Word: skill
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
From the boxes on the shady side, elegant ladies waved their lace handkerchiefs. In the sol (sunny side), two-peso fans whistled and yelled, tossed their hats into the ring. Conchita had done it again-with as much skill and grace as the three top-flight matadors who had preceded her on the program, the last big corrida of the bullfighting season. While the stands roared "Olé, Olé!", Conchita received a gold cup for the best performance...
Cribbage (played with cards and reckoned on a peg board) was invented by Britain's Sir John Suckling, a 17th-century gambler. He got the idea from an ancient English game called Noddy, mixed the proportions of luck (drawing cards) and skill (playing them) so piquantly that the game appealed to every Englishman's taste, soon became synonymous with a cozy fireside and a little something simmering on the hob. When English colonists went to the U. S., cribbage went along, too, sprouted wherever there were two people, a fireside and a long winter evening...
...yourself if your life depended on understanding something readable which at first perusal left you somewhat in the dark?" After pondering that one, most honest readers will follow the argument that: 1) intelligent reading, i.e. reading for understanding rather than merely for entertainment or information, is a complex skill; 2) U. S. schools and colleges no longer give as much time to developing it as they once did; 3) it is extremely desirable, especially in a democracy, since all communication depends on it; 4) it can be learned or improved by following certain practical rules...
...short-answer, check-and-underline variety. To the Senior who takes them, the Carnegie people will turn over a picture of his store of knowledge, telling how he stacks up mentally with his fellows. Admittedly the exams do not test "the ability to express ideas in writing, skill in laboratory techniques, research ability, and originality." Admittedly they are experimental even in the realm of pure knowledge. But nevertheless they were drawn up by professors from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, who can't all be wet. And for three seasons the exams have been tried on first-year graduate guinea...
Pollak, in a letter to the Mirror, declares that he was particularly anxious to correct that part of the fake story which said "he had to be fished out of the pool," since he learned to swim at Nantucket,"... and I hate to think of losing this skill, even in a cooked-up news item...