Word: martinet
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...face, almost wooden, sometimes lights up in a crooked smile. Prone to swearing a good deal in a quiet, pleasant way, he never loses his temper, though he is a martinet about detail. When he is in command, his ship must be spotless, his men equally neat. In only one respect is he himself lax-his beard, which is fast-growing, heavy. Hating to shave, he has tried all types of razor, has lately returned to an old-fashioned straightedge...
...which these individuals were subjected at such a crisis in their lives can be excused on the basis of the survival of the fittest. The thing which does give one pause, however, is to think that this example may be shaping these forty Juniors into sadists, just like the martinet of a proctor who ran Monday's show...
...December 1787, H. M. S. Bounty, a British armed transport commanded by a brutal martinet named William Bligh, set sail from Spithead, England, for Tahiti, from which it was to take breadfruit plants to the West Indies. After leaving Tahiti two-thirds of the crew, led by the first officer, mutinied and abandoned Bligh and 18 of his supporters in a small boat equipped with oars and sail. Bligh and his companions won through to Kupang after 43 nightmarish days. Meantime the mutineers returned to Tahiti, whence nine of them set out again with a Tahitian princess for the first...
...poor climate for noble sentiments. Though their English captors attempted, in their way, to be humane, their blundering tactlessness soon drove the exiles to a frenzy of outraged sensibility. Napoleon's honor was touchy, and Sir Hudson Lowe, the British Governor, was a choleric, literal-minded martinet. The French and their warders were at loggerheads from the start. Said Napoleon of Sir Hudson: "The man is a coward of long experience and a gaoler from taste." Napoleon and his entourage shut themselves up in Longwood, their uncomfortable quarters high up in the hills, while Sir Hudson fumed in Jamestown...
...central, animating force of E. A. Pierce & Co., but it is a woman who holds the system together. Brown haired, feminine, with a sturdy but pleasing personality, Miss Ethel F. Mercereau is probably the most famed woman in Wall Street. She is a Pierce partner. She is also a martinet. She forbids smoking anywhere in the office from 9 to 3 o'clock. She allows no employe to make personal telephone calls except when absolutely necessary, or to write personal letters on the firm's stationery. No E. A. Pierce clerk may appear before a customer...