Word: quaint
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...Iran as well as the royal family's own record of corrupt financial transactions. Further, the validity of the cultural and religious imperatives that the Shah's opponents accused him of ignoring could not be accepted by a press that saw in that cultural tradition only fanaticism or quaint impracticality...
Sports and weather are only the two most glaring beats whose coverage is profoundly colored by the prophet motive. Fashion news is primarily about things that have not yet happened, and the writer who dwelt on the reportable facts of the present would be viewed as quaint. The book reviewer, though stuck with palpable volumes of the moment, is happiest when proclaiming how posterity will treat a work. The food critic verily feeds on the unreliable assumption that a future meal, whether in a restaurant or out of a recipe, will be as palatable as the past one. Political writers...
...Laredo, some still unpaved streets are lined with quaint, two-story Spanish-style buildings that house hundreds of tiny discount shops. Aisles are packed with color TVs, pocket calculators, tape decks and radios. Prices-$460 for a Sony 17-in. portable color TV, vs. $634.95 at Foley's department store in Houston-attract a different kind of professional smuggler, the chiveras. They sometimes hire pilots, who are occasionally smugglers themselves, and twin-engine Beechcraft "Beech 18" airplanes with the noses extended 6 ft. to haul more cargo...
...Quaint as that query may sound to an American, the impending shutdown of the venerable Times and Sunday Times of London is no footling affair to an Englishman. The gloom among Britain's Establishment could be as thick as suet pudding if the Times (circ. 293,000)-the nation's newspaper of record and the favorite forum of impassioned letter writers -suspends publication this week, as now seems likely. Equally wretched will be the 1.4 million readers who look to the Sunday Times for its weekly compendium of news coverage and lively analysis...
...secretary makes them. It is insufferable one-upmanship to have a secretary chirp, "Please hold for Mr...." Baldrige offers a fairly quaint line for use in getting rid of a pest on the phone: "My staff informs me an emergency call is waiting for me on the other line. Please forgive me, and put in writing the rest of your thoughts." She is less than enthusiastic about recorded music being piped in to entertain a caller who is put on hold...