plucky

• “From the New York Times: It is the time of year when bedtime stories and television specials often recall the plucky reindeer and the little girl of Whoville who managed to save Christmas.”

  December 2005

• “It's been suggested that the plucky -- and it's almost always described as plucky --”

  World Hum

• “And eep -- Talia is many things, but "plucky" has never been one of them :”

  Writing About Rape, Part II

• “You have to be pretty creative and energetic -- you have to be quite kind of plucky, to a certain extent.”

  Toby Young Can't Resist One More Prank at Soho House

• “And hours after he spoke, the Sox won the first of three elimination games in a row to win the AL Central and the team went from the doldrums to the heights of a "no one's expecting us to win" kind of plucky underdog.”

  Jon Greenberg: Big-Game Hunter

• “I'm actually old enough to remember the 1967 Six Day War, and was young enough then to be enthralled by the drama, and by the sheer panache of the "plucky" Israelis as they prevailed against all the odds.”

  Reaching the limits

• “For Pullman fans, this kind of plucky self-confidence must sound familiar: it's Lyra Belaqua, the novel's crafty protagonist, who travels from Oxford to the Arctic Circle -- aided by armored bears, flying witches and a truth-telling compass that only she can read -- to rescue her kidnapped best friend.”

  Newsweek: The Arctic Adventurer

• “The character would try to cover it in rather pathetic 'plucky' attempts; while I on the other hand have skull kleenex, and I bet you wish you had some too – take that Laura Wilder!”

  My haul of Halloween skull stuff and a lot of screaming

• “A deranged angry woman disrupting a meeting is "plucky" and "stands up for herself".”

  If "every campaign is... a narrative," what's Hillary Clinton's narrative?

• “Tanni Grey-Thompson who has won more medals than just about any other British person is now, finally, accepted as a truly great athlete not just a 'plucky' wheelchair racer.”

  Oscar Pistorius v. I.A.A.F: excluded for "purity" & "fairness"

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