Word: primness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Prim, cautious Lord Templewood-whom the late, great Lord Curzon once characterized as "descended from a long line of maiden aunts"-did not go so far as to suggest that Franco, the Falange, the Army, the Church, the big landowners, or the aristocracy might have had something to do with Spain's plight. He found the villainy of Germany corrupting not only Spain but all Europe: "Posterity will say that the worst German crime is the studied destruction of all moral values of Europe...
Father-in-Law Coburn is of the opinion that there are better things for a handsome widow to do than fill her dead husband's political and social boots; when his prim housekeeper asks what, he replies, "I'm afraid you wouldn't remember." Mayoress Dunne begins uneasily to suspect that the old man is right when, in Manhattan, she meets the man who is to make the damaged statue of her husband as good as new. Sculptor Boyer follows her home and sets up shop in the garage. Before long Miss Dunne's infatuated stepdaughter...
...great vaudevillians and conceivably the greatest master of ceremonies of his day, Fay shows not a trace of breeziness, brassiness or smut. His manner is almost prim, his delivery slow, his material largely pointless. For one drawled gag like "Had a date with a newspaperwoman the other night-yes, she keeps a stand," there are a dozen droll nothings that are triumphs of timing and intonation...
Four weeks ago, canny Giovanni Vis-conti-Venosta, Premier Bonomi's Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, got tired of trying to work through the Roman dusk by candle and carbide light.* One afternoon when Britain's High Commissioner, prim Sir Noel Charles, was to call, Visconti-Venosta personally ordered every candle and sputtering carbide light in the Palazzo Chigi doused. Sir Noel walked into Stygian gloom, groped his way through the Chigi's interminable passages and waiting rooms, conferred ghost-to-ghost with Visconti-Venosta. whose face never cracked a smile. Next day Visconti-Venosta wrote...
Inside her prim decor lurks a spry libido. She favors doctors and dentists, not because she needs pills or teeth, but because "they are so good-looking and so young." On her recent first trip to Manhattan, she surprised her transport pilot with her ready ear for smoking-car subtleties. So far she has said nothing in public except "H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m." This is delivered in the tone of a cordial spinster to the man under...