Word: smirk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first." The idiot is Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, played by reformed Stand-Up Comic Don Adams. Smart has little piggy eyes, a voice that sounds like a jigsaw on slate, and a perpetual self-satisfied smirk. When challenged, he is too dumb to panic, bluffs fluently: "Would you believe that I can break eight boards with one karate chop? No? Would you believe three boards? Would you believe a loaf of bread...
...cleverness, at the success with which we had suavely maintained the "Christian posture." And then, though we have not talked about it, we both felt a little dirty. Maybe the Incarnate God was truly present in that man's need and asking us for something better than a smirk. (I started to say "More truly human than a smirk..." but I don't know about that. We are beginning to believe deeply in original sin: theirs and ours...
...self-conscious? Why couldnt they play it straight? Light opera is supposed to be foolish--the audience will discover that on its own. The characters aren't supposed to be realistic. But they have to appear to think they are. A deadpan is much funnier than a smirk...
...beginning of the school year most serving ladies taste, figuratively, like grapefruit juice. They all frown or smirk as they dole out small portions. Within a fortnight one can pick out the true grapefruit-juice specimens. They are usually under fifty, and suspect sexual motives in the student's eager smile. Often they try to give the impression that they could beat you up if you tried anything...
...were condemned after his death, would be appalled at the blind way we shamble in his huge footsteps. The magnificent company of non-Catholic thinkers-Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard, Sartre-are too often presented in our texts as straw men to be knocked down with a pat phrase and a smirk for the stupidity of those who don't agree with us." Kreyche's goal was "a classroom in which professor and student can move easily from Socrates to Sartre, from Plato to Planck, from Aristotle to Ayer...