Word: offhand
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Wrangle, Wrangle. Representative Knutson asked the Secretary of Commerce whether lowering tariffs was not comparable to lowering immigration restrictions (apparently meaning that U.S. labor would have to compete with cheaper foreign labor). Henry Wallace said the question was too complicated to answer offhand...
Baruch's red-faced press secretary (who apparently believes that newsmen should not take down offhand remarks too literally) complained: "Lasky wrote his story as if he was covering a fire...
Henle & Stephenson constantly buttonhole West Virginians in hotel lobbies, in Congress, at teas, in their offices, in Union Station. Then the pair goes on the air and tells all. They quote Congressmen's offhand comments on one another. They report who went to what luncheon, whose wife was not invited, who has been appointed to what. When a poem by a West Virginian gets into the Congressional Record, they rush the news to the home folks. When Kentucky-born Fred Vinson was appointed Federal Loan Administrator, they reminded their listeners that he had relatives "all over the western part...
...Land Sailor. Shipbuilder Ferguson runs his acres of ways and forests of derricks with the offhand manner of a country storekeeper. He keeps no regular office hours, usually refuses to sign papers, spends his time cruising about the yard. Says he, out of the side of his mouth: "My predecessors damn near wore themselves out signing their names...
Along with their choices, several of the critics passed a few offhand judgments on their own profession. Wrote one: "My opinion of critics is not overly high; when not heirs of varnished ignorance most of them are addicts of sycophancy and mental laziness...