Word: mieux
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rose to the occasion before them. Their common genius was that they saw in the convergence of circumstances a ripeness of moment -- and that they acted. They worked in pairs at their two separate projects, even though something inside each man came to the rendezvous reluctantly, uncomfortably -- faute de mieux, as if history had given him no choice. Each needed his other, absolutely, in order to succeed -- and each knew it. Each of the men was putting himself at enormous personal risk in the enterprise -- not now from his long-sworn enemy but from those on his own side...
...Americans have been considering only two serious contenders for the leadership. At the height of their religious wars, the French had three, all named Henri - Henri III, Henri of Navarre, and Henri, Duke de Guise. The first Henri and the last were assassinated, leaving Henri of Navarre, faute de mieux, to become king. Sixteenth-century French political technique makes early-21st-century American technique (even if it has to go to the Supreme Court) look like progress...
Doctors offhandedly counsel moderation as a holding pattern, something you do, cautiously and faute de mieux, until things go really wrong. But moderation is neither inspiring nor tasty. Most of us, lacking an urgent health reason to behave (e.g., recurring shortness of breath or pains in the chest), are liberals in the practice of moderation and harbor in ourselves the latent impulses of Farouk the Indulger. We revert to bad habits when the conscience naps, especially since the buildup of cholesterol and heart blockages occurs silently, invisibly, in the dark chambers of the chest...
...until the finale, when LuPone inexplicably appears 20 years older than she was moments before. While she is a fine if loud singer, he is at best ordinary. The supporting cast is without exception mediocre or worse, at a level unthinkable for Broadway, where this show is, faute de mieux, the most eagerly anticipated musical of the season to come...
...girl in the book, she commands initial attention and then numbed disbelief. It is not just her Olympian long-windedness that is troubling, but the things she writes. She describes sex with her lover (another correspondent): " 'Appen I enjoy it (as, despite all and faute de mieux, I sometimes do), bully for me; 'appen I don't, it up wi' me knees and nightie anyroad, and to't till I'm proper ploughed and seeded." This language has nothing to do with Lady Amherst, a 20th century gentlewoman; it is present only because...