Word: mordant
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...work contrived and superficial will mainly agree that no other writer save Chekhov has so enormously influenced the shape of the modern short story. De Maupassant's own life story, as told in Francis Steegmuller's breezy and readable biography, seems itself like one of his more mordant sketches-flashy, melodramatic and highly painful...
...possible "in the early twenties . . . to hire the recording secretary of the Classical High School debating society-a man whose mordant irony reminded his auditors of Disraeli and Brann the Iconoclast, although he had scarcely turned 16 -to sift your ashes and beat your carpets at 30? an hour. Even I find it almost too fantastic to credit, and, mind you, I was the recording secretary...
...witty, somewhat Peter and the Wolf-ish score, in which each instrument seemed to portray (or mock) a character on stage. There were other Britten trademarks: well-fitting songs and exciting ensembles. Even so, some found Albert's humor, at least in Tanglewood's production, so mordant that it often verged on the grim, and Britten's somewhat patchy score so consciously clever that at times it was irritating. The applause was warm, but not extravagant...
...Echoes. At first glance, the letters seem only the posturings of a dilettante, but this impression soon wears off. Proust's letters display a remarkable transformation in character: from an effete youth to a sharp observer of the tragedy in life, from a superficially clever snob to a mordant analyst and remorseless judge of snobbery...
...Mordant Retort. In Catanzaro, Italy, Carmelo Buongiorno, a Communist, was sentenced to four years in prison for ending a political argument by biting off his opponent's nose...