Word: sneering
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...form of language. Sometimes it is a powerful presence that lives just beneath the surface of articulation. Even when it is subarticulate, everyone recognizes it instantly--feels its menace, knows its smell, a radioactive something that registers on the mind's Geiger counter. The signals are unmistakable--the sneer, a semaphore of eyebrows, the "lock-and-load" swagger...
...things are, sales of trucks and truckoids--sports utility vehicles known as "suvs" or "utes" or even, to those who sneer at them as wussmobiles, "sputes"--rose to 41.5% of the U.S. automotive market last year, up from 30% a decade before. And while U.S. manufacturers hold barely 60% of a shrinking market for passenger cars, they build 90% of the trucks sold; without them, the American automakers would still be losing money. And as that line outside Barneys attests, these aren't your basic hay haulers...
...easy enough for those who can afford spacious homes and private therapy to sneer at their financial inferiors and label their pathetic moments of stardom vulgar. But if I had a talk show, it would feature a whole different cast of characters and category of crimes than you'll ever find on the talks: "ceos who rake in millions while their employees get downsized" would be an obvious theme, along with "Senators who voted for welfare and Medicaid cuts"--and, if he'll agree to appear, "well-fed Republicans who dithered about talk shows while trailer-park residents slipped into...
...Henchman (or -woman): Oddjob, Jaws, Rosa Klebb--this is a job for grotesques. Gottfried John as a rogue Russian general looks weird all right, but he has no unique killing skills--just a sneer and a routinely itchy trigger finger. Richard Kiel, you are missed...
Boston comedian Kim Davis is one such voice. He loves the ideals of the '60s and hates people who sneer at them. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers still inspire him, and he's tired of the prevailing pessimism that seems to define his particular demographic. In a statement included in the playbill, Davis explains that Generation X signifies an apocalypse of sorts to him. It is not one ushered in by four horsemen and plenty of fire, but rather a protracted apocalypse of mass resignation similar to what Thoreau described as lives led in quiet desperation...