At the very motioning thereof my very right entrail seemeth to be widened and enlarged, which was but just now hard-bound, contracted, and costive.
François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Amazon
Tobey Maguire, looking ever more costive and uncomfortable, returns as Peter Parker, who finds himself doubly transformed—first into the crime-busting arachnid whom we know and revere, second into a black-suited alternative who revels in violence and, for some unknown reason, keeps breaking into dance moves.
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 14 May 2007. The New Yorker
Peel himself was famously lachrymose; it is as if this quality has now transferred itself to others, with otherwise emotionally costive people becoming blubbering wrecks as they contemplate a world without the greatest DJ there has ever been.
Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian, 15 July 2006, Guardian
reviewing John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft's Margrave of the Marshes. Amazon