The will is not exactly proper in legal phraseology. George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple, 1897
... three previous presidents distinguished themselves through phraseology: “morning in America,” “city on a hill,” “tear down this wall,” “new world order,” “thousand points of light,” “axis of evil,” “bigotry of low expectations.” Derek Thompson, "Donald Trump's Language Is Reshaping American Politics," The Atlantic, February 15, 2018
Hard-headed because it accepts self-interest as the basic human motivator and does not wish it away into what Alinsky considers the mushy-headed idea that people will do good because they believe in the good. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage, 2011
Though Cotton acknowledges that this might seem elitist, he derides the Federalists’ modern critics as mushy-headed and naive. Molly Ball, "The Making of a Conservative Superstar," The Atlantic, September 17, 2014
A small settlement wedged between fjord-like Lake Chelan and the jagged eastern slopes of the Cascades, Stehekin has several comfortable lodges, an excellent bakery and, best of all, relatively few visitors. ... First, of course, we had to get to this little Shangri-La. Ethan Todras-Whitehill, "In the Cascades, a Trifecta for Outdoor Enthusiasts," New York Times, September 17, 2014
With its youth and isolation and spectacular scenery, there was a tendency to think of Los Alamos as a Shangri-La. Katrina R. Mason, Children of Los Alamos: An Oral History of the Town Where the Atomic Age Began, 1995
Tommy Moore, a life-long friend, an insatiable consumer of history, and a fellow mythoclast by constitution, accompanied me to the field on several occasions, and read sections of the working manuscript. Scott Stine, A Way Across the Mountain, 2015
... right now I reckon him a mythoclast, the sort of man you wouldn't trust with the Glastonbury Thorn, the Devil's Arrows at Boroughbridge, or Father Christmas. John Hillaby, "What's under York Minster?" New Scientist, March 29, 1973
Please. Stop letting yourself get carried away based on random anecdata from the Internet. Julie Lawson Timmer, Five Days Left, 2014
Again, industry stats support the anecdata. Publishers are reporting declining ebook sales but growing audiobook revenues, with audio filling the digital revenue gap that ebooks left. Antonio Garcia Martinez, "The Veni, Vidi, Vici of Voice," Wired, February 28, 2018
Spanish chestnuts: their inscape here bold, jutty, somewhat oaklike, attractive, the branching visible and the leaved peaks spotted so as to make crests of eyes. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), "Journal for 1868," The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 2015
What we wanted to do was to marry the meaning with the "inscape" of the poem. Colum McCann, Author's note on "An Ode to Curling," The New Brick Reader, 2013
But urchin Cupid shot a shaft / That play'd a dame a shavie ... Robert Burns, "The Jolly Beggars," 1785
‘Twas then that Love played him a shavie, / And strak his dart in donsie Davie. William Nicholson, "The Country Lass," Tales in Verse and Miscellaneous Poems: Descriptive of Rural Life and Manners, 1814