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Word: witless (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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...jungle fields in abysmal weather and sometimes under enemy fire, were a raffish lot. They referred to the CIA as "the customer," the ammunition they dropped as "hard rice" and being under heavy fire as "sporty." Brushes with death were described as "fascinating." To be "absolutely fascinated" meant scared witless...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: In Arizona: a Spymaster Remembered | 4/7/1986 | See Source »

...commercial was produced by Pellegrino's old friend Stan Freberg, 58, for two decades a master of light satire in advertising. Among his clients: Sunsweet prunes ("Today the pits, tomorrow the wrinkles") and Pacific Air Lines ("Most people are scared witless of flying...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Advertising: A Tale of Two Princes | 5/13/1985 | See Source »

...witless complain that humor is impossible to write in an age when headlines are more absurd than the products of imagination. Richler's contemporary entries offer hilarious refutation. Excerpts from Stanley Elkin's The Dick Gibson Show and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint belong on the shelf with Rabelais and Swift. Woody Allen's The Kugelmass Episode stands as a classic. In it, a professor of humanities is propelled backward in time to the arms of Madame Bovary and the pages of a remedial Spanish textbook: "He was running for his life over...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Laughing Matter | 11/7/1983 | See Source »

...company secretary, shot himself. Estimates of the number of margineers closed out varies from 20% to 70%. During the first three hours of Thursday stock valuations shrank about $11,250,000,000, recovered all but $3,000,000,000 before trading closed. Brokers met at Hornblower & Weeks, counseled against witless selling, thought the decline had spent itself in a day's volume of trading far exceeding anything ever known. On the Stock Exchange 12,894,650 shares changed hands...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Business: 1929 | 10/5/1983 | See Source »

...politics into programmed entertainment. The more extreme the event, the more TV air time it tends to get. James David Barber of Duke University believes that the networks will have more to say about who the presidential candidates will be next year than the political parties; hence all the witless clamor...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Presidency by Hugh Sidey: Shouting Instead of Thinking | 9/5/1983 | See Source »

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