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Reversion   /rɪvˈərʒən/   Listen
Reversion

noun
1.
(law) an interest in an estate that reverts to the grantor (or his heirs) at the end of some period (e.g., the death of the grantee).
2.
(genetics) a return to a normal phenotype (usually resulting from a second mutation).
3.
A reappearance of an earlier characteristic.  Synonyms: atavism, throwback.
4.
Turning in the opposite direction.  Synonyms: reversal, reverse, turnabout, turnaround.
5.
Returning to a former state.  Synonyms: regress, regression, retrogression, retroversion.
6.
A failure to maintain a higher state.  Synonyms: backsliding, lapse, lapsing, relapse, relapsing, reverting.



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"Reversion" Quotes from Famous Books



... slightly austere refinement, he could understand their shrinking from sudden chance and clinging to the customs of the past. They were all, so far as he had seen, characterized by the possession of high qualities, with the exception of Clarence, whom he regarded as a reversion to a baser type; but he thought that they would suffer if uprooted and transplanted in a less sheltered and less cultivated soil. Inherited instincts were difficult to subdue; he was conscious of their influence. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... after them, to the heirs of their body, and in default of such, to the heirs of the said Elizabeth. Should she die first without heirs, the property was secured to the heirs and assignes of the said Thomas Nash, a reversion certainly not fair to Joan Hart, the poet's sister, and her children. Still, it all seemed too far off to consider. To this document Mrs. Hall appended her signature and her seal, with the arms of Shakespeare impaled with those ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... of the clergy of the church of Saint-Saturnin at Plassans. He did duty as vicar during the illness of Abbe Compan, and had been led to expect the reversion of the appointment. Pressure brought to bear on Bishop Rousselot led to the selection of Abbe Faujas, and Bourrette was put off with vague promises for the future. He was a simple-minded, amiable man, who accepted his disappointment without murmuring, and continued on ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... wrapped, such a little dark head and swarthy face were exposed to view as might have made intelligent spectators (if there were any in Downside church that afternoon, which I doubt) reflect on the laws of heredity and reversion ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... of any foreign prince whilst she herself was still a subject; well aware that to accept of an alliance which would carry her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the loss of her succession to the English crown, a splendid reversion never absent from ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... capital which Nicholas found himself entitled to, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, after paying his rent and settling with the broker from whom he had hired his poor furniture, did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings. And yet ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... epithets—at passing automobiles is a mystery worth solving; it presents an interesting problem in psychology. What is the mental process occasioned by the sudden appearance of an automobile, and which results in the hurling of the first missile which comes to hand? It must be a reversion to savage instincts, the instinct of the chase; something strange comes quickly into view; it makes a strange noise, emits, perhaps, a strange odor, is passing quickly and about to escape; it must be killed, hence the brickbat. Uncontrollable impulse! ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... contributed to Raleigh's 'History of the World'. We know from a story, little to the credit of either, that Jonson accompanied Raleigh's son abroad in the capacity of a tutor. In 1618 Jonson was granted the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, a post for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did not live to enjoy its perquisites. Jonson was honoured with degrees by both universities, though when and under what circumstances is not known. It has been said that he narrowly ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... 'twere to banish their affects with him. Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, And had the tribute of his supple knee, With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends'; As were our England in reversion his, And he our ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... a true statement to say that the Renaissance referred to—this modern Renaissance, not less formidable than the historic revolt which bears that name—is an insurrection of free spirits against Christianity. It is much rather a reversion to a humane and classic reasonableness as opposed to mob-stupidity and middle-class philistinism—things which only the blundering of centuries of popular misapprehension could associate with the sublime and the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... Lady Merrifield, as Gillian walked beside her, 'you must be satisfied with giving Miss Hacket the reversion of our tree, and you and Mysie can