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Abuse   Listen
noun
Abuse  n.  
1.
Improper treatment or use; application to a wrong or bad purpose; misuse; as, an abuse of our natural powers; an abuse of civil rights, or of privileges or advantages; an abuse of language. "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty, as well as by the abuses of power."
2.
Physical ill treatment; injury. "Rejoice... at the abuse of Falstaff."
3.
A corrupt practice or custom; offense; crime; fault; as, the abuses in the civil service. "Abuse after disappeared without a struggle.."
4.
Vituperative words; coarse, insulting speech; abusive language; virulent condemnation; reviling. "The two parties, after exchanging a good deal of abuse, came to blows."
5.
Violation; rape; as, abuse of a female child. (Obs.) "Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?"
Abuse of distress (Law), a wrongful using of an animal or chattel distrained, by the distrainer.
Synonyms: Invective; contumely; reproach; scurrility; insult; opprobrium. Abuse, Invective. Abuse is generally prompted by anger, and vented in harsh and unseemly words. It is more personal and coarse than invective. Abuse generally takes place in private quarrels; invective in writing or public discussions. Invective may be conveyed in refined language and dictated by indignation against what is blameworthy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abuse" Quotes from Famous Books



... the sailor's treatment in the Navy may be said to have been profane abuse. Officers of all ranks kept the Recording Angel fearfully busy. With scarcely an exception they were men of blunt speech and rough tongue who never hesitated to call a spade a spade, and the ordinary seaman something many degrees worse. These were technicalities of the service which ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... fell afoul each other with curse and abuse. They were in no way embarrassed by the presence of Susan. Her "record" made her of no account either as a woman or as a witness. Soon each was so well pleased with the verbal wounds he had dealt the other that their anger evaporated. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... pinch of want or extremity of laziness. Beggary within the family—and by the less self-respecting, without it—has thus grown into a custom and a scourge, and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse. Special words signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro, of taro-tops, of taro-tops for planting, of tools, of flyhooks, of implements for netting pigeons, and of mats. It is true the beggar was supposed in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hire[*] High heaped up with huge iniquitie, Against the day of wrath, to burden thee? 410 Is not enough, that to this Ladie milde Thou falsed hast thy faith with perjurie, And sold thy selfe to serve Duessa vilde, With whom in all abuse thou hast ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... which men have sought in vain to reconcile. It is for this reason that the outer world is divided into two schools of thought, one believing implicitly in Japan's bona fides, the other vulgarly covering her with abuse and declaring that she is the last of all nations in her conceptions of fair play and honourable treatment. Both views are far-fetched. It is as true of Japan as it is of every other Government in the world that her actions are dictated neither ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing at ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Kendal, glancing every now and then at the wet study Elfrida was carrying home, felt himself distinctly thankful that she did not ask his opinion of it, as she had, to his embarrassment once or twice before; though it was so very bad that he was half disposed to abuse it without permission. Miss Bell seemed persistently interested in other things, however—the theatres, the ecclesiastical bill before the Chamber of Deputies, the new ambassador, even the recent improvement of the police system. Kendal found her ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... wonderful power? Very few fathers give their sons any guidance along this line, although they do so quite freely on every other subject. Of course, it is a sacred, delicate subject from which we naturally shrink, but it is overmodesty to allow a lad to fall into the abuse of his manhood, either alone or in twos, when a wise word, spoken in time, would save the smirch on two lives or more. In fact, we are beginning really to understand that it is just as imperative for us to teach a boy how to live his life with the utmost ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... to endure to be deprived of the good, and not to endure the falling into the evil. Then at last, when I am neither able to change circumstances nor to tear out the eyes of him who hinders me, I sit down and groan, and abuse whom I can, Zeus and the rest of the gods. For if they do not care for me, what are they to me? Yes, but you will be an impious man. In what respect, then, will it be worse for me than it is now? To sum up, remember that unless piety and your interest be in the same thing, piety cannot ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... affair Lady Wondershoot, casting about for exemplary additions to the abuse and fastings she had inflicted, issued a Ukase. She issued it first to her butler, and very suddenly, so that she made him jump. He was clearing away the breakfast things, and she was staring out of the tall window on the terrace ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... denounces these slaveholders, as the chief of sinners?" "Well, we don't know, but we think it says something dreadful about them; but we don't know where it is, or what it is." We searched, but searched in vain; almost ready to abuse the good Boob, because it refused to abuse slaveholders. We then soliloquized in the following words. "We don't like these slaveholders—never did—nor did our fathers before us. Our fathers told us that they were bad men—that they were guilty of ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... meanwhile, bestowing some hearty and general abuse upon them all (for Grace was not of the party), snatched the candle from the hand of one of the rustic coquettes, as she stood playing pretty with it in her hand, and ushered his guest into the family parlour, or rather hall; for the place having been a house of defence in former times, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... happened that the knowledge of Christian grace, of faith, of liberty, and altogether of Christ, has utterly perished, and has been succeeded by an intolerable bondage to human works and laws; and, according to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we have become the slaves of the vilest men on earth, who abuse our misery to all the disgraceful and ignominious ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther

... no shorthand reporter could have reproduced, for the pair of them began forthwith to rave and storm at one another with all their might, stamping, swearing, shaking their fists, and loading each other with abuse. When they had got as far as calling each other robber and scoundrel, the magistrate thought it high time to interfere, and at his command Margari was torn forcibly out of the tomato bed, led to a hackney coach and thrust inside; yet even then he put his head out of the window and shouted that ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... carrying with them, for your father has charge of my wealth, and it will soon fall as booty into the hands of the Egyptians. Shall I, if I obtain my liberty, return to my people and make bricks? Shall I bow my back and suffer blows and abuse?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... decision when she had once seen the path of duty; of the touching hunger for love and understanding that were so characteristic in her. "Lord A'mighty!" he ejaculated under his breath, "Lord A'mighty! to hector and abuse a child like that one! 'T ain't ABUSE exactly, I know, or 't wouldn't be to some o' your elephant-hided young ones; but to that little tender will-o'-the-wisp a hard word 's like a lash. Mirandy Sawyer would be a heap better ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... bearded face, that followed his hurried glance into the empty wagon. He heard the query, "What's gone o' them limbs now?" handed from wagon to wagon. He heard a few oaths; Mrs. Silsbee's high rasping voice, abuse of himself, the hurried and discontented detachment of a search party, Silsbee and one of the hired men, and vociferation and blame. Blame always for himself, the elder, who might have "known better!" A little fear, perhaps, but he could not fancy either pity or commiseration. Perhaps the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... fight old man Mills under gross provocation; and besides, though they were younger than he, the Mills boys were seventeen and eighteen, and "not such babies either; if they insisted on fighting they had to take what they got and not send their sister to talk and abuse a man about it afterward." And the weight of opinion was that, "that Vashti Mills was gettin' too airified and set ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... notes of those banking companies constituted, at that time, the far greater part of the currency of Scotland, which this uncertainty of payment necessarily degraded below value of gold and silver money. During the continuance of this abuse (which prevailed chiefly in 1762, 1763, and 1764), while the exchange between London and Carlisle was at par, that between London and Dumfries would sometimes be four per cent. against Dumfries, though this town is not thirty miles distant ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... You fly into a passion in a moment; without inquiring whether you are right or wrong, you fall foul of me. I am in the wrong, and I ought to make your words true, without finishing what I began, since you abuse ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere

... of the heart of the little Michael Angelo to the discipline of vulgar bullies, who, in order to lead tender young children to the Temple of Learning (as they do in the spelling-books), drive them on with clenched fists and low abuse; if they fainted, revive them with a thump, or assailed them with a curse; if they were miserable, consoled them with a brutal jeer—if, I say, my dear parents, instead of giving me the inestimable benefit of a ten years' classical education, had kept me at home with my dear thirteen sisters, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... efforts have reduced the area of cannabis cultivation and shifted some production to neighboring countries; opium poppy cultivation has been reduced by eradication efforts; also a drug money-laundering center; minor role in amphetamine production for regional consumption; increasing indigenous abuse of ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the abuse, the physical violence, quietly. They picked themselves up, disappeared through the exits, giving way to new arrivals. Once Hilary caught a gleam of familiar steel in the unbuttoned recess of a man's blouse pocket. He smiled. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... gave no further heed to him, but the speaker mounted the steps of the meeting-house and harangued the natives in a strain of rude and passionate declamation, in which my host, the aristocrats, and the Secessionists came in for about equal shares of abuse. Seeing that the native (who, it appeared, was quite popular as a stump-speaker) was drawing away his audience, the Colonel descended from the driver's seat, and motioning for me to follow, entered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... raise the Rent, And Kenyon to sink the Nation; And Sheil will abuse the Parliament, And Peel the Association; And the thought of bayonets and swords Will make ex-Chancellors merry— And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords, And throats in the County Kerry; And writers of weight will speculate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... the country, How can I expect it? when even the present Lord Erskine, whose talents and independence should have rendered his character sacred, as soon as it was known that he was to be counsel for Paine was overwhelmed with abuse, and threatened with the loss of his situation, as attorney general to the Prince, if he did not decline the defence. But he knew his duty and discharged it. And for which will he be most honoured by posterity? ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... in opposition to Kant, the fundamental doctrine of the Conditioned, as "the distinction between intelligence within its legitimate sphere of operation, impeccable, and intelligence beyond that sphere, affording (by abuse) the occasions of error."