Word: smirk
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...mirrors of the Imperial Hotel's grand ballroom, 300 of his followers could watch themselves sipping orange pop and looking bored, as the mullah on the stage mumbled a long recitation from the Koran. Then Jinnah rose. Smiling his death's-head smirk, he held up a hand to quiet the thunderous applause. Instantly, it stopped...
...same peevish expression-vanity without dignity, sourness without purity." But, like his father, he also has store clothes and an avaricious look. That's the man, says Highet. He is "rich but ill-mannered. That is why the bride is sitting quietly with downcast eyes. Her smirk means, 'I'm glad I'm getting married. I don't much like my husband, but he is rich...
...tabloid New York Daily News flatters the common man by cheering for commonness; consequently it has the largest newspaper audience in the U.S. The News scorns reformers, and flaunts the details of Manhattan's juiciest scandals with a self-righteousness that does not conceal a smirk. Its general attitude toward manners & morals is the tough kid's jeer: if they're good they're probably phoney and certainly ridiculous...
...make matters worse, this happened after he had sent out circulars the week before instructing everyone to be sure to open their fireplace drafts. Finally the blaze was quelled, leaving a blush on the face of Perkins and a smirk on the face of the Bellboys...
Manhattan's volubly witty Town Crier, the late Alexander Woollcott, had ten light literary fingers in a good many more pies, but what endeared him to his admirers was his habit of pulling out the juiciest borrowed plums in public with a happy little verbal smirk that meant: "What a smart boy am I." Last month he did it again (posthumously) in Long, Long Ago, a very satisfactory second course to his highly comestible While Rome Burns (TIME, March 12, 1934). Most of Wooll-cott's plums are still on the sugary side, but the best ones have...