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Groundwork   /grˈaʊndwˌərk/   Listen
Groundwork

noun
1.
The fundamental assumptions from which something is begun or developed or calculated or explained.  Synonyms: base, basis, cornerstone, foundation, fundament.
2.
Lowest support of a structure.  Synonyms: base, foot, foundation, fundament, substructure, understructure.  "He stood at the foot of the tower"
3.
Preliminary preparation as a basis or foundation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Groundwork" Quotes from Famous Books



... 1616, 4to, of which a second and enlarged edition was published in 1624. Cotta, who was a physician of great eminence and experience, residing at Northampton, has supplied in this very able, learned, and vigorous treatise, a groundwork which, if pursued to its just results, for he writes very cautiously and guardedly, and rather hints at his conclusions than follows them out, would have sufficed to have overthrown many of the positions of the supporters of the system of witchcraft. His work has a strong scholastic ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... is essentially a priestly book; but it is not entirely a priestly book. Much of the thought to which it gives utterance is popular in origin and sentiment, and is by no means of the lowest order. On this groundwork the priests have built up a system of hieratic thought and ritual of their own, in which there is much that deserves a certain respect. There is a good deal of fine poetry in it. There is also in it some idea of a law of righteousness: in spite of much wild and ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... all the psychologic subtlety of the portrait the groundwork of spiritual romance subsists. The militant saint of legend reappears, in the mould and garb of the modern world, subject to all its hampering conditions, and compelled to make his way over the corpses, not of lions and dragons only, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... of this word contains all those following, and is surrounded by a wreath of roses and other flowers; these are worked in satin stitch, the leaves in point de pois, the letters in raised satin stitch. The dots which are represented on the groundwork of the initial are worked in back stitching; these may be worked in scarlet ingrain cotton if desired for ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton

... greatly compensated for this defect. He speaks the French and Spanish languages fluently, besides being a perfect master of several Indian dialects. In Indian customs, their manners, habits and the groundwork of their conduct, no man on the American continent is ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious—but in this particular cipher we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... mythological in the history of AEsculapius, there is a groundwork of facts. Splendid temples were built to him in lovely and healthy places, usually on a hill or near a spring; they were visited by the sick, and the priests of the temples not only attended to the worship of AEsculapius, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... imitate that of Leonardo. But for all his diligence and study, in certain difficulties he was never able to surpass Leonardo; and although it appears to many that he did surpass him in sweetness and in a kind of natural facility, nevertheless he was by no means superior to him in that sublime groundwork of conceptions and that grandeur of art in which few have been the peers of Leonardo. Yet Raffaello came very near to him, more than any other painter, and above all in grace of colouring. But to return to Raffaello himself; in time he found ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... Fielding thus describes the men in the year 1776. 'The deceivers of this denomination are generally descended from families of some repute, have had the groundwork of a genteel education, and are capable of making a tolerable appearance. Having been equally profuse of their own substance and character, and learnt, by having been undone, the ways of undoing, they lie in wait for those who have ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... gross error in Gibbon to reckon the number of slaves equal to that of the free population. The luxury and magnificence of the great, (he observes,) at the commencement of the empire, must not be taken as the groundwork of calculations for the whole Roman world. "The agricultural laborer, and the artisan, in Spain, Gaul, Britain, Syria, and Egypt, maintained himself, as in the present day, by his own labor and that of his household, without possessing a single slave." The latter ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... toils are woven, I will give the name of the 'auxiliary spiral.' Its object is to supply cross-bars, supporting rungs, especially in the outer zone, where the radii are too distant from one another to afford a suitable groundwork. Its object is also to guide the Epeira in the extremely delicate business which she ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied in its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and entertainments ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... eye upward to the ceiling. It is frescoed with themes of a barbaric age. The finely-outlined figure of a female adorns the centre. Her loins are enveloped in what seems a mist; and in her right hand, looking as if it were raised from the groundwork, she holds gracefully the bulb of a massive chandelier, from the jets of which a refulgent light is reflected upon the flowery banquet table. Madame smilingly says it is the Goddess of Love, an exact copy of the one in the temple of Jupiter Olympus. Another ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... language had, in the reign of Henry III., become the language of the land; and that, also, had then assumed the form in which we still possess it. One law, in the eye of which all freemen are equal without distinction of race, was modelled, and steadily enforced, and still continues to form the groundwork of our judicial system. [Creasy's Text-book of the Constitution, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... bosom became the Theatre of a thousand contending passions. At length his attachment to the feigned Rosario, aided by the natural warmth of his temperament, seemed likely to obtain the victory: The success was assured, when that presumption which formed the groundwork of his character came to Matilda's assistance. The Monk reflected that to vanquish temptation was an infinitely greater merit than to avoid it: He thought that He ought rather to rejoice in the opportunity given him of proving the firmness of his virtue. St. Anthony had withstood all seductions ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... spirit of good, and when I am by myself I let my thoughts dwell on these, their immeasurable beneficence; the eternal wisdom, the source and origin of clearest light, that true joy within us which never fears that God will forsake us; that groundwork of truth; that willing love; and the Maker of us all, who is blessed in Himself, and likewise the desire and safeguard of all the blessed. Ah, what depth and what height of righteousness, mindful of the dead and not forgetting the living. He is the Spirit who ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... their corn on sleds. The cheerful scene is often witnessed of the whole family— father, mother, and children— at work gathering the crops. These pictures of cottage life in the mountain glens, with the beautiful variegated foliage of October for groundwork, are objects which neither weary ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these is the same in the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... corner. A corner. The