"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her dark cheeks the blood poured in again. It was as hard for her to talk about love as for him. She felt the same shy, uneasy embarrassment, as though it were some subject taboo, not to be discussed by ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... difference that makes." She must have given him a swift glance here. But she laughed again. "You evidently don't realize, Jerry, that monasteries are supposed to be taboo for young girls." ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... is always an engine ready with steam up. Headquarters suddenly rolls off; and, after two or three days, it returns noiselessly, with its archives, its general staff, its restaurant, and its electric plant. The Grand Duke rules with an iron fist. Champagne and liquor is taboo throughout the war zone, and even the officers of the general staff get nothing except a little red wine. Woe to anyone who sins against this order, here or anywhere else at the front. The iron fist of the Grand Duke hits, if ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... it," Stranor Sleth told him. "See, the rabbit's sacred to Yat-Zar. Not taboo; just sacred. They have to use a specially consecrated knife to kill them—consecrating rabbit knives has always been an item of temple revenue—and they must say a special prayer before eating them. We could have got around the rest of it, even the Battle of Jorm—punishment ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... professional rivals, Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo between ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... had discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... of ideas, only still further extended, may be detected in the sacredness attached to certain animals by so many nations of antiquity. It is now generally admitted that this 'sacredness' has two sides. A sacred animal may be 'taboo,' that is, so sacred that it must not be touched, much less killed or eaten; and, on the other hand, its original sanctity may lead people to regard it as "unclean," something again to be avoided, because of the power to do evil involved in ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... wrought out of emotion, sensibility and habit, some good besides piety may come out of a memorial Eleventh of November. Pitying, recording, respecting the dead or perhaps the bereaved, it may presently become a fixed idea with us that avoidable death is taboo. It may be borne in upon us on the next occasion when stung pride, outraged feeling or panic fear is sweeping like a plague over our land, that nothing but sorrow and loss was gained by the Four Years War. That is just possible, but no more ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... subject taboo in polite conversation, but Joe De Barr was not excessively polite, and he had, moreover, a very likely hope that Marie would yet choose to regard him with more favor than she had shown in the past. He did not chance to see her at once, but as soon as his ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... subject almost violently. John Williamson made a practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore be taboo on Rodney's account, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and myself had a mighty good time in Vienna (I forgot to say that Emperor Francis Joseph agreed with me that Danilo and Alexander were quite impossible and that henceforth Balkan marriages should be taboo). ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... real brothers and sisters, who might not marry either each the other or real children of the said god-parent. The reformed churches have set aside this fiction, but in the Latin and Eastern churches it has created a distinct and very powerful marriage taboo. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... captain to one of the members, "I would but the devil take it, how can a man go around asking for a job in a dress suit? And I'm so rotten big that none of my friends can loan me a suit. And my credit is gone with at least twelve different tailors. I'm sort o' taboo as a borrower. Barry, old top, if you will chase the blighter after another highball, I'll drink ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... among them—kept Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp—by this time the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, successfully shepherded ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here. The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt 'taboo') has to be declared, and who was to declare it? Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horse-back? He might plant palm branches: it did not in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right. I have not been a friend of worthless men. I have not wrought evil. I have not tried to make myself over-righteous. I have not put forward my name for exalted positions. I have not entreated servants evilly. I have not defrauded the man who was in trouble. I have not done what is hateful (or taboo) to the gods. I have not caused a servant to be ill-treated by his master. I have not caused pain [to any man]. I have not permitted any man to go hungry. I have made none to weep. I have not committed ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... free to be various. When the mood of gloom is off him, he experiments at will, and often with consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even when his Russian prepossessions ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Taboo all heretical religious papers; support those that defend the truth. Let infidels maintain infidel papers and build infidel colleges. Not one dollar to propagate infidelity! Make your one short consecrated life count for truth and righteousness. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... power. Ablutions both of persons and things are usually cathartic, that is, intended to purge away evil influences (kathairein, to make katharos, pure). But, as Robertson Smith observes, "holiness is contagious, just as uncleanness is''; and common things and persons may become taboo, that is, so holy as to be dangerous and useless for daily life through the mere infection of holiness. Thus in Syria one who touched a dove became taboo for one whole day, and if a drop of blood of the Hebrew sin-offering fell on a garment it had ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... showing Rebecca that she was taboo. Their attitude could not be mistaken. And so great was the influence of these older girls of Ardmore upon the whole college that ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... it discourteous to mention money at table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a number of firms the executives have lunch together, meeting in a group for perhaps the only time during ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... been in his power he would probably have left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their love disappointments ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... regulations of the place. During the time that Holland was overrun by the armies of the French republic, a French general, surrounded by his whole etat major, who had come from Amsterdam to view the wonders of Broek, applied for admission at one of these taboo'd portals. The reply was that the owner never received any one who did not come introduced by some friend. "Very well," said the general, "take my compliments to your master, and tell him I will return here to-morrow with a company of soldiers, 'pour parler raison avec ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... kinky and negroid, and he was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos were as follows: First, he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman's hand touch him or any of his personal belongings; ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... here the images are clothed. They were not represented as clothed in order to make easier the work of the sculptor. His carving shows he had great skill, was observant, and had true artistic feeling. Apparently the taboo against "nakedness" was too ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... slowly, "the thing that keeps a woman straight and a man faithful is not a matter of bricks and mortar nor ways of thinking nor habits of living. It's something finer and stronger than these. It's the magic taboo of her love for him and his for her that makes them—sacred. With that ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews—no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar and ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... thing I am going to talk to you about that really is a bigger thing than it seems—and that is gum—chewing gum. If you had had stage experience you would know that gum is taboo in the theatre, and the reason for this is not only that to chew in sight of an audience would be an insult and result in immediate dismissal, but also for this very important reason, that a cud of gum if dropped on the stage would destroy that stage for dancing—your own dancing and everybody ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... two orthodox methods of cooking fish and meat and no other is admissible, under penalty of infringing a very important taboo. One method consists of boiling them in water, with a little seasoning of red pepper, ginger, and possibly lemon grass and one or two other ingredients. The second method consists of broiling the pieces of meat and fish in or over the fire. Meat ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... influence of the early Friends ceased, the place of woman began to be circumscribed by new rules, and crystallized in a reaction under the influence of purely social forces; so that this most sensible people made women equal to men in meetings and in religious legislation through a form of sexual taboo. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... he said, "take my tip an' don't try no fool stunts around that girl. Which she once belongs to Whistlin' Dan Barry an' therefore she's got the taboo mark on her for any other man. Everything he's ever owned ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... can't," she said. "But let's talk of something else. Margaret is taboo—she's spoilt ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... managed; we were wholesomely fed; but there had grown up a strange kind of taboo about many of the things we were supposed to eat. I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed. The theory was that one must just eat enough to sustain life. There ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of complaint about secrecy, but in the end avarice won over taboo and the door to the holy of holies was opened for Jason while two of the sciuloj, with bared and ready daggers, stood at his sides. At almost the same instant Jason looked in through the door ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things—more or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function—as the things which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all there is to say concerning this topic, apart from ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... something they dread is about to happen. Arrived before the temple, there is a cry from the multitude, who instantly set on them with their clubs. Taro tells us not to grieve; that some are prisoners taken in war, others guilty persons who have broken a taboo, and others the lowest of the people. While we stand shuddering, a concourse of people arrive bearing fruits of all sorts, and hogs, and dogs. The human victims are stripped of all their garments, and placed in rows on the altars; the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... impossibility of going to her bedside. When we had taken leave of each other at Kew, she was very despondent on account of my husband's illness, and expressed a fear that she might die without our being near her. No one could say when the taboo on railway travelling could be withdrawn for him, but I gave our aunt a solemn promise that in such an emergency as she mentioned, I at any rate would go to her when she called me, and Gilbert had ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... ordinary costume of their race—a slip of native cloth about the loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion which would ensue, were the natives—men and women—allowed to come off to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... this mass of misery and ignorance covered over and clamped down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible superstition of sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor's office trembling with excitement over this situation. Oh, why had not some one warned him in time? Why didn't