Word: vaguer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...picked followers. He created an amateur army of commandos who flung vegetables and abuse at rival speakers or broke up their meetings. He broadened his appeal, organized affiliates for peasants, youth, workers, professionals. He preached only discontent, "throw the rascals out." As it wore on, his campaign grew vaguer. "My program is to have no program," he declared. He put up 819 candidates, made each take an oath never to take a position not approved personally by Poujade under penalty of "all the punishments reserved for traitors." What punishment did he intend? "Very simple, hanging," said Poujade breezily, and grinned...
...physics, has kept his life pretty much to himself. Since his seventeenth birthday, this genial, soft-spoken man has been challenging the frontiers of physics, armed with only his intellect, a pencil, and paper. Far removed from most undergraduates, only dimly aware of the machinery of collegiate life, and vaguer even about his own past, Schwinger dwells in a world apart. His personality spills out only in odd stories--his reputation for writing with both hands on the blackboard, his night-owl habits, and his excellence at ping-pong...
...story is as simple and deadly as the flight of a poisoned arrow. Its hero is Marius, a French sea captain who has lost his master's ticket for running a merchant ship into a known minefield during World War II, and whom rumor accuses of some greater, vaguer crime. By day he haunts the shipping offices of Marseille in his greasy old captain's uniform, cringing and wheedling for another command. By night he gets roaring drunk and tries to check his conscience and his failure at the local brothel...
...bottom of all this is an ingredient somewhat less convincing: the questionnaire itself. As pointed out in yesterday's editorial, and as recognized by the Report's authors, the poll's questions require some guesswork. The questions used for this section of the Report are by necessity even vaguer than those used in the section on teaching methods, for they refer to what goes on within students--changes which are difficult to perceive and even harder to distill into a phrase or two. This inevitably led to imprecise and qualified conclusions...
...tempted by a $250,000 offer to tour in Argentina. He sometimes speaks vaguely of accepting an offer to appear at Milan's famed La Scala, where he would like to sing Andrea Chenier, one of the twelve operatic roles he has learned. He is even vaguer about the great day when he may be ready to sing at the Met (top fee: $1,000 a performance...