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Reversal   /rɪvˈərsəl/  /rivˈərsəl/   Listen
Reversal

noun
1.
A change from one state to the opposite state.
2.
An unfortunate happening that hinders or impedes; something that is thwarting or frustrating.  Synonyms: black eye, blow, reverse, setback.
3.
Turning in an opposite direction or position.  Synonym: turn around.
4.
A decision to reverse an earlier decision.  Synonyms: change of mind, flip-flop, turnabout, turnaround.
5.
A judgment by a higher court that the judgment of a lower court was incorrect and should be set aside.
6.
Turning in the opposite direction.  Synonyms: reverse, reversion, turnabout, turnaround.
7.
The act of reversing the order or place of.  Synonym: transposition.
8.
A major change in attitude or principle or point of view.  Synonyms: about-face, policy change, volte-face.



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"Reversal" Quotes from Famous Books



... judgment decisively indicated the conclusion at which he had arrived on the main point in the case, we have the best reason for believing that there was not a single person in the House of Lords—with the possible exception of Lords Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell—who expected a reversal of the judgment. So much has the public press been taken by surprise, that, with the exception of a fierce controversy between the Standard, and Morning Herald, and the Morning Chronicle, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... law suits as have been decided unrighteously shall be re-investigated by the monarch: [in case of reversal of the judgment] the judges and the winning party shall be amerced in double the amount of the fine ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... flesh can never come again like the flesh of a little child. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, and reap for ever and ever. It is not eternal punishment which is incredible; nothing else has credibility. Let there be no illusion about this: forgiveness is a violation, a reversal, of law, and no such thing is conceivable in a world in ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... life in order quite to determine to which class of inspiration a given work belongs; and though he regards the work of Shelley as carrying its warrant within itself, his position leaves ample room for a withdrawal of faith, a reversal of judgment, if the ascertained facts of the poet's life should at any future time bear decided witness against him. He is also careful to avoid drawing too hard and fast a line between the two opposite kinds of poet. He admits that a pure instance of either is seldom to be found; ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... has been, in the course of three centuries, a complete reversal of the position. The last have become first, and the first last. What now has become of the terrible power of Spain, the enterprise of Portugal, the art and literature of Italy? When the element of Protestantism was crushed out of these nations by the Inquisition, the principle ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... by counterclockwise gyre (broad, circular system of currents) in the southern Indian Ocean; unique reversal of surface currents in the northern Indian Ocean; low atmospheric pressure over southwest Asia from hot, rising, summer air results in the southwest monsoon and southwest-to-northeast winds and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... was in the work at Westmore, and the fear of not being able to get other employment was a small factor in his intense desire to keep his post. What he really wanted was to speak out, and yet escape the consequences: by some miraculous reversal of probability to retain his position and yet effect Truscomb's removal. The idea was so fantastic that he felt it merely as a quickening of all his activities, a tremendous pressure of will along undetermined lines. He had no wish to take the manager's place; but his dream was ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... accuracy in details, which is sometimes arithmetically genuine, sometimes only a hoax. In Lilliput all the dimensions are scientifically computed on a scale one-twelfth as large as that of man; in Brobdingnag, by an exact reversal, everything is twelve times greater than among men. But the long list of technical nautical terms which seem to make a spirited narrative at the beginning of the second of Gulliver's voyages is merely ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... [3] The reversal of magnitudes makes this image obscure. The motion of the Crystalline Heaven, the swiftest of all, determines the slower motions of the Heavens below it, and divides them; as five and two divide ten. The fixed unit of time is the day which is established by the revolution ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... with rope round her neck, by the gallows where she was about to hang, their hearts rose in revolt. From all sides went forth the cry, "Never, since the world began, was there seen so villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered the wrong way, the girl condemned for having been made a tool, the victim hanged ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... roused by a sharp reversal of his normal position. When he became fully awake, he was lying in a pool of water in the middle of the hut, and Weldon was in possession of the blankets ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... system of law procedure, this meant that the action of the court was apt to be determined by legal technicalities. It was possible to dismiss a man from