the doctors and the teachers lift up their voices and tell young men about these frightful ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... Cupid—and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a} ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... previous eras of quasi-religious experience. Totemism not discernible. Taboo, and the means adopted of escaping from it; both survived at Rome into an age of real religion. Examples: impurity (or holiness) of new-born infants; of a corpse; of women in certain worships; of strangers; of criminals. Almost complete absence of blood-taboo. Iron. Strange taboos ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... was Taboo among these Good People, although Father could Fletcherize about 10 cents' worth of Licorice Plug each ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... he left the palm room with head down- bent, as if he were already pondering the problem, the solving of which was to free him from the self-imposed taboo of ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... probably belongs to the historical acquisitions of humanity and like other moral taboos it must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. (Cf. my work, Totem and Taboo, 1913.) Psychoanalytic studies show, however, how intensively the individual struggles with the incest temptations during his development and how frequently he puts them into phantasies ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... sometimes difficult to do, but it is the only safe course to follow. If you have something brilliant or worth-while to say, it will be best said spontaneously and with due modesty. But if there is no suitable opportunity to say it, put it back in your mind where it may improve with age. Egotism is taboo in polite society. ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... interesting man was, I fancy, happy in both his marriages; the first bringing him rank and connection, the second lands and wealth. I bring him in here because he associated with Forster in one of his most grotesque moods. To Forster, however, this agreeable spirit was taboo. He had offended the great man, and as it had a ludicrous cast, and was, besides, truly Forsterian, I may here recur to it. Forster, as I have stated, had been left by Landor, the copyright of his now value unsaleable writings, and he was more pleased at the intended compliment than gratified ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... Although the Osage chieftain was an American (who could claim such proud estate if Totantora could not?), the show by which he was employed had gone direct to Germany from England, and anything English had, from the first, been taboo in Germany. Now, of course, the Indian girl had no idea as to where ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in the first place. How else are we to explain that the Nipe, for all his tremendous technical knowledge, is nonetheless a member of a society that is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage of development?" ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to be taboo," spoke Ted Guthrie. "Dol was always a wizard, and now thus equipped she might have a lovely way of fanning ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... order of the world Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse Effeminizing of the male. We were Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain. All we have done, or wise or otherwise, Traced to the root, was done for love of you. Let us taboo all vain comparisons, And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand, Companions, mates and comrades evermore; Two parts of ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... has several of them; indeed in the village of Sapi almost every family has its own guardian spirit. The name for these guardian spirits is tapum, which seems to be clearly connected with the now familiar word tapu or taboo, in the sense of sacred, which is universally understood in the islands of the Pacific. On the whole the tapum are kindly and beneficent spirits, who bring good luck to such as honour them. A hunter or a fisherman ascribes his success ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... he most deplored in the social system of his country was the power of the police and of the statistician by whom the policeman was guided. This he ascribed to the growth of great towns, to civic cowardice, and to a new taboo laid upon uniformed and labelled public authorities, who are now regarded as sacred, and ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... themselves in a shady boulevard leading to the outskirts of the town. Darkness was falling, and soon would be intense; for lights are taboo in the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... great reenforcer of social taboo and custom, as well as morality. Just as it fails to keep us from eating the wrong kind of foods, so it may fail to keep us from the wrong conduct. Like every emotion it is only in part adapted to our lives, and in those people where it becomes a prominent emotion it is a great mischief worker, subordinating ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... either follow, or that perhaps Mudge would manage by some means or other to obtain my liberty, should he not already have left the island. There was some risk of this being the case, we agreed; and if so, Harry said that he would come back to me rather than have to live alone in Taboo ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... associations which appear to be essentially arbitrary at the outset, though they tend to become natural through the survival of the fittest. A favorite device for perpetuating institutions among the primitive peoples of many districts on different continents is the taboo, or prohibition, which is commonly fiducial but is often of general application. This device finds its best development in the earlier stages in the development of belief, and is normally connected with totemism. Another device, which is remarkably widespread, as ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... prohibition, inhibition; veto, disallowance; interdict, interdiction; injunction, estoppel [Law]; embargo, ban, taboo, proscription; index expurgatorius [Lat.]; restriction &c (restraint) 751; hindrance &c 706; forbidden fruit; Maine law [U.S.]. V. prohibit, inhibit; forbid, put one's veto upon, disallow, enjoin, ban, outlaw, taboo, proscribe, estop [Law]; bar; debar &c (hinder) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... she knew that the sound of a voice speaking English at a neighboring table was enough to cause her father to finish his meal in a hurry and leave the restaurant. They never went to the British Church, and even such cosmopolitan spots as the aquarium or the museum were equally taboo. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Fannia shouted. "Grant us a truce. We are allowed to fight only by sunlight. It is a tribal taboo." ...