corner—the big one, is further along, and then there's the hill and the hot sun on the dusty road. You'll need your sporting instincts. But you've got them. So had St. Paul and those others who furnished the groundwork for that oft-mentioned Roman holiday. That's religion, as I see it. That's what they did; pushed on—faced things down—went out smiling—"gentlemen unafraid." It's like swimming—you can't go under if you make the least effort. That's the law—of physics and, therefore, of God. The experience ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... itself unable to use those forms of verse which have been always held to be the highest— tragedy, epic, the ballad, and lastly, even the subjective lyrical ode. For they, too, to judge by every great lyric which remains to us, require a groundwork of consistent self-coherent belief; and they require also an appreciation of melody even more delicate, and a verbal polish even more complete than any other form of poetic utterance. But where there is no melody ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... is at once the most ancient and the most modern of the languages which constitute the Slavonic group. In its groundwork it presents the nearest approach to the old ecclesiastical Slavonic, the liturgical language common to all the Orthodox Slavs, but it has undergone more important modifications than any of the sister dialects in the simplification of its grammatical forms; and the analytical character ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... FIRST ISSUE, giving an Account of the History, Organization, and Conditions of Membership of the various Societies, and forming the groundwork of the Series, may still be had, price 7/6. Also Copies of the ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... was presented to the mind of the student. For unless the sense of beauty and symmetry had been aroused in him, he would of necessity find far more difficulty in retaining the, so to speak, statistical Blue-book of the groundwork and rules of any science. Newman himself was an adept at putting a subject in an entirely new light, when some pupil failed, perhaps, to follow his calculations or explanations. In relation to the teaching of Greek, the following words of Miss ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... was in consequence of the external nature of his acquaintance with it; for the view of one well accustomed to a people, and of a stranger to them, differs in this—that the latter sees the homogeneity, the one universal character, the groundwork of the whole, while the former sees a thousand little differences, which distinguish the individual men apart, to such a degree that they seem hardly to have any resemblance ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... emphasis? Preeminent above all other suggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ. Turn where I will, the redemptive work of the Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life. It is not only that here and there are solid statements of doctrine, wherein some massive argument is constructed for the partial unveiling of redemptive glory. Even in those parts of his epistles where formal argument has ceased, and where ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible tragedy, the Promos and Cassandra of George Whetstone, is supposed, from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson and the rest of the black-letter ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... Cruikshank (as he usually styled himself), was born in 1790. He had as a boy acquired the groundwork of his technical education as an artist and etcher under the direction of old Isaac his father; but we personally have met with little of his work prior to 1816, which is accounted for by the fact that he followed for a short time a sea life in the service ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... form the groundwork of the stories of the other sons of Jacob are also comparatively old. They afford us almost the only information we possess about the great change which must have taken place in the league of the tribes soon after Moses. This change principally affected the group ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... is the benefit which all orders of society, and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying influence of civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the liberation of Italy by Garibaldi the groundwork of an exciting tale of adventure. The hero is an English lad who joins the expedition and takes a prominent part in the extraordinary series of operations that ended in the fall of the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... manners, and perpetually kept up and improved in the tales of troubadours and minstrels, seem to have centred about the eleventh century in the ideal histories of Turpin and Geoffrey of Monmouth, which record the suppositious achievements of Charlemagne and King Arthur, where they formed the groundwork of that species of narrative called romance. And from these beginnings or causes, afterwards enlarged and enriched by kindred fancies fetched from the crusades, that singular and capricious mode of imagination arose, which at ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... beech, and birch, all have yellow spots, while retaining their groundwork of green. Oaks are often much browner, but the moisture in the atmosphere keeps the saps in the leaves. Even the birches are only tinted in a few places, the elms very little, and the beeches not much more: so it would seem that their hues ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... see that the glory and glow and grace Which lent a splendor to night and day Are surely fading, and showing the gray And dull groundwork of the commonplace; ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... extraordinary powers of the Wizard; and if we consider the thick cloud of ignorance which overspread the country at the period of his return from the continent, and the very small materials which are required by superstition as a groundwork for her dark and mysterious stories, we shall not wonder at the result. The Arabic books which he brought along with him, the apparatus of his laboratory, his mathematical and astronomical instruments, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... that only two or three of the London-crossed plants produced dark crimson flowers like those of their fathers, and only a very few of a pale pink like those of their mothers. The great majority had their petals longitudinally and variously striped with the two colours,—the groundwork tint being, however, in some cases darker ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... communications formed the groundwork of the reports, or more correctly, the bills of indictment in which the members of the Committee charged the Jews with the terrible crime of constituting "a religio-political caste," in other words, a nationality. Following ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... pipe, tobacco-pouch (which also contains a note-book), knife, purse, and pocket pipe-lighter, which comprise the necessary and indispensable groundwork, here are two leather laces twisted like earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of transparent celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with age. Then a little round mirror, and another square one; ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... of flowers learns a good many things by the way; at the very outset, that drawing accurate and clear must be the groundwork of any painting worthy the name. Both in the use of pencil and brush there must be a degree of painstaking observation, wholesome as a discipline and delightful in its harvests. How many of us, unused to the task of careful observation, can tell ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... written in Latin by one of the Canons soon after Rahere's death in the reign of Henry II. An illuminated copy of this work, made at the end of the fourteenth century, is preserved in the British Museum, with an English translation, which forms the groundwork of all subsequent histories.