Rich and strange in detail, magnanimous yet unsparing in tone, it presents an unairbrushed portrait of two quarreling middle-aged Ukrainian-English sisters, Vera and Nadia, who reconcile to save their stubborn father from a disastrous late marriage.

Mandarin and Khmer and possibly other Southeast Asian languages may be characterized as resisting obligatorification of their meaningful morphology. Could this have anything to do with their penchant for decorative morphology?

The object of the snood swivels, in which the gangings are so easily adjustable, is to save time in removing the fish and in baiting the hooks.

An absolute monarch is free from all forcible restraint, and so far as he is absolute[,] from all legal restraints of positive laws.