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Mutilate   Listen
verb
Mutilate  v. t.  (past & past part. mutilated; pres. part. mutilating)  
1.
To cut off or remove a limb or essential part of; to maim; to cripple; to disfigure; to hack; as, to mutilate the body, a statue, etc.
2.
To destroy or remove a material part of, so as to render imperfect; as, to mutilate the orations of Cicero. "Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho."
Mutilated gear, Mutilated wheel (Mach.), a gear wheel from a portion of whose periphery the cogs are omitted. It is used for giving intermittent movements.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mutilate" Quotes from Famous Books



... small, that dares to vary by the merest fraction from the regulation standards. This is ostracism, and ostracism, so to speak, is a physiological organ of democracy. Democracy by using it mutilates the nation, without it democracy would mutilate itself. ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... extended far and wide among the old European ones. This minute little insect, whose scientific name is the anobium paniceum, bores through the leaves of old volumes, making sometimes holes which deface and mutilate the text. All our public libraries, doubtless, have on their shelves old folios in vellum or leather bindings, which present upon opening the disagreeable vision of leaves eaten through (usually before they crossed the sea) by these pernicious little ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... food because fashionable people eat pate de foie gras; or as the crew of a whaler breaks in on a colony of seals and clubs them to death in wholesale massacre because ladies want sealskin jackets; or as fanciers blind singing birds with hot needles, and mutilate the ears and tails of dogs and horses. Let cruelty or kindness or anything else once become customary and it will be practised by people to whom it is not at all natural, but whose rule of life is simply ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540. It was not common for the Indians of the West to burn or mutilate trees, and as it was common for the Spaniards to do so, and as these hackings in the tree seemed to have been made with some edged tool sharper than any possessed by the Indians, it at least seems probable that they were done by the Spaniards. At any rate, from the year 1540 until the day of ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... not put his poilu inconnu in the depths of a cathedral in order to bring an unbelieving crowd into the house of God, but puts him in the public way under the Arc de Triomphe. He does not say that the soldier died for King and Country, and then mutilate a text—"Greater love hath no man than this," but he inscribes—"Ici repose un soldat francais mort pour la patrie," and leaves the living to make their own reflections. His Paris is a city of statues and gardens but it is all dignified, it is all in good taste. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... great favourite, "Tom-Jim-Jack." Most "love-children" of peers would be contented (if they ever had them) with courtesy titles; but Lord David has been further favoured by Fortune and King James II., who has first induced the comprachicos to trepan and mutilate Clancharlie's real heir (afterwards Gwynplaine, the eponymous hero of the book), and has then made Lord David a "pair substitue"[115] on condition that he marries one of the king's natural daughters, the Duchess Josiane, a duchess ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... living and dead must alike toil for nutriment; and the race having been cannibal in the past, the spirits are so still. When the living ate the dead, horrified nocturnal imagination drew the shocking inference that the dead might eat the living. Doubtless they slay men, doubtless even mutilate them, in mere malice. Marquesan spirits sometimes tear out the eyes of travellers; but even that may be more practical than appears, for the eye is a cannibal dainty. And certainly the root-idea of the dead, at least in the far eastern islands, is to prowl for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they found in the desert, across the Moroccan border, the man who ran away from Bel Abbes before we came? Yes, I saw the picture. Ghastly! And to think it's the women who mutilate men like that! But I shan't try to escape by way of Morocco. The danger I'll run is only from being caught and sent to the penal battalion—the awful 'Batt d'Aff.' It's a bad enough danger, for I might as well be dead as in prison—better, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... however. Occasionally a stray bullet would carry off one of our men in his sleep. Sometimes these naked savages would stealthily creep in upon our sentries and with their sharp knives would overpower them and mutilate ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... Scotland, was evident from the fact that the government had not dared either to inflict punishment on the offenders or to grant relief to the sufferers. Was it not fit then that the Church of England should take warning? Was it reasonable to ask her to mutilate her apostolical polity and her beautiful ritual for the purpose of conciliating those who wanted nothing but power to rabble her as they had rabbled her sister? Already these men had obtained a boon which they ill deserved, and which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... another spur to industry. Every land is not so blessed." Many quotations from this able state paper have already been made in the preceding pages, though it is so brilliant a piece of work that to quote is only to mutilate. Its argument, denunciation, humor, and satire are interwoven in a masterly combination. The renowned "sketch in the lapidary style," prepared for the gravestone of Thomas and Richard Penn, with the introductory paragraphs, constitutes one of the finest assaults in political ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... Plutarch, that 'the brain of a phoenix is a pleasant bit, but that it causeth the headache.' Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have slain the phoenix, for it must of necessity be 'a vain design to destroy any species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days.' To which it is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel, he could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only woman in existence; for then there must have ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Father,—We are still very anxious here. The Lords, though they have passed the Irish Church Bill through its first stage, will very probably mutilate it in Committee. It will then be for the Ministers to decide whether they can with honour keep their places. I believe that they will resign if any material alteration should be made; and ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... to be very cautious—to examine the texts, and to proceed carefully by induction. There is one class of narratives especially, to which this principle must necessarily be applied. Such are narratives of supernatural events. To seek to explain these, or to reduce them to legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of theory; it is to make the observation of facts our groundwork. None of the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under scientific conditions. Observation, which has ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... for the Republicans to hold out the olive branch, to mutilate their own principles, and to bar the door against any ultimate constitutional abolition of slavery. Even the slave States still in the Union were not to be satisfied by all this, and the Confederacy gave it no heed. And now, in the background, was visible a rising force, in which the temper ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... hand—Buddhists, whose law forbids the killing, not only of men, but of animals; on the other hand—Christians, professing the law of brotherhood and love) like wild beasts on land and on sea are seeking out each other, in order to kill, torture, and mutilate each other in the most cruel way. What can this be? Is it a dream or a reality? Something is taking place which should not, cannot be; one longs to believe that it is a dream and to awake from it. But no, it is not a dream, ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy

... things that are on him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Veneer's. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place. You'll see to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the greatest master I know: a single word frequently opens to view an almost interminable vista of antecedent states of mind. Confined within the narrow limits of time, the poet is in many subjects obliged to mutilate the action, by beginning close to the last decisive stroke, or else he is under the necessity of unsuitably hurrying on its progress: on either supposition he must reduce within petty dimensions the grand ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... to enter one of these sanctuaries without reflecting on the rapid progress of irreligion among a people who, six months before, were, on their knees, adoring the effigies which, at that period, they were eager to mutilate and destroy. Iron crows and sledge-hammers were almost in a state of requisition. In the beginning, it was a contest who should first aim a blow at the nose of the Virgin Mary, or break the leg of her son. In one day, contracts were entered into ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... necessary result. It is very difficult to come across the best pur sang horses, as the Arabs are afraid of the Bey's taking a fancy to them, and taking them by force; and, consequently, they often purposely mutilate them, lest he should seize them to himself. There are also some very fine bazaars at Tunis, and the otto of roses there is especially excellent. Our Consul has a very fine, large house, and dispenses his hospitalities, &c., very generously ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... compensation and peace in the other world if you do not mutilate her; and when I turned to the mason's lean corpse, and looked at his hands, which were harder and rougher than my own, the demon whispered the same. Then I stood before the strong, stout corpse of the prophet Rui, who died of apoplexy, and I remembered the honor and the riches that he had enjoyed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... "have become the craftsman of Death, training my arm and intellect to be cunning in the butchery of my fellows! Wearing the instrument of torture at my side, and using the faculties God gave me to mutilate His image. Yet, from the pulpit and the statesman's chair, and far back through ages from the pages of history, precept and example have sought to record its justification, under the giant plea of necessity. But is it justified? Has man, in his ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... exact what homage they please from the poor serf-teachers, whom they dominate and whom they keep eternally under their thumb. They absolutely own and control all the secondary schools, with all their private profits and all their Government grants. In the University what they do not dominate they mutilate. Every appointment, from dispensary doctors to members of Parliament, must acknowledge their ownership, and pay toll to their despotism. The County Councils must contribute patronage according to their indications; the parish committees of the congested districts supplement ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... wedge graft or the bark graft. We have had equally good results with each. If any difference it is in favor of the side or bark graft which we prefer because it does not split or mutilate the stock, there is not the chance for decay, and the wounds heal over much quicker. On limbs three to four inches in diameter put in three ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... members. But, if so, the doctrine must be the same; the doctrine of the Old Church must live and speak in Anglican formularies, in the 39 Articles. Did it? Yes, it did; that is what I maintained; it did in substance, in a true sense. Man had done his worst to disfigure, to mutilate, the old Catholic Truth; but there it was, in spite of them, in the Articles still. It was there,—but this must be shown. It was a matter of life and death to us to show it. And I believed that it could be shown; I considered that