"Signification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Economia, had, as I have shown, pp. 49-51, a large signification when applied to the divine ordinances; it also had a definite application to the duties of Christians, whether clergy or laity, in preaching, in instructing or catechizing, or in ordinary intercourse with the ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the indentured servants came from this class. Some were persons of culture, and, on rare occasions, of means. The word "servant" did not at that time have the menial signification that it has acquired in modern times, for it was applied to all that entered upon a legal agreement to remain in the employment of another for a prescribed time.[167] There are many instances of persons of gentle blood becoming indentured ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... signification, my dear," answered Julia laughing, "for it is not so very COMMON. Every body cannot have ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... permissible by the blessed Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed by an oath, because 'then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself?' ... It is admissible, therefore, to use words and sentences which have a double signification, and leave the hapless hearer to take which of them he may choose. What proof have I, then, that by 'mean it? I never said it!' Dr. Newman does not signify, I did not say it, but I did mean ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... fogs which that country is much subject unto, came flying to our ships, which causeth us to suppose that the country is both more tolerable and also habitable within than the outward shore maketh show or signification. ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... soldiers, moving hurriedly down the river bank toward the Castle. A band richly caparisoned, carrying two flags, one green, the other red, moved at their head. The former, you may know, has a religious signification, and is seldom seen in the field except a person of high rank be present. It is my opinion, therefore, that our arrest has some reference to the arrival of such a personage. In confirmation you may yet hear the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... "the large river", or the river PAR EXCELLENCE. Luambeji, Luambesi, Ambezi, Ojimbesi, and Zambesi, etc., are names applied to it at different parts of its course, according to the dialect spoken, and all possess a similar signification, and express the native idea of this magnificent stream being the main ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Assent, he shall declare, according to his Discretion, but subject to the Provisions of this Act and to Her Majesty's Instructions, either that he assents thereto in the Queen's Name, or that he withholds the Queen's Assent, or that he reserves the Bill for the Signification of ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous
... a Mayan word. It may be a nominal form from the verb tzen-tah, and would then have the signification, "a built-up place," or one well stocked with provisions; or, it may be a patronymic from the Tzentals, the tribe which occupied this region at the time, as ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... establishments of the East India Company, in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, were administered separately, each with a president and a council formed of agents of the Company. The name of Presidency was applied to the whole territory subject to this authority. This expression has no longer its real signification; however, it is still employed in official acts. British India is no longer divided into presidencies, but into provinces, eight of which are very extensive countries, having separate governments. The presidencies of Bombay ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... of the word Aunash, is to lay a fine. It is used in Deut. xxii. 19. They shall amerce him in one hundred shekels," and in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 3—"He condemned (mulcted) the land in a hundred talents of gold.—This is the general use of the word, and its primary signification. That avenging the death of the servant, was neither imprisonment, nor stripes, nor amercing the master in damages, but that it was taking the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... come down to us with a distinct and characteristic designation, is known as that of the wild band of tories who overran the South and West of Ireland both before the Revolution and after it. The actual signification of the word tory, though now, and for a long time, the appellative of a political party, is scarcely known except to the Irish scholar and historian. The term proceeds from the Irish noun toir, a pursuit, a chase; and from that comes ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Geology, in the narrow acceptation of the word, is confined to the investigation of the materials which compose this terrestrial globe;—in its more extended signification, it relates, also, to the examination of the different layers or strata of society, as they are to be met with in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... be diverted from the mournful idea on which I had so long brooded. He was a man well skilled in his profession, but had read and thought very little on matters unconnected with it. He had no idea that the marks had any particular signification, or were anything else but common and fortuitous ones. That I became at all acquainted with their nature was owing to a ludicrous circumstance which I ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... of this section of the Palatine Anthology distinguishes the {sumpotika}, the epigrams of youth and pleasure, from the {skoptika}, the witty or humorous verses which have accidentally in modern English come almost to absorb the full signification of the word epigram. The latter come principally under two heads: one, where the point of the epigram depends on an unexpected verbal turn, the other, where the humour lies in some gross exaggeration of statement. Or these may be combined; ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... as the train had passed, Christopher asked who was being buried. It was a simple burgher, it was not Gellert; and in the deep breath which Christopher drew lay a double signification: on the one hand, was joy that Gellert was not dead; on the other, a still small voice whispered to him that he had now really promised to give him the wood: ah! but whom had he promised?