Word: lilliputian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...miniaturization of technology, having made extraordinary progress in the 40 years since the invention of the transistor, is about to make another shrinking leap. Adapting the chipmaking equipment used to squeeze millions of electrical circuits onto slivers of silicon, researchers are creating a lilliputian tool chest of tiny moving parts: valves, gears, springs, levers, lenses and ball bearings. One team at the University of California, Berkeley, has already built a silicon motor not much wider than an eyelash that can rotate 500 times a minute...
After a storm of protest over the so-called zero-tolerance policy -- under which Brobdingnagian yachts were confiscated if lilliputian amounts of marijuana were discovered on board -- the Coast Guard and the U.S. Customs Service have decided that perhaps they can tolerate a trace or two of illicit drugs on the high seas after...
Dock denizens in Newport Beach, Calif., will probably do double takes this week when two of the Lilliputian yachts engage in a mini-America's Cup series. Both boats in the regatta are the products of Illusion 12, a San Diego-based company that has sold 72 of its $3,520 mini-12s since it began producing them under license from a British firm in April. Says Richard Seay, a partner in the firm: "The boat is called the Illusion because if you didn't see the skipper's head poking above deck, you'd think...
...since 1979, when Renault, France's leading automaker, began buying into the company. The French firm now owns 46.4% of American Motors, and AMC's president, José Dedeurwaerder, comes from Renault. Joining forces with the French was probably the only hope for survival for AMC, a lilliputian in a brobdingnagian land. With sales of $60 billion, General Motors is almost 21 times as big as AMC, whose share of the U.S. auto market reached a nadir of 1.2% last August...
...handiest tool." Perhaps Lord Olivier was thinking mostly of Britain, where the gift for malice, and the appetite for it, is higher than here. An English playwright, Arnold Wesker, once wrote The Journalists, a drama about "the poisonous human need to cut better men down to our size . . . The lilliputian journalist be the interviewee's fame, influence or achievement." That too may be more true in Britain...