Word: ricochet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like scaled stones skittering atop a lake, radio and TV signals ricochet from the electrically charged ionosphere. Some fall to earth in unpredictable patterns that baffle scientists. Because of the ionosphere's quirks, the man with the world's widest range of TV viewing may well be an English electronics engineer named George F. Cole. His address: Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, thousands of miles from Europe's transmitters...
...British) national character with the sort of inane intensity a small boy devotes to a wart. Items: French Suspiciousness, British Weather. The Cult of the Liver among Middle-Aged Frenchmen, The Function of the Horse in Anglo-Saxon Courtship Patterns. There is a marvelous visual essay on the ricochet principle in Gallic traffic, and the now-familiar comic scene in which a British mother gives her daughter some moral aspirin on her wedding night: "I know, my dear, it's disgusting. But . . . just close your eyes and think of England...
...UNEF's police-station headquarters. Hastily mustered Danish and Norwegian members of the UNEF guard drove off the rioters by tossing tear-gas grenades and firing warning shots into the air, but not before a young bystander named Mohammed el Moushref fell beside his bicycle with a fatal ricochet-bullet wound in his chest...
...Ellington's Paul Gonsalves was ripping off a fast but insinuating solo on his tenor saxophone, his fancies dandled by a bounding beat on bass and drums (Jimmy Woode and Sam Woodyard). The Duke himself tweaked an occasional fragment on the high piano. Gradually, the beat began to ricochet from the audience as more and more fans began to clap hands on the offbeats until the crowd was one vast, rhythmic chorus, yelling its approval. There were howls of "More! More!" and there was dancing in the aisles. One young woman broke loose from her escort and rioted solo...
...soon as he is old enough to get into real trouble. Graziano begins to ricochet between a cluttered cold-water flat and a series of reformatories, pens and Army prisons. Out of jail, he leads his gang of rocks on street forays-stripping tires from parked cars, hijacking trucks, reaching through tenement windows to steal radios, breaking open subway coin machines. In the hands of the police, he is the classic tough. He spits on the floor of the warden's office, grinds out a cigarette on a psychiatrist's hand, gives a careless guard a knee...