Word: prankish
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...revolver in his desk. When the newsman investivated he discovered that Curley felt in some danger for his life because a few days earlier, he had received a package that ticked. When he opened it, the major found an alarm clock surrounded by preprint candy that a couple of "prankish Harvard youths" had sent...
...daubing red paint on the noses of classical plaster casts at art school, but they watched in awed wonder when he took to drinking champagne out of ashtrays and washing his face in film developer. When Burra's health forced him to quit school and moderate his prankish ways, he retired to his parents' house in Rye, on England's South Coast, made a studio of his old top-floor nursery and settled down to work while gradually transforming the place into a fluttery nest of picture postcards, tabloid shock photos, scraps of comic strips and reproductions...
Time: 1865. Scene: the library of a country house in Lower Halliford (among the books: seven prankish novels to be reissued in 1947 as The Pleasures of Peacock). Cries of "Fire!" A tall, handsome, irascible old man hurries in, followed by a curate who implores him to leave. "By the immortal gods," shouts the old man, looking at his beloved books, "I will not move." Several weeks later, he died of shock. Death had paid Novelist Thomas Love Peacock the compliment of imitating his style...
Gradually, as Philip became a fixture in the family circle, his name crept into Elizabeth's tea-table talk. Her friends began to have their suspicions, and often prankish Princess Margaret would infuriate her sister by wondering out loud if Elizabeth's heart was jumping when Philip was due for a visit. Then, last fall, Philip spent several weeks with the Royal Family at Balmoral. By the time Philip's visit was over, Elizabeth's mind was made up, and she told her father all about it. As fathers the world over are prone...
...word in school. Later, he worked as a call-boy on the nearby Texas & Pacific Railway, and punched cows in the summer to earn his way through Simmons College (now Hardin-Simmons University). He played basketball, and ran so many campus organizations that he picked up another nickname, "Ma." Prankish, he liked to set all the alarm clocks in the student dormitory in which he lived for 4 a.m., roll 16-lb. shots down the halls and stairs in the dead of night. The college yearbook, which Gene edited, said of him: "Quiet and un assuming but a living example...