Word: thumb
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...common euphemism for the intelligence services, make up a kind of superelite. For years it was a basic tenet of Kremlinological wisdom that the head of the KGB was too much distrusted by his comrades ever to become General Secretary of the party. Yuri Andropov disproved that rule of thumb in 1982. He personified the Soviet obsession with security and reverence for the guardians of security...
...renowned architect Minoru Yamasaki used his designs for William James Hail, built in 1963, as a testing ground for his World Trade Towers in New York City. Although the 15-story edifice has been praised for its slender beauty, a 1973 survey of Cambridge architecture called it a sore thumb in its current location...
...little girls are locked up in a French-Canadian convent school. Eight-year-old Mildred and twelve-year-old Cathie are bathed every two weeks, the one wearing a rubber apron and the other a muslin shift so they cannot see their own bodies. The state of Mildred's thumb tells it all: "Sucked white, (it) was taped to the palm of her hand...
...sure sign of deceit, Ekman says, is the presence of a "leakage emblem," the unconscious misuse of a common symbolic gesture, such as delivering an A- O.K. sign (thumb to forefinger, making a circle) from below the waist instead of above it, or producing a one-shoulder shrug. "A liar can show these leakage emblems again and again," Ekman writes, "and usually neither the liar nor the victim will notice them." Another finding: the use of gestures to illustrate speech, stabbing the air or making a circle in space, often falls off dramatically when a person is lying. (Lie spotters...
...These movies are not exactly bogged down with story," says Doug Draizin, who packaged Bachelor Party. "The kids are coming back for the big comedy scenes. So it's important to give them enough, four or five big ones is the rule of thumb." In Police Academy, for example, a woman wails to one of the misfits in blue that her cat is stuck at the top of a tree. "Don't worry, lady," he says confidently. "I'll get him down." He pulls out his revolver, aims and shoots him dead...