Word: skittish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sympathizers, the intellectuals; they want to gallop all the time, and I have to put a curb-bit in that horse's mouth. The second is much older, and inclined to be mulish; that is my block of Southern states . . . And then my third horse, a nervous and skittish steed which I seldom dare mention by name. You will consider my naming it confidential, please? . . . My Roman Catholic charger. There are twenty million Catholics in this country, and the great bulk of them think and vote as their Church advises...
Universe in Flight. Astronomers have a speedometer to clock the motions of skittish heavenly bodies. They take spectrographs: photographs of the body's light spread out by a prism into a band of colors. If the band is "shifted toward the red" (i.e., if it is redder than normal), it shows that the body is moving away from the earth...
...obviously cut out of slick paper. But Joan Crawford knows as well as any movie star how to make such a manhandled heroine into a magic mirror for women moviegoers. Henry Fonda is a shrewd comedian, in spite of having to play that eternal Lost Little Boy who unleashes skittish maternal emotions. Dana Andrews, a most talented actor, has to call someone "honeybunch" umpteen times in this show, yet he never fails to make it a more or less fresh revelation of character. Director Otto Preminger is expert at the glossy details that are useful to this sort of story...
Last week thousands crowded the museum for a look. They were not allowed to see all the treasures at once. Skittish Director Colt had only 30 of the 600 on show. Until the museum gets a new, burglarproof wing, the rest will stay hidden in vaults at the bank...
...welter of tedious recriminations, a vicious behind-the-scenes economic battle comes far closer to splitting the East and West than any so-called ideological warfare. Iran, keystone of an important Anglo-American oil reservoir, is the stage for an oil dispute that threatens to boil over momentarily. Skittish over Russian expansion towards the Persian Gulf, the United States has influenced Iran to disavow a proposed oil-rights contract with Russia in a move that has Moscow frothing. This most recent indication of a return to the naked power politics of pre-war years defeats the purpose...