[1] ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... future state: the soul is immortal, this fact Ulysses is to tell in Phaeacia. The strong desire to behold the loved ones who have passed away is indeed the impulse; but they too return, though insubstantial. It is the primary groundwork of faith in immortality—this feeling of the domestic relation affirming that it is eternal and cannot be broken by death. Still the mother is but a ghost and cannot be embraced; this the son has to accept, though he would have her in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... results, affect ideas, conceptions, and beliefs. The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought. The reason these great events are so rare is that there is nothing so stable in a race as the inherited groundwork of its thoughts. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... attention is constantly given to creating humorous situations, will character-development necessarily suffer? 2. Do you agree with the Shakespearian critic Verplanck that this play bears no indication either of an original groundwork of incident, afterwards enriched by the additions of a fuller mind, or of thoughts, situations, and characters accidentally suggested, or growing unexpectedly out of the story, ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... the present administration the United States, having fully entered upon its position as a world power, with the responsibilities thrust upon it by the results of the Spanish-American War, and already engaged in laying the groundwork of a vast foreign trade upon which it should one day become more and more dependent, found itself without the machinery for giving thorough attention to, and taking effective action upon, a mass of intricate business vital to American interests ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... us: afflictions are what afflict us; and, under this showing, Grace was both tried and afflicted by the sudden engagement of her brother. When the whole groundwork on which one's daily life is built caves in, and falls into the cellar without one moment's warning, it is not in human nature to pick one's self up, and reconstruct and rearrange in a moment. So Grace thought, at any rate; but she made a hurried effort to dash back her tears, and gulp ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... some of the ideas: witness the claim that Negroes could never arrive at true taste, because their eyes were so accustomed to objects diametrically opposite to taste. As a further example of Miss Reynolds' occasionally muddled thinking there is the development of her initial assumption. While the groundwork of man is perfection, this perfection has been blemished and man is impelled to recapture it in the sublime. Yet instead of analyzing this impulse, Miss Reynolds appears to take it for granted. Nor does she consider how perfection is to be achieved in taste, preferring to conclude with a diatribe ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds

... to Mr. Hays also, Hugh; after a short time he came to Westerton, and threw his whole strength into his work. It may have been a hard struggle at first, but you can yourself see how he has conquered at last; love is the groundwork of all he says and all he does, and his sufferings instead of turning his heart into bitterness, seem rather to have given it ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... from 1837, the year of Dr. Ebers's birth in Berlin, to 1863, when An Egyptian Princess was finished. The subsequent events of his life were outwardly calm, as befits the existence of a great scientist and busy romancer, whose fecund fancy was based upon a groundwork of minute historical research. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... far more contentment, to compose a new piece, than to undergo the labour I have just concluded. The task was complicated and tedious. Here I had to correct an error, which naturally was rooted in the very groundwork of the play; there perhaps to sacrifice a beauty to the limits of the stage, the humour of the pit, the stupidity of the gallery, or some such sorrowful convention; and I need not tell you, that as in nature, so on the stage, an idea, an emotion, can have only one suitable ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... figure of an imperious guard with a waving lamp. The vision of a stampede. Gone. Then an interlude of sleep, during which an orchestra plays dream music, with a roll, roll, roll of wheels as a musical groundwork to the theme. Then Paddington, in a fog—a real London particular, now for the first time seen, felt, tasted, sneezed at, coughed at, wept over. Distracted biographic figures rampant everywhere. Gone. A vision of streets, populous, and full of ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... whether he treated you to a drink or a drubbing, indeed, it was at all times extremely difficult to say whether he was likely to give you the drink first or the drubbing afterwards, or vice versa. Sometimes he made the drubbing the groundwork for the drink and quite as frequently the drink the groundwork for the drubbing. Either one or other you were sure to receive at his hands; but his general practice was to give both. Shane, in fact, was a good- humored fellow, well liked, and nobody's enemy but his own. Jemmy ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... inference. The fact is not true, and the inference is fallacious. The resolutions were not Mr. Duffy's. On the contrary, one main object with those who adopted them, without discussion, was to avoid the expression of an opinion on several abstract principles forming the groundwork of his report. Secondly, he exercised little or no influence in the debate which led to their adoption by the Confederation. Thirdly, they were warmly sustained by the influence, personal and otherwise, as well as by the exertion and ability of the very men who, according to ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... accomplish what an ARISTOTLE and a DESCARTES began. The old theory of animal spirits, observes Professor Dugald Stewart, was applied by DESCARTES to explain the mental phenomena which led NEWTON into that train of thinking, which served as the groundwork of HARTLEY'S theory of vibrations. The learning of one man makes others learned, and the influence of genius is in nothing more remarkable than in its effects on its brothers. SELDEN'S treatise on the Syrian and Arabian Deities enabled MILTON to comprise, in one hundred ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... groundwork of these speeches is sound Liberal principle, their meaning and purpose, taken in connection with the Budget, and the industrial reforms for which it provides, signify a notable advance into places where the thinkers, the pioneers, the men in the advanced trenches, are accustomed to dwell. Let us ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... John Smith, in a fine passage too long to quote in full, says: "Reason in man being lumen de lumine, a light flowing from the Fountain and Father of lights ... was to enable man to work out of himself all those notions of God which are the true groundwork of love and obedience to God, and conformity to Him.... But since man's fall from God, the inward virtue and vigour of reason is much abated, the soul having suffered a [Greek: pterorryesis], as Plato speaks, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... arrived;(212) I