I've always had a hard time with the word maverick.

Therefore, he was not following everybody's lead, and therefore, he was a maverick.

Bill Stone, a maverick cave explorer who has plumbed Earth s deepest abysses, discusses his efforts to mine lunar ice for space fuel and to build an autonomous robot for studying Jupiter s moon Europa.

Only three maverick Republican Senators went along with Obama s proposals to get the plan accepted. And in the House of Representatives, the Republicans unanimously rejected every amendment, every compromise, and every courtesy that he offered.

RB Yeah, I think I was a bit of a maverick and but I ... And I was, yeah, I was fortunately good at sport, and so at least I had something to excel at, at school.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a veteran political maverick and former mayor of Jerusalem, inspired several of Sharon s initiatives. Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and Labor party leader, appeals to many voters from the left.

Should the best answer to the return of Russia s imperial ambitions be a modern version of a Holy Alliance of stability designed to contain the world s new maverick? Or is a latter day Yalta Conference, aimed at redrawing the political boundaries of Europe, necessary?

All negotiations between debtors and creditors involve bluff and bluster to some extent. But Greece's maverick finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has taken his case boldly to the media and the public in a way that leaves little doubt as to his willingness to play hard ball.

Dynamic models have become much more common, an economics of the second best has flourished, political economy has become mainstream, and behavioral economics has thrown the rational actor into doubt. As a result, Hirschman looks less and less the maverick that he fancied himself to be.

Ehud Olmert, the party s leader and now elected prime minister, has been a maverick of the center since his student days a fitting symbol for the rapprochement of left and right. But the rapprochement itself is, of course, mainly the work of Ariel Sharon, whose influence is by no means diminished because he is in a coma.

Although none of the aspiring candidates for the US presidency can match him in terms of zaniness, similar trends are plain to see. John McCain managed to defeat his more conventional Republican rivals by seeming to be totally different from them a maverick who says what he damned well wants, a tough guy with the knowing wink of the old ladies man.