Word: plodder
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...leave his subordinates alone is a hands-on executive. When strung together properly, 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...
...looks at oneself inevitably has a bearing on which of 'us' one plugs into the equation. Montaigne, the skeptical hero of this book, was the most hesitant of pluggers-in; a true plodder. But it is to him that Shklar turns. It is in our wrongdoings--essentially in our response to what we are--that Shklar finds the right clues to the answer we call government; to the question of what we ought...
Brezhnev was his country-genial, brutal, boring. He had the face of both plodder and plotter, being something of each; a scholar's face and a doorman's, the kind one does not notice until it is in charge of things. In the West one saw him mostly in photographs: clapping solemnly at parades, his chest tiered with medals, his body like a metalwork; or embracing a world leader...