orbit, limp, uptick, A hunted man, Em dash

And while Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton, never worked for State, he also held multiple roles within the Clintons' orbit. As Eric Lichtblau of The New York Timesrecently explained it to NPR:

"He is a personal assistant to Bill Clinton. He ran a consulting company that paid Bill Clinton a lot of money until 2012. He is also the head of Clinton's Global Initiative which gets together muckety mucks from all over the world for big charity events, and he's with the Clinton Foundation. So to figure out at any one time which hat someone like Doug Band is wearing when he communicates with aides to Hillary Clinton is a bit of a puzzle."

Gordon Brown: A hunted man Why the prime minister will probably limp through to the election
Unable to Unload Limping Divisions, GE Invests in Propping Them Up

GE is turning its attention and investment dollars back to its appliance business, since it can't unload it.

The second gallery contains an astounding work of accidental Modernism: the unfinished “Preparation of the Bride/Dead Girl,” one of the big paintings of village life that Courbet tackled in the early 1850s. Here a roomful of women orbits around a young, limp girl being dressed by three of them. Other women make a bed, lay a tablecloth or straighten up.


U.S. Stocks Limp After Layoff News
U.S. financials sank on news of layoffs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, though some of that negative sentiment was offset by an uptick in deal activity.




Today is the day when, in 1957, Laika the Soviet space dog became the first animal to orbit the Earth. This week NASA is also marking 15 years of humans living on the International Space Station. Our video shows how living in space affects the human body.




Fifty-eight years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II into space—a spacecraft carrying the first living creature to enter orbit: a dog. This is the space-age future that never happened.

Em dash

The em dash is perhaps the most versatile punctuation mark. Depending on the context, the em dash can take the place of commas, parentheses, or colons—in each case to slightly different effect.

Notwithstanding its versatility, the em dash is best limited to two appearances per sentence. Otherwise, confusion rather than clarity is likely to result.

Do not mistake the em dash (—) for the slightly narrower en dash (–) or the even narrowerhyphen (-). Those marks serve different purposes and are further explained in other sections.

 

uptick

(ŭp'tĭk')
n.

1. An increase, especially a small or incremental one: last week's uptick in interest rates.
2. A transaction in a stock market security above the price of the previous transaction.

[From the indication of a rise in price of a stock by a plus sign on boards above stock market stations.]

orbit
noun [C or U]
the curved path through which objects in space move around a planet or star:
The satellite is now in a stable orbit.
Once in space, the spacecraft will go into orbit around the Earth.

2An area of activity, interest, or influence:audiences drawn largely from outside the Party orbit


orbit
verb [I or T]
to follow a curved path around a planet or star:
On this mission the Shuttle will orbit (the Earth) at a height of several hundred miles.

orbital
adjective
an orbital space station

limp (PERSON/ANIMAL)
verb [I]
to walk unevenly and slowly because of having an injured or painful leg or foot:
Three minutes into the match, Jackson limped off the pitch with a serious ankle injury.

limp
noun [S]
She has a slight limp.
He walks with a limp.

limp (PROCESS) Show phonetics
verb [I + adverb or preposition] INFORMAL
to develop or grow slowly, unevenly or irregularly:
After limping along for almost two years, the economy is starting to show signs of recovery.