Word: whim
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...known to the correcter. But in large courses in other fields where examinations are not marked blindly there is apt to exist injustice; knowing the owner of a paper, an instructor is influenced by personal feeling. At all times, however, a grade is subject to the correcter's whim and mood of the moment...
...this apocalyptic land everybody-the prospectors and stagecoach drivers, the medicine men, outlaws, sheriff, the hero with the silver-plated stock saddle-is a gentleman of color. No attempt is made to explain how so much pigment got all over the open spaces. It is there, palpably, by a whim of the Almighty, indulged with the liberal connivance of one Jed Buell, an independent Hollywood producer who learned his art from Mack Sennett...
...Street. Toward the center of the city, the Vagabond found himself engulfed in screaming traffic that approached from a million different directions at once. To the Mexican driver, the horn is far more important than the brake, and the velocity and direction of his vehicle depend solely on the whim of the man at the wheel. If Rhode Island motorists are the worst in the world, Mexicans are far and away the most idiosyncratic...
Featherlight, the tale gets going when Jupiter's bang-crash arrival on earth- he forgot the law of gravitation-brings it home to him that assuming human simplicity is going to be a very complicated process. To gain Alcmena he has to sacrifice his wistful whim to be loved for himself alone. Husbandly attention Alcmena welcomes, lover's desire she abhors. "Desire is a half-god," she affirms. "Let's leave the half-gods to the adolescent girls and the casually married." In the battle of wits and wills between the omnipotent god and the constant matron...
...Dresses for daytime are slender, simply draped, with skirts still moderately short. Waistlines follow the designer's whim...