Word: paean
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...really? Try telling that to Denmark, whose anthem graphically commemorates the exploits of King Christian: "His sword was hammering so fast/ Through Gothic helm and brain it passed." Or the Chinese, whose national ditty is a paean to the prospect of "using our flesh and blood to build a new Great Wall." Guatemalans are admonished never to permit "tyrants to spit in thy face." And who could forget the immortal words in the second verse of the Bulgarian national song: "Countless warriors bravely die/ For the people's sacred cause." Such a roster would be incomplete without the heady draught...
...glory of America. In the decades following World War II, U.S. science reigned supreme, earning the envy of the world with one stunning triumph after another. Fostered by the largesse of a government swayed by Vannevar Bush's paean to science, it harnessed the power of the atom, conquered polio and discovered the earth's radiation belt. It created the laser, the transistor, the microchip and the electronic computer, broke the genetic code and conjured up the miracle of recombinant DNA technology. It described the fundamental nature of matter, solved the mystery of the quasars and designed the robot craft...
...paean to transformative violence . . . An explicit fascist theme," writes social commentator John Leo, who went out prospecting for a column in U.S. News and World Report and discovered a mother lode of fool's gold...
French police have banned the sale of a hit record called Go for It Saddam, a paean to the Iraqi dictator. Recorded in Arabic by Algerian singer Mohamed Mazouni, the song is popular with France's North African youth. The single, which was available in both audio- and videocassette versions, attacks the West for the war and ends on an apocalyptic note: "Where are you, Muslims?/ You permitted Bush/ to tread in the Holy Shrines . . . other Arabs are hypnotized by the dollar . . . /Oil prices rise, the atomic bomb/ is being made to terrorize Israel...
...wrote Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard and You Can Call Me Al and 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover knows how to have a good time with a lyric, but only Paul Simon could write a tune titled Have a Good Time that's a deliberately dippy paean to incidental ennui and spiritual indifference...