go and help her. It will not do to make these kind of works a nuisance to ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "It was needed." It was supplanting Himself: He had to remove it! It was He who crossed thy worldly schemes, marred thy cherished hopes. Why? "It was needed." There was a lurking thorn in the coveted path. There was some higher spiritual blessing in reversion. "He 'prevented' thee with ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... his own name the concessions necessary for that purpose, had transferred to his daughter, married to Archduke Albert, the title to the Low Country provinces; but as it was not expected that this princess could have posterity, and as the reversion, on failure of her issue, was still reserved to the crown of Spain, the states considered this deed only as the change of a name, and they persisted with equal obstinacy in their resistance to the Spanish arms. The other powers also of Europe made no ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is well established; our concern for preserved civilization has had its impassioned and heroic expression. There was no American failure to resist the attempted reversion of civilization; there will be no ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... the Duke of York attended parliament and boldly asserted his right to the throne. After hearing arguments for and against his claim, parliament arrived at a compromise by which the reversion of the crown was settled on the duke, and to this the king himself was forced to give his assent.(902) It was otherwise with the proud and defiant Queen Margaret. She was determined to acquiesce in no such arrangement. Whilst she was collecting a force in the north, wherewith ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... Persepolis, or those which distract him amongst the shadowy ruins of Yucatan (Uxmal, suppose, and Palenque),—once for all, barring these pure godsends, it is hardly 'in the dice' that any downright novelty of fact should remain in reversion for this nineteenth century. The merest possibility exists, that in Armenia, or in a Graeco-Russian monastery on Mount Athos, or in Pompeii, &c., some authors hitherto αιεχδοτοι may yet be concealed; and by a channel ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... the whole design, was Richard, Earl of Strigul, commonly known by the name of Strongbow. Dermot, to confirm in his interest this potent and warlike peer, promised him his daughter in marriage, with the reversion ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... sanctioned by successive heads of the Church, infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches. Nothing, on the whole, stood more constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy. It would be expecting ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... most instructive of all, for in it we see down into the depths of humanity; for, as on a raft of shipwrecked beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of nature. The light tissue of habit and of rational ideas in which civilization has enveloped man, is torn asunder and is floating in rags around him; the bare arms of the savage show themselves, and they are striking out. The only guide he has for his conduct is that of primitive ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... including that of the interested parties, and try the case as it best could be tried. Their orders were to be final and not (save in a single excepted case) subject to any appeal. All persons in remainder and reversion were to be bound by these orders, although infants, married women, idiots, beyond seas, or under any other disability. A special power was given to order the surrender of existing leases, and to grant new ones for terms not exceeding forty years. The judges gave their services for nothing, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... Dauphin; while a short time subsequently, when he manifested fresh symptoms of discontent, the Duc de Bouillon was instructed to inquire by what means he could be conciliated; upon which he demanded a pension of fifty thousand livres, the reversion of the government of Dauphiny for his son, who had not at that time attained his fifth year, and the sum of two hundred thousand crowns with which to pay a debt to the Duke of Savoy, contracted on the duchy of Moncalieri belonging to his wife. These ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... under civilized conditions, we see large families we are in the presence of a reversion to the tendencies that prevail among lower organisms. Such large families may probably be regarded, as Naecke suggests, as constituting a symptom of degeneration. It is noteworthy that they usually occur in the pathological and abnormal classes, among the insane, the feeble-minded, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... to be a man of business; that, you will say, is a most grievous one; but what makes it the more so to me, is, that my wife has nothing to do: at least she had too good an education, and the prospect of too good a fortune in reversion when I married her, to think of employing herself either in my shop-affairs, or the management of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... countries upon whose choice this supreme issue hangs. But the act of