have seen her; I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all increased. Her dress, like her languages, is a gralimatias of several countries; the groundwork rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black-laced hood represents the first; the fur of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity petticoat ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... assailed the doctrine of the special creation of man, and annihilated it in the minds of many eminent scientists. It formed a prominent argument in favor of the theory of organic evolution, and as such calls for consideration here, as a suitable groundwork for our ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... country, between Egypt and foreign lands. Then personal adventure, and the interest in schemes and successes, becomes the staple material; while only in the later periods does character come in as the groundwork. The same may be seen in English literature—first the tales of wonders and strange lands, then the novel of adventure, and lastly ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... wonderfully pretty effect in combination with the blue waters, the verdant bank, and the gray walls. But in addition to these are thousands of soldiers, equally gaudy as to raiment, reclining irregularly along the same greensward, each warrior a bright bit of coloring on the verdant groundwork of the bank. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... of this medium new possibilities came into the world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and processes of handling which are the groundwork of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... to the two chapels, where Giotto may be found at his best, although restored too, on this side of the high altar. The Peruzzi chapel has scenes from the lives of the two S. Johns, the Baptist, and the Evangelist: all rather too thoroughly re-painted, although following Giotto's groundwork closely enough to retain much of their interest and value. And here once again one should consult the "Mornings in Florence," where the wilful discerning enthusiast is, like his revered subject, also at his best. Giotto's thoughtfulness could not be better illustrated than in S. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... social much higher than she did her physical head, while there was a kind of nose-in-the-air bearing in both cases. She had beautiful, wavy black hair, a clear complexion, black eyes, and narrow, thin lips, which were always slightly pursed up, as the groundwork or main support of a kind of cast-iron smile that never left her face for a moment while she was awake. Her dresses always fitted her perfectly, and her skirts trailed at the proper angle, but yet there was a feeling, all the time, that she had been poured ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... composed, and I have just concluded on this vellum the ode that is to introduce it at my table. The analysation will be my next labour. It will take the form of a treatise, in which, making the experience of past years the groundwork of prophecy for the future, I shall show the precise number of additional dissensions, controversies, and quarrels that will be required to enable the new priesthood to be themselves the destroyers of their own worship. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... bears no comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung.... The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached"—for you must not forget that it is upon the roof of the mine that the impressions of the plants which have been turned into coal are found, not upon the coal itself, though even there they may be ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... promptly in behalf of subjects a thousand leagues away. New France, accordingly must organize itself for defense and repel her enemies just as the earldoms and duchies of the crusading centuries had done. And that is just what the colony did, with the seigneurial system as the groundwork of defensive strength. Under stress of the new environment, which was not wholly unlike that of the former feudal days, the military aspects of the system revived and the personal bond regained much of its ancient vigor. The sordid phases of seigneurialism dropped into ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... this family, is a degree smaller than Amatrix, but of the same shape. The fore-wings are covered with broken lines of different colours, the groundwork grey, with gold flushings, the lines and dots of the border very like the Sweetheart's. The back wings are pure gold, almost reddish, with dark brownish black bands, and yellow borders. The top of the abdomen is a grey-gold colour. Underneath, the markings are nearly the same as Amatrix, but ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... God says, Draw nigh, and, Draw not nigh. There can be no knowledge of God or nearness to Him, where we have not first heard His, Draw not nigh. The sense of sin, of unfitness for God's presence, is the groundwork of true knowledge or worship of Him as the Holy One. 'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.' The shoes are the means of intercourse with the world, the aids through which the flesh or nature does its will, moves about and does its work. In standing upon holy ground, all ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... inches, the strongest of the seedlings being put out one foot apart. By following this plan sufficient supplies for a small household may be obtained from one annual sowing made in April. It should not be overlooked that Parsley is indispensable to exhibitors of vegetables, especially as a groundwork for collections, and due allowance for such calls must be made in fixing the number and extent of the sowings. When the plant pushes for seed it becomes useless, and had best be got rid of; but by planting at various times in different places a sufficiency may be expected to go through a second ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... had no experience of political life, succeeded, within two months, in drafting a Constitution which has since served as a model for several European nations. It was the result of various influences: the groundwork—based on individual liberty, equality before the law, freedom of the press, of worship, of public meeting, of association and of teaching—was no doubt inspired by the French. On the other hand, the preponderance of legislative power, represented by the ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... depth of tone to be quite apparent, but not to lose their relation. The connecting grades may appear in furniture covering and draperies, thus giving different values in the same tone, the relation between them being perfectly apparent. These three masses of related colour are the groundwork upon which one can play infinite variations, and is really the same law upon which a picture is composed. There are foreground, middle-distance, and sky—and in a properly coloured room, the floors, walls, and ceiling bear the same relation ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... a man fell into errors, it must be from defects not intrinsical; they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his life, which, though they do not alter the groundwork of character, yet tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a profession. He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences,—a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and could impart my knowledge to the Captain, which would have the effect of fixing it more firmly in my own memory; and every one knows that it is of far greater importance to lay a good, solid groundwork of education, than to build a showy, superficial structure, on a bad foundation. Come, then, Captain, you see your advantages. This is the last time of asking. If you don't speak now, henceforth and ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... discovered the Elixir of Immortality.