Word: deftness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Zhao's background would hardly seem to have prepared him to solve such problems. He has traveled abroad relatively little and speaks no English. Yet he is at ease with foreigners and has a reputation as a deft, and occasionally witty, diplomat. After he became a member of the Politburo in 1979, he surprised many Chinese, long bored by tight restrictions on dress, by appearing in public in a Western tie and jacket, the first high official to do so since the Cultural Revolution. Like most of China's present leaders, Zhao was brutalized by the Red Guards...
...Sandinistas' show of moderation was diplomatically deft. It was as if the U.S., not expecting them to play along with the Contadora plan, failed to compute the consequences for its allies in the region. Under the Contadora treaty, those countries could be denied U.S. military help. Washington has since 1981 supplied arms to the antigovernment contra guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua. In Honduras, the Big Pine maneuvers amount to a continuing large-scale U.S. military presence. Earlier this month, Honduras and its conservative neighbors started objecting to Contadora proposals, probably precluding any agreement before spring...
Rachel, 28, wanders around Los Angeles wearing sunglasses, one sneaker, a stained sweatshirt, baggy jeans. She is bright, well-read and terribly out of kilter. "I need to be in a normal situation around normal people," she says. One moment Rachel is cogent and socially deft, the next she is twitchy and incoherent. "I just want to be out in the forest by myself. I want people to leave me alone, so I tell them I'm O.K. and go my own way. But I get a block away and lose it. I freak...
...scientists had high praise for the ingenuity shown by the men in orbit, like Mission Specialist Robert Parker, whose deft use of a sleeping bag provided a cover of darkness while he reloaded a jammed spool of film. Said one Houston observer, University of Naples Physicist Luigi Napolitano: "You know, without those guys, the mission would have been a failure on the first day." The astronauts also found time to clown for the TV cameras and take telephone calls from President Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. But some problems simply had to be endured, like the accumulation...
What this poetic approach too often misses is Williams' deft and impish sense of humor. The Glass Menagerie is autobiography in the form of a situation comedy. The first half of the play could be called "Mama's Family": Amanda Wingfield, a fiftyish matron whose husband abandoned her 15 years earlier, plots to find a "gentleman caller" who will support her and marry her shy, lame daughter Laura. In the second half, a young man does call-no gentleman, rather an awkward go-getter whose own glory days are long past-and a bittersweet romance flutters through...