those grounds of justification, which I ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... "to keep him from fighting for his country." Knowing the gentleman to be a northern man, she answered freely, saying that the country of herself and son was the whole country, and for it she was willing he should shed his last drop of blood, but not to divide and mutilate it, would she consent that he ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... It was reserved for monks and inquisitors, in the name of religion and the Gospel, to continue, through after centuries, those brutalities toward women of which gentlemen and knights had grown ashamed, save when (as in the case of the Albigense crusaders) monks and inquisitors bade them torture, mutilate, and burn, in the name of Him ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... evening of performance I was not aware what style of wig Mr. Farren meant to adopt, such matters being entirely at the discretion of performers of his standard. I have since mentioned to him the objections which have been pointed out to me, but he has sent me word that he cannot consent so to mutilate his appearance, adding that it is a wig he wore two years ago in a comedy called 'Lords and Commons.'" If this was true there can be little doubt that the wig had been dressed anew and curling-ironed into a Talleyrand ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... England, the practice has been to mutilate, curtail, and patch up a drama in Italian, in order to introduce favourite airs, selected from different authors, the contrast has always been broken thereby, without every one's knowing the reason: and since ignorant mercenary prompters, though Italians, have been employed ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... imperfect. It can only be increased by minute and patient study, by the rejection of surmise about him, and by the constant public playing of his plays, in the Shakespearean manner, by actors who will neither mutilate nor distort what the great mind ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... man who avoids all these faults, so as neither to transpose words in such a manner that every one must see that it is done on purpose, nor cramming in unnecessary words, as if to fill up leaks, nor aiming at petty rhythm, so as to mutilate and emasculate his sentences, and who does not always stick to one kind of rhythm without any variation, such a man avoids nearly every fault. For we have said a good deal on the subject of perfections, to which these manifest ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... a glimpse the custodian of legend. The man was illiterate, technically, but he knew by instinct, as his ancestors had known before him, that he was the guardian of the life of a song; he recognised that it was a scripture which he had no right to mutilate or alter. He had to the full that respect for a work of literature which is the best indication of a scholar, and for him at least the line was unbroken from the Ireland of heroes and minstrels to the hour when he chanted over the poem that some bard ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... eagerly opened the beautiful little casket, then dashed it with horror to the ground. "Prince!" she cried, "what can have induced you to mutilate yourself so cruelly? Could you imagine that I would ever wed a man who submitted to lose ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... does not hurt his neighbour? But Home Rulers are essentially one-sided in their estimate of tyranny, and things change their names according to the side on which they are ranged. To boycott a man, to mutilate his cattle,[F] to commit outrages on his family, and finally to murder him outright for paying his rent or taking an evicted farm, are all justifiable proceedings of righteous severity. But for a landlord to evict a tenant from the farm for which he will not pay the covenanted rent—will not, ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... life among us, whose occupations, one would think, tend to produce minds as callous as the mettle they work; lay a stronger claim to civilization, than in any other place with which I am acquainted. I am sorry to mutilate the compliment, when I mention the lower race of the other sex: no lady ought to be publicly insulted, let her appear in what dress she pleases. Both sexes, however, agree in exhibiting a mistaken pity, in cases of punishment, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... her copy back to be amended for the third time, she did not seem able to realize that their public wouldn't stand unions libres when not served up with a moral purpose—that no artistic apology for them would do. In the end, therefore, Rattray was obliged to mutilate the article himself, and to neutralize it here and there. He was justified in taking the trouble, for it was matter they wanted, on account of some expensive drawings of the locality that had been in hand a long time. Even then the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... In the same discussion Collins states that he knew of an instance in India in which a horse lay down, deliberately exposing his anus, and allowing the crows to pick and eat his whole rectum. In temporary insanity, in fury, or in grief, the lower animals have been noticed by naturalists to mutilate themselves. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... retain the confidence of your children do not threaten to mutilate the feet of their sensibilities for the sake of a narrow theory. I myself at least, after what I had experienced, would sooner have gone to the nearest police agent for intimate advice, than back to ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... on the market-place, the gold received as the price of their favours being offered to the goddess. This obligation only lasted for one day.