— Warrior Race • Robert Sheckley
... still more at sea. "And are there any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?" he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah or so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "is there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... perceive that among the number of natives that surrounded us, not a single female was to be seen. At that time I was ignorant of the fact that by the operation of the 'taboo' the use of canoes in all parts of the island is rigorously prohibited to the entire sex, for whom it is death even to be seen entering one when hauled on shore; consequently, whenever a Marquesan lady voyages by water, she puts in requisition the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... to a sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... expressed wish of at least two-thirds of the people, by the political chicanery of the same organization, and yet no one, during the long fight, thought to attack it directly; to have done so would have been to violate the taboo described. So when the returning soldiers began to reveal the astounding chicaneries of the Young Men's Christian Association, it was marvelled at for a few weeks, as Americans always marvel at successful pocket-squeezings, but no ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin. But we see no race on its way to becoming totemistic, so we ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... he said, looking him fairly in the eye, "belongs to the past, and is taboo. I won't hear a word about it. This is to-day. Get up, and we'll set about putting wrong right. You're a man again. Don't forget that. And I'm your friend. Don't ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... spectral white arms of the sycamores by the river. In a short time there was a shifting, wonderful, numbing veil streaming silent from the grey heavens. It was almost a relief when dark came and wrapped the great, lonely, ghostly countryside. This night the men disregarded the taboo and burned every available ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... way to cultivate taste in words, than by constantly reading the best English. None of the words and expressions which are taboo in good society will be found in books of proved literary standing. But it must not be forgotten that there can be a vast difference between literary standing and popularity, and that many of the "best sellers" have ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the steel embroidery on a gray suede bag which lay on the table. She had got it the other day to serve as understudy for the gold bag which was "taboo" for public use at present. She was glad that the forest creature did not know, and never would know, that she had secretly bought back his gold bag. If he found out, it might be his turn ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... In most stories of this class, the hero forgets his companion on reaching home, either by a charm or by breaking a taboo.] ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... En route to the interior. Native flora and fauna. We arrive at the capital. A lecture on Filbertine architecture. A strange taboo. The serenade. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the recoil ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire—the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... enough, though there was a noticeable effort on the part of each member of the family to keep the conversation from touching upon the subject of Ralph's affairs. Any reference to Cambridge was taboo, as Darsie swiftly discovered, but there were many points of interest left, which were both pleasant ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said quietly; "your congratulations are premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo for three years—at Mr. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... TABOO or TABU, a solemn prohibition or interdict among the Polynesians under which a particular person or thing is pronounced inviolable, and so sacred, the violation of which entails malediction at the hands of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... niggers you've been reading about call it the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off.' 'That's a taboo pig,' says he. 'A black fellow that died six months ago that pig belonged to. When he was dying, and leaving his property to his friends, he was very sorry to part with the pig, so he made him taboo; nobody can touch him. To eat ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... sown, it is tabooed, that, is rendered sacred, by men appointed for that service, and it is death to trample over or disturb any part of this consecrated ground. The wisdom and utility of this regulation must be obvious to every one. But, however useful this taboo system is to the natives, it is a great inconvenience to a stranger who is rambling over the country, for if he does not use the greatest caution, and procure a guide, he may get himself into a serious ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... in the ward the Senior depended on the convalescents—filling drinking cups; passing milk at eleven and three; keeping the white bedspreads in geometrical order. But the Avenue Girl was taboo. The boycott had been instituted by Old Maggie. The rampant respectability of the ward even went so far as to refuse to wash her in those early morning hours when the night nurse, flying about with her cap on one ear, was carrying tin basins about like a blue-and-white cyclone. The Dummy ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... renders the land unproductive for four months. It is not our fault that the government to which we are forced to bow—the Czar whose name lifts our hats from our heads—it is not our fault that progress and education are taboo, and that all who endeavor