the service for quite insufficient reasons, and to provide against the reversal of the sentence, if the technicalities of procedure were observed. But the worst criminals were apt to be adroit men, against whom it was impossible to get legal evidence which a court could properly consider ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... must have been a strong outside pressure, from some quarter, to produce such a change of front. From Wednesday to Friday, some persons of great influence must have been hard at work. The reasons assigned, in the record, for this sudden reversal, by the Council, of its deliberate decision, are the great number of criminals waiting trial, the thronged condition of the jails, and "this hot season of the year," on the twenty-seventh of May! It is further stated, "there being ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... throughout the Ottoman Empire is now more general than its internal condition would warrant us in supposing. Indeed, in travelling through the country, one cannot fail to be struck by the strange reversal of the general order of things. Thus, for instance, both telegraph and railways have preceded the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... Maggione all whose lives or lands were threatened by this new reversal of Caesar's policy. These were Paolo Orsino, Gian Paolo Baglioni, Hermes Bentivoglio, representing his father Gian, Antonio di Venafro, the envoy of Pandolfo Petrucci, Olivertoxo da Fermo, and the Duke of Urbino: the first six had everything to lose, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... this, while it lasted, altered the flow of the magnetic currents, which, in an imperceptible manner, influence the minds of men. Hitherto the stream of human life had directed itself to the westward, but when this reversal of magnetism occurred, a general desire arose to return to the east. And those whose business is theology have pointed out that the wickedness of those times surpassed understanding, and that a change and ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... seeming in the least conceited, tell how, through his clear-sighted firmness in refusing to write in the Spencerian manner prescribed in school, he succeeded in bringing the Principal and the whole Board of Education to their senses, resulting in a complete reversal of the public-school policy in ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... an appeal, a writ of supersedeas may be awarded by the appellate court, suspending the operation of the action appealed from until the final disposition of the appeal, but, prior to the final reversal thereof by the appellate court, no action of the commission prescribing or affecting the rates, charges or classifications of traffic of any transportation or transmission company shall be delayed, ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... scornful smiles, and in reply to something (I forget what) that the Vice-Chancellor said he dropped in his sarcastic tone that he would do so and so 'if his Honour would permit.' For a moment I thought there would be a breeze, but it ended without any vote, in the adoption of a form of reversal suggested by Lord Eldon, which left it to the option of the respondent to institute other proceedings if he should think fit. Afterwards all was harmony. Eldon seemed tolerably fresh, feeble, but clear and collected. He was in spirits about the dinner which had ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... their daughters into a sort of seraglio defended by their mothers, by prejudice, and by religious ideas, and give the most complete liberty to their wives, thus showing themselves much more solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day find in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... yellow and brown, and exactly resemble some species of the uneatable Heliconidae of the same district. Similarly, in the Malay Archipelago, the female of Diadema anomala is glossy metallic blue, while the male is brown; the reason for this reversal of the usual rule being, that the female exactly mimics the brilliant colouring of the common and uneatable Euplaea midamus, and thus secures protection. In the fine Adolias dirtea, the male is black with a few specks of ochre-yellow ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... tender-hearted Krishna for permission to depart. He is no longer the embodiment of evil: the cruel arrows with which the ideal of goodness had pierced him fall away, the top of his head opens, and his spirit soars to heaven shining like a meteor. How strange a reversal is here! How strange that he who had been the representative of all evil should have been transformed by his suffering, and should have been made to instruct and comfort the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... him in two halves, which writhing sections he swallowed SERIATIM. And the allied forces aft—what of them? Well, they had been rash—they fully realized that fact, and would have fled, but one certainly found that he had lingered on the scene too long. The thoroughly-roused leviathan, with a reversal of his huge bulk that made the sea boil like a pot, brandished his tail aloft and brought it down upon the doomed "killer," making him at once the "killed." He was crushed like ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... conception of the book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process, I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live, temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... is Life is written in short trochaic verses of irregular length and with occasional rhyme. The idea