The boast did not seem idle.
The problems, they say, ranged from life-threatening dangers to what seemed idle efforts at humiliation.
Talk of total nuclear disarmament seems idle in a world with nine nuclear powers and a simmering crisis over a possible tenth.
The question may seem idle; for most of us, the alternative is living in a cardboard box and dining from a Dumpster.
It was instead a tale about teenagers from broken families, lives complicated by drugs and poverty, who seemed idle, alienated and drawn to a small-town version of urban gang culture.
(For some years, I have had this quotation from "Middlemarch" pinned above my desk: "People may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think").
Yet no two raised arms are ever quite the same, and despite the hysteria surrounding Rooney's misbehaviour – as predicted by United's manager – it seems idle to pretend, as many have sought to do, that this particular assault was a potential jaw-breaker or cynical attempt to hospitalise an opponent.
And any supposed extra descriptive dimension would seem idle.
As our young women and men are murdered, as our politicians seem idle, as those with guns wield bigger ones, where is the spirit of the man who tried to teach us to use right for might?
It is also difficult to understand why nurses at times seem idle without apparent tasks [ 11].