[AB] Hamilton, like Kant, maintained that all our cognitions are compounded of two elements, one contributed by the object known, and the other by the mind knowing. But the very conception of a relation implies ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... suitor, obstinately refuses to obey her father's commands and marry a certain Captain Matamore, with whom he is perfectly infatuated. She is ably supported in her resistance by her pretty maid, Zerbine, who is well paid by Leander, the favoured lover, to espouse his cause. To all the curses and abuse that Pandolphe showers upon her, she answers gaily with the most exasperating and amusing impertinences, advising him to marry this fine captain himself if he is so fond of him; as for her part she will never suffer her dear, beautiful mistress to become ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... to the known nature, quality, and uses of the objects they represent. Thus a foot signifies a journey, and also understanding; a mouth denotes speech, revelation; an ear news, information, and, if ugly and distorted, scandal or abuse. The sun, shining brightly, denotes prosperity, honours. The moon, when crescent denotes success, increase, and improvement. When gibbous, it denotes sickness, decadence, losses, and trouble. The sun eclipsed shows death or ruin of a man; the moon, similarly ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial

... come upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... too quickly fulfilled: Mrs Harrel in a short time after rushed wildly into the room, calling out "My brother is gone! he has left me for ever! Oh save me, Miss Beverley, save me from abuse and insult!" And she wept with so much violence she could ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... as the priest tells him; but then the selected men were all good rattling talkers, not in the House, perhaps, but in their own country district in Ireland. Paddy thinks talking means ability, and when a fellow rattles off plenty of crack-jaw words and red-hot abuse of England, Paddy believes him able to regenerate the world. These men are not allowed to speak in the House. They only vote. But let me tell you they are kings in ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... to him, as to a great authority on such points. If the lawyer who came to consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him a long lecture on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of mature age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse him to me afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession. His house was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he had a handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were past; none of them planned or looked forward into ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the population was insane, and that the rest were preparing to become so. The truth is that a case of insanity originating in Minnesota is quite as exceptional and rare as other diseases, and can usually be accounted for by some self-abuse of the patient. The population is drawn from such diverse sources, and the intermarriages are crossed upon so many different nationalities that hereditary insanity ought to be almost unknown. The climate and the general pursuits of the people all ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... brethren. Now, then, in all justice, it should be so ordered that the weight of public indignation might descend upon him, whoever he might be, (and, of course, the more heavily, according to the authority of his station and his power of inflicting wrong,) who should thus wantonly abuse his means of influence, to the dishonour or injury of an unoffending party. We clothe a public officer with power, we arm him with influential authority over public opinion; not that he may apply these authentic sanctions to the backing of his own malice, and giving weight to his private caprices: ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Author; a Second out of Dislike to the House; a Third out of Dislike to the Actor; a Fourth out of Dislike to the Play; a Fifth for the Joke sake; a Sixth to keep all the rest in Company. Enemies abuse him, Friends give him up, the Play is damn'd, and the Author goes to the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... to me to put the lid on it. I didn't mind a heart-to-heart talk, but this was mere abuse. I changed ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... sound of blows at each that, and then a volley of abuse as I neared the officers' quarters, and every word and blow came through the ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... all insolent, nor, in thy calamities, thus comprehending the female sex, abuse them all. For of us there are many, some indeed are envied for their virtues, but some are by nature in ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... nocturnal emissions and one wholly separate from any abuse of the sexual function is irritability and mechanical irritation of the sexual apparatus—perhaps especially the membranous and prostatic portion of the urethra—caused by the presence of an excessive amount of oxalates in the urine. Oxalates occur in the urine in sharp ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... thus occupied, an old countryman slouched by, his heavy boots making a noise on the frozen ruts, his nose red with the harsh, unmitigated cold. The squirrel, mounted on a fence stake, greeted him with a flood of whistling and shrieking abuse; and he, not versed in the squirrel tongue, muttered to himself half enviously: "Queer how them squur'ls can keep so cheerful in this weather." The tireless little animal followed him along the fence rails for perhaps a hundred yards, seeing him off the premises and ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... to another matter—the attitude of the American Press toward the War. A certain section thereof, which need not be particularized further, has never ceased, probably under the combined influences of bias and subsidy, to abuse the Allies, particularly the British, and misrepresent their motives and ideals. This sort of journalism "cuts no ice" in the United States. It is just "yellow journalism." Voila tout! Why take it seriously? But the British people do not know this; and as the ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay

... them from the lips of others. "Sir Ellis Layton is, for a speech of forty words, the wittiest man that ever I knew in my life, but longer he is nothing." "Mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy do abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other a fool, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, much in the wrong." "How little merit do prevail in the world, but only favour; and that, for myself, chance without merit brought me in; and that diligence only ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... Her natural talents are great. They have been hidden, and, as it might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... contained columns of abuse, of misrepresentation and of downright charges of self-seeking against him. Man after man in the party that had asked him to run for Senator came to him to beg him to desist from his fight on corporations ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... the identical suffering which Rene, Obermann and Lara had been repeating to all the echoes. The elements of it were the same: pride which prevents us from adapting ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and makes them bleed, the wild imagination which presents to our eyes the deceptive mirage of Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles. Lelia personifies, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... transshipment point for heroin produced in the Golden Triangle; growing domestic drug abuse problem; source country ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Jones very calmly answered, "Sir, this usage may perhaps cancel every other obligation you have conferred on me; but there is one you can never cancel; nor will I be provoked by your abuse to lift my hand against the father ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... interests of Spain was the abuse of the ceded right held to be that the earliest efforts of the first new Cabinet under Ferdinand VI. were engaged in a revision of the commercial differences between that country and England. England was persuaded to relinquish the Asiento contract in exchange for advantages of greater ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... of high repute, who visited Berlin, has declared that the German Foreign Office made use of garbled and misleading documents to win him over to these views[507]. It was in vain. The British Government was not to be hoodwinked; and, as soon as it declined these compromising proposals, a storm of abuse swept through the German Press at the barbarities of British troops in South Africa. That incident ended all chance of an understanding, either between the two ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... born blind or deaf, does that imply that mankind was not designed to see or hear? Because certain individuals, through the effects of disease or abuse, lose their sight, does that disprove a purpose for the eye? Because certain communities, or certain civilizations, decline and decay, through corruption, does that prove anything with regard to the intention and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... sort of thing," said Bessie. "I mean a real, earnest teaching-place, where children are gathered in and told all about Christ's love and mercy—where they are softened and won to better thoughts and kinder actions, and their poor little minds filled with shining truth, instead of street dirt and abuse." ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... seen that the intercourse of Rome and her provinces was facilitated by the construction of roads and the establishment of imperial posts. During the decline of the empire the maintenance of these posts led, however, to a grave abuse. We are informed by Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... general intended was not to be known, for at this point there came that which turned his thoughts. One of his dogs, an English spaniel, neither interested in Janice's caricature of Lee, nor in Lee's abuse of Washington, took advantage of his master's preoccupation to steal into the house,— a proceeding which Clarion evidently resented, for suddenly from within came loud yaps and growls, which told only too plainly that if there was no protector of the household from the anger ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... a rude, imperfectly organized system of force; a chain-work of abuses roughly welded together as occasion required. It is a system created by emergencies,—improvised, not grown,—in which to remove a single abuse endangers the whole. When the imprisoned forces tried to escape at one spot, more force was applied and more bands and more rivets brutally held them down, and were then retained as a necessary ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... voice changed. "But I don't want the women to know I'm alive—I didn't intend to let anybody know it. My fool temper has played hell with me again"—then his voice grew firmer—"all the same, I mean it. If you or any man tries to abuse her, I'll kill him! I've loaded her up with trouble, as you say, but I'm going to do what I can to protect her—now that ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... no case, or a very bad one, as far as the mere continuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to it, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned man could pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with having lost his hand, with having been in prison, with being poor, with being friendless, accuses him of envy of Lope's success, of petulance and querulousness, and so on; and it was in this that the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the welfare of the Division, they always had the backing of these true Christian Knights. Their kindness and consideration at all times were unbounded, and the degree of liberty which they allowed me was a privilege for which I cannot be too thankful, and which I trust I did not abuse. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... King, and Queene, and Duke of York and Duchesse there, and all the Court, and Sir W. Coventry. The play called "The Change of Crownes;" a play of Ned Howard's, the best that ever I saw at that house, being a great play and serious; only Lacy did act the country-gentleman come up to Court, who do abuse the Court with all the imaginable wit and plainness about selling of places, and doing every thing for money. The play took very much. Thence I to my new bookseller's, and there bought "Hooker's Polity," the new edition, and "Dugdale's History of the Inns of Court," of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... man ought to honour his own faith only; but he should never abuse the faith of others. It is thus that he will do no harm to anybody. There are even circumstances where the religion of others ought to be honoured. And in acting thus, a man fortifies his own faith, and assists the faith of others. He who acts