was conceived early, the first act was written at the time of The Ancestress, and the title, though chosen late, being a reversal of Calderon's Life is a Dream, suggests the connection with that Spanish drama. Grillparzer's principal source for the plot, was, however, Voltaire's narrative entitled White and Black. In the psychology of dreams he had long been interested, and life in the dream state ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... poem has no direct historical reference. He calls it "An Old Story," because in all ages men have experienced this unjust reversal of public approval. The poem is merely an imaginative, dramatic representation of the fickleness of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then. He cast about for some excuse to detain ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... begins with an attempt to give as precise an account as possible of the old assumptions which we must discard and the new ones which we must adopt in order to understand Bergson's description of reality. To make the complete reversal of our ordinary mental habits needed, for understanding what Bergson has to say requires a very considerable effort from anyone, but the feat is perhaps most difficult of all for those who have carefully trained themselves in habits of rigorous logical criticism. ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... Moses deep down. It hurt God deeper down, in a heart more sensitive to hurt than was Moses'. Without doubt it was said with reluctance, for Moses' sake. But it was said, plainly, irrevocably, for their sakes. Moses' petition was for a reversal of this decision. Once and again he asked. He wanted to see that wondrous land of God's choosing. He felt the sting too. The edge of the knife of discipline cut keenly, and the blood spurted. But God ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... metamorphosis; transmutation; deoxidization[Chem]; transubstantiation; mutagenesis[Genet], transanimation[obs3], transmigration, metempsychosis|; avatar; alterative. conversion &c. (gradual change) 144; revolution &c. (sudden or radical change) 146 inversion &c. (reversal) 218; displacement &c. 185; transference &c. 270. changeableness &c. 149; tergiversation &c. (change of mind) 607. V. change, alter, vary, wax and wane; modulate, diversify, qualify, tamper with; turn, shift, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... deliverance are described in verses 16 and 18. The Revised Version has wisely substituted a simple 'and' for 'nevertheless' at the beginning of verse 16. The latter word implies that the raising up of the judges was a reversal of what had gone before; 'and' implies that it was a continuation. And its use here is not merely an instance of inartificial Hebrew style, but carries the lesson that God's judgment and deliverance come from the same source, and are harmonious parts of one educational process. Nor is this ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... told that our aggressive—by which is meant retrogressive—policy towards Russia is due to our inability to effect an entire reversal of our policy towards that country, but this is not the case at all. At any rate, as times and circumstances have changed, our policy need not be altogether reversed, but it must necessarily be subjected to ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... more profound that I agree with those of his friends who consider his entry into the diplomatic career as a misfortune for American letters, and that his mind flowed to waste in those later years. Nor was he at home in diplomacy. It was a reversal of all the conditions of his habitual existence; but it flattered his amour propre that the country should recognize the part he had taken in the cultivation of the anti-slavery sentiment of the nation, and the trace of worldly feeling which I have noted grew under ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... which may be subject to reversal does not constitute ground for divorce, but such conviction must be ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... old-fashioned discard from weakness is all that is used or required, provided it be understood that a signal in the discard means a reversal of its ordinary inference. A signal by discard (that is, for example, discarding first a 5, followed by a 2) is generally a showing of strength in that suit, and a most pronounced suggestion, if not an imperative command, ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... the counsel, his voice becoming doubly earnest, 'while there is even the possibility of innocence, it becomes incumbent on you, gentlemen of the jury, to consider well the fearful consequences of a decision in a matter of life or death—a decision for which there can be no reversal. The facts that have come to light are manifestly incomplete. Another link in the chain has yet to be added; and when it shall come forth, how will it be if it should establish the guiltlessness of the prisoner too late? Too late, when a young life of high promise, and linked ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... then the theory that, with increasing wealth and wider diffusion of education, or even without them, he negro must take his place on equal terms in the American political and social system. This theory, of course, requires an absolute reversal of attitude upon the part of ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... described, explained, and defended—the Special Committee had suggested rather than proposed, in scarcely more than a sentence, that the policy be abandoned—and it is announced that as long as the Executive was unchanged