Word: thumbnailing
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...most conspicuous change in the Third New International Dictionary is that every definition is really new. Instead of thumbnail essays, they run to single phrases. To illustrate new shades of meaning, they include 200,000 quotations that draw on sources as diverse as Variety, Lingerie Merchandising, and TIME (probably the most frequently quoted magazine), along with "pungent, lively remarks" by 14,000 modern notables from Winston Churchill to Mickey Spillane. The old edition brushed off goof as "a ridiculous, stupid person." Now. in amplification, Dwight Eisenhower is quoted as complaining that someone "made a goof." Elizabeth Taylor broadens sick...
...freely offered thumbnail descriptions of his old Nazi comrades. His top boss, Heinrich Himmler, was the kind of man who demanded only that "I click my heels and say ja." Next came Reinhardt ("The Hangman") Heydrich, who had "a well-known failing-a personal failing. He was known for his preening and self-worship." Savagery flashed but once, in his description of Dieter Wisliceny, who had once been Eichmann's best friend and whose name he gave to his second son. But Wisliceny, before being executed, had accused Eichmann of guilt in the mass murders. Eichmann declared that...
This section of the book comes closer to being the "reasoned analysis" promised in the foreword. The different views on the state of the nation are amplified with recent statements by the two candidates. And the conflict between the two parties is supported by a thumbnail historical digression. Further, the tone of this portion of the essay is, for the most part, clearly less inflammatory...
...unmistakable counterpoint of jungle drums: the throb of Africa. It first came through in the pavanlike procession in which the delegations of twelve new African nations* marched across the floor to take their places for the first time, each aware that his own nation, however young, inexperienced, poor or thumbnail-sized, is armed with a vote as meaningful as that of any of the great powers. And while U.N. votes are but feathers in the world balance of power, the world would read them as the visible talismans of cold war gains or losses...
Reaching for a smaller tool, the sculptor pares the head into an elongated, rectangular appendage, no larger than his thumbnail, perhaps one-twentieth the size of the body instead of nature's less than one-seventh. He pushes his own head backward and thrusts the piece forward, studying it with a frown. Then he pokes two tiny indentations to make the eyes. One or more such small maquettes, produced between breakfast and a 1 o'clock lunch, may prove the seed for another of the large reclining women or mother figures to which the mind of Henry Moore...