Word: pompousity
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Patrick A. (Pat) McCarran, Democrat from Nevada, 73, pompous, vindictive and power-grabbing-a sort of McKellar with shoes on. Working hand in glove with McKellar, he tied the 81st Congress' appropriations machinery in knots, staged a one-man committee filibuster against a liberalized bill to admit D.P.s to the U.S., and almost succeeded -with McKellar-in mutilating the Marshall Plan last summer. To control or retaliate against Senators who stand up against him, the silver-haired spokesman of the silver bloc swings a big club: chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, which passes on all claims against the Government...
Regardless of the possible merits of the bill, the Council should not have voted to approve it. The Council was not elected to pass judgement on local, state, or federal legislation. For it to do so is a pompous distortion of its real purpose in the College...
Partridge clears Charles Dickens of all responsibility for the expression "go to the dickens," a Victorian nice-nellyism for "go to the devil." But Dickens' perpetually optimistic Mr. Micawber produced micawberish and the pompous Mr. Bumble lent his name to incompetence forever after. Similarly, a hangman named Derrick is immortalized in hoisting devices, French Physician Joseph Guillotin in a machine which struck him as more humane than the ax, and be-trousered Suffragette Amelia Bloomer in billowing pantalets. It is a process that has never stopped, concludes Partridge happily-from Solon, who became a synonym for lawyer...
Twelfth Night (by William Shakespeare; produced by Roger Stevens) has its immortal virtues-speeches filled with fragrance, bewitching songs. In Viola it has a charming heroine; in Malvolio, "sick of self-love," a monumental pompous ass. To him, as a huffing spoilsport, is addressed one of Shakespeare's crispest queries: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" To him, by a frisking clown, is tossed some of Shakespeare's tersest wisdom: "There is no darkness but ignorance." And nowhere more than in Twelfth Night can a lovely moment suddenly leap...
...spice up the sin or gloss over the grimness of Emma's life. Instead, at a leisurely and often-lagging pace they have pried into every nook & cranny of Emma's avid, neurotic soul and the drab existence that nourished it. The handling of bumbling peasants and pompous tradesmen has an acid authority. One memorable scene-a whirling, overheated ball at a local château-is a wonderfully skillful projection of Emma's half-swooning sense of her own seductiveness...