Word: merest
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some Australians will tell you they have a classless society. This is the merest fantasy. Never since human societies began has there been a classless one. We began with the most ironbound of all class distinctions, between prisoners and the free. The freeborn (the "sterling") were bitterly opposed to giving up their social placement above the ex-convicts and their children (the "currency"). But the "lower orders"--that is, most 19th century Australians--fiercely resented the pretensions of the nobs and were well aware that in a pioneer environment Lady Luck was a more powerful queen than Victoria Regina. This...
...there, the production has sidestepped all the problems of making the music carry the plot by keeping the 17-strong cast and band onstage throughout. Between them, in thickest Jamaican patois and the merest whiff of ganja smoke, they summon the saucy spirit of the Kingston dancehall one minute, the legend of the outlaw the next. Best of all they rip through glorious renditions of hit after hit. Make room, Mamma Mia! For as sure as the sun will shine, The Harder They Come is gonna get its share...
...Skate parks, which first appeared in the 1970s, started out as places meant to draw skaters away from the respectable concrete of downtown. But those early parks tended to be melancholy stretches of concrete with a few bowls and half pipes--that's a semicircular ramp--thrown in. The merest parking lot was more fun. Over the next decade many of the parks closed, victims of underuse and high insurance costs...
...most experienced commentators describe this year's Conservative Party conference as "young and sparky." The Tories, sparky? What happened to the comatose bunch of wrinklies with as much spark as a soggy book of matches? Of course, there were plenty of them at the conference, too, but the merest hint that it might soon be fashionable to be young and conservative in Britain confirms the significance of other developments. There's the retirement of Joschka Fischer, the iconic figure of the politics of rebellion; the discovery that many young European Catholics are more traditionally devout than their parents; even, perhaps...
...plywood and cardboard--which he lightly assembled into strange little delicacies. Some of the works in that show, like his "rope pieces"--three-inch lengths of clothesline, fluffed a bit at the edges and attached to the wall with three nails--seemed less like works than offhand gestures, the merest residues of an intuition. Years later, Tuttle described another of them as "some paint on the end of a coffee stirrer, placed on a 40-foot wall...