She gasped stagily, choked, wrapped her hands about her throat.

Although she's speaking stagily to Jesus, she's ever so gently admonishing the audience.

Ms. Reed steers them stagily, which serves the cause of theatrics, if not coherence.

He paused, catching his breath stagily a little before coming out with emphasis on the "-George!"

It is somewhat stagily composed, but the play of line against surface reveals Siskind's innate painterly sense.

Neso forced an immediate laugh and then applauded stagily as if she'd offered an irresistible witticism.

The deep voice rumbled stagily.

Yet even in the quieter, less stagily plotted stories we are kept aware of the precariousness of the available hiding places.

Policemen were almost stagily considerate.

Breyguhn mimed sudden forgetfulness with a finger to her lips and a series of stagily puzzled expressions.

There were many glum faces, quite a few angry ones; Sulla paused rather stagily to see if anyone was going to protest audibly.

He chuckled stagily.

The French have a saying, at once cynical and stagily romantic: "There is no such thing as love, there are only proofs of love."

And then, stagily delayed till it was almost too late, came Gharr the Gherpotean, with Gharrgoyles.

Stagily casual, she drawled, "Sleepy.

"I don't know who these people are that they can give these things away," said Mr. Bennett, stagily stroking his mane of luxuriant hair.

Leaning forward, Sundara kissed the tip of my nose and said huskily, stagily, 'If you want a divorce, darling, you can have your divorce.

In the movie, Ms. Mol's co-stars deliver their dialogue stagily as if projecting to a back row while Ms. Mol affectingly plays to the camera.

(In an important subclass of therapeutic legislation, however, stagily offending an unpopular interest group--e.g., the tobacco lobby--is part of the therapy.)

The bottle of liquor may be a stagily shopworn prop in this little drama of life and death, but the play and its message of ebbing time are ultimately touching.

For example, he stagily denied that any foreign money was being used to finance the contras--although he himself had been involved in soliciting such money--because the check hadn't yet arrived.

As the editors observe, "Grover was strangely out of sorts with himself in recounting interviews" - he would merge his questions into subjects' talk so that they seemed to be soliloquizing stagily.

On Saturday afternoon, Marianna Tcherkassky was a sweetly subdued Nikiya and Wes Chapman a bold young Solor in performances that were finely danced but rather stagily acted.

For The Times Literary Supplement, Michael Robson considered that "a new Bond has emerged from these pages: an agent more relaxed, less promiscuous, less stagily muscular than of yore."

The dark bulk of the not-yet-completed Empire State Building, stagily illuminated from behind, is the subject of "Manhattan Lights" (1931), its starkness relieved by the relaxed presence of two women and a child.