choice is not the same for the two. The British imperial policy (apart from that of the self-governing dominions) has been conducted on a basis of free trade or economic internationalism. A reversion to close imperialism would be for her a retrogression. The United States, on the other hand, has practised a distinctively national economy, and the adoption of a free internationalism would be a great act of faith, or—as some would put ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... who puts all his goods in the window. The goods are not very fine nor very good, but they are showy and cheap, and, above all things, take the eye. Mr. Chamberlain in his day has been a poor attendant in Parliament—a friend of his used to tell him, when he was supposed to have the reversion of the Liberal leadership, that his inability to remain for hours in succession in the House of Commons would always stand in the way of his being the leader of that assembly. But he turns up now usually after dinner, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... bleeding bosom gored, Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? O, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die? Why bade ye else, ye Pow'rs! her soul aspire Above the vulgar flight of low desire? Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of angels and of gods; Thence to their images ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... of Mark's entire disinterestedness. He did not know that his young bride had quite thirty thousand dollars in reversion, or in one sense in possession, although she could derive no benefit from it until she was of age, or married, and past her eighteenth year. This fact her husband did not learn for several days after his marriage, when his bride communicated it to him, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... the Union"; that he "would levy a tax wherever he could upon these conquered provinces"; said he "would not only collect the tax, but he would, as a necessary war measure, take every particle of property, real and personal, life estate and reversion, of every disloyal man, and sell it for the benefit of the nation ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... previously occupied by the old battlements a modern wall has been built, from which a fine view across the Dee estuary can be obtained. The castle was probably built before the time of Edward I. Here Simon de Montfort surrendered the castle to Llewelyn. After its reversion to the Crown it was again taken by Llewelyn's brother, and it was about this time that the present keep was built. After its dismantling during the Parliamentary War, it was purchased by Serjeant Glynne, in whose family ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... "Lord of the Two Lands," and wore the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt; the snakes of Buto and Nekhebet (the goddess of Nekheb, opposite Nekhen or Hierakonpolis) always typified the united kingdom. This dualism of course often led to actual division and reversion to the predynastic order of things, as, for instance, in the time of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... his support with contumely. He perfectly understood his own interest; he had perfect command of his temper; he endured decorously the hardships of his present situation, and contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which would amply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed cease to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence gradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have been made up of vague ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that many of the very lowest forms of life eat their young. Is civilized man merely a case, at last, of reversion to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... the flood gates of Imperialism, and secured by means of a treaty with Lobengula the reversion of the native territory north of the Transvaal, at which two European nations were nibbling, and which in his honour received ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... of Satan!" interrupted the Corporal fiercely, as if his whole tide of thought, so lately favourable to the Soothsayer, had undergone a deadly reversion. "Please your honour, it's getting late, we had ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... older, sixteen, seventeen and getting on for eighteen, was reversion by Aunt Belle to the rectory manner. The child had been treated as a young woman; the budding maiden was treated precisely as if she were a small child or a small savage to be entertained by mere sight of the wonders all about her in Pilchester Square and by having ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... vacant Western territory is, by cession at least, if not by any anterior right, the common property of the Union. If that were at an end, the States which made the cession, on a principle of federal compromise, would be apt when the motive of the grant had ceased, to reclaim the lands as a reversion. The other States would no doubt insist on a proportion, by right of representation. Their argument would be, that a grant, once made, could not be revoked; and that the justice of participating in territory acquired or secured by the joint efforts of the Confederacy, remained ...
