fontanelle, soft spot, obliteration, succumb, beat the clock

 

Spring Culture Fell to Virus. In Oregon, Summer Theater Now Succumbs. By MICHAEL PAULSON As nonprofits around the country cancel all spring programs, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival halts performances through Labor Day, and will lay off 80 percent of its staff.

America will not and should not stop spying. But a clearer focus and better oversight are needed to restore trust. For its own sake, the NSA needs a new start, under new leaders and with proper oversight. But for the sake of the Americans whom the NSA must protect, neither Congress nor the White House should succumb to a dangerous mood of retribution http://econ.st/180WqXP

Love's Labors, Published
By JOEL LOVELL
The writer David Rakoff raced to complete his last work, a novel written in rhyme, before succumbing to cancer. With the help of friends, he beat the clock.

Something was happening, and the poem that had made it happen was “Luing.” The poem, which opens “Landing Light” (Graywolf Press), by a Scottish literary star named Don Paterson, pays tribute to an obscure island cradled in the bosom of the Hebrides, a negligible nugget of land “with its own tiny stubborn anthem.” Luing, Mr. Paterson writes, is a place where a visitor might be “reborn into a secret candidacy” and where “the fontanelles reopen one by one.” Mr. Paterson’s poem is a 21st-century ode to regeneration (fontanelles are those soft spots on a baby’s head where the skull hasn’t fully fused yet), but it’s also about the deep satisfactions of disappearing. By the closing stanza, its narrator has succumbed to a sort of sweet obliteration: “One morning/you hover on the threshold, knowing for certain/the first touch of the light will finish you.”


fontanelle,


The skull at birth, showing the anterior and posterior fontanelles. The skull at birth, showing the lateral fontanelles. Latin fonticuli cranii

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/fontanelle#ixzz1aBt3zbXu

fontanel, -nelle[fon・ta・nel, -nelle]

• 発音記号[fɑ`ntnél | fɔ`n-]

[名]《解剖学》（胎児・乳児の頭の）ひよめき, 泉門.


soft spot

1. A weak or vulnerable point, as in That's the soft spot in his argument. [Mid-1900s]
2. have a soft spot for. Have a tender or sentimental feeling for, as in Grandpa had a soft spot for Brian, his first grandson. This expression, first recorded in 1753 as "a soft place in one's heart," uses soft in the sense of "tender."

succumb

Syllabification: (suc·cumb)

Pronunciation: /səˈkəm/

Definition of succumb

verb

[no object]

• fail to resist (pressure, temptation, or some other negative force):he has become the latest to succumb to the strain
• die from the effect of a disease or injury.

Origin:

late 15th century (in the sense 'bring low, overwhelm'): from Old French succomber or Latin succumbere, from sub- 'under' + a verb related to cubare 'to lie'

beat the clock

perform a task quickly or within a fixed time limit.

obliteration[ob・lit・er・a・tion]

• 発音記号[əblìtəréiʃən]
• 
  

[名][U]

1 抹消（すること）, 削除, 一掃；破棄.

2 《病理学》閉塞(へいそく)；《外科》切除.