Word: staleness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...each President handled the question of whether he would seek a second term: "The subject of Harry Truman's 1952 intentions came up again in his weekly press conference. The President wasn't saying, just acting deliberately mysterious. It has become an unprofitable inquiry and a stale joke." (July...
...revised edition of their dictionary was finished in 1932, and they are only up to the B for braise in the new version. Naturally, one must not rush headlong into the definition of words as delicate as bouillabaisse (should it, or should it not, include a slice of floating stale bread?), or to the admission of such Americanisms as bluff (accepted). So, with only the deadline of immortality to achieve, the academicians ponder the verities, polish their language and, each year, award a prize to some young Frenchwoman who, "born in comfort, but forced by Fortune to work, prefers...
...January 1894, the year he died, Robert Louis Stevenson began to fear that his work was going stale and wrote that he could actually wish to die, though suicide "is not thought the ticket in the best circles." In December 1894, at 44, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. His mother was present, and it is her account of the death that Editor Neider presents. There is nothing more from Fanny. The spell was broken, the ledger book was closed, and there was nothing left but to sell Vailima and eventually return to the States. Twenty years later she died...
...scientific apparatus and set up a laboratory in the Carnegie Institution, where he works furiously on personal projects (his current interest: amino acids) whenever his work on the commission gives a moment of respite. "Science is like art," Libby explains. "You have to work at it or you go stale fast...
With Marked Cards. Stan goes back to Amy, and they measure out their old age in rocking chairs and the stale tea of memory. Author White's notion that destiny plays with marked cards is scarcely fresh, but Stan and even Amy play the losing game with stubborn dignity, unlike their children. Author White is overfond of the eye-stopping metaphor ("She was brushed in sad gusts by the branches of the music"), but at his best, he makes long-suffering Stan at least as poignant as Markham's Man with the Hoe. Stan's mute wisdom...