(1) Parties seek a sharper definition and a clearer purpose: voters rightly demand a reason to rule beyond Cameron’s laconic “because I thought I’d be good at it”.
(2) Just over two years later, Harvey, a 29-year-old with a laconic line in humour, can look back on it and joke about it.
(3) Miles, who spoke laconically and without passion, recommended that the tubes remain in place for several weeks at a stretch to minimize risk to a detainee.
(4) The author has revealed a classification based on systematization of most frequently observed pathology, that allows a laconic functional and topical diagnosis and provides phlebological patients with individualized treatment.
(5) As Clarke Reed, the former chair of the Mississippi Republican party who played a key role in the last contested convention in 1976, told the Guardian far more laconically, a contested convention this year is “likely to lead to all kinds of games being played”.
(6) Wittgenstein's reply is said to have been the laconic but absurdly cheerful: "Great!
(7) Spoofing the popular media that lamented the loss of a "great statesman", the weekly's headline laconically read: "Tragic ball at Colombey, one dead".
(8) You must have known,” Price says – laconic, nasal, one leg casually hitched up on the bench, endlessly jingling coins in his pocket – “that to give a senior public figure an arrest warning could lead to a complaint direct to the commissioner’s office.” Do you not see how important Mr Mitchell is?
(9) Kean dismissed the gesture with a laconic: "I didn't notice it."
(10) "We've all read the same spy novels," one said laconically.
(11) Mackenzie flew to Brazil this week as Ferreira came under increasing fire from local authorities, residents and media for what many saw as a laconic response to one of the South American nation’s worst mining disasters.
(12) Greater dementia severity in the SRD subjects was associated with laconic speech that was syntactially less complex.
(13) Probably not a good idea,” says a suitably laconic Chris Pratt in the trailer, which probably tells you everything you need to know here.
(14) Downing Street clarified the statement by laconically pointing out that "it's hardly surprising that UKTI DSO are seeking to promote defence exports – that's their job".
(15) At one point, Focus revealedon Monday, he had asked laconically why the police couldn't have waited until he was dead.
(16) Don’t expect a wild change of tack from Cohen, who turns 80 the day before the album comes out – Popular Problems is as laconic and gravelly as ever.
(17) From the start he was academically brilliant, in his off-beat and laconically concise way.
(18) At the end of a drive to Yucca, Arizona, 200 miles south-east of Vegas, we swung through the ranch gate and climbed out to a laconic “Howdy” from a cowpoke who introduced himself as Tex, the head wrangler.
(19) Official coverage in Russia of Novodvorskaya's passing has been muted, and President Putin's office issued a laconic statement .
(20) The problem with Dave is he’s so laconic, which I discovered recently is a posh person’s way of calling someone bone idle.
Pretentious
Definition:
(a.) Full of pretension; disposed to lay claim to more than is one's; presuming; assuming.
Example Sentences:
(1) But BrewDog’s astonishing growth may raise the uncomfortable possibility that in an age of media-savvy and brand-sceptical digital natives, ostentatious displays of “authenticity” – known to some as acting like pretentious hipster douchebags – may have become a necessary condition for success.
(2) All seven did at least try to give this dire and pretentious concept some life.
(3) To acknowledge that it must have seemed pretentious to enjoy 'This Charming Man' when Duran Duran was playing on the radio.
(4) If you ever feel tempted to say "status quo" or "cul de sac", for instance, Orwell will sneer at you for "pretentious diction".
(5) In one of the most pretentious sections, in traffic accidents of the type pedestrian--car, they want to attempt an interdisciplinary study the purpose of which is to obtain certain basic data for expert evaluation of the mechanism of fatal injuries of pedestrians, and a basis for assessing speed limits at sites of increased danger of this type of accidents.
(6) In Manhattan, she is cast as a pretentious, irksome snob of a journalist.
(7) The site also captions shots of the young and pretentious with lines such as: "Hold on, let me check to see if Topshop sells any iPhone purses."
(8) The most pretentious group are young patients working in industry.
(9) They're charged with posh-lad pretentiousness as a result, though I don't know it's all that uncommon for bands to plunder snatches of lyrics from wider culture.
(10) Newest methods are the technically very pretentious intraarterial perfusion with venous hemofiltration and the chemo-embolization of the hepatic artery requiring meanwhile an adjuvant systemic chemotherapy because the chemo-embolization influences only the arterially supplied part of the metastases.
(11) Speaking to Alec Wilkinson of the New Yorker, Springsteen remarked that Seeger "had a real sense of the musician as historical entity – of being a link in the thread of people who sing in others' voices and carry the tradition forward … and a sense that songs were tools, and, without sounding too pretentious, righteous implements when connected to historical consciousness".
(12) The detection of this preclinical stage in particular in sporadic cases is in common clinical practice, due to the low prevalence of the disease in the population and pretentious character as regards applied methods, unreal.
(13) People talk of "journalese" as though a journalist were of necessity a pretentious and sloppy writer; he may be, on the contrary, and very often is, one of the best in the world.
(14) They can now decide for themselves whether that font of wisdom, Halliwell's Film and Video Guide, gets it right by calling it 'a repulsive film in which intellectuals have found acres of significanceÉ it is pretentious and nasty rubbish for sick minds who do not mind jazzed-up images and incoherent sound'.
(15) Tom is a heavy metal fan who, as Matt says in the film, thinks indie rock is "pretentious bullshit"; the National are all around 40 with their carousing days behind them, so Tom brought the party himself, getting wasted on his own and filming himself for kicks.
(16) "You can call it a bacterial heat production effect if you are a pretentious scientist, or you can call it composting," he said.
(17) Describe your ideal audience member Russell Kane TR Discerning, critical, pretentious and stupid.
(18) With regard to the non-pretentious, simple and safe character and the high yield of the procedure the authors consider thin-needle biopsy under ultrasonographic control a foremost operation which makes morphological assessment even of diffuse liver diseases possible.
(19) The operation, though pretentious and time consuming, has the advantage of an extrathoracic approach.
(20) A broad swathe of the middle class, not just collectors, lap up the videos and pretentious installations he lambasts (he has never collected video), and dismiss any scepticism as "conservative".