Word: whirr
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...Ever since, there's been a slow burn of controversy, finally exploding into the kind of racial brush fire that's become familiar in American political discourse. Here's how it works: 1) a semi-obscure black figure says something outrageous or anti-Semitic; 2) pundits pontificate, word processors whirr; 3) one by one, black leaders are forced to condemn the offending words and the offensive speaker. It happened to Professor Griff, formerly of the politically charged rap group Public Enemy. It also happened to Farrakhan, when he called Judaism a "gutter religion." Now Muhammad's words have...
...terribly conservative folks, not really the types to haunt the living. Even a raven or a black cat would have sufficed, but my hopes of spotting something even moderately spooky soon dwindled. At midnight there were no church bells or demons, only the beeping of my watch and the whirr of passing taxis. Ethan A. Vogt...
...construction crews lay brick upon brick and the architects debate the true meaning of space, I hear the terrifying whirr which no amount of novocaine or promises of soft ice cream will make go away. Thomas J. Slegel, GSAS...
Such a character was Captain Mac Whirr of Joseph Conrad's short story Typhoon, a man whose physiognomy was "the exact counterpart of his mind: it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled." Mac Whirr, said Conrad, had "just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day." Yet that meager imagination became the hero of the tale, for when a monstrous storm arose at sea, and the good captain was advised by all the voices of reason to sail around and behind the trouble, he of the consistent mind responded, "A gale...
...well as to the body." The historical horrors of industrialization (child labor, Dickensian squalor, the dark satanic mills) translate into the 20th century's robotic busywork on the line, tightening the same damned screw on the Camaro's firewall assembly, going nuts to the banging, jangling Chaplinesque whirr of modern materialism in labor, bringing forth issue, disgorging itself upon the market...