there would be no reversal of the political policy of the Society. Finally the Reply asserts that the time had come to attempt the formation of a middle-class Socialist Party. At the end three resolutions were set out, which the Executive submitted to ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... youth had divined the truth. Just when a complete Southern victory seemed to be certain the reversal of fortune came. The coolness, the courage, and the comprehensive eye of Grant restored the battle for the North. The Southern reserves had not charged with the fire and spirit expected, and, met with a shattering fire by the Indiana troops, they fell back. Grant ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the reversal of this forfeiture. It does not, however, appear to have affected the succession. Indeed it is not likely that it even affected the actual possession, for it was not easy even for the Earl of Sutherland, though supported by the Royal authority to wield ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... aloof, interest. After a mere five minutes' rest we started on our ridiculous errand. But though I was as sure in my mind that we should not get down as I had been that we should not get up, there was an instant reversal of feeling. My instincts had been trying to prevent my ascending; they were eagerly bent on descending. I did not mind going down each difficult place, for I was going back into the known. Every step took me nearer the usual. I was going home to humanity. These mountains were cold company; ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... possible hypothesis or in the contemplation of any possibility. Just as when one played a game one was bound to play in unquestioning obedience to the laws and spirit of the game, but if one was not playing that game then there was no reason why one should not contemplate the completest reversal of all its methods and the alteration and abandonment of every rule. Correctness of conduct, the doctor held, was an imperative concomitant of all really free thinking. Revolutionary speculation is one of those things that must be divorced absolutely from revolutionary ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... new position, that the experience of the last three years justified the reversal of the system which the existing administration had been summoned to office to uphold, he wisely remarked, that 'the country will not be satisfied with three years' experience of any system. Three years' experience is not sufficiently extensive to afford a proper criterion by which we may decide ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... was a reversal of the usual facts of nature—(I say facts, not laws): the dreams of most people are more or less insane; those of Lady Alice were sound; thus, with her, restoring the balance of sane life. That smile was the sign of the dream-life beginning ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... looked at Cosette's blotting-book, and the consciousness of the reality returned to him. He caught up the blotter and said: "It comes from there." He feverishly examined the four lines imprinted on the blotter, the reversal of the letters converted into an odd scrawl, and he saw no sense in it. Then he said to himself: "But this signifies nothing; there is nothing written here." And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... of public opinion was so strongly endorsed that it affected the rebels, who shortly passed a Congressional measure for arming 200,000 negroes themselves. What a reversal of things; what a change of sentiment, in less than twenty-four months![14] Mr. Lincoln, in justifying the change, is reported to have said to ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... from the UK in 1966 and became a republic in 1970. In 1989 Guyana launched an Economic Recovery Program, which marked a dramatic reversal from a state-controlled, socialist economy towards a more open, free market system. Results through the first decade have ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... flat, palm downward, before the body; then throw it over on its back to the right, making a curve of about fifteen inches. (Dakota VI; Hidatsa I; Arikara I.) The gesture of reversal in this and other instances may be compared with picture-writings in which the reversed character for the name or totem of a person signifies his death. One of these is given in Fig. 249, taken ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... children and eating with the appetite of a man who was using and renewing his tissues in a wholesome way. Now he was silent, absent, and ate little. He was the victim of a combination of annoyances. Had he been wise to commit himself to a reversal of his sentence? Other and more important matters troubled him, but as usual where bothers come in battalions it is the lesser skirmishers who are felt ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... WANDERER: Pageantesque and dramatic story of the rise of a beggar to be the king's vizier, and of as sudden and entire reversal of fortunes. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... This reversal of the pacific policy which had marked the first two and a half years of Henry's reign was not exclusively due to the King's zeal for the Church. The clerical party of peace in his council was now divided by the appearance of an ecclesiastic ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... somewhere there existed a hitherto undiscovered specimen who could discuss the emotions and the philosophies in delightful sympathy, and restrain the expression of his own personal emotions to tones and glances, those indefinite suggestions that thrill yet call for no open reproof—no reversal of friendship. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... further. He stood with one foot over the brink and momentum at his back. Then when another moment would have ended his campaign of dissimulation his wife spoke again, and the man's brain reeled—but this time with an incredulous reversal of emotion. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... forgotten. Tomorrow is exactly two weeks since the weather machine was destroyed. My father, Martin Robbins, built it. He told me then that its effects were so powerful that they lasted for two weeks, even with the machine turned off. Only positive action could bring an immediate reversal, of weather ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... certainly lose Lila, so that from day to day he redoubled his efforts, and in the end, by using false statements and other artifices of a questionable nature, the party which he led was successful in obtaining the degradation of Chan Hung and his dismissal from office, together with an entire reversal of all his ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... day this week and we 'll go over things," he announced cheerfully. "We put one over on his royal joblots that time, anyway. Hates me from the ground up. Worst we can hope for is a conviction and then a Supreme Court reversal. I 'll get him so mad he 'll fill the case with errors. He used to be an instructor down at Boulder, and I stuck the pages of a lecture together on him one day. That's why I asked for an early trial. Knew he 'd give me a late one. That 'll let us have time to stir up a ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... The effect of this reversal of Anglo-American trade balance was a decline in the exchange value of the pound sterling, which was normally worth $4.86-1/2 in American money, to the unprecedented level of $4.50. This decline in sterling was reflected in different degrees in the other European ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... become felt which can only be satisfied by proportional representation in some form or another," and I do not think I misrepresent their attitude in believing that a very small change of circumstances might suffice to precipitate a reversal of their present conclusion. All who are familiar with the conduct of political controversies must recognize the situation thus revealed. Again and again have proposals of reform been made which the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... in the morning time by the reflex row from the rousing of the five o'clocker. Glorious morning. The scene the reversal of that of last night. The forest to the east shows a deep blue-purple, mounted on a background that changes as you watch it from daffodil and amethyst to rose-pink, as the sun comes up through the night ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... all your might to win, and then if you fail, not to care, relieves a game of an immense amount of unnecessary nervous strain. A spirit of rivalry has so taken hold of us and become such a large stone in the way, that it takes wellnigh a reversal of all our ideas to realize that this same spirit is quite compatible with a good healthy willingness that the other man should win—if he can. Not from the goody-goody motive of wishing your neighbor to beat,—no neighbor would thank you for playing ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... of cabinet government tended to stimulate political life among the Dutch farmers, hitherto the more backward part of the population, and in 1882 their wishes secured a reversal of the ordinance made sixty years before for the exclusive use of English in official documents and legal proceedings. Dutch was now placed on a level with English as an official language in Parliament and the law courts. But this assertion of Dutch sentiment was ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... sold at twenty-two and one-quarter cents—a new high price record, that was not exceeded for thirty-two years, when twenty-four and sixty-five hundredths cents were paid for July contracts in June, 1919. After reaching twenty-two and one-quarter cents, prices suffered an abrupt reversal. Ten days later the closing price for December was twenty-one and four-tenth cents. Then the real crash began. On Saturday, June 11, the panic started with another claim of cable trouble; and in the short session, December coffee broke from twenty and fifteen-hundredths ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... thing could cure your wife and that is the reversal of the conditions that have wrought upon her mind. She has lucid moments, but whenever her mind forcibly recurs to the Southern situation she again plunges into the gulf of despair. If in these lucid moments you could place before her a ladder of hope, I am of the opinion that a cure would be ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... excited and betting, just as he himself might have done. Fred felt a shock greater than he could quite account for by the vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his father had refused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked. It was a strange reversal of attitudes: Fred's blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give attention to anything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... dollars to act as your bodyguard that week, and when your bullion was ready you shipped it by express to the mint in San Francisco. In the express office at Ehrenburg I found a record of that shipment. You shipped it under the name 'T. C. Morgan,' a reversal of your real name. