Opening Day has surrendered the wild excitement it once embodied, just as the urgencies of Christmas seem diminished unless there are grandhildren in the house.

And the British are no longer responding to the "there'll always be an England" reserve that the Crown once embodied.

Twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago, it was: New York did once embody the essence of modern life in the United States.

Circumstances have forced him to rule his people as if he and most of what he once embodied were no longer there.

Product has since come to encompass all aspects of the entertainment world, and the cynicism it once embodied is today only occasionally highlighted by means of its presentation in quotation marks.

George Papandreou, 59, once embodied the hopes of the country's elite, combining a Western education with membership of a political dynasty that has ruled this country for three generations.

The neighborhood has aged gracefully, with the sugar maples dropping a brilliant carpet of leaves over streets that once embodied the American Dream.

In the recent past they often became fashion spoofs, but now the wedding dress once again embodies the main theme of each collection.

Examination of those wing areas at high magnification had made us aware once again of the utter splendor embodied in the lepidopteran wing.

But the block, which once embodied everything wrong with America's inner cities, today reflects much that can go right.