| But there are some obvious problems here, including metaphorical patness and the fact that it almost certainly couldn't have happened that way. |
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| Hence the book's picaresque quality — it is a string of anecdotes — and also, at times, a certain patness in the comedy. |
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| But Mukherjee's primary bulwark against patness is a piece of formal daring. |
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| At least one phrase may have lost its patness since the tobacco report was issued. |
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| Benjamin Black makes pointed asides about the dullness of Agatha Christie, and about the patness of mystery stories that resolve their loose ends too tidily. |
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| The setup's almost laughably pat, and nothing that follows mitigates that patness. |
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| This extra rhyme-line gives him scope to widen the thought or heighten the emotion of the particular stanza, and to avoid the patness that a neat quatrain can have. |
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