Word: sheerly
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...Census Bureau found that 77% of men and 61% of women had never married, up sharply from 55% and 36%, respectively, in 1970. Among those 25 to 29, the unmarrieds included 43% of men and 29% of women in 1988, vs. 19% and 10% in 1970. The sheer disposability of marriage breeds skepticism. Kasey Geoghegan, 20, a student at the University of Denver and a child of divorced parents, believes nuptial vows have lost their credibility. Says she: "When people get married, ideally it's permanent, but once problems set in, they don't bother to work things...
...prose styles tend toward relative sparseness these days, a sentence can still stretch on well beyond the patience of the English speaker. One may be left exhausted and bewildered after navigating through cascades of clauses that lead to the elusive verb at the very end that explains everything. For sheer frustration, however, little compares with the task of remembering what gender each noun is and hence whether a der (masculine), die (feminine) or das (neuter) needs to be affixed in front of it. And then, of course, there are the declensions...
...beginning, athletes play for the moment, for the sheer unmeditated joy of doing it. In mid-career they play for the money. At the twilight of fitness, they play for the memories, seeking one last accomplishment to etch their names in history. For the two dominant tennis players of the decade past, Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova, all the conceivable goals of a career have narrowed to one: the All-England Lawn Tennis championship, or Wimbledon, which starts this week and is the sport's premier tournament precisely because it is the most historic...
...manner of sports: Lendl is a fiend for golf and hockey, while Navratilova is enchanted with skiing, basketball and, as a spectator, American football. Both rose to the top through raw physical power, and both have seen the game evolve so much, in terms of their opponents' fitness and sheer anatomical size, that each now relies more on cunning and finesse. Both have probably earned less in endorsement contracts than their achievements merited: Navratilova's bisexuality makes advertisers nervous, while Lendl's unsmiling manner on the court and his passion for privacy off it come across, wrongly, as meanness...
...junior. Her main worry, Graf, has become almost an obsession. Since Graf wrested away the No. 1 ranking three years ago, they have met only five times, and Graf has won the last four. Twice Navratilova was within shouting distance of victory only to lose through what looked like sheer nerves. If she can couple a Wimbledon victory with a vindicating triumph over Graf, the temptation to do what almost no athlete ever does -- win the last one and depart -- may prove irresistible...