The notice empowered a doorman to accost strangers. (accost: confront, buttonhole, waylay) It left him considerable room to waylay a member he happened to dislike. (waylay: intercept, ambush, accost) A narrow-minded porter had once used it to ostracize a family on bigoted grounds. (narrow-minded: closed-minded, intolerant, insular; ostracize: exclude, shun, isolate socially; bigoted: intolerant, prejudiced, narrow-minded) The new porter found such intolerance contemptible. (intolerance: bigotry, narrow-mindedness, illiberality; contemptible: despicable, reprehensible, disgraceful)
A committee asked her to keep out anyone "unbecoming to the character of the club." (unbecoming: unseemly, improper, inappropriate) When she asked what that meant, its members called her combative. (combative: belligerent, argumentative, contentious) She said an intolerant rule could hide in a sentence whose vagueness seemed polite. (intolerant: narrow-minded, bigoted, illiberal; vagueness: imprecision, indefiniteness, indistinctness) A junior member nodded vehemently. (vehemently: fiercely, forcefully, passionately)
She proposed a guest pass with a name and a time. The committee tried it for a month. By its end every member had used a pass to bring a guest. The porter framed the old notice backward and used its blank side for a welcome.