I was ready to pay up until I saw the hideous mordancy they presented me with. From LearnThat.org. [yourdictionary.com]
He is much less funny than any of them, and his characteristic humor is an elegant wit rather than the deadpan mordancy of Beckett or the wild clowning of Ionesco. From Wordnik.com. [These Illusions Are Real] Reference
The most theatrical thing about "Tynan" is the gem-cut sentences within which Tynan performed; they are crafty, bravura events, detonations of deadly wit and mordancy. From Wordnik.com. ['Tynan': A show to please the critic] Reference
His subsequent interest in Shintoism and Buddhism lacks the mordancy and introspection (the "agenbite of inwit," as Joyce liked to put it) of his earlier hermeneutic investigations. From Wordnik.com. [The Immortal] Reference
The matter-of-fact mordancy of Emily Dickinson, the supreme poet of grief, may provide more balm to the mourner than the glad tidings of those who talk about how death can enrich us. From Wordnik.com. [Archive 2010-01-01] Reference
Ambassador with a mordancy sheathed in good-humour, casting on each of us a glance the gentleness and discretion of which appeared to be tempering while in reality they deftly intensified its malice. From Wordnik.com. [Within a Budding Grove] Reference
Even the story "People Like That Are the Only People Here" (collected in Birds of America), which is ritually cited as Moore's finest work, seems to me mostly an exercise in sentimentality, its supposed mordancy of tone notwithstanding, invoking that most maudlin of narrative devices, a child in distress, without redeeming it. From Wordnik.com. [A Sad Decline] Reference
Speaking at Emory University, where he received a global innovation award--which could explain the billionaire's mordancy--Turner joked that when he "lost his job," nobody would hire him because of his age so he founded a business he knew little about--the mahogany-paneled restaurant chain Ted's Montana Grill, whose specialty is bison burgers. From Wordnik.com. [Tuner Blasts Parsons' Time Warner] Reference
The tale is brutal to the point of barbarism, a cautionary story written with mordancy by a man who understands language. From Wordnik.com. [California Literary Review] Reference
Attorney Despeaux moderated his mordancy and became tolerantly patient in enlightening the ignorance of one of his employers. From Wordnik.com. [All-Wool Morrison] Reference
Sean Mathias was too soft and languid a spectacle; this has all the bittersweet melancholy and mordancy of Bergman with a top skin of Woody Allen. From Wordnik.com. Reference
With a trademark mordancy, the Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic from the University of Ljubljana points to the world leaders at the December. From Wordnik.com. [Baltimore City Paper] Reference
He made all these intellectual concepts plastic in a music of a brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that not overmany classic symphonies can rival. From Wordnik.com. [Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers] Reference
No great politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to make an impression of some kind on an audience. From Wordnik.com. [The Patrician] Reference
By now, Noonan is to Ruhl what Billie Whitelaw was to Samuel Beckett: a foremost interpreter, as adept with the Wilmette native's mournful, idiosyncratic vernacular as Whitelaw was with Beckett's stark mordancy. From Wordnik.com. [Chicago Reader] Reference
The very excess of strained and unnatural incidents indicates that the popular palate was becoming cloyed; for a time the writers of fiction attempted to stimulate it by spicing the dish, but when the limit of mordancy was reached, a new diet became imperative. From Wordnik.com. [The Life and Romances of Mrs Eliza Haywood]
Claud Cockburn were still alive and monitoring this week's events with his old eagerness and mordancy, he would have been certain that at long last he was witnessing the Beginning of the End. A year ago, the American magazine 'Counterpunch', jointly edited by his son Alexander, reprinted a despatch he sent from. From Wordnik.com. [Irish Blogs] Reference
It was the sort of unromanticized scene, mundane with an edge of mordancy, that Mr. Pekar might have liked to preserve in his long-running series of autobiographical comics, when Mr. Pekar died at 70 on July 12 - suddenly it seemed to some, but in painful stages as those closest to him knew - it brought an end to his compulsive chronicling of Cleveland's commonplace lives, including, most frequently, his own. From Wordnik.com. [NYT > Home Page] Reference
As Brecht put it, with Germanic -- and communist -- mordancy, "I don't trust him. From Wordnik.com. [Why You Can't Trust Anyone] Reference
But she paired her mordancy with a generous resignation: Again and again her characters fail each other — I can’t think of a relationship in Taylor’s oeuvre that isn’t ill-matched — but she seldom deplored, and her invariable compassion grew out of her realism. From Wordnik.com. [The Other Elizabeth Taylor] Reference
I won’t despair despondency it’s there to state a case which mordancy inflates outrageously but happiness appears for my defence as if to say it’s where you were before the current doldrums came the daffodils still bloom in beds you planted where their golden heads nod avidly of their assent. From Wordnik.com. [Archive 2009-04-01] Reference
A mordancy of signs declare an ending diffident with hope beyond ill-rent repair forty years are neatly held in dearest memory – a chance there-in of nascent peace or comforting yet emptiness invades the locus of my fears somnambulant release seeing you is fraught with pain you’ve borne too patiently in acquiescent amity – the scene in which I bleed to death before your suffered gaze a tragic penitent bereaved. From Wordnik.com. [Penitent Bereaved] Reference
LearnThatWord and the Open Dictionary of English are programs by LearnThat Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit.
Questions? Feedback? We want to hear from you!
Email us
or click here for instant support.
Copyright © 2005 and after - LearnThat Foundation. Patents pending.