—himself: and it is easy to argue with ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... ones being abdominal, and, I presume, the four terminal segments. That the cavity in which the thorax is lodged, in the larva and therefore in the mature Cirripede, is simply formed by the backward production of the carapace, does not require any discussion. The valves have no homological signification. ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... bravo, to use the expression of your country, would only have to commit a justifiable murder by first insulting him at whom he aims with rude words. The insulted person replies by a voluntary gesture, on the signification of which one may be mistaken, and you will admit that the bravo is the offended party, and that he has ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his observations had settled the supralunar ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Moses. Set side by side, the mere surfaces could never unite in any harmony of design. Therefore one must go below the surface, and bring up the supposed secondary, or still more remote meaning,—that diviner signification held in reserve, in recessu divinius aliquid, latent in some stray touch of Homer, or figure of speech in ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... distinguishable? What is spirit? and what is matter? What does faith rest upon? What is to be said of inspiration, and authority, and the essential attributes of a church? These, and other questions of the most essential religious importance, as the nature and signification of the doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incarnation of Christ, of Redemption, of Atonement, discussions as to the relations between faith and morals, and on the old, inevitable enigmas of necessity and liberty, all more or less entered into that mixed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... memory that he had been betrothed on the festival of Saint Nicodemus and wedded on Saint Synesius' day. A noble hound called Salve, or as we should say Welcome, spoke to him of the birth of his first born, and every dog in like manner had a name of some signification; thus Ann took it not at all amiss that he should call a fine young setter after her name. There had long been a Gred, short ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the 5th July 1838. But as such pieces have been hitherto reserved as your Majesty's Maundy money, and as such especially belong to your Majesty's service, Mr Goulburn considers that a coinage of them for general use could not take place without a particular signification of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Italian states are lying before us—the returns of the Governments themselves—but unfortunately none of them come down later than 1839, so that it is impossible, however desirable, to carry out fully the comparison for 1840. Not that it is of any signification for more than uniformity, because, on referring to years antecedent to 1839, the relation between imports of cottons and re-exports, with the places from which imported and to which re-exports took place, is not sensibly disturbed. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... to Astrology, in Three parts; containing the use of an Ephemerides, and how to erect a Figure of Heaven to any time proposed; also the signification of the Houses, Planets, Signs and Aspects; the explanation of all useful terms of Art: With plain and familiar Instructions for the Resolution of all manner of Questions, and exemplified in every particular thereof by Figures set and judged. The Second treateth of Elections, shewing their ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... deference, ventured upon the adoption of the original Terra Australis; and of this term I shall hereafter make use when speaking of New Holland and New South Wales in a collective sense; and when using it in the most extensive signification, the adjacent isles, including that of Van Diemen, must be understood to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Q. Explain the signification of the seven planets which are enclosed in a triangle, that forms the rays of the exterior circles, and are enclosed in the grand triangle. A. The seven planets, according to philosophy, represent the seven principal passions of the life of man; those passions are very useful when they are used ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... not only to say and sing her Breviary, but to know the signification in English. There were translations of the Lord's Prayer and Creed in the hands of all careful and thoughtful people, even among the poor, if they had a good parish priest, or had come under the influence of the better sort of friars. In convents where discipline was kept up the meaning ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... simony and gluttonous excess being glosed under such specious terms as "arrangement" and "moderate use of creature comforts," as if God could not penetrate the thoughts of even the most corrupt hearts, to say nothing of the signification of words, and would suffer Himself to be misled after the manner of men by the names of things. Which matters, with many others which are not to be mentioned, our modest and sober-minded Jew found by no means to his liking, so that, his curiosity being fully satisfied, he ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... complexion, the expressiveness which familiar thoughts attain by novel juxtaposition. In other words, the form is new. But then, in the creation of philosophical literature, as in all other products of art, form, in the full signification of that word, is everything, and the mere ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... performed by a chorus of dancers, in harmony with the voice; certain movements in dancing correspondent to the subject, which were all along considered as a constitutive part of the performance. The dancing even governed the measure of the stanzas; as the signification of the words strophe and antistrophe, plainly imports, they might be properly called danced himns. The truth is, that tragedy and comedy, made also originally to be sung, but which, in process of time, upon truer principles ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... As the origin and signification of the day and month, names of the Maya calendar, and of the symbols used to represent these time periods, are now being discussed by students of Mexican and Central American paleography, I deem it advisable to present the result of my investigations in this line. The present paper, however, ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... the word has too limited a signification. To characterise the condition of a Mormon wife, we must resort to the phraseology ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... members. I wish you would take it so, and flatter yourselves no more with church titles, as if these were sufficient evidences for your salvation. You would all be called Christians, but it fears me you know not many of you the true meaning and signification of that word, the most comfortable sense of it is hid from you. The meaning of it is, that a man is renewed by Christ in the spirit of his mind. As Christ and the Spirit are inseparable, so a Christian and a spiritual nature are not to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... lexicographer knew man in general much better than Crabbe did; but he nowhere shows anything like Crabbe's power of seizing and reproducing man in particular. Crabbe is one of the first and certainly one of the greatest of the "realists" who, exactly reversing the old philosophical signification of the word, devote themselves to the particular only. Yet of the three small volumes by which he, after his introduction to Burke, made his reputation, and on which he lived for a quarter of a century, the first and the last display comparatively little of this peculiar ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... The like signification was at the same time sent to all other Ambassadors and Foreign Ministers here that they would not send, the which, in compliance therewith, they forbear, all but the French, who upon the very morning, the hour of my audience approaching, sent four of his gentlemen, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... is, whiche sheweth the signification of sorowe, or of anger, by callyng vpon eyther a man, aplace, or a thynge? Cicero in hys oratour: Odeceitful hope of men, and frayle fortune: & our vayne contencions, whych oft[en] tymes are broken in the myd way, rushe downe, and in the ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... his wages from week to week, by force of custom (wherever there is any considerable division of labor), and also sufficient to purchase tools and materials. The various elements of capital are materials, instruments, and subsistence, giving "instruments" its wide signification which includes money (the tool of exchange), and other necessary appliances of each special ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... sense of the ancients in their well-known division of the objects of cognition into aiotheta kai noeta, or to share it with speculative philosophy, and employ it partly in a transcendental, partly in a psychological signification.] ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... is nothing to prevent an individual from making religion a mask of hypocrisy. If in using these practices, he does not mean what they imply, he lies as plainly as if he used words without regard for their signification. These practices, too, may become absurd, ridiculous and even abominable. When this occurs, it is easily explained by the fact that the mind and heart of man are never proof against imbecility and depravity. There are as many fools ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the first Christians called Christianity THE WAY, and explain the signification of ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... vertical thickness of the peat-bog represents a phase in the progressive change from wood-tissue to lignite, using this term with its common signification to indicate, not necessarily carbonized ligneous tissue, but plant-tissue that belongs to a past though modern geological age—i.e., Tertiary, Cretaceous, Jurassic, or Triassic. These lignites or modern coals are only peat beds which have been buried for a longer or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... no. Now, your reading play is of a different stamp, and must have wit and meaning in it. These latter I call your substantive, as being able to support themselves. The former are your adjective, as what require the buffoonery and gestures of an actor to be joined with them to shew their signification. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... another style of crossing which when practicable, may, it is believed, be made a means to the highest degree of improvement attainable, and especially in the breeding of horses. The word "breed" is often used with varying signification. In order to be understood, let me premise that I use it here simply to designate a class of animals possessing a good degree of uniformity growing out of the fact of a common origin and of their having been reared under similar conditions. The method proposed is to unite animals ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... d'excellence les seigneurs, elles ne leur donnoient pas meme de la seigneurie." This would hardly be applicable to the manners of the French. The principal of Lucinde's creditors, "se nommoit Bernard Astuto, qui meritoit bien son nom." The signification of the name is clear in Spanish; but in French the allusion is totally without meaning. This probably escaped Le Sage in the hurry of composition, or it would have been easy to have removed so clear a mark of translation. The following ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... His Excellency, or the Army, or the Shippens. Neither did they resolve the doubts that might have been entertained concerning the manner of men who frequented the home of Peggy and her sisters; nor the Alliance which had just been established, nor the vital signification of the event. They just talked over a field of affairs none of which bore any special relation to any one save their own selves. At length the old clock felt constrained to speak up and frown at them for their unusual ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... to answer it. He does not think they are prisoners— certainly not Conchita. She is only being taken back along with her mistress. About the senorita, his mistress, he heard some words pass between Uraga and Roblez, but without comprehending their signification. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... African epithet for the whites is said, in the original, to bear the complimentary signification of 'devil.'] ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... drifting dead leaves, and a steel-grey sky; and the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton was glorified by the presence of Lady Maulevrier and suite. Her ladyship's suite was on this occasion limited to three servants—her French maid, a footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward, but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any other member of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in my 50th year that the question "What is life" had reduced me to utter despair. Various queries clustered round this central interrogation. "Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there any signification in life that can overcome inevitable death?" I found that in human knowledge no real answer was forthcoming to such yearnings. None of the theories of the philosophers gave any satisfaction. In my search for a solution of life's problem I felt like a traveller lost in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... nocturnal marauders who divide their existence into two parts, consecrating it to the duties of theft and riot. It may be supposed that slang is the only language of this delightful society: it is generally in French, but so perverted from its primitive signification, that there is not a member of the distinguished "company of forty" who can flatter himself with a full knowledge of it, and yet the "dons of Guillotin's" have their purists; those who assert that slang took its rise in the East, and without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... was less eagerness on the part of the young monarch to behold his bride than on that of his subjects. We will not say that he had exactly imbibed the principles of a libertine, but it is well known that he was a gallant in the most liberal signification of the term, and that his amours extended to all ranks. He had, therefore, until he had well nigh reached his thirtieth year, evaded the curb of matrimony; and it was not until the necessity of his marriage, for the welfare of his country, was urged upon him by his nobles, that he agreed to take ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... signals, Nos. 222-4, for doubling the van, doubling the rear, and for the rear to double the rear. From Hoste also it borrows the method of giving battle to a superior force, which the French writer apparently borrowed from Torrington. The signification of the signal is as follows: 'No. 232. When inferior in number to the enemy, and to prevent being doubled upon in the van or rear, for the van squadron to engage the headmost ships of the enemy's line, the rear their sternmost, and the centre that of the enemy, whose ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... THEM. A great philosopher [Dr. Berkeley.] has disputed the received opinion in this particular, and has asserted, that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. As I look upon this to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters, I shag here endeavour to confirm it by ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... wrong however in thinking that Cic. only uses the word once in the plural (Ad Att. II. 18, 1), for it occurs N.D. II. 20, and elsewhere. Perspicua: [Greek: enarge], a term used with varying signification by all the later Greek schools. Verum illud quidem: "which is indeed what they call 'true'." Impressum: n. on 18. Percipi atque comprehendi: Halm retains the barbarous ac of the MSS. before the guttural. It is quite impossible that ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a measure out of sympathy with our surroundings. We have heard and we can never forget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us. There is more in that word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found. But this, I think, is part of its signification, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... the widows and orphans who trusted in me, as well as a source of strength, security, and honour to the nation and its rulers, and I resolved that henceforth my name, the Bank of England, should carry with it a meaning wherever it was heard, far beyond its original signification; it should be another term for wealth, honour, and thrift—a something to be trusted, and in which nothing foul, mean, or sordid ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... this text harmonise with these constantly repeated assertions that Christ has done all for us, and that we have nothing to do, and can do nothing? To answer this question, we have to remember that that scriptural expression, 'salvation,' is used with considerable width and complexity of signification. It sometimes means the whole of the process, from the beginning to the end, by which we are delivered from sin in all its aspects, and are set safe and stable at the right hand of God. It sometimes means one or other of three different parts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... learning, which has never deserted me. Before the termination of the voyage. I could express myself in English, so as to be understood as well as are most children of my age; and as Sir Charles would not allow me to be taught nonsense, I put a right signification ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... in various senses, which, though they cover a wide range, are yet very closely allied to one another, and to the initial conception in which they all have birth. Its primitive signification, as its structure(6) indicates, is manliness. Now what preeminently distinguishes, not so much the human race from the lower animals, as the full-grown and strong man from the feebler members of his own race, is the power of resolute, strenuous, persevering conflict and resistance. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... seems here to signify a hill. Its common signification is a brook. Milton in Comus uses bosky bourn in the same sense perhaps with Shakespeare. But in both authors it may ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... the diverging descendants of a common stock. These terms of affinity, relations, families, adaptive characters, &c., which naturalists cannot avoid using, though metaphorically, cease being so, and are full of plain signification. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... seventeenth century, however, the limitation of the word to the sense of prediction had gradually begun to appear. This secondary meaning of the word had by the time of Dr. Johnson so entirely superseded the original Scriptural signification that he gives no other special definition of it than 'to predict, to foretell, to prognosticate,' 'a predicter, a foreteller,' 'foreseeing or foretelling future events;' and in this sense it has been used almost down to our own day, when the revival of Biblical criticism has resuscitated, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Hebrew word translated travail, has no reference whatever to childbearing, but signifies fearful toil, or painful distress. The English word travail, in the time of the translators of the Bible had this signification. They have employed it in this signification in the passages following: "And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done unto Pharoah and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... one and simple. This solution did not seem thoroughgoing enough to Saadia's successors, and every one of the Jewish philosophers tried his hand at the problem. All agreed that the attributes cannot apply to God in the same signification as they have when we use them in our own experience. The meaning of the term attribute was investigated and the attributes were divided into classes, until finally in the system of Maimonides this question too received its classical solution. God is conceived ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the Portuguese, and its meaning is doubtful. Galles is the French of Wales, and La Nouvelle Galles is New South Wales; without the final s, the word means an oak-apple, in French. As I heard one of the 'Big Four' say this morning, 'You pay your money and take your choice,' as to the signification of the word. At any rate, the importance of the place is gone, and Colombo has captured its business and ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... northerly, and Acer shall disappear.' Shall I stride the ground so many steps, or is there a mystic and hidden signification couched in these numbers?" ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... significance and acquired, in the English language at least, its modern and better-known meaning of corsair or freebooter. The French adventurers, however, seem always to have restricted the word "boucanier" to its proper signification, that of a hunter and curer of meat; and when they developed into corsairs, by a curious contrast they adopted an English name and called themselves "filibustiers," which is merely the French sailor's way of pronouncing ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... way, a further light is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification. -Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-, anything pounded; -aritram-, oar and ship; -venas-, that which is pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are thus ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was now cast. From this moment onwards my inner life received a quite new signification and a fresh character, and yet I was unconscious of all this. I was like a tree which flowers and knows it not. My inward and outward vocation and endeavour, my true life-destiny and my apparent life-aim were still, however, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... notices of the earliest American Discoveries by the Portuguese, English, and French nations. We now return to a continuation of the early Discoveries and Conquests in India, taking that word in its most extensive signification as comprehending the whole of southern Asia, from the Persian Gulf to Japan and Eastern China. In the present portion of our Collection, we propose chiefly to direct our attention to the transactions of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... inquired Bounce. Theodore Bertram looked and felt puzzled. He was not the first man who thought that he knew the signification of terms well, and found himself much perplexed on being suddenly called upon to give a correct definition of a well-known word. While he is labouring to enlighten his friend, we shall leave the bower and return to the hall, or kitchen, or reception room—for it might be appropriately designated ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... word is likewise used to denote silver coin: thus likewise the Greeks call silver money Aspro[7], the Turks Akeia, and the Kathayans Teugh, all of which words signify white; and hence, both in Venice and in Spain, certain silver coins are all called bianchi, which has the same signification. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... enduring, you will see des grises. Perhaps you don't know what the word means, and, like one of Gavarni's children, you will say, 'What! des grises?' You will, I trust, one of these days learn what is the signification of the term at your own cost. One of your absurd pretensions is to be the only people in the world who understand how to love, or who care for domestic ties. You will see, by the hatred which we shall ever bear to you, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... NATURAL is commonly taken in so many senses and is of so loose a signification, that it seems vain to dispute whether justice be natural or not. If self-love, if benevolence be natural to man; if reason and forethought be also natural; then may the same epithet be applied to justice, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... judge of Blake or Nelson, no names current among men being worthy of such heroes. But still it is odd enough, and very appropriate in this connection, that the latter was greatly taken with his Sicilian title. "The signification, perhaps, pleased him," says Southey; "Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomey would have been called a STRONG NAME; it was to a sailor's taste, and certainly to no man could it be more applicable." Admiral in itself is one of the most satisfactory of distinctions; it has a noble ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would suffice for the construction of a Science of History, would necessarily include all the Branches of Inquiry above