Word: solemnization
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...parade yielded to another. The one that ended in fatal chaos produced, four days later, a nervous, solemn pageant of much of the world's leadership (fetching back three Administrations in the U.S. case). The procession of power on display was pharaonic. It was a complicated homage: there was Prince Charles, to represent the British, whom Sadat once plotted violently to evict. And there, of course, was Menachem Begin, something of an ex-terrorist himself, who enjoyed an immeasurably complex relationship and history with the deceased...
...hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies...
...million dollars in damages was at stake. So was the entire French fast food market--one of the fastest-growing and most profitable such markets in the world. Reporters from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal scribbled furiously as Schultz addressed the Hon. Richard Curry, a solemn and conservative judge, even by the standards of his fellow magistrates...
...mutual obligation (and perhaps by an equal and opposite network of betrayal). The system starts with nods and smiles and wordless understandings; it elaborates itself interminably through certain assumptions, casual promises, oral agreements, laborious plans, written contracts and formal vows, and ends finally in that thunderous atavism, the solemn oath: the promise with a jolt of the sacred in it, the upraised hand, the divinity standing by to witness...
Oaths have their sinister uses. They can turn into weapons to coerce and restrict. The solemn oath, of course, is not a bad way to lie. The Mafia enforces silence with an oath, and the blood oath over the centuries has killed more people than a medieval plague. But, in a free society, the oath has a crucial ceremonial function. The Hippocratic Oath reminds new doctors of their obligation, of the human context of their calling. An immigrant knows that the oath of citizenship is spiritually, almost physically, nourishing. His oath is a symbolic drama of community...