Word: peculiar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...island in the Galapagos. It was there, in 1835, that Charles Darwin observed the variety of species that inspired his theories of natural selection. But according to Vonnegut, nature goofed: Homo sapiens' highly developed cerebral lobes were responsible for the world's troubles. Thinking generated opinions, rationalizations and a peculiar sense of pleasure from cruelty. Says Leon the friendly ghost: "This was a very innocent planet, except for those great big brains...
...coronary just to feel the soothing touch of a human hand. Tyler's complex ironies offer no easy solution to the quest for home. Rather than bringing him neatly full circle back to familiar territory, Macon's odyssey leaves him in Oz. It is in this world of peculiar intimacies, where strangers become family and families remain strangers, that Tyler's remedy for homesickness offers Dorothy's ingenuous lesson that "home" is where the heart and its unpredictable yearnings...
...they hope to find subtle clues that will lead to more precise and reliable forecasts. Keiiti Aki, a geophysicist at the University of Southern California, has designed a detailed computer model that combines such varied earthquake signposts as seismic anomalies, strange animal behavior, changes in the water table and peculiar bulges along the terrain...
Cancer used to be the most dreaded word to be uttered in a doctor's office. But cancer no longer means a virtual sentence of death. AIDS does. AIDS therefore sounds with a peculiar and absolute resonance in our minds. It catches echoes of the voice of God and of nuclear doom. AIDS carries significances that go beyond the numbers of those afflicted...
...being done. One senior vice president gave underlings envelopes containing play money equal to how much extra profit he thought they could be bringing in. But in attempting to trace the blame for the check-kiting scheme as high as possible on the corporate ladder, Bell discovered a "peculiar management structure" at Hutton with fuzzy personal responsibilities. No one, for example, was willing to admit being the immediate boss of Morley, the cash manager. Wrote Bell: "Morley is now an orphan, seemingly lost or at least in limbo along with his corporate function." Even so, the investigator found fault with...