to forward the cause of humanity are promptly put away in a safe place where they are at liberty to forward their own salvation and nothing else. Nothing is our fault, mein lieber, in this country. We have to make the ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... similar strange exotics of the first period withered and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the word Sex was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly the sex note—(as I will call it for want of a better word)—disappeared from the press. Psychology was pronounced 'off,' and plots were the order of the day. Many names well-known at that time ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... wavered uncertainly. "Oh, of course I shall get along. I can't protest. It's your privilege to choose Milly's friends, even if you mean to exclude me. It's also my privilege to choose my friends and I shall do so. If this means that I am taboo at your houses, I shall respect your wishes but I hope you'll remember that you are all welcome at 'Wake-Robin' or here whenever you see fit to ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... than the Chink himself realizes the commercial value of the taboo, the bizarre and the unclean. Nightly the rubber-neck car swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and faro game, with a farewell call at Hong Joy Fah's Oriental restaurant and the well-stocked novelty ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... the worst parts of Polynesia. The Wesleyan Missionaries established themselves in these islands in 1821, and are reported to have met with considerable success. The leading island is that which is called Tongataboo, or the 'consecrated island.' The name is properly two words 'Tonga Taboo,' signifying 'Sacred Island,' the reason of which appellative will appear, when I tell you that the priest of this island, whose name was Diatonga, was reverenced and resorted to by all the surrounding islands. Earthquakes ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... obstetrician after a hard case, and meekly handed over to Dinkie anything his Royal Highness desired, even to his fifth cookie and the entire contents of my sewing-basket, which under ordinary circumstances is strictly taboo. But once the ear-passage was clear the pain went away, and Dinkie, at the end of a couple ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... myself at the river's edge down among the Seine watermen. I am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," and the glances cast in my direction by the other customers indicate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... saw one appearing as the soul of the dead like the lover in the ballad of "The Bloody Gardener". They refrained also from killing the pigeon except sacrificially, and suffered agonies on a deathbed which contained pigeon feathers, the "taboo" having ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... officials of Hanwell Asylum had been a little shy of being handed down to fame; so I adopted the ruse of getting into Herr Gustav Kuester's corps of fiddlers for the occasion. However, I must in fairness add that the committee during the evening withdrew the taboo they had formerly placed on my writing. I was free to immortalize them; and my fiddling was thenceforth ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... fairly striking out from time to time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I'll do ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of Religion' treats of early religion, from the point of view of Anthropology and Folk-lore; and is the first attempt that has been made in any language to weave together the results of recent investigations into such topics as Sympathetic Magic, Taboo, Totemism, Fetishism, etc., so as to present a systematic account of the growth of primitive religion and the development of early ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... 'trustworthy'); rendition (for 'performance'); repudiate (for 'reject' or 'disown'); retire (as an active verb); Rev. (for 'the Rev.'); rôle (for 'part'); roughs; rowdies; secesh; sensation (for 'noteworthy event'); standpoint (for 'point of view'); start, in the sense of setting out; state (for 'say'); taboo; talent (for 'talents' or 'ability'); talented; tapis; the deceased; war ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... him out of the corner of my eye. I wondered what was passing through his mind. The subject of my relations with papa was one which, without saying anything at all about it, we had consented to taboo. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... was by no means occasioned by any fears in regard to my own safety. Far from it. I considered myself as one set apart from all mankind,—set apart, and fenced in, by my own personal disadvantages. The thought of my caring for a girl, or of being cared for by a girl, never even occurred to me. "Taboo," so far as I was concerned, was written upon them all. The marriage state I saw from afar off. Beautiful and bright it looked in the distance, like the Promised Land to true believers. Some visions I beheld of its beautiful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... supper in silence. No one spoke to him, and he addressed no one except to ask that certain dishes be passed. Among the others conversation was general. Hazel noticed that, and wondered why—wondered if Roaring Bill was taboo. She had sensed enough of the Western point of view to know that the West held nothing against a man who was quick to blows—rather admired such a one, in fact. And her conclusions were not complimentary to Mr. Bill Wagstaff. If people avoided him in that country, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... talk of schoolboys is wholly immature and shapeless. They cannot express themselves, and moreover there is a very strict and peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to have worked the moral regeneration of the islands, the Martin Luther of the group anticipated them by half a year. Liholiho—that was his name—publicly kicked the idols, burned the temples, ate from the dishes of women, and defied the taboo. So soon as the natives discovered that the sea did not rise nor the sky fall, they rejoiced exceeding, and when one of the priests gathered an army and mutinied against the new order, they vehemently suppressed him. Yet the gods whom this soldier-priest ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to save us from war. Rend your hearts and not your armaments. Let us learn to look War in the face, and while the blood is cold, so that we may know what we are meaning to do. Let us put a moral taboo upon it, such as we have put upon parricide, or incest, or cannibalism. For certain, in those matters, the reason has put a sanction on the conscience. So will it in the matter of aggressive war. Side by side with that, as we now see, we must change the governance of nations. If ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... most dangerous class are confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as a prison for dangerous ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... day, February the 12th, the ships were put under a taboo, by the chiefs: a solemnity, it seems, that was requisite to be observed, before Kariopoo, the king, paid his first visit to Captain Cook, after his return. He waited upon him the same day, on board the Resolution, attended by a large train, some of which bore the presents ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... convention, of observance, of taboo, of folkways, ends. And into the brain of all living beings will be born the perfect comprehension of their ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... many valuable lessons concerning the enforcement of law and order without the parade of any force or badgering, judging from the assiduity with which they studied our methods. Even the "drunks"—and they were not strangers to Ruhleben, despite the fact that alcoholic liquor was religiously taboo, the liquor being smuggled in and paid heavily for, a bottle of Red Seal costing fifteen shillings—never gave us ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... taboo am I placed?" said he, gayly, as he laid his hand on her shrinking arm. "I inquire for Helen,—she is ill, and cannot see me. I come to sun myself in your presence, and you fly me as if gods and men had ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by the municipality. The performances are almost exclusively in Hungarian, the exceptions being the occasional appearance of French, Italian and other foreign artists. Performances in German are under a popular taboo, and they are never given in a theatre ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... disappointed that he found no old-time acquaintances among those who were bound for the suburbs. The first person to recognize him was the station agent at Bransford and his greeting was casual as he trundled the truck of empty milk cans to the far end of the platform. "Maybe these London tweeds are taboo in this central zone," he grumbled as he made his way up the shaded street ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... shake his head and mutter under his breath, "By George, I wish I had Fenchurch or von Gottschalk here. They're a shade better than I am on intercultural contracts, especially taboo-breakings and ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the taboo touched David that Dick was resentful, and then he was inclined to question the wisdom of his return. It hurt him, for instance, to see David give up his church, and reading morning prayer alone at home on Sunday mornings, and to see his grim ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Constabulary airboats were patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... from the reading desk at which he stood and fall to the points of that vast waistcoat which inspired the description of him as "a fellow of infinite vest." It would wander aimlessly a moment about his—stomach is a word that is taboo among the polite English—equator, and then shift swiftly to the rear until the thumb found the hip pocket. There the hand would rest a moment, to return again to the reading desk and to describe once more the quarter circle. Once in a while it would twist a ring upon the left hand, once in a while ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... She shrugged. "Nothing very definite. War has been a taboo subject with him—I mean from the first when you all went in. I know he has strong feelings about it, terribly strong. But he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... The child of evolution, flings aside His swaddling-bands, the morals of the tribe, He, following his own instincts as his God, Will enter on the larger golden age; No pleasure then taboo'd: for when the tide Of full democracy has overwhelm'd This Old world, from that flood will rise the New, Like the Love-goddess, with no bridal veil, Ring, trinket of the Church, but naked ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... never referred to Van Luck, whom he seemed to have wiped from the slate of his recollection, nor did he again allude to the mutiny. Once, when I touched upon it, he had cut me short, and I could see from his manner that all reference to it must henceforth be taboo. But I could not help sometimes recalling the picture of the boat with the solitary man on board of her, drifting upon the grey waste of sea, and I often wondered if Dirk Hartog had been able to obliterate that ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... heard always how he was the lover of the Princess Naomi. He was a true lover. He loved but the once. After her death they said he was eccentric. He was. He was the one lover, once and always. Remember that taboo inner room of his at Kilohana that we entered only after his death and found it his shrine to her. 'Dear Bella,' it was all he ever said to me, but ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... superstitions of Ossory, therefore, we have several of the cardinal features of savage totemism, the descent from the totem-animal, the ascription to the totem of a sacred character, the belief in its protection, and a taboo against killing it. I will venture to suggest, however, that to these important features there is to be added a parallel in survival to the Semang and Arunta features where the local circumstances of birth ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... weeds, and dresses in colors, why should she taboo society, and make herself the town-talk by refusing to receive even the clergy and their wives? She has lived here ten months, and I understand from Dolly Spiewell that not a soul has ever seen her. Of course such eccentricities provoke gossip and tickle the tongue ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson |
