Word: pretended
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Because man "is frightened to death by the specter of death," he tries to pretend that it does not exist, at least not for him; in the subconscious mind, "it is other people who die." Studying 350 terminal patients, Weisman found that denial can take many forms. Often a gravely ill patient, alarmed at being in a hospital, may say, "My doctor wants to be sure I don't have anything serious." Sometimes a sick person, worried about his loss of weight, may go on a diet to have a reassuring reason for the loss...
...rising minorities below, must justify its accomplishment by a particular social myth. It must idealize the simpler, more in- dividualistic society of the past. It must reject racial equality because it symbolizes the new changes. It must yearn for the real uniformity and closeness of the old society and pretend that they still exist: there would not be such loyalty to the myth of the neighborhood school if the new suburbs really were neighborhoods of the old type...
...conversation sometimes brittle, sometimes stoned, full of the gossip of relentlessly recycled relationships as Patti's seen first with Dan then with Bob before returning with mathematical certitude to take up with Dan once again, as the earth lurches away from the sun and, consciously or not, we pretend to be the vile young bodies of Evelyn Waugh or Fitzgerald's golden flappers. So I can hardly be expected to complain...
...conversation with "far-outs" the way other people use casual obscenities. Dick, underneath the smooth exterior a creep held over from the fifties who's reported to be making it with his tutor's wife. Most importantly, Mike and Cootie, two blithe spirits, masters of the put-on, who pretend to hold-the show together through the incantatory appeal of their preposterous school-boy jive...
Spring is the season when Amerlcan college opera companies pretend that they are the Metropolitan, La Scala, or Covent Garden. Often the results amount to just that-pretending. This year, however, campuses are positively blooming with new opera productions and new opera houses that New York, Milan and London could well be proud of. The architecture and stage facilities tend to be lavish, the repertory venturesome and the level of performances impressively high. In Connecticut next week, the University of Bridgeport will open a $5 million arts center with Neil Slater's Again, D.J., a rock-flavored updating...