Word: taut
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...timpani looks as if it were forged for the artistic elevation of soups. Its expansive, gleaming copper bowl tilted jauntily to a side and the drumhead stretched taut over its opening suggest hidden depths of bouillon--of boiling meats and vegetables. The common name for the timpani is, not surprisingly, the kettledrum. Originally a military instrument, primitive versions of the timpani were slung over the backs of horses in cavalry units and, aside from their practical uses in battle, often served in processions and other public events as a sort of status symbol...
...even with the innovation of the foot pedal, playing the timpani remains a delicate and complex job. Each timpani is different, and in addition, each spot on the taut drumhead has a slightly different tuning, tension and response. And the tuning is still an uncertain science, performed with the orchestra in full swing around the timpanists. They have to find the perfect pitch despite the tooting and sawing of their neighbors and without losing track of the conductor. If you see them stooping over the drumhead during the concert as though they were whispering into a gargantuan ear, that...
...poorly conceived Greek mythical creature. I tried getting rid of some of my body hair once before, when I first started getting chest hairs and would pluck them out. I stopped not because of the pain but because my chest began to look like Manuel Noriega's face. A taut, muscular version of Noriega's face...
...Ever since his best-selling first novel, Presumed Innocent (1987), Scott Turow has turned out taut legal and psychological thrillers at the rate of one every three years: The Burden of Proof (1990), Pleading Guilty (1993) and The Laws of Our Fathers (1996). If this is 1999, there must be another one on the way, and sure enough, here comes Personal Injuries (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 384 pages; $27). But another Turow, as his constant readers have discovered, does not mean the same story with different names attached for the sake of variety. Turow likes to alter the form as well...
...told me the day after I was diagnosed that I'd be here today leading the Tour de France, there'd be no way I'd believe you," says Armstrong as he stretches his thigh muscles in a hotel room along the race circuit. He is taut and lean, and his close-cropped brown hair has replaced the temporary baldness caused by his treatment--three months of debilitating chemotherapy and a brain operation to remove the tumors...