— The Federalist Papers

... together on the shawl, of which each held a corner. And no great wisdom was needed to forecast a storm. Mrs. Smith's shawl was undeniably better than Judy's by many degrees but she had not the magnanimity to consider this, even so far as to propose that Judy should at any rate enjoy the reversion of her own. On the contrary, she had rapidly planned its division between her two little ragged girls. Judy, for her part, had set her heart desperately upon the acquisition, and she deemed it her best policy to say in a tone ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... 200,000 livres per annum, and an hotel in Paris; that the town of Arbors, Pichegru's native place, should bear his name, and be exempt from all taxation for twenty-five years; that a pension of 200,000 livres would be granted to him, with half reversion to his wife, and 50,000 livres to his heirs for ever, until the extinction of his family. Such were the offers, made in the name of the King, to General Pichegru. (Than followed the boons to be granted to the officers and soldiers, an amnesty to the people, etc). ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... This reversion to normal is seen to have appeared in a pronounced manner after rapidly continuous stimulation, in process of which the modified molecular condition must in some way ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... Lockhart's friends to-day. I really fear he is near an actual standstill. He has been extremely improvident. When I first knew him he had an excellent estate, and now he is deprived, I fear, of the whole reversion of the price, and this from no vice or extreme, except a wasteful mode of buying pictures and other costly trifles at high prices, and selling them again for nothing, besides an extravagant housekeeping and profuse hospitality. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... confirmation of this change having really occurred is afforded by the occasional occurrence in Scotland of birds with a considerable amount of white in the winter plumage. This is considered to be a case of reversion to the ancestral type, just as the slaty colours and banded wings of the wild rock-pigeon sometimes reappear in our fancy ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... wooden pegs which were driven in a horizontal row into the board walls of grandfather's back entry ever approximated the ideal. But such a reversion to primitive principles would now be considered out of the question, even in my farm house—by the farmer's wife, at least. The problem of a satisfactory hat-tree, which baffled the genius of Chippendale, is still unsolved in Grand ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... which had vanished several years before. Both sign and fame had disappeared, for the building served later as the city poorhouse, still harboring, indeed, numerous guests who had lived to see the setting of the sun taken down from the sign, and had acquired at its bar the reversion of their present shelter ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... drove offenders headlong from his presence. In these outbursts he was unrestrained by rank, age, or sex—indeed, his antipathies to certain women were the most violent of all. Curiously enough, it was the presence of humanity of the uncongenial type which alone had power to effect his reversion to the status of the brute. His normal condition was gentle and serene: he was fond of children and certain animals, and he bore the agonies of his old rheumatic limbs without ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... his seat in the House of Commons as member for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In October, 1586, he sat for Taunton. He was member afterwards for Liverpool; and he was one of those who petitioned for the speedy execution of Mary Queen of Scots. In October, 1589, he obtained the reversion of the office of Clerk of the Council in the Star Chamber, which was worth 1,600 pounds or 2,000 pounds a year; but for the succession to this office he had to wait until 1608. It had not yet fallen to him when he wrote his "Two Books of the Advancement of Learning." In the Parliament ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... him to our mother, and he had offered, with the greatest generosity possible—said my mother—to waive his claims and put a stop to the suit (he knew it could not hold for a moment), provided she would give her fair daughter to his son, the Chevalier de Poligny, with the reversion of the Ribaumont property, after my brother, on whom, vulture that he was, he had fixed his eyes, as a man in failing health. My mother and her eldest son were absolutely enraptured, and they expected Eustace to be equally delighted with this escape from all ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... plays strange freaks now and then. It is easier to account for Abraham Lincoln by the second theory than by either of the others. His shiftless, untidy mother and commonplace father do not explain such a soul as his; nor was there any reversion in his childhood to the original savage instincts that make children dismember grasshoppers—rather the reverse. I like better to think that, like that other Deliverer, who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, he came to do the will of his and ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... sovereign of France compelled to retain in his service a man whom he believed to have said that it would be a meritorious act to murder him; and this man's pastry must be admitted to the royal table every day! The man held the reversion to the office of king's pastry-cook (the right to it when the occupant should die), and the right once acquired, the man could not, by court custom, be got rid of. Thus were court offices not open to merit; but conferred sometimes by favour, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... soon in a dreamless sleep, but his momentary reversion to the wilderness awoke him after a while. He sat up in his blankets and looked around. A mere