Word: micawberish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...frustrated gallant with Micawberish business instincts," Jones was raised in Hollywood, where he worked occasionally as a child extra in Mack Sennett comedies. After graduation from art school, he supported himself by drawing pencil portraits for $1 apiece at a friend's bookstore. From this he drifted into animation, more or less moseying up through the ranks of animation's curious technocracy (eel washer, painter, inker, in-betweener), and began directing...
Along with its legislative record, each Congress writes its own short hand label: innovative or standpat, Micawberish or Scroogian, spineless or rebellious. The 90th's first session fell somewhere in between on each count. It reflected rather too faithfully the national condition of confusion and contention over Viet Nam and the urban crisis. Unable to change the course of either, its mood was often one of angry frustration. The fight over the proposed tax increase and efforts to curb federal spending flavored the entire session, giving it a bitter taste-but no tax bill and only marginal savings...
...years, the nation's biggest city has followed a Micawberish routine of using reserves and loans to meet ever-rising operating costs. When Republi can John Lindsay took office in January on a clean-up-the-mess platform (TIME cover, Nov. 12), he immediately pro posed a city income tax on both resi dents and commuters as the principal source of new revenue...
...State Department now seemed prepared to follow Britain's Micawberish line: let Mossadegh fall, perhaps his successor will be more tractable. Mossadegh flew off home, scheduling a stop en route at Cairo, where he and the Egyptians could make muscles at the British together. That might divert his homefolks from his empty hands...
Partridge clears Charles Dickens of all responsibility for the expression "go to the dickens," a Victorian nice-nellyism for "go to the devil." But Dickens' perpetually optimistic Mr. Micawber produced micawberish and the pompous Mr. Bumble lent his name to incompetence forever after. Similarly, a hangman named Derrick is immortalized in hoisting devices, French Physician Joseph Guillotin in a machine which struck him as more humane than the ax, and be-trousered Suffragette Amelia Bloomer in billowing pantalets. It is a process that has never stopped, concludes Partridge happily-from Solon, who became a synonym for lawyer...