Word: preciously
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...Thurber figure dominates nearly all of the fifteen sketches which comprise the show. This character's vacillation from cynical to maudlin and from macho to castrated propels the show's bitter but sometimes precious humor. The play is full of disturbed men who can't decide what role to play, who can't tell, as Thurber never could, whether they're coming or going. A would-be wife murderer cowers when she threatens him with a monkey wrench. Walter Mitty fantasizes that he is Bogart, Patton, and Dr. Christian Barnard, but his wife can't seem to take him seriously...
...fewer experiences, or at least not as wide a variety of them. He has been to fewer cities more times, is less educated, and richer. He's been a professional baseball hitter since high school. This is his first year in the major leagues, and, not surprisingly, there's precious little he can say to reporters except things like "Well, I feel real good, and I've been working on my swing some, and, uh, I'm just looking forward to the game tonight...
...Post columnist, writes: "A lot of us are wondering whether the busing game is worth the prize. Some of us aren't even sure just what the prize is supposed to be. Most whites have long since accepted the notion that segregation is wrong. But on the other hand, precious few whites, North or South, feel any guilt in resisting the disruption of their children's education by busing them to distant schools because those schools are 'too black.' Nor is there much more enthusiasm among black parents for large-scale busing for the primary purpose of racial integration...
...Butte was originally settled by gold prospectors, but it owes its development-and recent decline-to copper. In 1882, a prospector named Marcus Daly found a 5-ft. vein of 30% pure copper ore while searching for silver. Daly's discovery touched off a wild scramble for the precious ore, which was eventually won by Anaconda. By 1910, the company owned the rights to the minerals underlying 90% of the city. It also held the right of eminent domain, which allows it to buy up any sur face property that stands in the way of its operations...
...less. To a great extent, a people's language is its civilization, the collective storage system of a tribe. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who knows something of the totalitarian uses of language, has said that he studies the words in his Russian dictionary "as if they were precious stones, each so precious that I would not exchange one for another." Another Russian exile, Vladimir Nabokov, has the same curator's love of words...