How To Use Directness In A Sentence

  • Older and newly arrived Vietnamese Americans often display indirectness and extreme politeness in dealing with others.
  • Their e-mails were 'tortured haikus of indirectness', so he told me. Relationships Of Mutual Mistrust
  • Kellen blushed, and assented, wondering if he'd ever really get the hang of the indirectness of Elven manners. Tran Siberian
  • He presents his case with refreshing clarity and directness.
  • His love of simplicity and directness extends beyond tech. Times, Sunday Times
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  • He had an innate egalitarianism, a plain-spoken American way of talking, a directness, and a lack of airs.
  • But he and his advisers rightly think his best sales point is his image as an antipolitical politician, a country doctor turned governor who boasts of "my directness and my unwillingness to bend" as he bluntly diagnoses all the ills of American life. There's A Chill In The Air
  • The MIT students' postshow demonstration in the lobby of the two toy-plane-like robots had all the charm and directness that the stage presentation lacked. Mark Morris And His Joy of Text
  • Now I'm starting to appreciate the interplay of musical texture and lyrical directness.
  • These are shown in the boldness of the batik colors and the directness of the motifs.
  • Those willing to discuss their disagreements with him say they respect his directness.
  • Compounded or compacted terms like "darksome" and "lionlimb" are expressive in a way that seems the opposite of Thomas '"unable to rejoice" and "others could not": the power of explosive compression, forcing meanings together, rather than the unfolding power of directness. Slate Magazine
  • There is a directness, a genuine sense of conviction in these words which extend far beyond strategic posing.
  • But nevertheless, she has written emotionally charged music with lyrical directness.
  • It was positively with trepidation that he presented himself before her very soon after his arrival; and an undeniable blush "mantled" his cheek -- if a blush can be said with any propriety to mantle the male cheek --- when he marched into the drawing-room, where she was doing a dainty bit of embroidery, and with much simplicity and directness said, "You said I might come, you know, and I have come; and I begged of Ethel to come too, but she could not leave my aunt," before he had so much as shaken hands. Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885
  • There's a directness, an anti-intellectual quality to my art.
  • This paper analyzes the relationship between gender difference and conversation strategy in general, and indirectness, interruption and coherence and cohesion in particular.
  • ‘Religion as mere sentiment,’ he wrote with denunciatory directness, ‘is to me a dream and a mockery.’
  • Such directness would have lent a strategic clarity needed to link ends and means in statecraft, reinforced the war's objectives, and reduced a fair amount of second-guessing and downright back-stabbing at home and abroad.
  • She has a childlike enthusiasm and directness.
  • Friends and foes alike live in awe of his intellect and in fear of his directness.
  • Reyes runs at defenders with directness and explosive pace and he is not good enough defensively to be regarded as a long term wing solution.
  • For all these films' formal originality and sophistication, for all their self-consciousness, finally what makes them extraordinary is their directness, their effortless grace and beauty and truthfulness.
  • It can be a particularly valuable introduction to Wordsworth, whose directness of statement is better judged by the standards of song lyrics than of imagism. Abstracts
  • The indirectness of this approach relates to the pragmatics of the culture: the Navajo avoid speaking for another person or controlling the behavior of others.
  • Bees dart homewards from far-off fields with the directness of an arrow.
  • It is, finally, with the magisterial last story that Ford surpasses himself, writing with a directness and clarity that leaves even the best of the stories in its dust.
  • Yes, I said it has to, and you get that kind of directness which is ... CNN Transcript May 10, 2003
  • From his undergraduate days he had been recognised as an authority on any abstract subject, and his directness of approach and candour were an inspiration to his associates.
  • Its very simplicity and directness has always made Islam a religion with great appeal.
  • The presence of steps or ramps and the directness of the route also seem relevant.
  • Using "I" adds directness to a piece of writing.
  • the girls have a directness that borders on rudery
  • I like that kind of directness in branded footwear. Darth Vader shoes: I want them (alive) | EW.com
  • He has a directness that lends itself to being interviewed.
  • This directness and simplicity demands courage and discipline. The Education of a Gardener
  • Children like poetry because they are sensitive to rhythm and music and are attracted by its brevity and directness.
  • He was amazed at the directness of their travel, even in strong currents.
  • Specifically, members of collectivistic cultures expect greater verbal indirectness, politeness, and non-immediacy than members of individualistic cultures.
