Word: phrased
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Moreover, Iacocca likes getting his way in the world quickly and unambiguously. He is a bossy boss. Heads of corporations can fold whole departments, hire anybody they choose and, in Iacocca's phrase, shuck the losers. Presidents, on the other hand, are hemmed in, constrained by the Executive bureaucracy, checked and balanced by Congress. In the give and take of governing, Iacocca's virtues--frankness, boldness--might not serve him so well. "He's a man who wants his hands on all the levers," says White House Aide Craig Fuller, the Administration official friendliest with Iacocca. Could a President Iacocca...
...have provided a hint of what the West can expect from Gorbachev. Andropov's ascendance, too, occasioned high hopes in the West. The code words of wishful thinking were the same: moderate, pragmatist, technocrat, sophisticate. Within a day of his selection, there was talk of an Andropov era, a phrase that suggested a clean and welcome break with the past. His style seemed fresh and that, it was assumed, connoted a change in the content of Soviet policy. Here was a Soviet leader who would be comfortable and stimulating on the Georgetown cocktail circuit, and who would therefore be equally...
...apparently innocent modifiers can acquire megaton force. For instance, a journalist may write, "A private, deliberate man, Frobisher dislikes small talk, but can be charming when he wants to." In translation this means, "An antisocial, sullen plodder, Frobisher is obnoxious and about as articulate as a cantaloupe." The familiar phrase "can be charming" is as central to good journalese as "affordable" is to automobile ads and "excellence" is to education reports. It indicates that Frobisher's charm production is a rare result of mighty exertion, yet it manages to end the revelation about his dismal character on an upbeat note...
...tower in the Kremlin so that he could see, "objectively," how threatening Star Wars looked from that perspective. Reagan has lamented the unofficial American nickname of S.D.I., insisting that its aims are entirely peaceful, while Soviet spokesmen relish using the literal Russian translation of Star Wars, partly because the phrase includes the word war. Since his meeting with Shultz, Gromyko has continued to heap contempt on the defensive rationale for Star Wars. Mixing his metaphors a bit, he has said that if the U.S. persists with the program, the world will end up "under a Sword of Damocles...
Self's financial transactions make the phrase "filthy lucre" seem quaint. He spends in a slack-jawed trance usually associated with pornography. Wads of currency go for hogsheads of alcohol and composts of fast food. His car, an overpriced Fiasco, is nearly as costly to keep as Selina Street, a sexual acrobat and shakedown artist whose faked orgasms excite Self more than the real thing...