—The belief in this elixir was general in China about the seventh century, A.D., and many emperors used great exertions to discover it. This fact forms the groundwork of Leopold Schefer's novel, "Der Unsterblichkeitstrank," which has furnished the conception, though not the incidents, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... constitution of our race; on which account, in our training of youth, we steer them by pleasure and pain; and it is of the first importance that they should feel pleasure in what they ought, and displeasure in what they ought, as the groundwork (or principium) of good ethical dispositions. Such a topic can never be left unnoticed, especially when we look at the great difference of opinion thereupon. Some affirm pleasure to be the chief good [Eudoxus]. Others call it altogether ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... long before they are acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the invention of ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest tribes of the earth. They are for the most part sung by a class of men whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of traditions. Indeed, so natural ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... to be recast and made new, the destinies of Germany, Italy, and Poland settled, a solid groundwork laid for the future, and a commercial system to be outlined."[7] Might not those very words have been penned at any moment during the Paris Conference with equal relevance to ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... for the great work which I have long intended some day to write, and of which I completed the first map during my stay at Ottawa, I found that I must go to Australia before getting very far through with the book, and that I could not be even so much as certain of my basement and groundwork until ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... and, for my own part, I think them as agreeable as any that I have eaten: but as the Taste is not alike in every one, I shall add an Observation or two more of Monsieur Garneau's, concerning the Mushroom, which I think not unworthy our notice. The Mushroom, says that Gentleman, is not only a good Groundwork for all high Sauces, but itself a good Meat to be dress'd after any manner, either to compose a white or brown Fricassee, or fry'd or broil'd, or baked in Pyes with common Seasoning, and stands in the room of Flesh better than any thing that has ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... leave to take breath for a short time among the fashionable world of Paris, where we are but just arrived. Allow us to prepare at our leisure the groundwork of our novel, and do not hurry on the ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... was a merit; the grosser the burlesque, the broader the parody, the greater was the success and the more effective was the result: but in a dramatic attempt of higher pretention than such as might be looked for in the literary groundwork or raw material for a pageant, this intrusion of incongruous contrast is a pure barbarism—a positive solecism in composition.... On the other hand, even Gifford's editorial enthusiasm could not overestimate the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... ice, always with an anxious lookout below for fear of dangers which might loom up from the bottom, always with an anxious lookout starboard for fear of running against the foundations of Greenland, always with an anxious lookout to port for fear of striking the groundwork of the unknown land to the west, and always keeping a lookout in every direction for whatever revelation these unknown waters might choose to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... the ground or groundwork, which is the Spirit, so also it worketh in the heart those three graces, faith, hope, love, all which as naturally purify the heart from wickedness as soap and nitre cleanseth the cloth. He purified 'their hearts by faith,' by faith in Christ's blood. 'And every man that hath ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... family were the happier for having listened reverently (if with some surprise) to Tom's thanksgiving. They were not an ill-disposed set of people, but wanted thoughtfulness in their every-day life; that sort of thoughtfulness which gives order to a home, and makes a wise and holy spirit of love the groundwork ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... and Peace, or perhaps even the Birds, might form the groundwork of an amusing piece. Should you be able to spare a corner in your valuable periodical for this Query, you ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various

... an intelligent act—adaptation of means to ends; not a general and vague adaptation, but a determinate adaptation to a determinate end? In the reflex action we find all that constitutes in some sort the very groundwork of an intelligent act—that is to say, the same series of stages, in the same order, with the same relations between them. We have thus, in the reflex act, all that constitutes the psychological act except ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... institutions, nor any permanent and healthy force in those great movements which elsewhere tend to uplift the masses and elevate mankind. There may, it is true, be some advance, from time to time, in science and in material prosperity; but the social groundwork for the same is wanting, and the people surely relapse into the semi-barbarism forced upon them by an ordinance which is opposed to the best instincts of humanity. Sustained progress becomes impossible. Such is the outcome of an attempt to improve upon nature and banish woman, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... proper times; receive no mission as a go-between; compound no philteries; abhor dissimulation; follow right doctrine, and be kind to all that lives; receive in moderation what is given; receive but hoard not up; these are, in brief, my spoken precepts. These form the groundwork of my rules, these also are the ground of full emancipation. Enabled thus to live this is rightly to receive all other things. This is true wisdom which embraces all, this is the way to attain the end; this code of rules, therefore, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... to the absolute unison of a pair. Thus, though he might never love a woman of the island race, for lack in her of the desired refinement, he could not love long a kimberlin—a woman other than of the island race, for her lack of this groundwork of character. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... new idea, and the following evening he made a groundwork of branches in the corner of the corral itself, and put down his blankets on the evergreens. Diablo was much concerned and walked about examining the new work from every angle. There Bull slept, and the next night he found that during the day the stallion had torn the boughs to ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... most memorable administrations of the century, the great conservative government of Sir Robert Peel was undoubtedly one. It laid the groundwork of our solid commercial policy, it established our railway system, it settled the currency, and, by no means least, it gave us a good national character in Europe as lovers of moderation, equity, and peace. Little as most members of the new cabinet saw it, their ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... he seems to have tried to approach the Maori from his own side, and to enter the inmost recesses of his thought: "I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving at the very foundation and groundwork of the Cannibalism and Superstitions of these Islanders. All their notions are metaphysical, and I have been so poisoned with the apparent sublimity of their ideas, that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a heathen." Like the ancient Gnostics, Kendall tried ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... jurisprudence of Rome was bound to assert its superiority. About the close of the eleventh century, there was a great revival in the study of the Roman law as embodied in the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian (see p. 358), and in the course of a century or two this became either the groundwork or a strong modifying element in the jurisprudence of almost all ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... work are also frequently enriched with further work upon them in metal threads. Spangles are very rarely found on canvas-bound books. The backgrounds of several of the later specimens are worked in silver threads, sometimes in chain-stitch and sometimes in tapestry-stitch; others again have the groundwork of silver threads laid along the surface of the canvas and caught down at regular intervals by small stitches—this kind of work is called 'laid' or 'couched' work. Books bound with this metal ground have always strong work superimposed, usually ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport

... probable, it is remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who, like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... time to be influenced by the new environment? It took centuries to make him just what he is. Can't you spare him one generation to shed the crust of those centuries? Can't you be satisfied with making him the solid groundwork of the citizenship ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... residence on the Continent enabled him to master French, Italian, and especially German, and confirmed him in his taste for literature, to pursue which he abandoned business; various essays and reviews formed the groundwork of his elaborate "Historic Survey of German Literature," the first systematic survey of German literature presented to English readers; taught German to George Borrow, who in "Lavengro" sketched his interesting personality, which may ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be shown, to be so exhibited that it will tell itself. To hand over to the reader the facts of the story merely as so much information—this is no more than to state the "argument" of the book, the groundwork upon which the novelist proceeds to create. The book is not a row of facts, it is a single image; the facts have no validity in themselves, they are nothing until they have been used. It is not the simple art of narrative, but the comprehensive art of fiction that I am considering; ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... spoliation forms the groundwork of human savagism. To retrace its history would be to reproduce almost entire the history of all nations—Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Franks, Huns, Turks, ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... handled, on the old familiar lines, and supplies the groundwork of an eminently readable story, peopled by many life-like "humours" and an attractive, spirited heroine. The adventures of Valerie are various and well-sustained; her bearing throughout secures the reader's sympathy, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... and, save in rare cases, late hours and overexertion in the dance are utterly incapable of alone explaining the mischief. I am far more inclined to believe that climatic peculiarities have formed the groundwork of the evil, and enabled every injurious agency to produce an effect which would not in some other countries be so severe. I am quite persuaded, indeed, that the development of a nervous temperament is one of the many race-changes ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... utterances of this great man, it seems as if these peculiarities and strange asperities were the results of some mysterious law of Nature, so that we are inclined to adopt the paradox by which a wit once described the singular groundwork of our nature,—"The faults of man are the night in which ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humored, humane old bachelor; remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... can hardly fail to see that many of the Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries—old wives' fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power of steam. It is long, indeed, since English nurses told these ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... of the miracles and wonders contained in it, will be discussed at a later point in this book. Meanwhile there is a stranger story still connected with the life of St. Antony. It professes to have been told by him himself to his monks; and whatever groundwork of fact there may be in it is doubtless his. The form in which we have it was given it by the famous St. Jerome, who sends the tale as a letter to Asella, one of the many noble Roman ladies whom he persuaded to embrace the monastic life. The style is as well worth preserving as ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... shower of rain would reduce the grub's garment to pulp. Fire does not affect it greatly either. When exposed to the flame of a candle, the jar, without changing shape, loses its brown colour and assumes the tint of burnt ferruginous earth. The groundwork of the material therefore is of a mineral nature. It remains for us to discover what the cement can be that gives the earthy element its brown colour, holds it together and makes ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... the plan of the Catholic union, which was distinguished from the evangelical by the title of the League. The objects agreed upon were nearly the same as those which constituted the groundwork of the Union. Bishops formed its principal members, and at its head was placed Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. As the only influential secular member of the confederacy, he was entrusted with far more extensive powers than the Protestants had committed to their chief. In addition to the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the privileges of sexual intercourse, and he would therefore not be so closely in companionship with the women of the local groups as the friendly animal, plant, or tree who did so much for the mothers. There would thus be formed the groundwork for the fashioning of that most incredible of all beliefs, well founded, as Mr. Hartland has proved both from tradition and belief,[365] that the human father was not father, and that other agencies were responsible for the birth ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... the wild imagination of Jules Verne, when he described Captain Nemo, in his diving armor, looking down upon the temples and towers of the lost island, lit by the fires of submarine volcanoes, had some groundwork ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... smut' was, for some time, considered the most valuable of fancy rabbits. It is thus named on account of having bluish or lead-coloured spots on either side of the nose, having some resemblance to the spread wings of a butterfly, what may be termed the groundwork of the rabbit's face being white. A black and white rabbit may also have the face marked in a similar manner, constituting ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... doubling oil production to 3 million bbl/day by 2015. Libya faces a long road ahead in liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps - including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and announcing plans for privatization - are laying the