Word: skittishly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...much the same way that his mentor and predecessor Andropov was a skillful conductor of the anti-Euromissile campaign, Gorbachev is likely to be a deft opponent of Star Wars. Once again, the campaign will be pitched largely to the West Europeans who are skittish about the possibility that Star Wars research will lead to testing and deployment of systems that will provoke a new, extraterrestrial arms race...
...which permits the use of "deadly force" if a person believes that he or she is about to be robbed, raped, kidnaped or sodomized. The standard is not what judgment a reasonable person would make in retrospect, but what the victim personally believed at the time. Goetz's skittish fears, fanned by a previous mugging, may have proved an asset under New York State...
...which Japan has been slow to invest is China. The two countries have 19 joint ventures, including factories in south China that make television sets and cassette tape players, but the total value of Japan's investments is only about $80 million. Japanese companies have many reasons to be skittish about China: uncomfortable living conditions, a complex government bureaucracy, lack of control over labor relations, the difficulty of repatriating profits, and unreliable power supplies. But as the business climate slowly improves, the Japanese will become more interested in what is potentially the world's largest market...
...unique design makes the X-29A as skittish as a colt. "It's roughly like throwing an arrow backward," says Robert Roemer, head of the X-29A project for Grumman. "No human could handle the multitude of adjustments necessary to keep this bird in stable flight." So three computers do the work for the pilot, making 40 adjustments a second to the wings and canards to keep the plane from ripping apart. In effect, the pilot guides he plane by feeding directions into the computer. If all the computers were to fail, the X-29A would self destruct...
What now worries some experts is the chance that the dollar may come crashing down. That could happen if skittish investors decide that the currency is greatly overvalued and suddenly start to sell. Such a run could blunt the U.S. recovery by draining off cash needed by American industry. Many observers believe, however, that the economy's vigor makes a dramatic pull-out unlikely...