Word: overwrought
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ironically, many of the new security measures were about to be put into effect anyway. The clampdown was prompted by an incident in October 1982, when an overwrought Israeli youth was seized in the crowded House of Representatives gallery while attempting to detonate a homemade bomb concealed under his shirt...
Admittedly, First Affair goes a bit too far. Besides running the gamut of simplistic emotions and stiff, unbelievable actions, CBS somehow managed to depict every known Harvard stereotype. But from a public relations standpoint, even the overwrought tale of King's adventures carries a grain of truth. The admissions office has no control on how students do, how they behave, what relationships they have once they get here. Merely predictors, they can only form a Harvard class, not lead it through...
...killed her husband. The children in the class are more confused than appalled; the teacher's superior politely suggests that she has reached the age of retirement. In a similar tale, a woman refuses to keep silent about another Protestant-Catholic bloodletting. Her embarrassed companions believe she is overwrought and exaggerating...
Only two incidents disturbed the ceremony. When Vicar Jardine asked, "Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her?" overwrought Edward cried "I will!" in a shrill voice that was almost a scream. When he put on her finger the plain wedding ring of Welsh-mined gold, the trembling of his hands was noticeable even to the farthest watchers...
While Tygiel is convincing in substance, though, he sometimes gets bogged down in overwrought academic analysis and jargon. He has an irritating tendency to resuscitate his general premises and conclusions every 20 pages or so; maybe he's thinking of some tenure committee somewhere. The point that he weaves implicitly into the work is made clumsily explicit, with repeated statments that this or that action in baseball integration reflected some' rational trend. His twisted explanation, moreover, for why white players in the 1890s rejected interracial competition--that it was a reflection of the "culture of professionalism" emerging...