Word: whim
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Next, Mr. Ickes got down to the cases of the "snipers and guttersnipers." Snipers were General Hugh Johnson and Westbrook Pegler. "While Johnson is against only those numerous public officials who are bungling affairs that he could so competently manage, Pegler is against everything and everybody according to his whim." Chief guttersniper in Mr. Ickes' category was "Mr. Munchausen," identified in advance copies of the speech as Paul Mallon, although CBS induced Mr. Ickes not to call names over the air. Several of Columnist Mallon's items about Mr. Ickes, Mr. Ickes bluntly charged, were lies...
...thronged with more modern, more efficient rivals. A plausible theory is that the Coelacanths retreated to the deeps where competition was not severe, and persisted there as the archaic okapi survived in the dense Congo forests, as the primitive duck-billed platypus in benign Australia. If so, some whim or freak of circumstance brought this particular Coelacanth up from the deeps to the coastal water of South Africa. And the possibility remains that other "living fossils" may lurk in the ocean depths, awaiting the scrutiny of science if science is ingenious enough to retrieve them...
...residents a little alarm. Songs in the serious, philosophic, or romantic vein are carried off by Tamara and Mary Martin, with a little assistance from Mr. Gaxton. "Get Out of Town" and "From Now On" will be heard a lot this winter, and others according to the public's whim...
...solution to the mystery of departmental fluctuations is the tragic, but simple one, that nobody has any clear idea of the purpose of an intellectual institution. Courses are chosen--in some cases, even fields--on the basis of relative difficulty, the hour and place of meeting or the whim of an assertive room-mate. There is an arrogant confusion everywhere as to the meaning and value of attending college; and this is related as cause and effect with an analagous chaos in the world generally...
...every shade and color, bent on selling them something--be it an idea for the economic salvation of the nation or a simple old-fashioned gold brick. The appeal to people's emotions is often so subtly made that decisions of momentous importance to the nation are governed by whim and whimsy, simply because clever propaganda deprives people of their power to reason and think...