mentioned. While, therefore, History, as it has been used in these papers, and as it is especially exhibited in the present one, has had this comprehensive signification, the term is not applied by Comte to any of the Departments of which he treated; and a very different meaning, and one much more circumscribed, attaches to the qualified expression which he uses in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... history, entitled to that station in society as one of his constitutional rights, as being descended from free parents in contradistinction to 'villains,' which should be borne in remembrance, because the term 'FREEMAN' has been, in modern times, perverted from its constitutional signification without any statutable authority." The LIBERI HOMINES are so described in the Doomsday Book. They were the only men of honor, faith, trust, and reputation in the kingdom; and from among such of these as were ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... Contempt of all his Laws? No! For, on the contrary, God ever waits to be gracious to all such, as through Inadvertence fall into Sin, and are willing to forsake it. The View and Intent of our Apostle, in these Words, seems to be of very easy and plain Signification: There was in those early Times, as appears from our Saviour's frequently reproving the Hypocrisy of that Generation, a Sort of People, who appeared zealous in the Externals of Religion, while at the same Time they neglected Things of far greater Moment: Woe unto you ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... As the full signification of this lost opportunity overwhelmed me, I could not in my mortification meet Caterina's reproachful eyes. Her last gallant stroke for liberty had failed through my lack of co-operation. Cesare's pikemen enclosed her with a wall of bristling spears; the populace slunk into side alleys, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... glass case, there is the representation of an undraped little boy in wax, very prettily modelled, and holding up a heart that looks like a bit of red sealing-wax. If I had found him anywhere else I should have taken him for Cupid; but, being in an oratory, I presume him to have some religious signification. In the servants' room a crucifix hung on one side of the bed, and a little vase for holy water, now overgrown with a cobweb, on the other; and, no doubt, all the other sleeping-apartments would have been equally well provided, only that their ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... system of verbal prefixes used to form verbs from certain stems, regularly varied in signification, according to the prefix used. The Dakota has seven of these prefixes. The Min. has three of these almost identical in force. I should suppose that I would, with as much material, find greater similarity in the other languages, but the ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... commentaries the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase 'peerten up' means substantially 'to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective 'peert' (probably a corruption of 'pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of 'smart' in New England, as e.g., a 'peert' horse, in antithesis to a 'sorry' — i.e., poor, mean, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... London were able to procure. In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names. He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song. On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... in token of his belief in a creator of all things, and in recognition of the Divine Presence, probably attaching to them at first no more mysterious import or virtue. There is sound reason for believing that in this form the symbol existed before Abraham, and that its fundamental signification of creation or generation was gradually overbuilt with arbitrary speculations and fantastic notions. In theory it degenerated into a crude egoism, a vaunting and hyper-stoic hostility to nature, which, though intellectually godless, was not without that ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... calling, from side to side of the twisting street; the bargaining of the sellers at the stalls—all this, with the rattle of their own horses' feet and the jingling of the bits, combined only to make a noisy and brilliant spectacle without sense or signification. ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... gather it had never been here before—at any rate no one could be found who had seen it here or in the neighbourhood, and it seemed obvious that its sudden emergence, as it were, out of nothing must have some high and dove-like signification. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... where he received that sacrament by the hands of Modestus who governed that church as vicar during the absence {197} of the patriarch Zachary, whom Chosroes had led away captive into Persia. In baptism he changed his Persian name Magundat, into that of Anastasius, meaning, according to the signification of that Greek word, that he was risen from death to a new and spiritual life. He had prepared himself with wonderful devotion for that sacrament while a catechumen, and he spent in no less fervor the several days after it, which persons baptized passed in white garments, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... demonstrating the method of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for instance, a black line of an inch in length: this, which in itself is a particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its signification general, since, as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line in general. And, as THAT PARTICULAR ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... is simple, precise and unambiguous. We may reasonably give to the phrase "In the beginning" the same meaning as attaches thereto in the first line of Genesis; and such signification must indicate a time antecedent to the earliest stages of human existence upon the earth. That the Word is Jesus Christ, who was with the Father in that beginning and who was Himself invested with the powers and rank of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... precise signification was of the "whew!" which the gentlemanly Tom had uttered, I did not know; but it seemed to indicate that he was not particularly pleased to learn that I had been a visitor at the house. I felt that there was ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... with Mrs. Roberts, and on two of them she had been required to cook from similar reasoning. "For once" is apt, in such cases, to become a phrase of very extensive signification. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsy interlined translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his classical attainments. The most ordinary Greek words have their English signification scrawled under them, showing too plainly that he was not sufficiently familiarised with their meaning to trust himself without this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find {GREEK SMALL LETTER NU}{GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON}{GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON}{GREEK ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... doubted whether such tales as the above were ever regarded as true, but it was not until thought became more active that the falsity of them was fully appreciated, and "jests" gradually acquired their present signification. The word romance has also come to be used not only for a pleasant poetical narrative, but especially for something utterly devoid of truth. "Story" is used in the same sense, but not "novel," for in our present works of fiction there is seldom so much improbability ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... garden full of lamps and lights; they then paused and their attention was fixed, because lamps with lights signify truths (veritates) which shine from good[p]. From this it was evident that they could be detained in the consideration of material things, provided only that the signification of those things in the spiritual sense were insinuated at the same time; for the things which belong to the spiritual sense are not abstracted from material things to the same extent, inasmuch as ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Event. The Time; the Places; the proper Accessories and Circumstances; the angelic Choristers; Signification of the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Andes is often derived from anta, an old Peruvian word signifying metal. But Humboldt says: "There are no means of interpreting it by connecting it with any signification or idea; if such connection exist, it is buried in the obscurity of the past." According to Col. Tod, the northern Hindoos apply the name Andes to the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the doctrine of following nature was a political dogma. It meant a rebellion against existing social institutions, customs, and ideals (See ante, p. 91). Rousseau's statement that everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Creator has its signification only in its contrast with the concluding part of the same sentence: "Everything degenerates in the hands of man." And again he says: "Natural man has an absolute value; he is a numerical unit, a complete integer and has no relation save to himself and to his fellow man. Civilized ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... concourse of people present at the sacrifice; and, after all the rites and ceremonies of the sacrifice were over, when we had seated ourselves again at the table, there was an inquiry made first of all into the signification of the word bulimy, then into the meaning of the words which are repeated when the servant is turned out of doors. But the principal dispute was concerning the nature of it, and all its circumstances. First, as for the word bulimy, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right signification. What is true about Art is true about Life. A man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour, ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... nothing arbitrary in our doing this, whereas there is much that is arbitrary in adopting a definite system of nomenclature, and applying it to organisms but imperfectly known, the differences or resemblances between which are only recognizable through certain characteristics, the true signification of which is obscure. Take, for example, the extensive array of widely different systems which have been invented during the last few years for the species of the genera bacterium and vibrio in the works of Cohn, H. Hoffmann, Hallier, and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... to their amusements with the echo, having no other signification but to express the sound of stones when beaten one against the other, returned by ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the beginning of his Annals. But Augustus was better able than anyone to judge of his good fortune. He appears to have died content, as may be inferred from a proof he gave of contentedness with his life: for in dying he repeated to his friends a line in Greek, which has the signification of that Plaudite that was wont to be spoken at the conclusion of a well-acted play. ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... directed. The lesson, however, is drawn, not from the inherent, essential properties of the soil, but from the accidental obstructions to the growth of grain which it may in certain circumstances contain: some notice, therefore, of the seed and the sower in their spiritual signification is not only profitable at this stage, but peremptorily necessary to the full apprehension of the instruction ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... path; it was Bataille. He was shown into the dining-room, and lunch was served to him just as if he had been a gentleman, for his constant intercourse with the provincial aristocracy, his knowledge of the coats-of-arms, their mottoes and signification, made him a sort of herald with whom no gentleman need ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... housekeeping and what not; to smile appropriately when she is disposed to be lively (that laughing at the jokes is the hardest part), and to model your conversation so as to suit her intelligence, knowing that a word used out of its downright signification will not be understood by your fair breakfast-maker. Women go through this simpering and smiling life, and bear it quite easily. Theirs is a life of hypocrisy. What good woman does not laugh at her husband's or father's jokes and stories time after time, and would not laugh at breakfast, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to write to me the result of his interview. Should the president of the United States think proper to signify that hostile operations should cease on the American side, Mr. Foster suggests the expediency of my being prepared to make a similar signification ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... of human imbecility, ignorance and error. To them it represents neither shadow nor substance, neither phenomenon nor thing, neither what is ideal nor what is real; yet is it the name without full faith in which there could be no religion. If to the name God some rational signification cannot be attached away goes, or at least away ought to go, that belief in something supernatural which is 'the fundamental principle of all false metaphysics.' 