Word: wan
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Possessed of a dexterous though partly imitative technique, it has none of the raucous and hurtling sentiment which usually gives poetry a popular appeal. The music of his verses is delicate and blurred; his gentle comments on saints and harlots, soldiers and nuns, unlike his previous satire, seems too wan to provoke a storm either of praise or censure...
...keeping tab on you out of sheer love and hope for your artistic success. (Any damn fool can make money.) Dropped lines seem to be chronic with you now. That kind of "dropsy" is worse than your competitor's edema verbosum. And such crudities as "war boats" and wan dirge" make one suspect that, after all, there may "be a reason" for letters like the "famed" X. Y. Z. W. Something-Somethingelse's.f To one who fully realizes the beauty "swan-song" and the aptness inventor in of the "swan dirge" expression stands on a level with...
...presidential Vermont syrup stands complacently before the speaker. Who does not sympathize with the President in his unwillingness to devote precious minutes to political topics and thus deprive the White House cheif of justice? It is a hazardous guess but there is a possibility that the Garbo is comparatively wan at the breakfast table that Milt Gross dispenses with his smott crecks, that Galli Curei temporarily quits singing and that Hoppe regretfully lays aside...
...earnest sisterly tussle for admiration and happiness, envy matching envy with competitive malice. Julia still has money and looks, so the reader's sympathy is meant to go to crippled, homely, honest Elena. But Elena is more shrewish than shrewd. Her experiments with new religions are wan and woeful. The backgrounds -Manhattan, Italy, unnamed places -are nebulously uninteresting, taking the edge off such intensity as Authoress MacConnell and her characters may possess. A ripe theme and much good characterization go to waste through fireless cooking...
...line" she gives her J. Hartley Harrison, scoutmaster, is one of the most innocently poisonous characterizations ever done. Some of her others are: acidulous Aunt Sarah, 99, with parrot and enema bags; dependable, blockheaded Charlotte, who marries Hoagland Driggs; the fat little heir across the street; wan, wishful Carrie, Aunt Sarah's slave; and-flashes-sultry, vivid Opal Mendoza, "bad girl," the only one whose words comfort Joe at all; squat, square, red-faced Effa, "simply killing," a perpetual circus, whose salt tears run into her broad mouth when she smells the lilacs and knows she will never have...