groundwork for a transition to a more market-based economy. The non-oil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for more than 20% of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... called American literature." We read in a review of 'A Tramp Abroad', published in The Athenaeum in 1880: "Mark Twain is American pure and simple. To the eastern motherland he owes but the rudiments, the groundwork, already archaic and obsolete to him, of the speech he has to write; in his turn of art, his literary method and aims, his intellectual habit and temper, he is as distinctly national as the Fourth of July." Mark Twain was admired ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... knowledge, and showed that it consists solely in a trustworthy history of the sacred writings; such a history, in spite of its indispensability, the ancients neglected, or at any rate, whatever they may have written or handed down has perished in the lapse of time, consequently the groundwork for such an investigation is to a great extent, cut from under us. (2) This might be put up with if succeeding generations had confined themselves within the limits of truth, and had handed down conscientiously what few particulars they had received or ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... poem has become a picture, pattern within pattern, of the life of all things: flowers blowing, trees waving, men and women moving and speaking in densest crowds among the flaming rocks of hell, the steps of purgatory, the planispheres of heaven's stars making the groundwork of that wondrous tapestry. But it is better to read Dante than to read about Dante, so I ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... no groundwork sooner than that? Sometime in the foreseeable future, at least! Take it up with Propaganda, Blauvelt! It seems to me that the briefing mentioned an indigenous race ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe

... the groundwork of one of the ballads which I have made the harbinger of doom to the house of Rookwood, is ascribed, by popular superstition, to a family resident in Sussex; upon whose estate the fatal tree—a gigantic lime, with mighty arms and huge girth of trunk, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... formed the main groundwork of Liebig's treatise, as they had before done for Davy's; but the progress of science had supplied many new facts which confirmed the opinions of the older chemists in most respects, and enabled Liebig to generalise ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... chronology but much of the actual history can be recovered from these tablets, while the names of the witnesses and parties to the transactions will settle the order of the years which are still doubtful. It is from these deeds that the greater part of this work will be constructed. They form the groundwork, while later ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... receive herewith a paper marked A, which is a copy of one lately received by me from Earl Bathurst, His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the colonies, and which I am directed by his lordship to make the groundwork of my instructions to the officer whom I might think proper to select for, and entrust with the due execution of the services therein required. And I therefore refer you for all farther instructions to the paper thus alluded to; persuaded you will do every thing in your power to comply with and ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than as her husband's wife. It was not my desire to deal in this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... their being sisters children, ordinarily superintended all the minor concerns of Marmaduke Temple. Richard was fond of saying that this child of invention consisted of nothing more nor less than what should form the groundwork of every clergymans discourse, viz., a firstly and a lastly. He had commenced his labors, in the first year of their residence, by erecting a tall, gaunt edifice of wood, with its gable toward the highway. In this shelter for it was little ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Character, whether in visible presence or only perceptible in its effects. Characteristic Beauty, therefore, is Beauty in the root, from which alone Beauty can arise as the fruit. Essence may, indeed, outgrow Form, but even then the Characteristic remains as the still efficient groundwork ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... from a heap." Nothing could be more conclusive—"here there could be no deception"—and the graphic sketch which the talented gentleman drew of this wretched wight, would no doubt have formed the groundwork of many leading articles in the influential journal for which he reported, had he not been undeceived before he had time to forward his dispatch, and undeceived, too, by no less an authority than Mr Sullivan himself. At the conclusion of the very letter which contains ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... work I had some advantages. My father's training, as I have said, was practical, the course at the commercial college had taught me the rudiments of business, and I thus had a groundwork to build upon. I was fortunate, also, in working under the supervision of the bookkeeper, who was a fine disciplinarian, and well disposed ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... by groups of men who for half a century had pursued a well-defined policy in common, united among themselves and marked off from most of the other states by a difference far more deeply rooted in the groundwork of society than any mere economic difference,—the difference between slave-labour and free-labour. These eleven states, moreover, held such an economic relationship with England that they counted upon compelling the naval power of ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed,—no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... the Parthians in the country called after their name dated from a time anterior to Darius Hystaspis, and the Greeks certainly did not set on foot any inquiries into their origin till at least two centuries later, it would be unlikely that the Parthians could give them a true account. The real groundwork of the stories told seems to have been twofold. First, there was a strong conviction on the part of those who came in contact with the Parthians that they were Scyths; and secondly, it was believed ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... docile a pupil as any reasonable preceptor might have desired. But still, reading and writing—they are very uninteresting elements! Had the groundwork been laid, it might have been delightful to raise the fairy palace of knowledge; but the digging the foundations and the constructing the cellars is weary labour. Perhaps he felt it so; for in a few days Alice was handed over to the very oldest and ugliest writing-master that the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that we can scarcely see any trace of their existence except in certain relics which have been borrowed from true poetry and converted into the half fabulous history of the infant ages of Rome. That the Romans, as a people, had no great national drama, and that their poems never became the groundwork of a later polished literature was due to the incorporation of foreigners into their nation who took little interest in the traditions of their earlier achievements. Father Ennius (239-169 B.C.), as Horace calls him, was the true founder of Latin poetry. He enriched ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... fuller truth, after truth has been discovered. Only a very foolish man would now uphold the Ptolemaic astronomy. But the Ptolemaic astronomy, when first invented, was based on real if incomplete observations, and formed a groundwork without which