It's a sport of splendid cruelty, for all its decorum and finicky trappings; every winning point comes when the other guy, in front of a whole stadium of people staring directly at him, is forced by his opponent into inadequacy.
For all her decorum, she seemed to enjoy the protracted battles over the plaster goats that stood at the end of the dormitory's long veranda.
If you go to meetings and someone's physically accosting an employee, the message it sends is, It's a free-for-all, no rules and no decorum".
Though not for the faint of heart, "Elle" is a tour de force of je m'en foutisme, a thumb in the eye of all our preconceptions about feminine decorum, of all the woe-is-me-stories about victimized women.
He was also the symbol of the unsettled nature of an institution that for all its stately decorum is in severe turmoil.
The German tribes did not succumb to the Roman Empire but remained outside its laws, and, for all the achievements and decorum of contemporary Germans, a potential for lawlessness — for going beyond the merely decent and workable — still hangs in the air.
They retain, for all their impishness, a sense of emotional gravity and aesthetic decorum that can feel bracingly old-fashioned.
But for all their charm, some, like authorities in Rome, have shunned love locks because they take away from general "decorum".
In his biography, in a section on his requirements for courtroom decorum, he wrote, "All weapons must be checked at the door".
If he couldn't let Let It Be be - and in fairness, for all the pointless carnage he wrought, he'd always hated Spector's contribution - couldn't he at least show some decorum here?
