Machiavelli was no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he wrote obliged him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his substance grave, his manner nobly plain and serious.

Others were no less critical, proclaiming that Emerson "has come to the end of what he had to say, and is repeating himself" (Athenaeum) or even calling him a "phrasemonger" and "second-hand writer" (Critic).

Revolutionary phrasemaker or co-architect of a historic compromise with Israel?

Below the surface, however, one discovers that in essence Sondheim is not a comic phrasemaker but a teacher.

As a lyricist, she is also a humorous phrasemaker with a talent for one-liners.

The phrasemaker had not misled us.

The old phrasemaker, Closing In on the Truth.

"Bill Clinton is not a phrasemaker," Ickes says.

As phrasemaker, the search for fabulousness turned to self-conscious flippancy that may seem quotable until you think about it.

Wilson's sobriquet was "the Phrasemaker"; it won't be Clinton's.

"Hogarth Up and Down," said Steiner, wallowing a bit in his new role as phrasemaker.

What makes them exciting, at times thrilling, however, is her skill as a phrasemaker, her ability to write with fierce and electrifying precision.

You're a real phrasemaker, Pollard!"

As an orator and phrasemaker, he resembles Demosthenes only in that he sometimes seems to be speaking with pebbles in his mouth.

(The last part was written by Mr. Vallone himself, a sweet-natured man who is not exactly a phrasemaker.)

That she is now the verbose phrasemaker, Frazier-Lyde said, "is God's sense of humor."

As Steve DeOssie, the inside linebacker and phrasemaker, said: "Offense sells tickets.

He was described as "MADISON Avenue's favorite phrasemaker" and was also known for his advertising approach of "smart" sell.

A few weeks ago Claudio Martelli, the Socialists' most acerbic phrasemaker, came down from Rome and condemned Palermo's "shadow government of judges and Jesuits."

He will retire Jan. 31, to be replaced by Ben S. Bernanke, a White House adviser and former Princeton economist who can become the nation's new economic phrasemaker.

The Pentagon Pictures In the United States, a pride of the highest American officials went on television Wednesday to declare victory in what some phrasemaker had dubbed Operation Just Cause.

In 1882, Labouchere met Wilde in America; Wilde praised him as the "best writer in Europe", though Labourchere criticized Wilde as an "effeminate phrasemaker".

An affable phrasemaker with a raspy, soul-inflected voice, Mr. Lewis, who is 38 years old, acknowledged his debt to blues and soul giants like Muddy Waters, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.

Mr. Blair is no mean phrasemaker, but just as Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in high heels, the Reverend Crabbe gave Blair's speech in rhymed heroic couplets.

Songs like "Painting the Kitchen," an amusing depiction of home improvement as a therapeutic exercise during which the narrator carries on an interior dialogue with his therapist, emphasize his gift as a witty phrasemaker in the Sondheim mold.

But even as you read this, some sharp political phrasemaker is working on a paragraph that begins "Not in a hundred days, not in a hundred hours, but in a hundred New York minutes. . . . "

But at his best he's been more than a phrasemaker; with a sympathetic eye for self-delusion, he captured the embarrassed spiritual yearning in his characters, the refugees of the new economy - rendering meaningful that least sympathetic of emotional breakdowns, the "quarter-life crisis."