further progress in that science would have been probably impossible. The theories and ceremonials of the Catholic Church suited well with an age in which little was known and much was imagined: when superstition was active and science ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... embryons and childhood, and among the illiterate, we always find the groundwork and start, of this great science, and its noblest products. What a relief most people have in speaking of a man not by his true and formal name, with a "Mister" to it, but by some odd or homely appellative. The ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... of words common to both. But everywhere the original language is notably affected, though in different degrees, by its contact with the more cultivated languages into the use of which the nomads have been forced. German in one case and Spanish in the other have so modified the Romany groundwork that it would not be possible for a gipsy from the Black Forest to converse with one of his Andalusian brothers, although a few sentences on each side would suffice to convince them that each was speaking a dialect of the same language. Certain words in very frequent use ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... they held that some parts of the Catholic system were contrary to reason. The conclusion was obvious. Two propositions, each of which separately is compatible with the most exalted piety, formed, when held in conjunction, the groundwork of a system of irreligion. The doctrine of Bossuet, that transubstantiation is affirmed in the Gospel, and the doctrine of Tillotson, that transubstantiation is an absurdity, when put together, produced by logical necessity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... more, groundwork or broidery Never in cloth did Tartars make nor Turks, Nor were such tissues by ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... eat or drink. He would, however, smoke, and helped himself from the pouch that Douglas offered. He let his blanket fall from his shoulders, and underneath there showed a richly-wrought shirt of true barbaric grandeur. On a groundwork of crimson flannel was wrought a rare and striking mosaic in beads of blue and yellow and red. The sun glowed from his breast, countless showy ermine tails dangled from his shoulders, his arms and his sides like a gorgeous fringe, and numerous tiny bells tinkled all over him ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... the last-mentioned author's explanation of such serial homology as exists in the centipede and its allies, the very groundwork is open to objection. Multiplication by spontaneous fission seems from some recent researches to be much less frequent than has been supposed, and more evidence is required as to the fact of the habitual propagation of any planariae in this fashion.[169] But even if this were ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... which were in a very ruinous condition three hundred and forty years ago. They were described by Cieca de Leon, who accompanied Pizarro, and also by Diego d'Alcobaca. Cieca de Leon mentions "great edifices" that were in ruins, "an artificial hill raised on a groundwork of stone," and "two stone idols resembling the human figure, and apparently made by skillful artificers." These "idols" were great statues, ten or twelve feet high. One of them, which was carried to La Paz in 1842, measured ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... doubt being entertained as to whether it has been deposited under water or by drippings. Here in Rainy Chamber it is fully explained. Near the center of the room the fallen masses are heavily crystallized, much of the groundwork being fine box work and the crystals in perfect condition. On these crystals the pop-corn is being formed, and specimens can be seen in all stages of development, from the beginning to an approximate degree of finish; and whatever the position it occupies ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... been, after mature deliberation, finally disavowed by that Government as inconsistent with the powers and instructions given to their minister who negotiated it. This disavowal was entirely unexpected, as the liberal principles embodied in the convention, and which form the groundwork of the objections to it, were perfectly satisfactory to the Belgian representative, and were supposed to be not only within the powers granted, but expressly conformable to the instructions given to him. An offer, not yet accepted, has been made by Belgium to renew negotiations for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... are brought into relation to their objects. There is also the reserved potent power (s'akti) of citta, by which it can restrain itself and change its courses or continue to persist in any one direction. These characteristics are involved in the very essence of citta, and form the groundwork of the Yoga method of practice, which consists in steadying a particular state of mind to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... centrally-planned economy. Economic stagnation marked the period after reunification from 1975 to 1985. In 1986, the Sixth Party Congress approved a broad economic reform package that introduced market reforms and set the groundwork for Vietnam's improved investment climate. Substantial progress was achieved from 1986 to 1997 in moving forward from an extremely low level of development and significantly reducing poverty. The ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... gusts of emotion than we are; yet it would be unfair to judge his life as a whole by these occasional outbursts rather than by its general tenour, which to those who know him from long observation reveals a groundwork of logic and reason resembling our own in its operations, though differing from ours in the premises from which it sets out. I think it desirable to emphasise the rational basis of savage life because it has been the fashion of late years with some writers to question ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... and to spare, since every literary traveller in Spain thinks it incumbent on him to describe them. But this is the first instance we remember where the incidents of the bull-ring, and the exploits and peculiarities of its gladiators, are taken as groundwork for a romantic tale. The attempt has been crowned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... amboyna or burr-walnut it is advisable not to use linseed-oil on the sole of the rubber when polishing, but the best hog's lard; the reason for this is that these veneers being so extremely thin and porous the oil will quickly penetrate through to the groundwork, softening the glue, and causing the veneers to rise in a number of small blisters. Of course, this is not always the case, but the use of lard instead of oil will be found a good preventative. Lard is also used on the above class of work when it is desirable ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... borrow of him; it was in the form in which he cast his poem that his originality was shown. The legendary history of Rome, her supposed connection with the issues of the Trojan war, and her subsequent military achievements in the sphere of history, such was the groundwork both of Naevius's and Ennius's conception. And, however unsuitable such a consecutive narrative might be for a heroic poem, there was something in it that corresponded with the national sentiment, and in a changed form it re-appears in the Aeneid. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell



Words linked to "Groundwork" :   supposition, assumption, raft foundation, construction, understructure, bed, readying, preparation, supposal, explanation, support, structure, meat and potatoes



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