Word: taut
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Drama, Comedy. In his first straight dramatic role, TV Comic Jackie Gleason gave a taut and convincing portrait of an unscrupulous politician on Studio One, in a play by Carey Wilbur called Short Cut. Gleason not only looked the part, with his suety face and alderman's stomach, but for most of the play he put aside the comic's tools of obviousness and loudness in order to make his character dramatic and believable...
...Holiness has asked for an egg," said the taut, nervous voice of Papal Physician Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi over the long-distance wire to Bologna. "What am I to do? How shall I tell him he can't have it?" The Pope's new doctor, Antonio Gasbarrini, was delighted. "Tell him he can have not only one egg, but two-and have them flipped with Marsala, if he agrees...
...world of simple, palpable acts. But at his best, Hemingway has a sense of fate recalling Melville, an American heartiness recalling Mark Twain (who never used big dictionary words either). Hemingway can carve icebergs of prose; only a few words on paper convey much more beneath the surface. The taut, economical style contains more than meets the casual eye-the dignity of man and also his imperfection, the recognition that there is a right way and a wrong, the knowledge that the redeeming things of life are measured in the profound satisfactions that come from struggle. Said Dr. Anders Osterling...
...with his group. When this happens, the rank and file are apt to turn to someone else as an informal leader. Therefore, the most effective leaders according to Fiedler, are men who are properly matched to their subordinates. When possible, an overly friendly commander should be assigned to a taut unit with rigid barriers between lesser ranks. Overly aloof leaders should command units where barriers of rank are more relaxed...
Within the straw-matting hut lay one hundred French Union prisoners, their skin drawn taut across their ribs. Their feet were cut and swollen; their complexions were jaundiced; their eyeballs were ghastly white and the men had difficulty focusing their sight. Many of the prisoners had festering sores that crawled with swarming flies. "My God, they look awful," said a French officer who saw them. "They are like men from a second Buckenwald," cried the skipper of a French...