Word: sir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Roosevelt called the President of Venezuela "a pithecanthropoid," according to Morris, and once referred to the lionized George Bernard Shaw as "a blue-rumped ape." Sir Mortimer Durand, His Majesty's Ambassador to the U.S. back then, was denounced as a fellow with "a mind that functions at six guinea-pig power." The Populist Senator William Peffer was immortalized as "a well-meaning, pinheaded, anarchistic crank, of hirsute and slab-sided aspect." That latter bit might make it a little difficult for the victim to throw off the effects with a laugh. Still, all of Morris' research...
When a renowned Italian expert in semiotics, the arcane science of signs, sets out to write a thriller, the resulting fiction is bound to bristle with more obscure clues, mysterious ciphers and symbolic happenings than were ever conjured up by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So it is with Umberto Eco's first novel, The Name of the Rose, a Sherlock Holmesian fantasy in a medieval setting...
...author tips his hat to Sir Arthur early on. The name of his medieval detective, William of Baskerville, is an echo of the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. In the 14th century context, William is a Franciscan friar, famed for his formidable powers of deduction. His companion and disciple is called Adso, or in French, Adson, as in the phrase "Elementary, my dear Adson...
...student first types in a few words to make contact with the computer and hook up to the encyclopedia service. He or she then begins an electronic search. If just the word Churchill is typed, a choice of eight items is given, from Churchill River in Newfoundland to Sir Winston. After selecting Sir Winston, the student is offered six sections of an article about different phases of Churchill's life, as well as a bibliography. The student can read the material simply by pressing the number key that corresponds to the selection wanted...
...Hitler's bombings." Campaigning in the economically depressed West Midlands, Deputy Labor Party Leader Denis Healey discovered a mechanical crab at a street market and held it up before TV cameras. "It moves sideways and evades your every instruction," he joked. "I'm going to call it Sir Geoffrey Howe." That swipe at Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer made the evening news programs. Said Healey: "Margaret Thatcher has turned the Tory Party into her personal dictatorship...