Word: pompously
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...could it have failed? With a smugness that smothers the actors' energy and obliterates the historical reality. Welles is a pompous oaf, and Houseman his toady. The rich are scheming, the poor artists cliches of do-gooder striving. These are caricatures drawn so violently that one sees blotches of ink instead of quick, deft lines. Perhaps, in the long view, we are all idiots. But we don't need a 60-year perspective to see Robbins' attitude revealed in all its meanness of spirit. If he hated these people so, why did he waste his time and ours putting them...
...example of what draws criticism is the way in which West writes a short introduction to each excerpt in the Reader. While these introductions often help to shed light on the issue at hand or provide necessary background information, they just as often appear to be needlessly pompous. For example, West's introductions include many phrases such as "it is one of the most requested essays in my corpus." This style leaves him open to critical attacks, and West's views will always render him unpopular with some. He responds that "I do not write or act to win popularity...
...credentialed experts. Besides, in Austin, at the statehouse and in campaign headquarters on Congress Avenue, his distaste for the highbrow is considered a virtue. In meetings with his speechwriter and press staff, Bush reviews the words that will go out under his name with a keen eye for the pompous and overwrought. When he spots a sentence that wouldn't make sense to the average layman, Bush peers over his half glasses and reads it back to his staff in a haughty, mock-intellectual voice. "He's always asking,'How can we say it more directly?'"says a top aide...
...less corrosively bitter than Hodge, Purdy's tone and substance--the fact that this book is about Jedediah Purdy, and that any power in the book springs from his unshakeable convictions--may seem narcissistic; and his tendency towards moralistic aphorisms, towards a Thoreauvian epigrammatic style, seems a little bit pompous...
...Pompous Pre-Frosh Still Has A Few Things to Learn