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... ironist Is Love. Therefore, when some cleft lightning mocks Thine arrogant rapture, sad idealist, Admire the wild play of his paradox. Great satires of reversal have astounded His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident Before an idol in their image are hounded Through comedies of disillusionment. Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine, Not any mage of Epipsychidion Can the true nature of the god divine. Heresiarchs ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... through the desert. The Maud followed her closely, having nothing to fear on account of the depth of the water; and even the ship had plenty under her keel. But it is said that, by what appears to be a curious reversal of the ordinary rule, the very large steamers are in less danger of running aground than those of ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... excuse me," he said, "but a sense of humor was always my undoing, and this reversal of our positions is a little odd, isn't it? I am not going to marry Juliet Lundy because she happens not to care for me in that way at all. My appearance is scarcely that of a ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... counter-suggestion, "Yes, especially for people with short necks," she shook with gelatinous laughter, and burst into the generous cry, "Oh, how delightful!" Perhaps this was because she, too, had experienced the advantage of perusing the frescos in the hand-mirror's reversal. At any rate, she would not be satisfied till she had returned a Roland for that easy Oliver. Her chance came in showing a Rubens in one of the rooms, with the master's usual assortment of billowy beauties, when she could ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... actually skinned, so that the total disappearance of the oyster was looming in the distance. But even the passing of this latter Act was powerless to check the evil, and by the Oyster Fisheries Act of 1884 (the present Act) there was a reversal to the old system of long leases and larger holdings. Even at the present time matters are far from perfect, and in the opinion of the Commissioners of Fisheries some radical change is necessary if oyster production is to have a place at all. Now, it is true that the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... obtaining for civilization the needed resources of their lands, must be inaugurated—a democratic method. And this is perhaps the supreme problem of democracy today. It demands for its solution a complete reversal of the established policy of imperialism, a new theory of international relationships, a mutual helpfulness and partnership between nations, even as democracy implies cooperation between individual citizens. Therefore President Wilson ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... be a reversal in their relationships. Before, his end of the beam was down, hers up. But subtly in her voice he felt the swing to the other extreme. She had set him in a realm ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... water. As the decoction trickles slowly through the seams below, more is poured on from above, and from time to time the position of the hide is reversed in such a way that the tanning permeates each part in turn. Sometimes only one reversal of the hide takes place half-way through the process, which occupies as a rule some eight days. But energetic Chamars continually turn and refill the skin until satisfied that it is thoroughly saturated with the tanning. After a washing in clean ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... which the bullet has been fired, wobbling on the part of the bullet due simply to loss of velocity and force in flight, or to turning of the bullet by impact with an obstacle to its course (ricochet) which may amount to actual reversal of the striking end. As a rule, in such cases the size of the aperture of entry exceeds that of exit, and in a large proportion the bullet ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... name of Eliphaz, won a cheap selling race from very bad horses—won it in a canter after leading all the way. The Bald-faced Kid, a student to whom past performance was a sacred thing, was shocked at this amazing reversal of form and sought Old Man ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... a debt which does not yet appear to have been paid. The verdict of proscription against him was pronounced by the most incompetent and superficial aera of our literature, and no friendly appellant has yet moved the court of posterity for its reversal. Yet without entering upon the theory of the patriarchal scheme, which after all, perhaps, was not so irrational as may be supposed, or discussing on an occasion like the present the conflicting theories of government, it may be allowable to express a doubt whether even the famous ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... the Archbishop at Rouen, which had witnessed so many scenes of the previous tragedy, the depositions of witnesses collected with the minutest care, and which it had taken a long time to gather from all quarters, were submitted for judgment, and a full and complete reversal of the condemnation was given. The proces was a civil one, instituted (nominally) by the mother and brothers of Jeanne, one of the latter being now a knight, Pierre de Lys, a gentleman of coat armour—against ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... else but minister to his appetites? If he delays a single second in doing it, it is only through fear of man or of some stronger animal. His intellectual movements have this as an end in complete reversal of the case with man. With the brute the intellect seems incidental to the body. With man the body is incidental to the intellect. One feels for this reason that man might live a purely spiritual and ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell

