Word: timidity
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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There is a general belief among folk whose faith is frail and timid, that a study of actual phenomena, a demand for evidence to support the hypothesis, precludes a belief in immortality. Such folk were surprised last week when Dr. William Darrach, dean of the faculty of medicine, speaking at Columbia University's annual commemoration service, said...
...undergraduates who are keenly interested in "aesthetic outpourings", or stuff after the manner of the Dial. The undergraduate is not afraid of literature. Bad literature, yes: but that is another matter. The trouble with most college literary magazines is that they do try to compromise--that they are timid, and afraid (this fear itself being philistine) to go all out for literary distinction. Playing safe, they achieve a kind of dreary neutrality. And it is a question whether this does them any good. One wonders whether it mightn't be proved that it is precisely when such papers are most...
...think more of constitutional government than I do about the liquor traffic. I think that democratic institutions are passing through as severe a test as they have ever had or will have. Fascism on the one hand, communism on the other and a vast drove of timid souls in between make a pretty hard fight for democratic institutions...
...perfect synonyms. A "whack" is a blow delivered much in the same way as a "thwack," but it presupposes a certain capable nonchalance in the deliverer. A thwack is a blow delivered more clumsily, though with equal vigor, by some person not accustomed to administering physical violences; as a timid schoolboy, an enraged English butler, any octogenarian...
...Gillette Safety Razor Co. prints on the tasteful green wrappers of its blades, besides a handsome portrait of King C. Gillette, the words "NO STROPPING NO HONING." Timid users of Gillette blades, especially women, think these words are a command, forbidding the shaver ever to have a Gillette blade salvaged once it wears out. Other people ignore the legend or interpret it as gentle self-ingratiation by the Gillette Co., meaning, "Whoso uses a Gillette razor, he strops not, neither does he hone...