Word: whim
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There was a time when William Randolph Hearst, at his megalomaniac whim, could order his papers from coast to coast to lambaste Franklin D. Roosevelt on the front page, build up the career of Hearst's mistress Marion Davies on the movie page, and fill the intervening space with scandal. The Hearst papers have long since moderated their ways. No other newspaper chain nowadays commits such abuses. Instead, the damning indictment of most chain papers is that they have become flat, boring and timorous...
...design is based on drawings found on ancient Sumerian clay tablets. Iraqi workmen first tied the reeds together into two long, tapering rolls. Then the rolls were joined to form the craft's hull. Though on earlier voyages Heyerdahl and his crew drifted across oceans at the whim of winds and currents, the Tigris will be more versatile. It has been fitted with a large squarish sail and twelve wooden oars, each of them 6 meters (20 ft.) long...
Getting really serious about a professional musical career may be difficult for Cipolla, who has always taken life with a large dose of spontaneity. She started playing guitar on a whim; several years ago, after hearing some bad news, she found her sister's guitar on a bed, and just started playing it--which is why her technique is so unusual...
...melody with a judicious blend of brio and ease. It was astonishing to note the degrees of softness he achieved with the chorus, rather than the customary piling up of decibels. The soloists were a uniformly excellent band of singers-though how they fared dramatically depended on the whim of Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, former Wunderkind of European opera. Ponnelle attired his Electra in a red fright wig and managed the considerable feat of making Soprano Carol Neblett look less than gorgeous. Electra may be a mixed-up lady; she does not have to be a visual horror. As Idamante...
Opposition to the South African regime is illegal. People can be arrested and detained without trial at the whim of the Justice Minister, who does not have to give any reasons. They can be sentenced to life imprisonment or executed under the Sabotage and Suppression of Communism Acts, which define any attempt to change the status quo as "communist." Under such laws, the African National Congress of South Africa--the party of national liberation--was outlawed in 1960, and many opposition leaders--among them Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Bram Fischer--sent to jail for life...