Word: mordant
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...onto the vaudeville boards at 17 as one of the most inept jugglers in history, became a comic after serving in World War I, starred in Broadway musicals through the '203. His radio career was highlighted by a longtime "feud" with Jack Benny and his life illumined with mordant comment on the American scene. Allen on Hollywood: "California is a wonderful place to live-if you're an orange"; on broadcasting: "The scales have not been invented fine enough to weigh the grain of sincerity in radio"; on studio audiences: "When I look at them, I think there...
...best white alto saxophonist," wrote French Musicologist Hugues (Le Jazz Hot) Panassie, "is a Chicago musician, Boyce Brown . . . He has voluminous sonority, a trenchant attack and a hot, mordant intonation." He got his first horn when he was 14, and he played in combos all over, even played at the Palace on a bill that included Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. In 1952 Boyce was working in a Chicago nightclub called Liberty Inn, and developed the habit of dropping into a nearby church in the early morning after work to listen to the cool music of the organ. Then...
...surface . . ." he said. "The conference was overshadowed by the memories of the last war.* It was not like other conferences. Passions, not rule of logic, played the predominant role . . . The hospitality at official functions bore no relation to the atmosphere at negotiations. The hospitality was hearty. The negotiations were mordant . . . We, I believe, did right...
...years since mordant Lyricist W. S. Gilbert thus mocked Britain's maligned Upper House of Parliament (in lolanthe), Her Majesty's Lords have had less and less to do with the making of British law or policy. Back in 1911, testy Commoner David Lloyd George, with the help of his King, cut the Lords' veto power to a mere delaying action. Six years ago, even their right to delay was curtailed...
...Wall Street Spirit. A string of episodes fleshes out the mordant meaning of this dumb show. A Negro cripple named Black Guinea squats on his deformed legs and begs for his supper by singing an idiotic little tune, winning the crowd's favor by catching pennies, and more than a few buttons, in his mouth. A mean-spoken cynic promptly accuses the cripple of shamming, and after a vain, mumbling plea for "confidence," Black Guinea slinks off the boat at the next landing. Black Guinea is the first of many disguises assumed by the confidence-man and the clue...