Word: misunderstood
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Baron Ochs, the clumsy gallant of Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss thought was consistently misunderstood and misplayed. Instead of "a vulgar monster with a horrible make-up and proletarian manners," as most bassos represented him, Strauss intended him as "a rustic beau, a Don Juan of some 35 years, but nevertheless a nobleman . . . Inwardly he is gross (ein Schmutzian), but outwardly he remains quite presentable . . . Above all, his first scene in the bedroom must be played with extreme delicacy and discretion, it must not be repulsive ... In short, Viennese comedy, not Berlin farce...
Harry Truman was wearing that confident look, too, as he faced his press conference. Senator Lucas, he declared firmly, had been misunderstood. Congress should finish the job-it didn't make any difference how long it took. As for himself, he was still for everything, he said...
Reluctant to share the fate of Charles Dickens ("so much is known about him that might have happened to Wickens, or Pickens, or Stickens that his biographers have obliterated him"), Shaw devotes most of Self Sketches to correcting "what had been overlooked or misunderstood."* Sample restatements: ¶ "I have not yet ascertained the truth about myself. For instance, how far am I mad, and how far sane? I do not know." ¶ "Aunt Ellen, though humpbacked, was not a midget...
...Stalin's offer to meet President Truman behind the "iron curtain" made in good faith?--or was it only another sly twist in the Soviet propaganda campaign to split the Western defenses? The United States government has heavily inclined to the latter view and has consequently been excoriated or misunderstood by many people who sincerely believe that Stalin meant just exactly what he said...
When Newman spoke out against the Bloomfield doctrine, Harvard silently agreed with him, and a portion of the rest of the nation did also. But perhaps this was only because they were mistaking certain meanings, meanings often misunderstood in the days of Thomas Committees and Barnes Bills. Perhaps these people defined such phrases as "fuzzy-minded" and "American" in certain ways, and thought they knew which phrase to apply to whom. But the word now is that Newman's supporters are wrong about their adjectives. They have been caught napping, and while they have slept, these phrases and other outmoded...