His people talk about how England has traded imperial confidence for self-consciousness, how attitudes — toward marriage, the household division of labor, even smoking — have devolved over the course of their lifetimes.
PARIS — The United States' notions of U.N. sanctions on Iran have devolved over the past months from crippling ones to ones that bite to the currently described smart ones, which although packaged with the words tough and strong might not be hard-nosed enough to cost the mullahs a half-hour's lost sleep.
As he has for months in prospective campaign stops in the early voting states, and throughout his political career, the former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, on Wednesday assailed an economic system that he said has devolved over the past 40 years and eradicated the nation's middle class.
As many of these festivals have become in the States, this one has devolved over the years into a bizarre combination of the sacred and the profane.
Beginning with peaceful protests during the "Arab Spring" that challenged Assad's autocratic rule, Syria's strife has devolved over the last 32 months into a regional proxy war stoked by sectarian malice.
In the process, what began at the end of the 60s and early 70s as an ostensibly positive search for self discovery, self-realization and self-actualization has devolved over the years to a negative spiral of being self-centered, self-absorbed and self-delusional.
The talks are formally between Iran and six world powers but have devolved into U.S.-Iranian negotiations over recent months, with diplomats saying the other nations were ready to accept terms agreed to by Tehran and Washington.
Since Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager, won election in 1994 with an overwhelming majority, his original nationalistic appeal and charismatic sway over the electorate have devolved into repression of political opponents.
The union sometimes seems to have devolved into a totem of discontents -- over the continued inflow of migrants from poorer countries, the expanding powers of bureaucrats in Brussels, and the very notion of tying one's national fortunes to the perceived dysfunction of broader Europe.
Over the course of several decades, a series of constitutional reforms have devolved ever more powers to the regional authorities (both regions and communities).
In lesser hands, this might have devolved into cliché.
