Word: grinding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...similar expression flickers when Naipaul assesses his own career. "I really don't have a success story to tell," he begins. "My story is one of slog and grind and disappointment and overcoming." Growing up in Trinidad "among advertisements for things that were no longer made," Naipaul rebelled against the prevailing backwater mentality. His model was his father, a journalist who tried to bring new ideas to his insular community. Seepersad Naipaul died in 1953, a defeated man of 47. Yet, as his son has written, "he made the vocation of the writer seem the noblest in the world...
When I returned to good old suburban high school U.S.A. that fall, I was restless. After a taste of college life I found it impossible to slip back into the old high school grind...
Caught between the need to reassure the outside world and intimidate citizens at home, China's aging leaders are still groping for a way out of the political morass. The desire to grind out all traces of the democracy movement takes precedence. A court in Shanghai accused three people of burning a train that ran over a human barricade, and quickly sentenced them to death. The harsh actions open the door to a wave of execution orders. Such a move would be tragic for China's psychic well-being and potentially fatal for its economic health, and it was unthinkable...
...stores, crowded with shoppers whom shortages have made ruble-rich, it is between the shoddy output of state enterprises and the higher quality -- and prices -- offered by co-ops. "There is more freedom now, but life is harder," a Russian friend said. Reality is a daily grind: commuting from cramped flats to unsatisfying work, sending children to decrepit schools, trudging from shop to dismal shop in hopes of finding even basics like laundry soap...
...learning that in addition to all the ills the flesh is heir to, terrorism can strike very close to home. But in less affluent, less cushioned societies, people are beset by risks all the time, much worse than anything that most Americans must contend with, and life does not grind to a halt. Unless Americans follow suit, they risk becoming a society that imitates T.S. Eliot's aging, fearful hero J. Alfred Prufrock: they would not dare to eat a peach...