'No such belief can for a moment be entertained by those who see in nature the cause ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... inquiry concerning the nature of the language employed in its prophecies and concerning the mode of its interpretation. It will be seen at a glance that it is wholly unlike the common language of life; and it will be useless for us to undertake to ascertain its signification unless we understand perfectly the principles ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... him, that they found a verdict of manslaughter, or murder in the second degree; which it could not possibly be, as there had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel or provocation, and if he were guilty at all, he was unquestionably guilty of murder in its broadest and worst signification. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Bellows-mender, and Gingerbread from a Grinder of Knives and Scissars. Nay so strangely infatuated are some very eminent Artists of this particular Grace in a Cry, that none but then Acquaintance are able to guess at their Profession; for who else can know, that Work if I had it, should be the Signification of a Corn-Cutter? ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... choose from. Every new arrival from Holy Russia, regardless of sex or age, spent some hours or days, as the case might be, alone with the Master in his apartment, in order to be initiated into the Law and impregnated with its full signification: such was the way of the New Jerusalem. By this system of spiritual control he could be sure of finding a successor sooner or later. Besides, the defection of this favourite disciple was only a drop in the ocean of his griefs. What secretly preyed upon his mind ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... sound, a sort of velvety and oily intonation, that distinguishes the speech of the women of high birth such as I never heard in any other country. It is not to be defined: but whoso has drunk in the golden tones of such a syren, will know what I mean. Moonlight! yes, 'tis a pleasing word, by its signification and its associated ideas, if not by its own innate harmony: yes; I have learned the full influence and sweetness of moonlight, whether in the summer woodland or in the wintry cloister; true, there is both music and poetry, ay and something else, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... perhaps, and she sewing, she would drop her work in her lap, and sigh suddenly and deeply, as if the first shadows of the upgathering gloom were beginning to cloud her young and innocent spirit, and force her apprehensions into utterance. This did not escape me, but I read its signification, as witches are said to read the Bible, backward. A gloomier fancy filled my brain as I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... conduct we restore the word Contraband (contra and ban) to its true and original signification, which means against Law, edict, or Proclamation; and none but the Government of a Nation can have, or can exercise, the right of making Laws, edicts, or Proclamations, for the conduct of its ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... words different in origin and signification are pronounced alike, whether they are alike or not in their spelling, they are said to be homophonous, or homophones of each other. Such words if spoken without context are of ambiguous signification. Homophone is strictly a relative term, but it is convenient to use it absolutely, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... corner-stone of all that exists. For in life "a trivial little love-story" is a matter more frequently aspersed than found. Viewed in the light of its consequences, any love-affair is of gigantic signification, inasmuch as the most trivial is a part of Nature's unending and, some say, her only labor, toward the peopling of ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to call the pieces of music in any volume for an instrument by the name 'Lessons.' The first meaning, of course, was that they were examples for the pupil in music, but the word was used quite freely with the purely general signification of ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... its special but most common signification—is debasing. Compensation, so far as it goes, is found in the abandonment by those communities among whom it is most rife of certain gross amusements, such as cock-fighting and the prize-ring. Bull-and bear-baiting, too, so prominent among the deliciae ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... expression, 'Omnes enim venit per semetipsum salvare; omnes inquam, qui per eum renascuntur in Deum, INFANTES et parvulos et pueros et juvenes.' (At the sound of so much seriousness Paula turned her eyes upon the speaker with attention.) He next adduced proof of the signification of 'renascor' in the writings of the Fathers, as reasoned by Wall; arguments from Tertullian's advice to defer the rite; citations from Cyprian, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Jerome; and briefly summed ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... paws, which are thrown out about fifty feet in front, are constructed of masonry. The Sphinx of Sais, formed of a block of red granite, twenty-two feet long, is now in the Egyptian Museum in the Louvre. There has been much speculation among the learned, concerning the signification of these figures. Winckelmann observes that they have the head of a female, and the body of a male, which has led to the conjecture that they are intended as emblems of the generative powers of nature, which the old ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner |
