From then on, King was immovably established as, in someone's neat phrase, "the chairman of the board of blues singers".
A neat phrase I heard recently was that "you shouldn't use airmiles as a proxy for excellence".
CONVENIENT as it is to describe the 22 countries (including the unborn Palestine) that belong to the Arab League as "the Arab world", the neat phrase can mislead.
It is a neat phrase and typical of this elegant, informed account of the lessons we are still learning from the project.
Government bonds may be offering "return-free risk", in the neat phrase of Jim Grant, a veteran newsletter publisher.One warning sign is that real bond yields (as measured by the inflation-linked market) have risen.
And then there is RM ("Prince") Myshkin, whose biog note starts: "Cream of the Tartars, the artist formerly known as Prince Myshkin … " which packs Dostoevsky, a bad pun and the mini-rock-star all in one neat phrase.
He made over 100 campaign stops in more than 30 states; he also summed up the Republican's problems in a neat phrase that also advertised his wife's virtues—"they can't run anything right".The Arizona manJohn McCain had an even better mid-term than Mrs Clinton proving that his brand of Republicanism is what the party needs if it is to avoid self-destruction.
Many Internet start-ups are, in the neat phrase of Stanford Graduate Business School's Mr Saloner, "plug-and-play" companies.Many of the barriers to entry that once protected big companies are therefore disappearing or at least some parts of established companies are vulnerable to being "blown to bits".
If you explained to him why, say, Jeff Koons or Damian Hirst was not quite the monster he had imagined, he would listen patiently, and then sum up your wavering, hesitant hems and haws in a neat phrase: "Hmmmn…Well, Yes.
