Word: peculiar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sixteen hundred successful high school students checked into 16 unfamiliar brick buildings last weekend and thereby offered themselves up to an outrageous number of emotional slings and arrows. Between now and June, they can count on undergoing many, if not all, of a sequence of trials peculiar to that single nine-month period, in roughly chronological order...
...fate of Salmo salar is linked to its peculiar life cycle. Like its larger cousin, the Pacific salmon, the Atlantic type hatches in fresh water. The parr, as the young fish are known, stay in their rivers until they reach a length of five to six inches, a process that may take several years. Then the salmon migrate to the sea and make their way to feeding grounds hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. Salmon that have spent several years at sea "run," or return to their native rivers, throughout the spring...
...begins Canadian Timothy Findley's fourth and most peculiar novel. In Ragtime style. Famous Last Words assembles a vivid cast of historical personages, among them the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lana Turner, Ernest Hemingway and Charles Lindbergh. But here the famous names do not move to syncopated jazz; instead the work resounds with tainted anthems...
...accustomed to blaming and blessing "America's commitment to education" for a host of sociological circumstances, from up ward mobility to crowded professional job markets to the existence of "diploma mills." A few voices have complained that one reason for economic confusion and disproportionate educational spending is this peculiar idea that every member of society should be able to go to college. The belief was strengthened by increasing attention to diversity in admissions and the Carter Administration's more comprehensive financial aid policies. Though inimical to Reagan's conception of society, that theory has on the whole withstood scrutiny...
...appearance of real writing in the world is a miracle. Sociology cannot predict it. But certain patterns appear. Perhaps great writers arrive only at certain stages of a civilization. Great writing may be conjured by great injustice, for example, and a peculiar receptivity in the audience, not gullibility exactly but a kind of craving, a deep need for moral definition. One detects tremors of both the talent and the need in Latin America. That part of the world is breeding up unexpected, wonderful writers the way Russia did in the 19th century Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for example...