Word: misfitting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...classmates at Harrow, George Macaulay Trevelyan seemed, as he himself tells it, like "a 'swot' of the worst kind . . . socially [a] misfit . . . a complete muff at cricket, and clumsy at football." He was "wrapped in literary and historical imaginings," and he was also a crashing bore. "I never had dreams of being a general, or a statesman or an engine-driver, like other aspiring children . . . I wanted to be [a] historian...
...Theta Upsilon Fraternity pledges at Northern Illinois College of Optometry got even with Senior John Santarelli after he put them through an initiation "Hell Week." After dressing him in misfit shoes and clothes, they gave him a nickel spending money, put him on a plane at Chicago, and sent him off to Kansas City...
...slow to integrate, or the misfit, the years are torture. He is acutely aware of his difficulties, and he seeks desperately to get "in" with groups he knows. He watches the club group; he finds out he is excluded if he does not meet certain restrictive standards. He watches the publications group; unless he has certain peculiar talents he cannot gain entry there. He may abhor politics, social work, card playing, or drinking; these groups are therefore out. The terms of the search should not be put too baldly, but it goes on nevertheless. Success equates with satisfaction, failure with...
...soon led him to conclude, among other things, that the "most disgraceful colonial problem in the world" is that of Negro-white relations in the U.S. Indian politics, always a great puzzle to Occidentals, seemed to him likewise a puzzle to Indians, because their political terminology was a misfit hand-me-down from the British. The paranoid touchiness in all the Indian factions, but especially in Pakistan's Moslems, he likened to what he called group or "institutional delusions" throughout the world, to be corrected only by "a discipline whereby the normal man can train himself to be something...
Like other Varsity coaches throughout the country, "Mac" can depend on two factors to help him shape a winning combination from the misfit musclemen who are hidden, needle-like, in the esthetic Cambridge area...