Word: pettish
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...shown before that he is capable of more than phonographic reiterations of his country's determination to fight. The chance remains for him to try to show--in a television address--that the stakes of the Cuban issue are war itself, too important to be sacrificed to an essentially pettish desire for revenge and even to the U.S.' understandable distaste for Castro's regime...
Bing also issued a waspish, pettish statement to the press: "Madame Callas' reputation for projecting her undisputed histrionic talents into her business affairs is a matter of common knowledge. This, together with her insistence on a claimed right to alter or abrogate a contract at will or at whim, has finally led to the present situation . . . Let us all be grateful that we have had the experience of her artistry for two seasons; the Metropolitan is also grateful that the association is ended . . . I could name a number of very famous singers who thought they were indispensable and would...
West Europe, Ltd. Connolly's less agreeable qualities include a tone of pettish portentousness into which he falls when writing of philosophical or religious matters that he can taste but cannot fathom. At Eton little Cyril preserved a pious air in chapel, though reading his blackbound Petronius instead of the prayer book; in more adult ways he has continued...
...Pettish critics have sometimes said that reading Jules Remains' serial novel, Men of Good Will, is like reading backfiles of French newspapers from Oct. 6, 1908. The New York Times's hardworking Critic Ralph Thompson once remarked in a fit of exasperation that Remains' "theory of fiction is almost intolerable." But The New Yorker's Clifton Fadiman has stuck to his opinion that Men of Good Will "is the Comedie Humaine of and for the 20th Century." Tired critics and trustful critics have divided over the question whether the finished job (in 27 volumes, as planned...
...leads shift for themselves. Acting with considerable charm, and bursting frequently into song in the midst of Canadian wilds, Miss MacDonald and Mr. Eddy should provoke an even greater box-office triumph than by their first effort, Naughty Marietta. Marie de Flor (Jeanette MacDonald) is a pettish, kittenish opera singer whose scapegrace brother (James Stewart, see p. 28) has escaped from jail, murdered a pursuing officer. To bring him financial assistance, she treks toward his cabin in the woods. Cheated on the way by an Indian guide, she meets Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Bruce (Nelson Eddy), likewise on the trail...