Word: clutching
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...stigmatize them as "atrociously bad" is idiotic. Mr. Dowse has evidently not studied etymology or he would know that the word "atrocious" (Latin atrox, "fierce," "truculent") cannot be suitably applied in this connection. Again, he alludes, in a badly jumbled and incoherent sentence, to "the full clutch of circumstance." Apparently he is groping after a line from William Ernest Henley, whom, however, he has evidently not read. I recommend him to study Pope's famous line about a little knowledge. Once more, he uses the term "Yanks," and this in a letter of fault-finding as to style...
Thus finding myself in the full clutch of circumstance, though verified by all human experience, a bitter taunt comes to mind and seems justified. It frets my soul to think that the Yanks, a nation far removed and by no means of the first rank, who with invincible logic found themselves in 1914-1918 too proud to fight, should with homely eloquence in 1927 find themselves too proud to learn to read and write...
John Owen, once a cotton broker, wrote a novel, The Cotton Broker, six years ago, for which Britons laid down many a clutch of seven shillings. This year the shillings are rattling down again because Novelist Owen, a tall man who might pass for a giant, has written The Giant of Oldborne.? As a yardstick to current British taste in fiction the book will stand branding with the cliche "important...
...least patronized of all the at tractions offered Harvard men in the Square is that which allures by the exhibitrating "Rent this fine car! And drive it yourself". To many a steering wheel in the hand and a foot on the clutch are synonymous with "Drivurself". In Fords, Chryslers, Buicks and Hudson Broughams Harvard men, in increasing numbers, drive forth daily and nightly for business and pleasure. Around them classic myths have begun to circulate...
...woman murderer; in a generation which tempers its judgment toward females in proportion to their so-called 'sex-appeal'; in a day when judges are known to order screens placed between the prisoner-at-the-bar and her jury, Mrs. Frances Hall, without any attempt, apparently, to clutch after youth or the allurements of her sex, sits grim as winter...