Word: singsonged
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With his bushy eyebrows, courtly manners and singsong Texas drawl, Jim Wright comes across as a curious mix: part kindly uncle, part snake-oil salesman. It was the second ingredient that gave some Democrats pause about the new House Speaker's delivering the party's response to Ronald Reagan's State of the Union address. But Wright was eager for his moment in the limelight, and the result was a pleasant surprise for most of his colleagues. In many ways, the speech by the 17-term House veteran proved more effective than the slickly produced Democratic responses of past years...
From his first eminence in the early '50s as the rage of syndicated TV, Liberace was a vision out of a closet yet to be opened in mainstream show business. The silken singsong voice, the candelabrum, the welded dimples and fluty presence, the references to his sainted mother Frances, all made him a conversation piece, a figure of fun -- the Gorgeous George of mid-cult music. As Michael Herr observes in his new book The Big Room, "Never before, at least knowingly, had a man ever had the big steel balls to show himself like that, and on television...
Though Aurelius Augustinus had won a bit of renown, he would surely be unknown to history were it not for the celebrated September day in A.D. 386 when he seemed to hear a child's singsong voice chanting "Tolle lege, tolle lege" (Take up and read, take up and read). Snatching the Bible, which he had once disdained, he read the first words his eyes fell upon: St. Paul's admonition in Romans 13 to abandon wanton living and "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." Instantly, he later wrote, "a light of certainty pierced my heart and all the shadow...
...dictatorial will with genuine dignity. Peggy Cass is the family entertainer, Elizabeth Franz its happiest housewife and Gisela Caldwell its edgy protofeminist, whose eventual crack-up seems to result from her discontent with women's lot. The most affecting performance comes from Bette Henritze, as a stroke victim whose singsong speech does not obscure a larger tragedy. When she admits, "I'm not very demonstrative," she speaks for the whole family and sets in motion a tentative embrace of reconciliation that ends the play without really changing the lonely togetherness of the octette...
Mondale appeared tired and read his 25-min. speech in a lackluster singsong. ("The speech was typed better than it was read," groaned one of his supporters.) Nevertheless, the force and eloquence of the language prompted his obviously sympathetic audience to interrupt him with 24 ovations. The speech struck hard and often at Reagan's remark about intolerance. "B'nai B'rith is opposed to Mr. Reagan's [school-prayer] amendment; I would not call you intolerant of religion," said Mondale. "Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and other church groups also oppose his amendment. And they...