" turns out to be an all-too-typical musical, straight off the moviemakers seemingly endless assembly line. Jack Carson does his best to liven things up a bit, handling a sparse handful of gags with a veteran hand, and most of the musical numbers, though of no great significance, are pleasant enough to the eye and ear, but that's about...
...stand a touch of sin ... a naughty trifle now & then, just to liven things up. They have always enjoyed such tidbits in British politics, the record of which abounds with magnificent exaggerations, metaphors and friendly libels. American political campaigns have always been a quadrennial circus...