Word: phenomenon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...personality possesses certain compelling traits, when an event carries some content of morality or ideology or suspense or horror or romance, some ambiguity, even an engaging murkiness, he, she or it is claimed by the public and used as a source of everything from mythmaking to sheer entertainment. The phenomenon provides glimpses of the subtle human chemistries from which folklore is manufactured. To know how such mythmaking works is to be freed of all surprise when dramatic events evoke numberless theories to account for them or produce songs, plays and novels to celebrate, rehash and elaborate them...
...lawyers, theologians, historians, mystics, psychologists, poets and playwrights. Even medical pathologists have joined in the continual replaying of the trial of the Maid of Orleans. In 1958 Scholar Isobel-Ann Butterfield and her physician husband John theorized that an advanced infection of bovine tuberculosis might have led to the phenomenon of Joan's hearing voices. Critic Albert Guérard was right when, in a review of one of the thousands of books about her, he said: "The last word on Joan of Arc will never be uttered...
Language placement tests, questionnaires distributed to freshmen, and freshman advisers all help immediately spot any students with potential language problems, Dinklage says. That way, students can be tested for language disability before they have to take the language requirement. "There is a phenomenon by which the longer some students study a language, the lower they score on language tests," Whitlock says...
...other woman," Karen Traynor, is played masterfully by WASP phenomenon Meryl Streep. A lawyer whose civil rights organization gives Tynan information which can destroy a supposedly racist Supreme Court nominee, Traynor bears the oft-mentioned aphrodisiac of power: as Tynan makes the move on Traynor in his private office, he whispers, "I think I'm infatuated with you... You remind me of John Kennedy...
...long arm of the law does not protect banks the way it used to. Local police forces have been reduced, and the FBI, which used to pursue robbers zealously, is now concentrating on the more costly phenomenon of white-collar crime in banks. That strategy is questioned by New York City Police Commissioner Robert J. McGuire. A bank robbery, he says, "is a street crime that has an immediate impact on daily life." Few bank robbers end up in jail for long, which may be one reason that they commit a crime that does not pay all that well...