mass of black coals showed where the fire had been, and two long dark objects looking like logs in the dim light ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... at ye same time y'e s'd H—— solemnly declared as in y'e presence of Almighty God & before many witnesses, that she was in no way in possession of her former husband's estate of whatever kind soever neither possession or reversion." An excellent Deacon married an elderly matron, Dorothea ——, and before the Justice of Peace "Y'e s'd Dorothea declared she was free from using any of her former husband's estate, and so y'e s'd Nathaniel [the Deacon] received her." The following ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... people, despite the shock given by Newman's secession. Then once again the query "Are we wealthy?" was answered with enthusiasm; and even the poor were told that they were wealthy, for had they not the reversion of complete felicity to crown their entry into a future world? We must believe that there is some compensation for this life's ills, or else existence would become no longer bearable; but it was hard for people in general to think that everything was for the best on this ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... compelled to leave the city once again. The Duchy of Milan was at this time passing through a severe political crisis. It had long been the theatre of a disastrous struggle originating in the pretensions of the French Kings, Louis XII. and Francis I., to the reversion of its crown, and as a portion of the Duchy, Brescia had been more or less involved in the troubles of the times. In 1529, the date which we have reached, the war had lasted for many years, and with varied success; Louis and Francis had each in turn won and lost the prize. One ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... and went away. Then said the Caliph, "Ask a boon of me, O Dalilah!"; and she said, "Verily, my father was governor of the carrier-pigeons to thee and I know how to rear the birds; and my husband was town-captain of Baghdad. Now I wish to have the reversion of my husband and my daughter wisheth to have that of her father." The Caliph granted both their requests and she said, "I ask of thee that I may be portress of thy Khan." Now he had built a Khan of three stories, for the merchants to lodge in, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... something in the nature of a reversion to the methods of days that are no more. Yet a full return to the mode of our fathers is impossible. Let this be acknowledged frankly and fully and at once. Those "black sermons" to which we listened forty years ago can never be preached again. The day has gone, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... incapable of a cooperative effort strong enough to kill him or cast him out. Rude as was our social organization, he was, nevertheless, too rude to live in it. He tended always to destroy the horde by his unsocial acts. He was really a reversion to an earlier type, and his place was with the Tree People rather than with us who were in ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... rarely bearded, and of a copper colour more or less dark. Most of the women have no distinct line of hair on the forehead. Some there are with a frontal hairy down extending to within an inch of the eyes, possibly a reversion to a progenitor (the Macacus radiata) in whom the forehead had not become quite naked, leaving the limit between the scalp and the forehead undefined. The hair of both males and females stands out from the skin ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... immense fortune and high rank of the young Chatelaine de Repentigny had excited the cupidity of De Pean for some time, and although the voluptuous beauty of Angelique fastened his eyes, he would willingly have sacrificed her for the reversion of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... sank slowly into oblivion, much as before now he had travelled there in the other's presence,—travelled with a gloomy mind and a body sore from the latest beating. Now the mind was full of scorpions, and the body stood in deadly need of sleep. It took it with a strange reversion to long gone-by conditions. The thought of Gideon's stick, the feel of his heavy hand upon his shoulder, were with him as of yore. The difference was that the man was comforted by what had been ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... both minds there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election—the Liberals in office—himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Commons—with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord Broadstone should die or retire—this indeed had been Ferrier's working understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... mean equivalent; and it is but justice to say, that when I was in this part of the world, the apparent negligence in the protection and jurisdiction of these possessions, by the administration of the day, had so far alienated the minds of the inhabitants, that their reversion to the former government did not appear to be a subject which would excite their regret; although they were originally predisposed in ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... precedent, which may serve to give to change the authority of ancient usage. Our laws have always been administered in this spirit; we are willing to accept, and even to hasten, change, if we can show that the change is no real change, but is only a reversion to an older practice, or a development of an established law. It was a saying of King Alphonso of Aragon that among the many things which in this life men possess or desire all the rest are baubles compared with old wood to burn, old wine to drink, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... Lincoln was positively sure of only Illinois, and several of its delegates preferred Seward; Chase had failed to secure the united support of Ohio, and Dayton in New Jersey was without hope. Cameron held Pennsylvania in reversion for the New York Senator. So hopeless