otherwise, diminishes his own faith, and hurts ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... old-clothes men who throw useless rags from hand to hand in the dirty market-place, and shout, and swear and abuse each other, so they embarked on a rabid and fiery bargaining. Intoxicated with a strange rapture, running and turning about, and shouting, Judas ticked off on his fingers the merits of Him ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... his protection, and generously bestows his hospitality. But they do not for long need the former, nor are they called upon to abuse the latter by a too protracted stay. Shortly after their arrival at the Sacred Town, they get news which, though of death, gives them joy, as it only could and should; since it is the death of that man who has ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... Lord knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!" Sheridan was baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous abuse went on in spite of him. "I can't say I expect much of you—not from the way you always been, up to now—unless you turn over a new leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do THAT! If you go down there and show a ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... long, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience? Until how long, too, will thy frantic fury baffle us? Unto what extremity will thy unbridled insolence display itself? Do the nocturnal guards upon the Palatine nothing dismay you, nothing the watches through the city, nothing the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... and that Cuvier was "brilliant but superficial"![16] How unlucky must one consider the bold speculator who, just before the dawn of modern histology—which is simply the application of the microscope to anatomy—reproves what he calls "the abuse of microscopic investigations," and "the exaggerated credit" attached to them; who, when the morphological uniformity of the tissues of the great majority of plants and animals was on the eve of being demonstrated, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... world a plant that had been considered so absolutely important that he must have provided himself with either buds or cuttings in great quantities when he selected his animals for the Ark BEFORE the Deluge. If this is true, the use of wine must have been pre-historical, and its abuse historical; the two purposes having continued to the present day. It may therefore be acknowledged that no custom has been so universal and continuous as the drinking of wine from the earliest period of human existence. The vine is a mysterious ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... awakening begins. Then can preaching stir the heart until deep answereth unto deep. It can talk of the struggle with moral temptation and weakness; of the unstable temperament which oscillates between the gutter and the stars; of the perversion or abuse of impulses good in themselves; of the dreadful dualism of the soul. For these are inheritances which have made life tragic in every generation for innumerable human beings. Whoever needed to explain to a company of grown men and women ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... deeds committed in Belgium and northern France, of the infamy of the Lusitania murders, of innumerable violations of The Hague convention and the law of nations, of abominable and perfidious plotting in friendly countries and shameless abuse of their hospitality, of crime heaped upon crime in hideous defiance of the laws of ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... pretended fear," he writes, "lest error should step in, is like the man who would keep all wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge." But Cromwell never applied his logic to the removal of the restraint upon printing, which by this same argument Milton had judged to be "the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... artillery group—big guns which barked mostly of nights—having found his forward observation post knocked in by a small field-gun shell, had come back and growled like a bear all dinner-time, most inconsequentially, about the lack of cover from heavy shells in the back areas. His real object was to abuse the men at the table with him; but one junior Staff Officer, hankering after promotion, looked round for the best dug-out site; and caused to be burrowed downwards, from the bottom of a steep grassy bank which ran half-way across a neighbouring field, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... assertion of opinion and personal preference is not proof. If it seems necessary at times to show the fitness of one candidate by contrast with another, never descend to personalities, never inject a tone of personal attack, of cheap wit, of ill-natured abuse. If such practices are resorted to by others, answer or disregard them with the courteous attention they deserve, no more. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into any discussion remote from the main issue—the qualifications of your ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... and the benefits derived from Free-trade will shortly convince all but those connected with the late Hongs, that the changes recently effected in the relations of the Celestial Empire with other countries, are not deserving of the abuse that has been so abundantly ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... not since the close of the American war, in fact. One of the men was addressing to his townspeople, in a high pitched voice, an exhortation which few could hear, for, pressing around this nucleus of cruel wrong, were women crying aloud, throwing up their arms in imprecation, showering down abuse as hearty and rapid as if they had been a Greek chorus. Their wild, famished eyes were strained on faces they might not kiss, their cheeks were flushed to purple with anger or else livid with impotent craving ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... storm of abuse from Gowan. He called her "priest-ridden" and every kind of fool and idiot. She would soon learn to repent of her folly, for he would go straightway to a lawyer and change his will! Not a penny would she get—now or later—from him, as she would find one day to her cost! Then he dashed ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... descendant of the Kuru race, I was agitated with wrath, and, O king, having reflected upon everything, I set my heart upon slaying him! And, learning, O Kauravya, of his oppression of the Anarttas, of his abuse of myself, and of his excessive arrogance, I resolved upon the destruction of that wretch! And, O lord of earth, I accordingly set out (from my city), for slaying the (lord of) the Saubha. And searching him here and there, I found him in an island in the midst of the ocean! ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... organisation is given to the bodies—some of the steadiest amongst the Indians themselves being nominated as sergeants, and all the members mustered at the principal village of their district twice each year. The captains, however, universally abuse their authority, monopolising the service of the men for their own purposes, so that it is only by favour that the loan of a canoe-hand can be wrung from them. I was treated by Captain Antonio with great consideration, and promised two good Indians when I ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... attacked me also in blooming youth, and drove me in a rage to the writing of swift-footed iambics. Now I am desirous of exchanging severity for good nature, provided that you will become my friend, after my having recanted my abuse, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... as an ordinary prisoner of war. He booted Hannibal into the rocking gallop the big mule was capable of upon occasion, and pulled the bay along. Kirby was clinging to the horn, his language heated as he alternately ordered or tried to abuse Drew ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... now the nominee of the American party for the office of Vice-President, naturally attracts much of public attention; and as a matter to be looked for, and not at all to be regretted, draws down upon him great abuse and slander from the hireling editors of the corrupt party opposing him. We will let a neighbor of Major Donelson, who has had access to his papers, and who has prepared and published in the Nashville Banner a sketch of his life, answer the question propounded at the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... this shilling they would willingly double, so they might share but some pittance thereof againe. Now in such indifferent matters, to serue their humours, for working them to a good purpose, could breed no maner of scandall. As for the argument of abuse, which I so largely dilated, that should rather conclude a reformation of the fault, then an ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... popular nomenclature. It is neither accident nor a desire to abuse that has given the German the name of barbarian in the Latin nations. Just as the Latin peoples are the inheritors of Greek ideals, so the German peoples seem to be the active modern protagonists of all that the ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... scored a triumph over rival organizations, notably the Patriotic Daughters of America, whose vice-president, the austere Miss Perkins, first bombarded the papers in vain protest and denunciation, the Red Cross being her main objective, and with abuse of the commanding officers in camp; then called in person on the same officers to demand transportation to Manila ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... he had no idea himself) why he felt sure that this miserable little waif would not abuse hospitality: "She is a child," he answered rather stupidly, for children are often treacherous and wicked, and he knew nothing of this one except what she had chosen ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... this pluralism that led to much abuse, much neglect, and much carelessness. However, enough has been said about the shepherd, and we must return to his helper, the clerk, with whose biography and history we are ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... of modern writers and thinkers who cannot altogether be overlooked in this question, though there is no space here for a lengthy account of them, which, indeed, to confess the truth, would consist chiefly of abuse. I mean those who get over all these abysses and reconcile all these wars by talking about "aspects of truth," by saying that the art of Kipling represents one aspect of the truth, and the art of William Watson another; the art of Mr. Bernard Shaw one aspect of the truth, and the art of Mr. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... wickedness; but returning to St. Germanus, and falling down at his feet, he sued for pardon; and in atonement for the calumny brought upon Germanus by his father and sister, gave him the land, in which the forementioned bishop had endured such abuse, to be his for ever. Whence, in memory of St. Germanus, it received the name Guarenniaun (Guartherniaun, Gurthrenion, Gwarth Ennian) which signifies, a calumny justly retorted, since, when he thought to reproach the bishop, he ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius

... of them," answered Abou Hassan, "to the satisfaction of all honest men. I would punish the four old men with each a hundred bastinadoes on the soles of their feet, and the imaum with four hundred, to teach them not to disturb and abuse their ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... am not going to abuse "these same metre ballad-mongers," for the obvious reason that, as all The Teacups know, I myself belong to the fraternity. I don't think that this reason should hinder my having my say about the ballad-mongering business. For ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... that Zoe and she had discussed the incident and Vizard's infatuation, Fanny being specially wroth at Vizard's abuse of pearls; but she told him she had advised Zoe not to mention that lady's name, but let ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the other; yet they are alike in this—that both attempt to deal with one of the most striking problems in the spiritual history of man, viz., the frustration or abuse of power in a superior intellect originally inclined to good. Perhaps there is no problem that more fascinates the attention of a man of some earnestness at that period of his life, when his eye first disengages itself from the external phenomena around him, and his curiosity ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... seas? He asked them next (Wishing to see them more perplexed) Which of the two contending powers Was chiefly abused by this bard of ours? For he said, "Such a bold, so profound an adviser By dint of abuse would render them wiser, More active and able; and briefly that they Must finally prosper and carry the day." Now mark the Lacedaemonian guile! Demanding an insignificant isle! "AEgina," they say, "for a pledge of peace, As a means ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... be our duty to defend the absent, is it not ten thousand times more so to defend the dead? Shall a daughter hear with acquiescence the memory of a mother, who would have died for her, loaded with obloquy and falsehood? No, sir! Menace and abuse myself as much as you wish, but I tell you, that while I have life and the power of speech, I will fling back, even into a father's face, the falsehoods—the gross and unmanly falsehoods—with which he insults her tomb, and calumniates her memory and her virtues. Do not blame me, sir, for ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... fell on the blurred French print, raising a soft blot. She lifted her head sharply, exclaiming aloud, "It's intolerable!" Looking out of the window with eyes that would have seen nothing even had they not been dazed by tears, she indulged herself at last in violent abuse of the entire day. It had been miserable from start to finish; first, the service in the chapel; then luncheon; then Evelyn; then Miss Allan; then old Mrs. Paley blocking up the passage. All day long she had been tantalized and ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... said my attendant. "There are the Orthobrachians, who declaim against the shameful abuse of the left arm and hand, and insist on restoring their perfect equality with the right. Then there are Isopodic societies, which insist on bringing back the original equality of the upper and lower limbs. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Hague and make a few purchases there for me. But, mark well, without saying that you come there in my employ, or that you have a contract with me. I should much prefer your assuming the appearance of belonging to my enemies, and sounding in unison with them the trumpet of abuse." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... been criticised for stony-heartedness, for opportunism, and for selfish abuse of her husband's vast wealth. She has been likened to an experimental chemist, who mixes discordant elements together in order to watch the results, chilling them in ice or heating them over the fire, until the lives burst in fragments or the colour slowly fades out of them. ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... to pride himself more on his will than on his talent. Though Talent has its germ in a cultivated gift, Will means the incessant conquest of his instincts, of proclivities subdued and mortified, and difficulties of every kind heroically defeated. The abuse of smoking encouraged Lousteau's indolence. Tobacco, which can lull grief, inevitably numbs ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... of the Dongola province were despised and disliked in the Southern Soudan, it is not at first apparent why Mohammed should have resented so bitterly the allusion to his birthplace. But abuse by class is a dangerous though effective practice. A man will perhaps tolerate an offensive word applied to himself, but will be infuriated if his nation, his rank, or ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... there is heroism unrequited, or paid with misery; vice on thrones, corruption in high places, nobleness in poverty or even in chains, the gentle devotion of woman rewarded by brutal neglect or more brutal abuse and violence; everywhere want, misery, over-work, and under-wages. Add to these the Atheist's creed,—a body without a soul, an earth without a Heaven, a world without a God; and what a Pandemonium would ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... performance upon the audience. Every Greek was a trained critic, and as unsparing in his hisses as he was lavish in his applause. Many a singer far better than this absurd fop had been driven amid execration and abuse from the platform. But now, as the man stopped and wiped the abundant sweat from his fat face, the whole assembly burst into a delirium of appreciation. The shepherd held his hands to his bursting head, and felt that his reason must be leaving him. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... drove but Mabruk the Little, who, though generally stolid, stood to his work like a man. Bombay and Uledi were far behind, with the most jaded donkeys. Shaw was in charge of the cart, and his experiences were most bitter, as he informed me he had expended a whole vocabulary of stormy abuse known to sailors, and a new one which he had invented ex tempore. He did not arrive until two o'clock next morning, and was ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... There had been a question indeed whether young Momson should be received at the school,—because of the quasi connection with the arch-enemy; but Squire Momson of Buttercup, the boy's father, had set that at rest by bursting out, in the Doctor's hearing, into violent abuse against "the close-fisted, vulgar old faggot." The son of a man imbued with such proper ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... almost every other blessing which they could desire, are still unhappy from the malice and ill-will they meet with on every side; and being so inferior in numbers, they must submit to the insults and abuse they are daily exposed to, while the blood boils in their veins to resent them. Thus situated, many of them have abandoned the settlement and gone to the United States, where they enjoy the fruits of ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... rasad rasani) above described is one of the necessary evils of Oriental life. It will be observed that the author, though so keenly sensitive to the abuses attending the system, proposes no substitute for it, and confesses that the small attempt he made to check abuse was a failure. From time immemorial it has been the custom for Government officials in India to be supplied with necessaries by the people of the country through which their camps pass. Under native Governments no officials ever dream of paying for anything. In British territory requisitions ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... other hand, among professed physical philosophers, the great abuse of theories and hypotheses is, that their promulgators soon regard them, not as aids to science, to be changed if occasion should require, but as absolute natural truths; they look to that as an end, which is in fact but a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the figure humped up under the light silk cover. He had long patience. He might have been a stick or stone under his master's abuse. But he was not a stick or a stone. It seemed too that suddenly his soul expanded. No man had ever called him a fool, and he had worn a decoration in France. He knew what he was going to do. And for the first time in many months he felt himself a ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... English women handled as M. Paul that morning handled them: he spared nothing—neither their minds, morals, manners, nor personal appearance. I specially remember his abuse of their tall stature, their long necks, their thin arms, their slovenly dress, their pedantic education, their impious scepticism(!), their insufferable pride, their pretentious virtue: over which he ground his teeth malignantly, and looked as if, had he dared, he would have said singular things. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... of his clothes, and making him look like an awkward genie just let out of his bottle. He will come down here and print impressions of his muddy boots all over the carpet, and he'll sit on your Gobelin tapestry, my lady, in his wet overcoat; and he'll abuse you if you remonstrate, and will ask why people have chairs that are not to be sat upon, and why you don't live ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... considerable family at this day. An idle, good-natured, happy-go-lucky fellow, he lived, presumably, in the village of Catskill, and began his long sleep in 1769. His wife was a shrew, and to escape her abuse Rip often took his dog and gun and roamed away to the Catskills, nine miles westward, where he lounged or hunted, as the humor seized him. It was on a September evening, during a jaunt on South Mountain, that he met a stubby, silent man, of goodly ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... me; but I can make a noise and look dirty, wash myself in cold water, go barefoot all winter, and then, like Momus, find fault with everybody else; if any rich man sups luxuriously, I rail at, and abuse him; but if any of my friends or acquaintance fall sick, and want my assistance, I take ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... temper rose to the occasion; for, although he saw in Mrs. Belcher's petulance and indignation that his victory was half won, he could not quite submit to the abuse ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... subtleties and violations of the sense. This characteristic comes out in bold relief when we compare Rashi with his disciples, the Tossafists, who carry their niceties to an excess. It would be wrong to hold Rashi responsible for the abuse later made of controversy; while, on the other hand, praise is owing to him for the happy efforts he made to unravel the texts, not only for the purpose of explaining their meaning, but also to indicate possible ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... the emperor into the next room. The latter waved his hand, and the door closed upon him. As he reached the street Joseph heard the sharp, discordant tones of Therese Levasseur's voice, heaping abuse upon the head of her philosopher, because he had not completed his task, and they would not have a sou ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... will be the day after to-morrow," replied Pennie shortly. She did not like even Ethelwyn to abuse Nearminster, and she was beginning to be just a little tired of hearing so much ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton

... Germany, the literature of his court exercised an influence hardly less detrimental on the literature of Germany. No doubt, the literature of France stood far higher at that time than that of Germany. "Poet" was amongst us a term of abuse, while in France the Great Monarch himself did homage to his great poets. But the professorial poets who had failed to learn the lessons of good taste from the Greek and Roman classics, were not likely ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... explaining himself, when a lady richly dress'd came up to them, and giving Horatio a sudden pluck by the arm; villain! cried she. Madam, returned he, strongly amazed. Is the trifling conversation of Sanserre, resumed she, or this little creature to be preferred to a woman of that quality you have dared to abuse?—but this night has convinced her of your perfidy:—she sends you this, continued she, giving him a slap over the face as hard as she could, and be assured it is the last present you will ever receive ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... be good to me if on the right principles I relate my life to it. I can make the heat and the cold serve me, the winds and the floods, gravity and all the chemical and dynamical forces, serve me, if I take hold of them by the right handle. The bad in things arises from our abuse or misuse of them or from our wrong relations to them. A thing is good or bad according as it stands related to my constitution. We say the order of nature is rational; but is it not because our reason is the outcome of that order? Our well-being consists ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... colony, which, taken in connection with the two cases just referred to, throws a bright light on the unwritten laws then regulating this matter. Elizabeth, wife of John Williams, appeared with a petition asking for a divorce, and complaining of her husband because of his great abuse of, and "unaturall carryages towards her, in that by word and deed he had defamed her character and had refused to perform his duty towards her according to what the laws of God and man requireth." Her husband appeared and demanded trial of the issue by jury, who found the complaint to be just ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... writer, inured to abuse, and callous to criticism, here braves your severity;-neither ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... "Ay, you may abuse me as you please," said the good-natured old lady, "you have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot give her back again. So there I have the whip ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... twitted in the very court of justice to which he appealed for protection, for not having recourse to the hostile measure which in his despair he at last adopted, and for pursuing which he was tried for his life. Abuse went on in spite of the action of damages; Mr. Stuart finally addressed himself to the agent for the printer of the newspaper, and the agent gave up the manuscripts from which the libels had been printed. Mr. Stuart went to Glasgow to inspect them. He discovered his assailant. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various



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