Word: pushmi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What on earth is taking place? Over here, ten teenage kids in green tops and white miniskirts are jerking their heads into the air, then locking elbows, back to back, to form a herd of lurching pushmi-pullyus. Over there, a gang of pink-lipsticked, sunglassed young blonds, in matching scarlet outfits, have gathered in a circle around a giant radio and are joining together in a chorus of banshee wails. And all about, twirling, swirling, waving their hands in the air Al Jolson-style or vaulting on top of one another's shoulders are girls with turquoise streaks...
...bird showed up at a Louisiana-sponsored State Department reception, to the amusement of Secretary of State George Shultz, 62. Perhaps his department needs a mascot too. How about a giraffe (elegant, with no voice of its own), a penguin (always in formal dress) or Dr. Dolittle's Pushmi-Pullyu (for simultaneously making policy statements and taking them back...
Exacerbating restraint. A Pushmi-Pullyu, as in expressing the hope that the Soviets would do nothing "to exacerbate the kind of mutual restraint that both sides should pursue...
Like Doctor Dolittle's pushmi-pullyu, the chamber orchestra is a curious beast that faces in two directions at once: toward the intimacy of the string quartet and toward the richness of the symphony. It stands between both, the way a watercolor stands between an engraving and an oil painting. Or, as Conductor Dennis Russell Davies says, the way baseball stands between tennis and football: "There are just a few players, each one is a virtuoso, and all are involved in every moment of what's going...
Given such societal and family pressures, the American child often resembles Dr. Dolittle's pushmi-pullyu, the creature whose heads tugged it in opposite directions. It is scarcely any wonder that children, like their older and larger counterparts, seek more and more solace in the fictive world of TV (27 hours a week...