Word: prick
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...appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He turned it down to become a U.S. Senator (from Louisiana). In an age of eloquence, Benjamin was eloquent too. Many of his speeches were as fancy as a beaded bag. But he could also say things that made his Senate colleagues prick up their ears. Sample: "If the object [of this bill] is to provide for friends and dependents, let us say so openly." To a Congressman his voice was "as musical as the chimes of silver bells." But Mrs. Jefferson Davis thought he had "rather the air of a witty bon vivant...
...businessmen, tuning in on the first Presidential address since Casablanca (see p. 75), had good reason to prick up their ears. In a speech in which he mildly chided Labor and Farm leaders for obstructionist tactics, the President failed also to chide Business...
Revolution of '48. Among the first to prick this Raphael bubble were seven young men who banded together in 1848 as "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood," to defy academism by returning for inspiration to the freshness of Botticelli, Mantegna and other predecessors of Raphael. In art they left nothing rugged, but they did succeed in rolling up a mighty snowball of Raphael-belittlement. Even Academicians like John Ruskin agreed that Raphael's Madonnas bore no resemblance to the Jewish Mary. Manet said crudely: "Raphael turns my stomach." In the 20th Century Stark Young, standing in the solemn little chapel...
...even pain involved. Every volunteer is carefully examined, and he is only accepted if in good health. He feels no after-effects, and replaces the loss completely within twenty-four hours. The process takes 15 minutes. A local injection of novocaine makes it no more unpleasant than a pin prick...
...which the Judge takes in going around breaking jinxes all over the place, he has other colorful peculiarities. He "would as soon cite Shakespeare or Gilbert and Sullivan as some legal savant" to prove his point in court; he likes to bully that specie of man named "lawyer"-to "prick their sensibilities, to bait them and make them squirm"; and, (strangest eccentricity of all), "the breath of scandal has never remotely touched...