Word: taunting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...classic line: "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind." Our sentences no longer run backward (or hardly ever), but the spoofs continue. More recently, The New Yorker commented on our occasional tendency to use active, colorful verbs, and claimed that people in our pages always "groan, coo, snarl, taunt, thunder, chortle, crack, intone, growl, drawl," etc. The same article suggested that the reason for TIME'S liveliness can be found in the masthead, which lists dozens of female researchers whose "pulse-quickening" presence "peps up TIME'S denizens." TIME'S masthead also fascinated Playwright William Saroyan...
...began with a taunt. Repeatedly accused by Tory Opposition Leader John Diefenbaker of mishandling national security matters, Justice Minister Lucien Cardin stood up in the House of Commons and fired back. "He is the very last person who can afford to give advice on the handling of security cases," charged the peppery French Canadian. So saying, he challenged Diefenbaker to "tell about his participation in the 'Monseignor case' when he was Prime Minister...
...Americans served and shielded by machines at every turn, each silent switch and powerless push button was a taunt. Two of modern technology's paramount deities?the dynamo and the digital computer?had defected simultaneously. Yet Northeasterners wasted little time lamenting their betrayal by the machine. Instead, with a high sense of shared adventure, they set about the unfamiliar task of using legs and arms to help themselves and their fellow men. If in the process the 20th century American learned belatedly to mistrust the complex mechanics by which he lives, he also acquired new faith in his humanity...
Message Undelivered. On the eve of Loyalty Day (Oct. 17), the tension reached the point where President Arturo Illia decided to forbid all Peronista demonstrations. Next morning 5,000 well-armed police patrolled Buenos Aires streets. Out came some 6,000 Peronistas-as much to taunt the cops as cheer Perón. By nightfall, more than 600 of the rioters were in jail. Isabel had dropped out of sight, and Perón's tape-recorded message had gone undelivered. President Illia then warned that any unions dabbling in politics would lose their legal rights. The Peronistas called...
Technology of Haste. Boorstin approaches the problem region by region. In New England, he finds, adaptation required a monumental psychological change. Poor in natural resources, the New Englander exploited his native resourcefulness. "New England," ran the popular taunt, "produces nothing but granite and ice." So energetic New Englanders, making an economic virtue out of a geographical necessity, harvested their rocky hills and frozen ponds, virtually created the markets for their products, shipped granite to Savannah and New Orleans, ice to Persia, India and Australia. The same restless and ingenious spirit drove New England manufacturers who developed specialized machines to replace...