Word: scornful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pervasiveness of legal concepts these days is coupled with the heaping of scorn on them. Take "legalistic hairsplitting," used to imply that we all know the precise meaning of common phrases like sexual relations. Thus the scandal has brought a touch of reality to our talk, making us realize how little we actually agree on the meanings of basic words. Not only do some people define "sex" narrowly as "sexual intercourse," but health professionals have long known that Humpty Dumpty spoke for us all when he claimed, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose...
Gluck, then, does not scorn her old idealism; she simply recognizes it as a self-fulfilling dream, embracing it as part of her identity and her human need for happiness. She is not embarrassed if in the past she was foolish or hypocritical: in "Earthly Love" Gluck admits that she once avoided clear self-perception and claims, "And yet, within this deception,/true happiness occurred." In "Descent to the valley," she describes her old vision of life as an upward climb into light followed by a descent into uncertainty, and then states, "I have found it otherwise...
...crime. Republican lawmakers voted along party lines, over public protest, to impeach a popular President from the opposing party and in the process dissolved their authority in acid on the House floor. The press corps that viewed itself as the public's conscience became the object of its scorn. Hillary Clinton, who for years had been vilified for leveraging the power of her marriage, was extolled for having handled with grace its public ruin and so finds herself loved for reasons she hates. Ken Starr, who was once viewed as too moderate to beat Oliver North in a Senate race...
...plant an intolerant city-state on American soil, this Milton sneers at the memory of More, calling him an idolater who had had his head chopped off. And yet Milton must repress his delight in Utopia, More's 1516 tract about a perversely perfect new world. He heaps murderous scorn on neighboring English Catholics, although he is surreptitiously enthralled by their pageantry. He is Satan, and tragically, he knows...
...hour off the workday. In those years it was unthinkable that a guy could be paid that much for doing something that didn't involve an awful lot of training or education. The Wall Street Journal called the plan "an economic crime," and critics everywhere heaped "Fordism" with equal scorn...