... may seem as nothing, existence in hell must drag along with leaden limbs, and a single hour seem like a lifetime of regret. Since it is dreadful to think that such unsoothed anguish should continue forever, I have often pondered whether it might not be that, by a form of involution and reversal of the past law, the spirit that came to life evolved from the mineral, plant, and animal worlds, may mercifully retrace its steps one by one, till finally the soul shall penetrate the solid rock and hide itself by becoming ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... ground between himself and the horsemen. Shady followed him closely, moving furtively and with many backward glances, her tail tucked almost between her legs, and Breed, accustomed to Shady's indifference to the approach of riders, wondered at this sudden reversal of ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... in Henry's time by the vehemence of his opposition (from abroad) to the divorce and to the King's subsequent ecclesiastical proceedings, and his brothers as well as his mother had all been found guilty of treason in connexion with real or manufactured conspiracies. The reversal of the attainder was required to legalise his position. On the 25th he landed with official pomp at Westminster. On the 29th, the Houses agreed—with but one dissentient in the Commons—to a "supplication" entreating for pardon and the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Naturally this reversal of a policy of such long standing, even though due notice had been given, worked serious hardship to schools established in the expectation of its continuance. Bishop Hare's valuable work in South Dakota was crippled, particularly as the principle at issue was so interpreted ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... the rims of the pair of wheels in the rails, and thus the engine worked its feed-pumps without interfering (by its needless running up and down the line) with the traffic. It should have been stated, that at this time there was no link motion, no practical expansion of the steam, and that even the reversal of the engine had to be effected by working the sides by hand gear, in the manner in use in marine engines. When the British Association originated, although the Manchester and Liverpool Railway had been opened for a year, there ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... believe that, even now, a publisher of the works of either of those justly distinguished men would find his account in procuring their admission to the membership of learned bodies on the Continent,—a proceeding no whit more incongruous than the reversal of the judgment against Socrates, when he was already more than twenty centuries beyond the reach of antidotes, and when his memory had acquired a deserved respectability. I conceive that it was a feeling of the importance of this precaution which induced Mr. Locke to style himself 'Gent.' on the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... uneasy as to the silver bill and the illimitable folly of the greenbackers; business men anxiously await the adjournment of Congress, that they may be able to lay their plans with some sense of security against a complete reversal of monetary conditions by some silly legislation; and I do not believe that there is a quiet man in the Republic to whom the whole political caucus at Washington is not a ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... portion of our energies which we devote to the service of mankind toward such changes in the direction of the Social impulse as can be made without impairing the force of the evolutionary movement, rather than to those which involve the reversal of the direction of the force with the resulting ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... and from this to calculation by letters, and who, calling upon the eyes to aid Reason, depict the inward analogy of quantities by the outward analogy of symbols. In this way science becomes complete by means of a properly organized language.[3124]—Through this reversal of the usual method we summarily dispose of disputes about words, escape the illusions of human speech, simplify study, remodel education, enhance discoveries, subject every assertion to control, and bring all truths ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,—no, THERE he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... inspire a man to Letter-writing. He is acclimatizing himself to Cervantes, about whom he must write one of his fine, and (as I think) final Essays: I mean such as (in the case of others he has done) ought to leave no room for a reversal of Judgment. Amid the multitude of Essays, Reviews, etc., one still wants that: and I think Lowell does it more than any other Englishman. He says he meets Velasquez at every turn of the street; and Murillo's Santa Anna opens his door for him. Things are different ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... exists, and has always existed, and always will exist. Therefore, if matter, and all it includes as concomitants, evil, sin, sickness, accident, chance, lack, and death, is based upon unreal, false thought, then it can all be removed, put out of consciousness, by a knowledge of truth and a reversal of our ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... sudden, unexpected