In particular, it reflects a longing for formality, precision, restraint — for tuxedos, against an age of blue jeans; for crispness, responding to an era of slouch; for self-control in lieu of untrammelled expression; for consideration and dignity as a reproach to shameless individualism.
It pretends to be asking for information, but it conceals a reproach.
As Lawrence Wright has written for The New Yorker, in a reproach to those who argue that 9/11 showed the need to remove limits on the N.S.A., the F.B.I. had a warrant in hand that could have helped stop the attack, if it hadn't been bureaucratically thwarted.
And, packed into Robyn's suitcase along with the rest of her clothes — all freshly washed, apart from the dress, and pressed, even the socks, with Valerie's steam iron — the pajamas would be like a message, a coded reproach, for that mother in Chelsea.
I do not think Guyton would have an answer for this reproach.
For me a Writing Day was an occasion for self-reproach and panic, a time to lament the passing of the years, stare out of windows and remember that even those famous late starters Joseph Conrad and George Eliot had started by the age I was now.
It's almost impossible to be a good parent anymore — offspring, once grown, seem to have an endless appetite for reproach.
Semantic change is every bit as certain as death and taxes, and it is inevitable that a hundred years from now there will be entries from the dictionaries of today that are just as head-scratching and risible as the definition that Samuel Johnson playfully provided for monsieur in his great dictionary of 1755 — "a term of reproach for a Frenchman".
The reproach for a man who takes family leave may be even greater!
"Mr Solbes has no cause for personal reproach.
