Word: sordidly
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Justice Frankfurter was caustic: "If only the Harrises were involved, one might be brutally indifferent. ... [But] what is involved far transcends the fate of some sordid offender. . . . How can there be freedom of thought or freedom of speech or freedom of religion if the police can, without warrant, search your house and mine from garret to cellar merely because they are executing a warrant of arrest? . . . Yesterday the justifying document was an illicit ration book, tomorrow it may be some suspect piece of literature...
What commands in this work is its contribution to an understanding of the most sordid and emotional side of war and of the lives of the men who fight it. No American with a conscience, no American with an eye to the past and an ear to the future can ignore it. These fifty-three may not be full-grown Hemingways, Dos Passos, or Remarques, but in their simplicity and humanness they have reached points of literary clarity and feeling that are difficult to surpass...
...Curse. Sordid cash was responsible for London Pet Shopkeeper George Palmer's sudden interest in cussing parrots. Pubs, cafes, and even maiden ladies were demanding birds with rich vocabularies as never before, and last week Shopkeeper Palmer was offering to buy parrots on a basis of ?1 per each perfected cuss word up to 50. But only unreasoning love could account for the lepidopterological kleptomaniac who took 2,700 mounted butterflies from three Australian museums. London's Scotland Yard thinks it knows who did it but it cannot figure out the motive...
Ruark's column had most of the sordid story next day. Luciano had been in Cuba since October. He had a bodyguard, and otherwise lived in the manner to which his earnings from women and the dope trade had accustomed him. Among the folk he had been seen with in Cuba were such divergent characters as Ralph Capone (Al's brother) and Frank Sinatra...
...more likely object of close scrutiny might rather be sports that openly accept the label of professional. Recent headlines have shown the dangers which are so tempting to their employees, with sordid tales of attempted bribery in the ranks of professional football and boxing following close upon each other's heels. A gambling industry of such size and resources as the one with which we seem to be saddled makes many more such attempts at insuring some desired victory inevitable, and some of them are quite likely to succeed without being detected...