impression. If he were drowning, and a young woman should rescue him, it is by no means impossible that the change in the nervous current we have referred to might be brought about as rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the poles in a magnet, which is effected in an instant. But he cannot be expected to throw himself into the water just at the right moment when the 'fair lady' of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore. Accident may ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... intolerable vanity which so often marks men who have nothing whatsoever about which to be vain. Also he had a great idea of his rights and what was due to him, which he appeared to consider included, upon what ground I could not in the least understand, the reversal of all the Ragnall properties and wealth. I do not think I need say any more about him, except that he bored me to extinction, especially after his fourth glass ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... mind to incur risks for her; and Clement, though he annulled Cranmer's proceedings, hesitated as yet to take sterner action. Henry, on the other hand, conscious that the die was thrown, moved rapidly forward in the path that Cromwell had opened. The Pope's reversal of the primate's judgment was answered by an appeal to a general council. The decision of the cardinals to whom the case was referred in the spring of 1534, a decision which asserted the lawfulness of Catherine's marriage, was met by the enforcement of the long-suspended statute ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... modern homes for the most part are not sanitary dwellings in the country, but single floors or parts of floors in huge tenement houses in great cities. It is probable to-day, therefore, that there is a perfect reversal of opinion, and that the social reformer now dreams of a world where no work is permitted in the home, other than ordinary domestic avocations, but all is compelled to be done in factories under the supervision of public authorities—a splendid example of the dangers of hasty legislation; ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... doubt whether the Supreme Court has ever recovered from the shock it then received, and, considered from this point of view, the careless attitude of the American people toward General Grant's administration, when in 1871 it obtained the reversal of Hepburn v. Griswold by appointments to the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... explanation suggested is that the comparative faintness of the small star causes its light to affect the retina of the eye less quickly than does that of its brighter companion, and, in consequence, the reversal of its apparent motion with the swinging of the telescope is not ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... in the day when we left Glen Edith, and consequently very much later by the time we had unpacked all the horses at the end of our twenty-nine mile stage; it was then too dark to reach the lower or best water-holes. To-day there was an uncommon reversal of the usual order in the weather—the early part of the day being hot and sultry, but towards evening the sky became overcast and cloudy, and the evening set in cold and windy. Next morning we found that one horse had staked himself in the coronet very severely, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the suppliant. The reversal of parts, strange in itself, hardly seemed strange to Harry Tristram. And it made him quite his old self again. He felt that he had something to give. But her next words ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... house! She had gone back to her rooms from the third day of their house-hunting gently amused at an addition to her compendium of lore on the male habit. It was in a way like the cat idea; at least it was, like that, reversal of a common opinion on distinguishing traits as between men and women. It went in her mind like this and, because it arose out of Harry, she laughed softly to herself as ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... a wonderful reversal of judgments one day! Names that now fill the trumpet of fame will fall silent. Pages that now are read as if they were leaves of the 'Book of Life' will be obliterated and unknown, and when all the flashing cressets in Vanity Fair have smoked and stunk themselves out, 'They that be wise ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... against segregation. But he made a careful distinction between constitutional or legislative action and executive action in the states. A governor's decision to integrate, he pointed out, would not be recognized by the Army because such an action was subject to speedy reversal by the governor's successor and could cause serious confusion in the guard.[13-23] (p. 321) The majority of the National Guard Committee, supported by the Director of Organization and Training, recommended that the secretary ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... pardon the most atrocious crimes; may declare war against all the world; may conclude treaties involving unlimited responsibilities, and even vast expenditure, without the consent, nay without the knowledge, of Parliament, and this not merely in support or in development, but in reversal, of policy already known to and sanctioned by the nation. But the assumption is that the depositaries of power will all respect one another; will evince a consciousness that they are working in a common interest for a common end; that they will be ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education



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