Word: plumb
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...magazine's staffers defended the project, saying they hoped to plumb the depths of a complicated and divisive issue...
Spain was establishing what historian J.H. Plumb calls "the greatest empire since antiquity." This modern empire was built, as Plumb also notes, on the basis of medieval theology. Yet much of Europe and most of the New World would become the domain of Charles V, and then of Philip III, making the next hundred years the Spanish Century...
Presently, a convoy of black cars purrs up, and out of one appear sensational legs, feet shod in high purple pumps, and a blur of bright pink cheerful enough to part the clouds. The tall young woman who alights smiles radiantly, her carriage plumb line but her head tilted slightly down so that you see the whites setting off huge blue eyes -- a far more effective beauty tactic than any cosmetic. Diana, Princess of Wales, the woman who will be Queen of England and is already the world's reigning celebrity, has come to Pontypridd...
...popular image of the orchestra conductor is that of a grand seigneur: imperious, authoritarian and, more often than not, old. Concert music, goes the conventional wisdom, is something so emotionally and spiritually complex that no one who has not reached at least his 60th year can possibly plumb its depths. What Beethoven, who died at 56, Mozart, who died at 35, or Schubert, who died at 31, would have thought of this manifestly ridiculous proposition hardly needs asking...
...redeeming truth, to our own surprise, is that Gertrude is in vast company. Last March, Independent Sector, a Washington research and lobbying group, commissioned a Gallup poll to plumb the depths of our charity: What do we give, and why, and who does the giving, and how much? It turns out that almost half of all American adults offer their time to a cause, an astounding figure even allowing for the number of people who lie to pollsters. And most are giving more time than ever. These are commitments, not gestures. The average volunteer offers nearly five hours a week...