did the success of the opposition appear at midnight of the second day, that Greeley telegraphed the Tribune predicting Seward's nomination, and the "irrepressibles" anticipated victory in three hundred ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... was greatly disheartened by this reversion to the original type. She delivered daily lectures on nail-brushes, hair-ribbons, shoe polish, pins, buttons, elastic, and other means to grace. Her talks on soap and water became almost personal in tone, and her insistence ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... vessels, if they be of the degree of barons, bishops, and upwards) and placed on their tables, whereof, when they have taken what it pleaseth them, the rest is reserved, and afterwards sent down to their serving men and waiters, who feed thereon in like sort with convenient moderation, their reversion also being bestowed upon the poor which lie ready at their gates in great numbers to receive the same. This is spoken of the principal tables whereat the nobleman, his lady, and guests are accustomed to sit; besides which they have a certain ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... subject of reversion, I may here refer to a statement often made by naturalists—namely, that our domestic varieties, when run wild, gradually but invariably revert in character to their aboriginal stocks. Hence it has been argued that no deductions can be drawn from domestic races ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... Academy very much deserve our Attention. The Students are to have in Possession, or Reversion, an Estate of two thousand French Livres per Annum, which, as the present Exchange runs, will amount to at least one hundred and twenty six Pounds English. This, with the Royal Allowance of a Thousand Livres, will enable them to find themselves in Coffee and Snuff; not to mention ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... he gave, also, smaller amounts to various others. Seeing so much depredation, and no recovery to hope for, I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans to attach 12,000 livres, by way of increase, to my government of Senlis, which was worth only 1000 livres, and of which my second son had the reversion. I obtained ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... who can keep their own counsel long, he soon imparted to Althea and me, whom he found sitting by the parlour fire, how his promotion now seemed very near. There was a living of which he had long had hopes to get the reversion; and the actual incumbent was fallen sick of a strange fever, with ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... sun-disk did not always remain the only permissible emblem of Deity. The image of a man—an archetypal man—was in after days placed in the temples and adored as the highest representation of the divine. In some ways this might be considered a reversion to the Rmoahal worship of the Manu. Even then the religion was comparatively pure, and the occult fraternity of the "Good Law" of course did their utmost to keep alive in the hearts of the people the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... hard that it was easy to be quiet now. She could not eat the meal which Zaidee, assisted to the door by the maid, brought in to her. It seemed, oddly enough, like a reversion back to that first night of her arrival—oh, so long ago!—after tempest and disaster. Yet then the white, enhancing light of the future had shone down through everything, and now there was no future, only ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... afterwards enlarged by Princess Amelia; to whom her rather, George II. had granted the reversion of the rangership after Lord Walpole. Her Royal Highness sold it to George III. for a pension on Ireland of twelve hundred pounds a-year, and his Majesty appointed ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... owing to their size may well have led to the small drum-domes of later times. Though not strictly Byzantine these Turkish domes are of interest as showing the development of Byzantine forms under Turkish rule, and that reversion to the earlier drumless dome which is so marked a feature of the imperial ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... it. Sir Thomas had expressed his readiness to endeavour to obtain it for her; but on consulting the lawyers they decided that this could not be done. Her father—Master Radford—had been outlawed in the reign of King Henry for holding heretical opinions; and unless he should appear and obtain a reversion of that outlawry, the estate would remain forfeited. By petitioning the Queen's Majesty, however, there would be no difficulty in obtaining this reversion. But Master Radford had not appeared; and great doubts were entertained whether he ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... stamp on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the brain,—which is as true as truth can ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... winds in summer, and almost as distinctly cold winds in midwinter, were manufactured for us. The heat had been increasing daily, and this, as we comforted ourselves, was surely the climax which was to bring the inevitable reversion of the southerly blast and the restoring rain, for it was felt as the hottest day in my recollection. In town we did not hear of much that day, although reports came from time to time of sinister-looking signs from the surrounding interior, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... octogenarian female relative—whom I had never seen—but who, for a full decade of years, beyond the period allotted to the life of man—or women either—had obstinately persisted in standing betwixt me and a small reversion—so long, indeed, that I had ceased to regard it as an "expectation." It was of no great amount; but, arriving just then in the very "nick o' time," was doubly welcome; and under its magical influence, a large quantity of superfluous timber soon disappeared ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... over-exertion, but we came to the conclusion that it was caused through the repair of my boots at York. Before arriving there the heels were badly worn down at one side, and as I had been practically walking on the sides of my feet, the sudden reversion to the flat or natural position had brought on the disaster that very nearly prevented us from continuing our walk. We applied all the remedies that both our hostess and ourselves could think of, but our slumbers ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— 905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... 