Word: mordant
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Paris, "Antoine the Knife Thrower," notorious apaché, was persuaded by the police to explain how he had managed to erase from his chest two gorgeous tattooed designs seen upon him when last arrested. Sepia, charcoal and cinnabar bite deep. Science has failed to discover how to blench their mordant effects. Antoine's recipe, reluctantly yielded: pour concentrated tannic acid upon the illuminated parts, inject it into the skin by close punctures with needles, rub lightly over with a crayon of silver nitrate. With the thick black scab, off comes the tattooing...
...occurs to him that "we get lots of our ideas of government from comic operas and then take ourselves as seriously as Sitting Bull"). From "The Ghost of Gough Street" and "Shakespeare and the Old Vic" one gets a faintly disturbing impression of anglomania, soon dispelled by the mordant judgments of "Are Comparisons Odious?" (on English lecturers and tailors, French politeness and libraries, American politicians and platitudes) and the warm enthusiasm of "Change Cars at Paoli"† (on historic spots near...
...beneficent auspices of the Theatre Guild. At least two others are now in preparation. The swagger and tinsel of war in the theatre of eight years ago has been discarded. The majority of these new productions are bitter, ironic dissections of sorrow. Probably none of them will possess the mordant satiric force of Shaw's Arms and the Man. Yet their mission is clear. The young men who have written them have been to war. After five years their protests must be heard...
RAIN-Well-known mordant drama, subjecting the exhorting clergy to some of their own brimstone...
...speech, copies of which are disseminated by the Fabian Society of London, discussed the question: "Is Civilization Desirable?" Shaw answered that whether or not it is desirable it is rapidly being destroyed. "But," added the mocking, mordant, misanthropic Shaw, "nobody will take any notice of me. Nobody ever...