[24] It was also customary for the priests of Adonis to mutilate themselves in imitation of the god, a distinct proof, if one were needed, of the ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... modern, generous way of fighting. When our country is invaded, and we drive back the invaders, we do not, if victorious, slaughter their chief men. Much less, when we invade a country, do we kill or mutilate all those who have endeavored to protect their own homes. Caesar has evidently much to boast, and among the Italians he has caused it to be believed. It suited Cicero to assert it in Caesar's ears. Caesar ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... from the letters is plain enough. But the first thing that the theorist does is to mutilate letters. He suppresses all those parts of a correspondence which tell against his theory. When these torn and bleeding passages are restored piously to their contexts they are destructive to the legend of tragic passion. They show (as Mr. Clement Shorter has pointed out) that throughout ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... our warfare pays no respect to international laws. It knows no indisciplined cruelty. But in the east the earth is saturated with the blood of women and children unmercifully butchered by the wild Russian troops, and in the west dumdum bullets mutilate the breasts of our soldiers. Those who have allied themselves with Russians and Servians, and present such a shameful scene to the world as that of inciting Mongolians and negroes against the white race, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... inquired Colomba. They all drew near to the horse, and at the sight of the creature's bleeding head and split ear there was a general outcry of surprise and indignation. My readers must know that among the Corsicans to mutilate an enemy's horse is at once a vengeance, a challenge, and a mortal threat. "Nothing but a bullet-wound can expiate ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... miles. He bids me tell you to follow to Huejugilla el Alto, where he says arrangements will be made for my ransom. Remember Jack Burk. He spoke of the mountains to the west of Zacatecas. Pacheco threatens to mutilate me and forward fragments to you if you do not follow to the point specified. He is watching me as I write, and one of his men will carry this letter to Mendoza, and deliver it. The situation is desperate, and it strikes me that it is best to comply with Pacheco's demands in ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... Vaughan no doubt tore them out himself, when he took his violent dislike to Swain. The act would be characteristic of a certain form of mania. Nobody else would have any motive for destroying them; in fact, no one else would dare mutilate a book ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... It is too long and clumsy, you see. What you really want for the purpose is something like this,"—and he whipped out of its sheath a rusty but keen-bladed Mexican cuchillo,—"something you can wield with a deft turn of the wrist, you know. The sabre is apt to tear and mutilate the flesh, especially when you use both hands." And Captain Buxton winked at the other subaltern and felt that he had said a ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... spruit, he believes that his officers have done their best for him. He is ordered to fall in upon the deck of a burning troopship and to stand at attention while Death inspects the ranks. He is besieged in a hill fort on the Indian frontier by a horde of fanatics eager to kill or to mutilate him. He lies wounded on the field of battle from which, after an indecisive engagement, each combatant has retired; and there, scorched by the mid-day sun and starved by the cold of the night, and perhaps also ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... that, brethren, the Cross of Christ is a commandment. For we miserably mutilate it, and sinfully as well as foolishly limit its application and its power, if we recognise it only—I was going to say mainly—as being the ground of our hope and of what we call our salvation, and do not recognise it as being the obligatory example of our lives, which we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... want my papers whole, and don't you dare to mutilate them." By way of letting her down easier I added: "Don't give yourself ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... avoiding scandal by too hazardous a style of writing in the future. Sterne, in reply, protests that he would "willingly give no offence to mortal by anything which could look like the least violation of either decency or good manners;" but—and it is an important "but"—he cannot promise to "mutilate everything" in Tristram "down to the prudish humour of every particular" (individual), though he will do his best; but, in any case, "laugh, my Lord, I will, and as loudly as I can." And laugh he did, and in such Rabelaisian ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... had my way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. For every man that they have tortured, we must torture one of theirs. For every child mutilated, we must mutilate ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... rights," and the law describes them as sacred—however immoral or repugnant to common sense and common humanity they may be. So the effort to abolish the "right" of a slaver to starve, suffocate, mutilate, torture, or murder a black man in whom he had acquired a property right by the simple process of kidnapping required more than half a century to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... primate, and free from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sate at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... has he varied from him, unless he conceived that, in so doing, some practical advantage would be gained. He hopes, therefore, to escape the censure so frequently and so justly awarded to those unfortunate innovators who have not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture the text of that able writer, merely to gratify an itching propensity to figure in the world as authors, and gain an ephemeral popularity by arrogating to themselves ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... abstraction &c (taking) 789; garbling, &c v.. mutilation, detruncation^; amputation; abscission, excision, recision; curtailment &c 201; minuend, subtrahend; decrease &c 36; abrasion. V. subduct, subtract; deduct, deduce; bate, retrench; remove, withdraw, take from, take away; detract. garble, mutilate, amputate, detruncate^; cut off, cut away, cut out; abscind^, excise; pare, thin, prune, decimate; abrade, scrape, file; geld, castrate; eliminate. diminish &c 36; curtail &c (shorten) 201; deprive of &c (take) 789; weaken. Adj. subtracted &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... as ever they were in the past, and there seems little reason to doubt that the good condition of wells, cromlechs, and other antiquities in the county, is due to the widespread traditions that dreadful harm will befall those who disturb or mutilate any ancient remains. ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath

