Word: trait
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...original Southern type, "the core about which most Southerners of whatever degree were likely to be built," Cash selects not the aristocrat but the "backcountry pioneer farmer," the descendant not of English squires but of "half-wild Scotch and Irish clansmen." This countryman's outstanding trait was his lack of complexity. A direct product of the soil, he was "as simple a type as Western civilization has produced in modern times." To that intense simplicity, Cash assigns several Southern traits: individualism, puerility, a tendency to violence, romanticism, hedonism, piety, a passionate love of rhetoric and of politics...
...world does not want to be governed by a master, but a servant; a servant of the people. His letter shows the predominant trait of the Germanic people. Order, Yes, ORDER, at all cost, even down to the last of their own personal liberties...
Paul, 15, only child in a happy, well-adjusted family, is a mathematical genius (I. Q. 172). Quick-tempered and talkative, he has a sharp tongue, often annoys classmates, has few intimate friends. He shows no interest in girls. While this is a common adolescent trait, it is exaggerated in Paul because he is emotionally dependent on his parents. His chief conflict: whether he should think first of his own career or of supporting his parents...
...Double, or split personality, such as Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment, "thirsts for power and is powerless, he desires to torture and to be tortured, to debase himself and to debase others, to be proud and to humble himself." Dominance of one trait characterizes the Meek (quixotic Prince Myshkin of The Idiot}, as also the Self-Willed (the murderer Verkhovenski in The Possessed...
...Somewhat frustrated by having to work without color, Adrian compensates himself by taking a high hand with his temperamental charges. He forbade Norma Shearer the frills she liked, had the idea of turning Joan Crawford from Judy O'Grady into Colonel's lady, overcame a troublesome Garbo trait by observing: "It is difficult to have an evening gown fit properly with the right lines when the person wears low heels." At parties Adrian keeps a keen eye peeled for signs of dowdiness, can be convulsing about it afterwards. Of Tallulah Bankhead he once remarked: "She can wear...