But he never wanted to open his mouth, say something wrong, and look stupid.

CNN: Excerpt: 'Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life'

Before Prime Minister Tony Blair could even open his mouth to reveal the secrets of Britain's biggest mystery, the public spat between the minister in charge of the Dome project, Peter Mandelson, and its former creative director Stephen Bayley re-ignited on the airwaves.

BBC: Battle of the Dome continues

He would shake out into his palm a handful of pills from a bottle, open his wide red mouth, and fail to swallow them.

ECONOMIST: Bip

And then I turned around and saw that a managing director was watching with his mouth open.

WSJ: Warning: Banking May Be Hazardous to Your Health

"Mauchly was the kind of guy who thought with his mouth open, " says his widow, Kay Mauchly Antonelli, who became one of the world's first computer programmers when she worked on the ENIAC.

CNN: Genesis of the computer

The prisoner sank to his knees at the lip of the crater and looked back at the workers, his eyes hollow with terror, his mouth open and gulping air with rattling gasps through a parched throat.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Legends'

They took the shoes from my hands and fitted them on my wet feet, Herbert, with his mouth open as befit his concentration, tying the laces, and Emily looking on as if it were a surgical procedure.

NEWYORKER: Wakefield

He chewed with his mouth open.

NEWYORKER: Free Radicals

One of them, a child, lays with his face frozen in fear, mouth open and arms outstretched.

CNN: Rescue of 'martyrs' yields survivor in Syria