... impartial trial! How much does nature approve thy laws, as consistent with her own feelings, while she absolutely turns pale, trembles, and recoils, at the institutions of these receivers! Execrable men! you do not murder the horse, on which you only ride; you do not mutilate the cow, which only affords you her milk; you do not torture the dog, which is but a partial servant of your pleasures: but these unfortunate men, from whom, you derive your very pleasures and your fortunes, you torture, mutilate, murder at ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... so widespread that freedom from it is the exception. It is painfully common to hear public speakers mutilate the king's English. If they do not actually murder it, as Curran once said, they often ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... dispose of his person, his industry, and his labour. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sensible that there is no appeal from his master." Where the slave is placed by law entirely under the control of the man ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... tattooing, nor do they mutilate the lips or nose, but what they lack in these respects they make ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... hand then, mutilate them; but do not kill them!" cried Catharine, passionately. "Ascertain at least whether their crime is so grievous as they want to make you believe, my husband. Oh, it is so easy now to be accused as a traitor and atheist! All that is needed for ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... (1841). This, in the language of its author and his friends, was the famous attempt to clear the Articles from the glosses encrusting them like barnacles, and to bring out the old catholic truth that man had done his worst to disfigure and to mutilate, and yet in spite of all man's endeavour it was in the Articles still. Mr. Gladstone, as we have seen, regarded Tract Ninety with uneasy doubts as to its drift, its intentions, the way in which the church and the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... individual turns upon himself the revolutionary frenzy that he cannot otherwise exercise. Russia is full of these madmen, who, not content with committing arson or throwing bombs at hazard into the crowd, finally mutilate themselves, like the Skopzis ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... men and women! Dash the children's brains out against the stone wall! Violate young girls! Mutilate their fair bodies so that they will be unseemly when they are found by the husband or father. Burn, steal, kill—but remember that your Kaiser and the War Staff have promised to stand between you and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... house, not to be excused from the intrusion of heresy? Dost thou come," he said, "to enjoy the hopes which fete holds out to thy demented and accursed sect, to see the bosom of destruction sweep away the pride of old religion—to deface our shrines,—to mutilate and lay waste the bodies of our benefactors, as well as their sepulchres—to destroy the pinnacles and carved work of God's ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... Quakeress. She had perceived, she thought, a relation between it and the clouded brow, and was bent on finding for the brow's owner as amazing a part in the tale as could be contrived by any piecing together of its facts which did not absolutely mutilate them. And these facts already she had begun to collect when by the mention of this "Phyllis" she discovered that old Joy had at least a share of the facts and under due ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... his life—his marriage—gave them their opportunity. Then they came forth, threw down the mask which they had hitherto worn, to put on one more hideous still; overturned the statue from the pedestal upon which the public had raised it, and tried to mutilate its remains. But as the stuff of which it was made was a marble which could not be broken, they only defiled, insulted, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... and his children. In what other country than in Germany is such a thing conceivable? Not in France, at all events. Now, if my readers want another document to show how customary it is in the German Army to mutilate the wounded, well, I will borrow one from the notebook of Private Paul Gloede of the Ninth Battalion of Pioneers, Ninth Corps, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... or a curia, the public treasure, or a private fund, the names and surnames of public or private individuals; prerogatives or favors granted, such as the right of asylum, of hospitality, of citizenship; the punishments pronounced against those who should destroy or mutilate the monument; the conditions of treaties and alliances; the indications ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... prevent his humming now and then pieces which struck his fancy; and as these little reminiscences usually recurred to him in the mornings, he regaled me with them while he was being dressed. The air that I have heard him thus mutilate most frequently was that of ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... insolence so far, as to declare that he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (which was absolutely rejected by Attalus) to the baseness, and perhaps the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... roots are tough and the trunks are strong, and the sap wells surely up from those mysterious sources where, in darkness and silence, Nature works her wondrous transformations,—proving, through each waxing and waning year, by bud and leaf and branch, that, thwart and mutilate and deny her as you may, she is the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of