  • Stephen Rice brings a sort of sensuousness to the shaping of each of the phrases that means the highly intellectual basis of much of the writing in terms of the adherence to the rules of stile antico part writingis always imbued with a directness of expression befitting to such a flexible voice as underlies this music. Archive 2009-03-01
  • But somehow, for all his foreign ways and uncustomary directness toward Miss Darcy, she trusted him.
  • But it had the Chamberlain directness and clarity. The Present Challenge to British Imperialism
  • Euphemisms rather use understatement … indirectness … the language of diplomacy. Euphemisms are often misleading.
  • Instead, they take up those weapons in the male armoury more befitting of their glabrous state: candour, bluntness, directness, scepticism. THE CALLIGRAPHER
  • But, perhaps aware there may be scant opportunities for flippancy in the next 10 months, he was in engaging mood, answering every question with a diverting directness and lack of self-absorption.
  • The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross ill - mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to his mother. Once Aboard the Lugger
  • There are varying degrees of directness and indirectness concerning a teacher's intervention, yet the intended purpose of changing behavior is the same.
  • Would we find that this hitherto unknown man spoke to us in tones of refreshing directness and honesty?
  • But the chief peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. War and Peace
  • That may change on Tuesday, in what ought to be a rewarding contrast between Portugal's speed, directness and solid defence, and the football equivalent of lacemaking offered by Spain, whose players have yet to receive a single caution. Fernando Torres and Cristiano Ronaldo in clash of the unfulfilled
  • Her directness was a kind of disturbing truth serum, which quickly got to the core of the matter at hand. Portrait of An Artist
  • Its advantage is its directness, its disadvantage its crudity.
  • A tall man, with a gravelly voice, steel-gray hair, and eyes that can radiate great joy and deep sadness, Vaillant blends the regal bearing of his old-money ancestors, the emotional directness of his psychiatric colleagues, and a genial absentmindedness. What Makes Us Happy?
  • Instead of direct confrontation with the brutal events of the last decade, the afterglow is saturated with indirectness, reminiscence, and even nostalgia. Anis Shivani: Huffington Post Exclusive: The 10 Best Books Of 2010 (PHOTOS)
  • He knew that his basic idea of football, directness and simplicity was the right one. Sir Alf: A Major Reappraisal of the Life and Times of England's Greatest Football Manager
  • His use of long sinuous lines with no cross-hatching gave his work at its best great directness and clarity.
  • Because of its directness the cadence V-- I is called the _authentic cadence_. Music Notation and Terminology
  • But she negotiates its vocal awkwardness capably, and supplies much of the character's blend of hauteur, froideur and directness.
  • Its salient features are: financing directness, timeliness and convenience.
  • However, despite the directness of the route, the old road was terribly difficult to cross.
  • Critics of the day gave it the label expressionistic realism, but the directness of Neel's art now looks like a form of free speech. Alice Neel: Painted Truths; In the Company of Alice
  • With his trousers hoisted slightly too high above his waist, long grey hair grazing his collar and a roguish glint in his eye, he charmed us all instantly with a combination of naivety and directness.
  • In both shows, Ms. Coon's directness and unmannered simplicity pointed to a new star in the sky. Revival of the Fittest: Great Shows Roar Back
  • We discussed the merits of ‘Vote for Me’, which I think is hard to beat for directness, but she felt it ran counter to the personal development ethos of the school.
  • The figure of Christ, his sepulchral pallor set off by a shroud of tender pink, confronts the viewer with awesome directness.
  • Mold - printing portrait bricks is a recreature of art, reveals indirectness of art - designing.
  • Everywhere the problem due to the desire to be overjust, so to say, emerges; and exactly in the measure it does so the source of true dramatic directness and variety is lost. Robert Louis Stevenson: a record, an estimate, and a memorial
  • His freshness, his directness and his capacity for making connections with people both in person and on the television screen certainly fitted him for the task.
  • I think it sums up my personality; behind my directness is complexity. Zornhau: Five Word Meme...
  • He was a man of severely limited understanding but of ruthless directness and great energy.
  • The new Metropolitan Police Commissioner is a man of admirable directness.
  • [used by Gerard Manley Hopkins] like "darksome" and "lionlimb" are expressive in a way that seems the opposite of [Edward] Thomas' "unable to rejoice" and "others could not": the power of explosive compression, forcing meanings together, rather than the unfolding power of directness. Archive 2009-04-01
  • He recalled the directness of her speech in their first conversation and smiled at the naïveté of her estimate of himself. A Mating in the Wilds
  • They have learned that directness can be a liability, benefiting the administration and Democratic members of Congress.
