Word: shrewd
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hoke is a wise and patient man. And Miss Daisy is a woman worthy of those qualities. She may be comically set in her small ways, but she casts a shrewd eye on her immediate world. As she ages, that world shrinks, so that Hoke looms ever larger within it. As a result, she is forced to think harder about the growing civil rights struggle than she might otherwise have. An encounter with menacing red-neck cops on a country road, the bombing of her synagogue, a distant but moving exposure to the force of Martin Luther King...
...future of Germany." The presentation did surprise Western capitals in one regard: Kohl had consulted none of them -- not even Paris, London and Washington, which, together with Moscow, are empowered by the postwar settlement to determine the conditions of reunification. His decision not to consult was a shrewd signal to everyone -- including, again, West German voters -- that reunification is pre-eminently a matter for Germans to decide...
...parlor can function as a little lodge hall for women, a place where they can let their hair down while it is being put up. It was clever of him to stock Steel Magnolias with Southern belles, wicked of eye and tongue, though ultimately forgiving of heart. It was shrewd of him to work his successful off-Broadway drama around personal milestones (marriage, birth, death) that everyone shares. His characters may be exotics, but their situations are achingly familiar...
...metaphor for Xinhua (New China), the Kai Kong mural is perfect. And no area in New China has taken more readily to Deng's economic freedoms than Guangdong, the province on the southeastern coast that borders Hong Kong. Famous for being shrewd businessmen, Guangdong's residents also have a long tradition of ignoring imperial edicts. Even today the province negotiates its tax remittances to Beijing, in part because the national government's ability to control various localities differs greatly depending on an area's wealth, strategic significance and the personal connections and acumen of its leaders...
...that's Phil Hartman) puts on his familiar bumbling act in public, then turns into a whipcracking boss in private, directing every detail of the covert operation, down to computing interest on the money stored in Swiss bank accounts. The show's movie parodies have also had some shrewd twists: Carvey, for example, playing Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant in Rain Man -- who turns out to be giving gambling tips to Pete Rose...