victory, as had done their savage ancestors. The effect of these dances is marvellous. By a contagious shout they excite each other. They reach a frenzy which communicates itself with hypnotic effect to the whole dancing circle. At times men tear their hair, cut their flesh or even mutilate their limbs for life. The "tom-tom," or Indian drum, adds to the power of monotonous rhythm and to the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... persecuted, but they number nearly six thousand, and regard themselves as the real Christians, the only true followers of Christ. They castrate themselves, and sometimes amputate the genitals entirely; the women even mutilate their breasts as a ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... of the revolution in science and technology—the harnessing of steam, the internal combustion engine, the air plane, electronics, plastics, and the release of atomic energy—were used to mutilate, destroy and kill. During the half century that began in 1910, tens of millions were mobilized, fed, taught, armed, and led to the slaughter fields by the masters of western civilization in two long orgies of wholesale destruction and mass murder—1914-18 and 1936-1945. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... in criminals, savages, and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... she receives the guests at the sheep-shearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual character: but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... throughout the ages, with a different name for their Hero in each new recension, cannot pass unrecognised by the student, though they may naturally and rightly be ignored by the devotee; and when they are used as a weapon to mutilate or destroy the majestic figure of the Christ, they must be met, not by denying the facts, but by understanding the deeper meaning of the stories, the spiritual truths that the legends expressed under ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... him why he had been rescued from the fire. Doubtless his gigantic struggles had been observed by the onlooker, and he was considered too good a man to burn. They would keep him for a slave, possibly mutilate him first. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... let no idea of piety, nor the face even of a father presented to you, move you: mutilate with your sword those venerable ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... he was despatched by Billings and Wood striking him on the head with a hatchet. The murderers then held council as to the best mode of concealing their crime, and it was determined that they should mutilate and dispose of the body. They cut off the head, Mrs. Hayes holding a pail to catch the blood; and she proposed that the head should be boiled until the flesh came from the skull. This advice was rejected ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various

... the frontier, which was not so very long ago, just one tick in the great clock of history, it was permissible to straddle one's enemy when one got him down, and churn his head against the ground; to gouge out his eyes; to bite off his ears; to kick him, carve him, mutilate him in various and unsportsman-like and unspeakable ways. But it was the high crime of the code to slug him with brass or steel knuckles, commonly called knucks. The man who carried this reenforcement for the natural fist in his pocket and used it in a fight was held the lowest of all ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... to be credited, yet is true, that in the anxiety of the Northern merchant to conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher was found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer's picture. He intended his edition for use in the Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell into the hands of those who believed literally in a gospel which was to preach ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the terrible imprecations which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one, and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a stone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else upon it, or carry,it away to a place where it will be no longer seen,—this man, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon him looks of wrath, may they destroy ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... speaker, addressing Captain Prescott, "he has been a true friend to our race for years, and we must do him what kindness we can. If we leave these bodies here, the Shawnees will return and mutilate them—" ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... he stood Nick could not see the face of the body clearly enough to form a decision. If, however, this was only an ordinary subject for the dissecting-table, why did Dr. Jarvis mutilate it with such caution and ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Procrustes treated his victims,—he must stretch some, and mutilate others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. "As the third or positive stage had accomplished its advent in his ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... pretended deserter from Darius, with a view to obtaining an influence and a command within the city, which should enable him afterward to deliver it up to the besiegers; and, in order to convince the Babylonians that his desertion was real, he resolved to mutilate himself in a manner so dreadful as would effectually prevent their imagining that the injuries which he suffered were inflicted by any contrivance of his own. He accordingly cut off his hair and his ears, and mutilated his face in a manner too shocking to be here detailed, inflicting ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... contenting herself with keeping a watch on the man's movements, though to the very innermost part of her she longed to fling herself upon him to mutilate or to kill. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... of, and obey the "voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam." This science has done, while yet in her infancy. What she will do in her maturity, who dare predict? At least, in the face of such facts as these, those who bid us fear, or restrain, or mutilate science, bid us commit an act of folly, as well as of ingratitude, which can only harm ourselves. For science has as yet done nothing but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever done? When any one will show me a single result of science, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... startled when he read the particulars of their scheme, which was no other than an intention to sally upon him when he should be altogether unprovided against such an attack, cut off his ears, and otherwise mutilate him in such a manner that he should have no cause to be vain of his person for the future. Incensed as he was against the brutal disposition of his own father's son, he could not help being moved at the integrity and tenderness of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... French. The source is Greco-Lat. manganum, apparatus, whence Ital. mangano, with both meanings. The verb mangle, to mutilate, is unrelated. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... power of Character, and break against the forms of firmly-founded Beauty, as the waves of a stream that just fills, but cannot overflow its banks. Otherwise, this striving after moderation would resemble only the method of those shallow moralists, who, the more readily to dispose of Man, prefer to mutilate his nature; and who have so entirely removed every positive element from actions that the people gloat over the spectacle of great crimes, in order to refresh themselves at last with the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... said that he could not conceive how anything could daunt or cast down a man who had an aim in life. "They that have had a guid schoolin' and do nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye something ayont need never be weary." I have had to mutilate the dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words, something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for me: and that from a man cleaning a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of Demeter of the Sicilians. But that does not necessarily prove any original connection between Peruvians, Scotch and Sicilians, any more than the fact that the negroes of Barbadoes make clay figures of their enemies and mutilate them, as the Greeks and Accadians of old used to do, proves any connection between the negroes and the Greeks and Accadians. If we find the Australians spreading dust round the body of a dead man in order ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... Comprachicos. They bought children, and understood how to mutilate and deform them, thus making them valuable for exhibition at fairs. But an act of parliament had just been passed to destroy the trade of the Comprachicos. Hence this flight from Portland, and the forsaking of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... narrative of Livy, who was a man of fine imagination, these stories retain much of their genuine character. Nor could even the tasteless Dionysius distort and mutilate them into mere prose. The poetry shines, in spite of him, through the dreary pedantry of his eleven books. It is discernible in the most tedious and in the most superficial modern works on the early times of Rome. It enlivens the dulness of the Universal History, and gives a charm ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... did not direct his disciples to undertake to convince the people by their testimony, but charged them to wait for divine power. Accordingly they did wait. Now look at the account which we have, of what took place on the day of pentecost. I will not mutilate this account by quoting parts, there is no need of quoting what you have perfectly in your memory. Take particular notice of what Peter said to the people who had been accessary to the crucifixion of Jesus. He who was so intimidated as to deny Christ, now stands in the midst ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite! What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this Expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Can you eradicate from memory and from history ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay

... adventure a pleasing argument whereby it may be proved and known that he is not wise who does not make liberal use of his knowledge so long as God may give him grace. The story is about Erec the son of Lac—a story which those who earn a living by telling stories are accustomed to mutilate and spoil in the presence of kings and counts. And now I shall begin the tale which will be remembered so long as Christendom endures. This ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... base money. He changed the standard or name of current coin with a view to counterbalance the mischief arising from the illicit coinage of the nobles, and especially to baffle the base traffic of the Jews and Lombards, who occasionally would obtain possession of a great part of the coin, and mutilate each piece before restoring it to circulation; in this way they upset the whole monetary economy of the realm, and secured immense profits to themselves (Figs. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... to you of that eternal life. And though this be painful and laborious yet consider, that it is but the cutting off of a rotten member, that would corrupt the whole body, and the want of it will never maim or mutilate the body, for you shall live perfectly when sin is perfectly expired, and out of life, and according as sin is nearer expiring, and nearer the grave, your souls are nearer that endless life. If this do not move us, what can be said next? What shall he ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... no novelty there, many of these free lances were born in camp, and had the inherited habits of generations of robbers, so that it was to them a second nature to mutilate, imprison, and torture, and slay. They looked upon burghers and peasants as butchers do on sheep, or rather they looked upon them as beings made that warriors might wring their hidden hoards from them, by torture and violence, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake



Words linked to "Mutilate" :   garble, distort, gouge, mar, maim, cut up, damage, mutilator, murder, falsify, mangle, mutilation



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