Word: milquetoasts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...unfortunate who still needs to be told that "oil is mispronounced 'erl.' " Some of it is what the whole book imagines itself to be: plain common sense and practical advice. But there is also a great deal of pedantic nonsense whose prissiness would drive a climbing Milquetoast to despair, as he struggled always to say "telephone" (instead of "phone") and "whiskey and soda" (instead of "highball"). "TOMATO," says Author Fenwick firmly, "is better pronounced 'to-mah-to,' as ... it comes from the Spanish Toma-te,' which is pronounced 'tomahtay.'' This...
...cinema critic who can also lay claim to being a first-class moviemaker is a blue-eyed, Milquetoast-mustached Scot named John Grierson. At 48, John Grierson might well call himself the father of the documentary. A minor proof of paternity: he was the first to call the fact film a "documentary." As a documentary-maker for the British Government (1927-39), he trained most of that country's current crop of experts. During the war, he bossed Canada's wartime National Film Board and turned out the excellent series of shorts called World in Action and Canada...
Victor Moore, the theater's fatted Caspar Milquetoast, threw a stick in Manhattan's Central Park for his 2½-lb. Pomeranian. The Pomeranian went after the stick, and Actor Moore got a summons for letting the beastie off its leash. In an old revue sketch Moore played the role of a man who spits in a subway, fights a $2 fine, and winds up in the shadow of the gallows. In real life Moore just paid his $2 fine in court and tripped away. "If they issue summonses for dogs of this type," he croaked, "they should...
With his convex profile and his hornrimmed glasses, President Lewis J. Clark of the C.I.O. United Packinghouse Workers looks like the Caspar Milquetoast of U.S. labor. With his mere 200,000 members, many pulling at cross-purposes, he holds one of the shakiest of all union leaderships...
...Once-confident, once-buoyant TIME has become a Caspar Milquetoast, shuddering in fear at every shadow, bewailing each news item as a foreboding of fresh evils yet to come. Read for yourself the news of the world in the issue of Dec. 31, as seen through TIME'S dim, grey-tinted spectacles...