  • They hunger for the riches of our faith presented with directness, simplicity, and truth.
  • Other people might have been offended by such directness, but she was not.
  • There is a directness, a genuine sense of conviction in these words which extend far beyond strategic posing.
  • Like all absolutist dogmas, this combination of axiom and corollaries appeals in its simplicity and directness.
  • In the weaker poems, the effect is wishful and mechanical, but there are many moments of startling illumination, and these are made more powerful by the seeming plainness and directness of his manner.
  • The Fifth Circuit test requires assessment of 1) the nature of the plaintiff’s injury; 2) the directness or indirectness of the asserted injury; 3) the proximity or remoteness of the party to the alleged injurious conduct; 4) the speculativeness of the damages claim; and 5) the risk of duplicative damages or complexity in apportioning damages. Lanham Act doesn't cover competition with customers
  • If they are positive, it is very unlikely that they are large, considering the indirectness of this method of subsidizing education. Education Loans, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
  • The Fifth Circuit test requires assessment of 1) the nature of the plaintiff’s injury; 2) the directness or indirectness of the asserted injury; 3) the proximity or remoteness of the party to the alleged injurious conduct; 4) the speculativeness of the damages claim; and 5) the risk of duplicative damages or complexity in apportioning damages. Archive 2009-08-01
  • Here, as in the first picture, the eyes looked forth with a curious, proud directness; but beneath the directness was a glint of humor, a flash of daring absent in the other face; the mouth smiled, seeming to anticipate life's secrets, the ungloved hand held the gun with a touch peculiarly caressing, peculiarly firm. Max
  • He was content with chronological order for his guide; his directness is the directness of the Chronicle History. The Growth of English Drama
  • The directness of the message, which is somewhat bluntly conveyed, is a somewhat disappointing end to an extraordinary novel that is full of subtlety and cunning.
  • With a cultural group in which indirectness is more valued, family members should not be pushed to make demands of others without trying gentle appeals and negotiation first.
  • Why can't we get candor and directness in what is patently obvious to anyone?
  • The success of Jacquette's pastels, with their delicate, nuanced responsiveness, results partly from their directness and quick execution.
  • Junipero pioneered craft-distilled American gin, and though it is solidly in the London dry style, it has a Western directness, with bold juniper dominating a highish-proof spirit. American Entrants in the Gin Game
  • The All Blacks will stretch the Scots ' defence with the speed and accuracy of their passing and the power and directness of their running.
  • Instead, they take up those weapons in the male armoury more befitting of their glabrous state: candour, bluntness, directness, scepticism. THE CALLIGRAPHER
  • Children like poetry because they are sensitive to rhythm and music and are attracted by its brevity and directness.
  • I was speechless at the end - totally disarmed by the simplicity, the beauty and the unforgettable directness with which it was delivered. Times, Sunday Times
  • I was speechless at the end - totally disarmed by the simplicity, the beauty and the unforgettable directness with which it was delivered. Times, Sunday Times
  • He was widely known for his exposition of the ideas of physics to the layman, and he was held in affection by his many colleagues and pupils for the warmth and simple directness of his personality.
  • The trolley-running phase of the game is there merely to reward both speed in connecting your route and directness of the run.
  • They want directness about what's going to change and how it is going to change.
  • Why can't we get candor and directness in what is patently obvious to anyone?
  • With the development of the legal reform in our country, we attach more importance to the directness principle and the verbalism principle in the trial.
  • The particular virtue of this method was the directness of style it engendered.
  • Writing songs from personal experience, Natalie gravitated towards country music because of its honesty and directness.
  • He blinked several times, surprised by her directness.
  • Using "I" adds directness to a piece of writing.
  • The indirectness of the process invites a certain familiarity.
  • Finally, several of Gornik's charcoal drawings, such as Roman Light, represent dark trees against clear, watery skies with a limpidity and directness that evoke landscape photogravure.
  • The indirectness of metaphor allows clients to work out struggles at their own pace. Judith D. Schwartz: Therapy and the Writer
  • King went to the cave entrance, to look the new man over; but because he was in Khinjan, and Khinjan in the "Hills," where indirectness is the key to information, he stood for a while at gaze, listening to the thunder of tumbling water and looking at the cliff-edge six feet away that was laid like a knife in the ascending mist. In The Time Of Light
  • Once again, a mature person will appreciate your directness and give you a reasonable explanation for not answering you.
  • However, in place of the suggestive delicacy of traditional ink painting, his bees and butterflies are realized with the blowsy directness of American Pop art.
  • He likes the poem's blend of directness, ornateness and obliquity, unsurprisingly for an Ulsterman who is given to verbal opulence and is notoriously elusive in some of his opinions.
  • I was speechless at the end - totally disarmed by the simplicity, the beauty and the unforgettable directness with which it was delivered. Times, Sunday Times
  • Emma was somewhat taken aback by his directness.
  • Such directness would have lent a strategic clarity needed to link ends and means in statecraft, reinforced the war's objectives, and reduced a fair amount of second-guessing and downright back-stabbing at home and abroad.
  • His style is acerbic, his humour disquiets, his directness can shock.
  • He had an innate egalitarianism, a plain-spoken American way of talking, a directness, a lack of airs - a plumb-line moral compass.
  • But television is an unforgiving medium: it rewards directness and a sense of human spark.
  • He will apply common sense, in the shape of directness and simplicity, as much to the design of a garden and its parts as to its construction. The Education of a Gardener
  • Your directness is bracing," CBI director Gale Bertram tells him, meaning "You're a complete waste of plasma and I wish you were landfill. Tonight's TV highlights
  • The account has a particular directness, a delightful naivety, and an enormous sense of authenticity.
  • Simplicity and directness are generally regarded as cardinal virtues in American peace leadership.
  • Systematic and methodical rather than dashing, he had a reputation for honesty and directness.
  • During these same thirty years or more, Sam has also become a writer of true amplitude: of outrage and forgiveness, of directness and intelligence, of tenderness and generosity.
  • I was a little taken aback at the directness of the question.
  • Yet, Haskil manages to impart a directness and plain-speaking in the ariosi and recitativo passages that testify to the searching character of each of her endeavors. Audiophile Audition Headlines
  • Instead, with an ingratiating directness, he allows the audience to share a hardworking, yet playful, day in the lives of a group of Cuban peasants.
  • They are more elaborate because people practice indirectness.
  • Urdu is perhaps the politest of written tongues and lends itself most readily to indirectness; but since he did not expect to read a catalogue of exact facts, he was not disappointed. In The Time Of Light
  • The figures show reduction of emissions from planes in UK airspace, through improved efficiency of airspace management and flight path directness.
  • His plain-spoken directness cut through the trappings of privilege.
  • Children like poetry because they are sensitive to rhythm and music and are attracted by its brevity and directness.
  • Agreement with an elder, boss, or anyone of higher status is valued above directness.
  • Quaker State-Slick 50, Inc., 165 F.3d 221 (3d Cir.1998) (opinion by then-Judge Alito), which assesses five factors: "(1) the nature of the plaintiff's alleged injury, (2) the directness or indirectness of the asserted injury, (3) the proximity or remoteness of the party to the alleged injurious conduct, (4) the speculativeness of the damages claim, and (5) the risk of duplicative damages or complexity in apportioning damages. McDonald's is lovin' it: Burger King franchisee lacks Lanham Act standing
  • In comparison with the traditional method of hazard detection, this method has advantages of its directness and being capable of detecting both static hazards and dynamic hazards.
  • He mixes tenderness with directness and a lack of sentimentality.
  • I was a little taken aback at the directness of the question.
  • They consist in directness, in easily stirred susceptibility, in inflexible and lively spirits: they point to a superfluity of unexhausted gifts; and over the whole there extends a never-failing charm, a certain glamour of nobility. Nobel Prize in Literature 1924 - Presentation
  • Sometimes that honesty could be somewhat brutal, yet his directness, mischievous grin and twinkling eyes persuaded you to listen to his point of view. Times, Sunday Times
  • The girl's sibylline countenance unnerved viewers who, as one critic put it, were almost ‘repelled by the directness and force of the painting.’
  • She has a childlike enthusiasm and directness.
  • The indirectness of memory, in contrast to the directness of retention, however, remains somewhat obscure.
  • Her eyes now in their directness were the ice blue of Bill's, enchanting, and I felt reality slip a notch. The Fat Lady Sang
  • Under the system of institutional government, a political party's obtaining and holding the state power has the feature of legality, indirectness and temporariness .
  • rivaling a hawk in directness of aim
  • The post-Duchamp art world has often seemed a little cold, slick, uniform - a place where directness, heartiness, earthy good humour, celebration, anger and pity have little room, where a know-all irony stills the laughter.
  • It also has a vividness and directness not usually associated with paintings worked up from sketches and photographs.

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