But, as is generally the way with national cliches, there is a tiny piece of accuracy here, in that alcohol pierces the national cloud of awkwardness that defines so many British social interactions.
But one shaft of light pierces the gloom.
They will focus on the places above the poles where the wind pierces the earth's magnetic defences and causes, among other things, the shimmering lights of the aurora borealis and aurora australis, and interference with radio communications.
A cry of "lal salaam!" ("red salute!") pierces the air as the drill instructor orders a halt, and the soldiers make thrusts with their mock-up wooden rifles.
IN A drab concrete building on the southern fringes of Tehran a woman's voice gently pierces the air, rising to a lingering vibrato.
If politics is the "slow boring of hard boards", then city wrangling is where the gimlet pierces the wood.The drama does not need or miss the prestige of presidential politics.
At various intervals throughout the story he describes, at great length and in microscopic detail, the trajectory of each bullet as it pierces skin, tears through muscle, rips up sinew and shatters bone.
It pierces the sky above London Bridge, and divides opinion on the ground.
Some free-living flatworms perform a type of copulation known as hypodermic impregnation, whereby the penis of one animal pierces the epidermis of another and injects sperm into the tissues.
Sisera escapes on foot, pursued by Barak, taking refuge in the tent of Heber the Kenite (the Kenites, a nomadic tribe, were supposedly at peace with Canaan); he is offered protection by Heber's wife, Jael; as he drinks a bowl of milk, she pierces his head with a tent peg and kills him (thus fulfilling Deborah's prophecy).
He pierces her eyes to let the Tigris and Euphrates flow forth, and then, heaping mountains on her body in the east, he makes the various tributaries of the Tigris flow out from her breasts.
