Word: pile
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shopping center or housing development can be more profitable. Another culprit is cable TV, particularly the first-run films shown on such pay systems as HBO and Showtime. One of the major appeals of the drive-in was that the whole family, from Grandpa to Baby Sis, could pile into a car, taking with them food, pillows and blankets, and see a double feature surrounded by most of the comforts of home. Now they can see the same kind of films without even leaving home. A third conspirator: the movie companies, which often demand longer runs than many drive...
...Exotic Nile," the narrator is hoodwinked by his landlord into taking his wife's younger sister out to dinner because "She's young, but she's not that young, and she likes you." "[Did] You get him?" the girl asks her brother on reappearing and they all pile into her convertible, where she proceeds to climb all over the narrator...
...sounds like a terrible mess, but it does not cook out that way, for two reasons. The first is the strength of Alexander's imagery; the second, his formal control. Since most neoexpressionist painting is given to conventional signs for intensity but lacks formal rigor (a gut pile without shape), Alexander's work repays inspection...
...insist and insist again by Vague Generalities. We abhor V.G.'s, we skim right past them, we start wondering what kind of a C to give from the first V.G. we encounter; and as they pile up, we decide: C- (Harvard being Harvard, one does not give D's. Consider C- a failure). Why? Not because they are a sign the student doesn't know the material, or hasn't thought carefully, or any of that folly. They simply make tedious reading. "Locke is a transitional figure." "The whole thing boils down to human rights...
Artful Equivocations are even worse; Iynx-eyed sly little rascals that we are, we see right through them. (Up to Exam No. 40. Then our lynx eyelids droop, and grading habits relax. Try to get on the bottom of the pile.) Again, it is not that A.E.'s are vicious or ludicrous as such: but in quantity they become sheer madness. Or induce it. "The twentieth century has never recovered from the effects of Marx and Freud" (V.G.); "but whether this is a good thing or a bad is difficult to say" (A.E.). Now one such might be droll enough...