As would have been the case a million years ago, a typical colonist can expect to be edentate by the time he or she is thirty years old, having suffered many skull-cracking toothaches on the way. Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos, 1985
Anyway, an edentate man led a bloated, mouth-foaming goat down a road webbed with knee-deep gullies. Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project, 2008
I say to Lord Hartington before you all, not by any backstairs intrigue and not by any secret negotiations, but in the face of this great meeting held in this great town and before all of England ... "Come over and help us!" Herbert Maxwell, "Lord Randolph Churchill," The National Review, Vol. XXV, March to August 1895
He would never believe it--it was a nasty piece of backstairs gossip! Upton Sinclair, The Metropolis, 1908
His art is highly complex, but its expression is so pellucid, so simple, that we can see only its body, never the mechanism of its body. Edward Garnett, "Introduction," The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, 1906
Trump’s ramblings about Vladimir Putin were positively pellucid in their clarity compared with his March 29 comments on the U.S.-South Korea trade deal ... Max Boot, "What on earth is Trump saying?" Washington Post, April 11, 2018
Swap out the stiff white shirt for button-downs in mellower colors. "If you’re in finance, it’s hard to make a big fashion statement, but this is a good way to summerize your wardrobe," says Coats. , "7 stylish office looks for summer (including 4 that will cool off even the strictest of dress codes)," Forbes, June 7, 2017
The spark plugs don't need to be changed for three years, and the motor can “summerize” itself by fogging the cylinders with oil when you put your machine away in the spring. Ezra Dyer, "Dashing Through the Snow," New York Times, January 29, 2009
When touch is the stimulus, the response is thigmotropism. Positive thigmotropism occurs when a tendril touches an object and, by growing toward it, wraps around it. James D. Mauseth, Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology, 2009
Thigmotropism is what makes a vine curl around a stake or an epiphyte cling to a branch in the wild. Deb Wandell, "Flora Grubb reinvents the plant stand with Thigmotrope Perch," San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 2015
For any New York turophile ... there is irritation, frustration and dismay when visiting most of the town's restaurants whether grand luxe or bistro. The cheeses, if available at all, are more often than not overripe or underaged, too cold or too few ... Craig Claiborne, "Cheese Lover Dismayed by Restaurant Selection," New York Times, October 12, 1965
... as any turophile knows, microbes are the source of cheese’s vast diversity of flavors, textures, and smells. Casey Quackenbush, "The FDA Is Coming Around to the Idea That Cheese, Microbes, and Mold Can Work Just Fine," Time, September 22, 2017
... he seized on the word as if it might somehow help to plug him into German culture, rather like a day-tripper to Boulogne trying to convince himself that he has explored France. William McIlvanney, The Kiln, 1996
Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. Anthony Lane, "Space Case," The New Yorker, May 23, 2005