Word: summoning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Austere old Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar is still unaware that he was replaced 15 months ago while in a deep coma following a stroke-and he may never find out. No one in Portugal has so far been able to summon up the nerve to tell the old man that his 36-year reign is over. The task of preventing Salazar from finding out has fallen chiefly to his housekeeper, Dona Maria de Jesus Caetano Freire, and his physician. They deny him newspapers and television, explaining that such diversions would "tire" him. They schedule meetings with his former Cabinet...
Gibbon was a small man, just over five feet, and so fat that when he knelt to a lady she had to summon a servant to hoist him to his feet. Rather fussily elegant in his dress-flowered velvet suit, lots of ruffles, snuffbox to flutter over-Gibbon exuded a tepid blandness. Joshua Reynolds painted a deadly portrait of him. His profile is distinctly not that of a Roman emperor. He has the eyes of a maiden aunt, a tiny Cupid's mouth, and a second chin far more impressive than the first. Even his hands manage to look...
...fashionable Washington restaurant not long ago, a young man named Ralph Nader stopped suddenly and gazed down in disgust at his chef's salad. There, nestled among the lettuce leaves, lay a dead fly. Nader spun in his chair and jabbed both arms into the air to summon a waiter. Pointing accusingly at the intruder on his plate, he ordered: "Take it away!" The waiter apologized and rushed to produce a fresh salad, but Nader's anger only rose. While his luncheon companions watched the turmoil that had erupted around him, Nader launched into a detailed indictment of sanitation...
...father's final sense that he did not understand the modern world around him. Unfortunately, such moments only emphasize the fact that the book never reaches the secret of the genius that prompted the drunk's gratitude and Lahr's fame. The book does successfully summon up the private Bert Lahr and the backstage world in which he lived, but as his son would probably admit, the best way to know the man through and through was to see him onstage. As with most famous performers, the masque, finally...
...although I had escaped the trees, I wasn't out of the woods. There was still my operatic ignorance to contend with. So, making every effort to summon up my best Jacksonianly Democratic facade, I settled back, confident that the very commonness of my heart would ferret out a couple of passable truths or, at very least, an exploitable metaphor...