Word: venal
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...lure him into making the social rounds, but he shoos them off. Parasitical cronies cadge a few rubles from him, while his decrepit old manservant grumps and bemoans the good old days. For a good 100 pages, Author Goncharov drains every drop of social comedy from the venal parade around Oblomov's bed, and from Oblomov himself, frittering away the morning and afternoon with artful dodges before finally getting...
...swords with him, watch him flail the table with his fists, see the top of his head go pink with anger. Some diplomats had a certain sympathy for him, but Vishinsky never allowed sympathy to break through his guard, constantly embarrassed hosts and guests with personal attacks. "Lots of venal people dislike their work," said Britain's Soviet Specialist Edward Crankshaw. "Vishinsky was venal but happy." In the strange and somber matrix of murder, assassination, conspiracy and intrigue that has been Soviet official life in the last 30 years, Vishinsky, a man of non-proletarian origin and a onetime...
...Menen's version, King Dasa-ratha is an old lecher who ministers to his harem more assiduously than to his people, and totters on his throne from lack of sleep. Venal flunkeys catch the king's ear, and tell him that his son Rama plans to kill him. Under a pious pretext, the old man banishes Rama from his kingdom for 14 years. Into exile with Rama go his dutiful wife Sita and his loyal brother...
Next day Moscow put out a blast against Thailand's "venal, corrupt, half-Fascist" government. From Washington came gloomy predictions of the next Red move: to campaign for an "Autonomous Thai Federation," which is already organized among the Thais who live inside South China. This grouping is designed to embrace 1,100,000 Laotians and 3,700,000 Cambodians (many of Thai stock), in addition to the 19 million Thais of Thailand. As such, it would make a handsome Red jewel to set beside a Viet Nam run by Ho Chi Minh...
Among the rimes of war, trading with the enemy is one of the most venal and despicable. And although the present cold war situation has changed this view considerably, a feeling that there is something immoral about trading through the Iron Curtain persists. For this reason, Washington observers last week met with indignation the news that British businessmen were favorably considering negotiations for a billion dollars in Soviet trade...