'mauvaise honte' which a woman of the world would have shown. The impulses of her heart followed as direct lines as the reasoning of her brain. Was it due to her peculiar education, education only in the noblest ideas of the race, that she should be a sort of reversion, in our complicated life, to the type of woman in the old societies (we like to believe there was such a type as the poets love, the Nausicaas), who were single-minded, as frank to avow ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... confiance, where families may arrange marriages for their sons and daughters in perfect comfort and security. It is but a question of money on one side and the other. Mademoiselle has so many francs of dot; Monsieur has such and such rentes or lands in possession or reversion, an etude d'avoue, a shop with a certain clientele bringing him such and such an income, which may be doubled by the judicious addition of so much capital, and the pretty little matrimonial arrangement is concluded (the agent touching his percentage), or broken off, and nobody unhappy, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have renounced their own country. They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the North and North-west. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself, he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on, as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... version, anniversary, versatile, divers, diversity, conversation, perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, versification, animadversion, vice versa, controversy, tergiversation, obverse, transverse, reversion, vortex. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... followed as a matter of course; I mean, simply, that the two Parts did not need to remain the periods that were their original type; the process of growth cannot be stopped. The Three-Part form resulted from adding to the Two-Part the perfecting reversion to the starting-point, and confirmation of the principal statement. The Five-part form, and the Song with Trio are enlargements of the Three-Part forms by repetition or multiplication; and with the latter the limit of this particular process appears to be achieved. ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... "scions" from the original tree are "budded" or "grafted" by the nurseryman into young seedling trees, which are thus changed into the selected sort. To sow the seeds of your favorite Baldwin does not imply that you will get Baldwin trees, by any means; you will more likely have a partial reversion to the acid and ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... mockery, an expression of invincible faith, or a reversion from habit to the gentler associations of childhood? The spirit of Christmas was not wholly dead, for it is narrated that these brave men in English and German trenches on this saddest of Christmas Eves declared for a few hours of their own ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... ostracize him in society. Such a man must not be looked upon as a successful businessman any more than a pirate is a successful trader; success must clearly imply obedience to the rules of the game. Taking all that one can grab without punishment is a reversion to barbarism; the unscrupulous magnate is morally no better than a pickpocket. And these men are, in general, responsive to public opinion; it has effected rapid improvement in some points in the past few years. Just so soon as the community ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... home, the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from this art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse has a promise of both lives,—of this, and of that ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... find marriages in the sight of heaven uncivilised and socially reactionary, a reversion, in fact, to Nature, which bored her. Gerda and Kay rightly believed such marriages to have some advantages over those more visible to the human eye (as being more readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... on August 26, 1600, Raleigh had the satisfaction of succeeding him in the Governorship of Jersey. He had asked for the reversion of this post, and none could be found more appropriate to his powers or circumstances. It gave him once more the opportunity to cultivate his restless energy, to fly hither and thither by sea and land, and to harry the English Channel for Spaniards as a terrier ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... should be no Property Tax. A more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentleman, well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of L15,000 a year in possession and L50,000 in reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the House of Commons without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, and that his plan may be a secret, he ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... streets; but ichabod!—its glory has departed; and the most humane or romantic of travellers may without scruple consign the modern collector of highway alms to the tender mercies of the next policeman and the reversion of the treadmill. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... Evelyn, not a very reliable authority, but still a chronicler worthy of notice even on questions of fact, says:—"Oct. 1705. Mr. Cowper made Lord Keeper. Observing how uncertain greate officers are of continuing long in their places, he would not accept it unless L2,000 a yeare were given him in reversion when he was put out, in consideration of his loss of practice. His predecessors, how little time soever they had the seal, usually got L100,000, and made themselves barons." It is doubtful whether this bargain was actually ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... the title of earl of Desmond was conferred on Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall, at whose death in 1628 it again became extinct. It was then bestowed on George Feilding, second son of William, earl of Denbigh, who had held the reversion of the earldom from 1622. His son William Feilding succeeded as earl of Denbigh in 1675, and thenceforward the title of Desmond was held ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... Assurance on a person's own life is to create at once a Property in Reversion, which can by no other means be realized. Take, for instance, the case of a person at the age of Thirty, who, by the payment of 5l. 3s. 4d. to the Britannia Life Assurance Company, can become at once possessed ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes—lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the wo others, in the fulness of their persons and the robustness of their constitutions, seem to bespeak the reversion of a landed estate, rich acres, fat beeves, a substantial mansion, costly clothing, a chine and curkey, choice wines, and all other good things consonant to the wants and full-fed desires of their bodies. Such men charm fortune by the sleekness of their aspects and the goodly rotundity ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... in which slavery under the modified form of feudalism ran its course, there was a reversion to the ancient classical controversy. The issue became clearly defined in the hands of the English and French philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In place of the time-honored doctrine that the masses of mankind are by nature subject to the few who are born to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... starting-point of our troubles, Great Britain, however mistaken she may have been, had no possible selfish interest in view. There were no Rand mines in those days, nor was there anything in the country to tempt the most covetous. An empty treasury and two expensive native wars were the reversion which we took over. It was honestly considered that the country was in too distracted a state to govern itself, and had, by its weakness, become a scandal and a danger to its neighbours and to itself. There was nothing sordid in the British action, ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it and dived in the verbiage. He came up again with a discovery. In spite of its feebleness, verbosity, obscurity, and idiotic way of expressing itself, the Deed managed to convey to David and Mrs. Dodd a life interest in nine thousand five hundred pounds, with reversion to Julia and the children of the projected marriage. Sampson and Edward put their heads over this, and it puzzled them, "Why, man," said Sampson, "if the puppy had signed this last night, he would be a ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... poultry, pigeons, ducks, and rabbits is published, with all the measurements and weighings of bones, I think you will see that "use and disuse" at least have some effect. I do not believe in perfect reversion. I rather demur to your doctrine of "centrifugal variation." (136/2. The "doctrine of centrifugal variation" is given in Sir J.D. Hooker's "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania" (Part III. of the Botany of the Antarctic Expedition), 1859, page viii. In paragraph 10 the author writes: ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... himself of his land in perpetuity, he could dispose of it so far as to put another person in possession of it during a certain number of years; reserving to himself and his relations the right of redeeming it, should they ever possess the means; and having at all events the sure prospect of a reversion at the period of the jubilee. In the eye of the lawgiver this transaction was not regarded as a sale of the land, but merely of the crops for a stated number of seasons. It might indeed have been considered simply ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... filled with admiration and gratitude. He had been a friend for a day or two to the beasts of the forest and one of them had come to his rescue. The feeling of reversion to a primitive golden age was still strong within him, and doubtless the bear, too, had really felt the sense of kinship. He looked in the direction in which the shambling animal had gone, but there was no sign of him. Perhaps ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Testament was submitted to the General Assembly of the Roman Gentes, in order that those aggrieved by its dispositions might put their veto upon it if they pleased, or by allowing it to pass might be presumed to have renounced their reversion. It is possible that on the eve of the publication of the Twelve Tables this vetoing power may have been greatly curtailed or only occasionally and capriciously exercised. It is much easier, however, to indicate the meaning and origin of the jurisdiction confided to the Comitia Calata, than ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... something unreal, appalling in this sudden reversion to weakness, and Berrie could not credit his remorse. "Give ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... shrink and to dwindle; and probably gradual and compensated emancipation, which appealed very strongly to the new President's sense of justice and expediency, would, in the progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas of the founders of the Republic, have found a safe outlet for both masters and slaves. But whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, and when seven States, afterwards increased to eleven, openly seceded from the Union, when they declared and began the war upon the nation, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... the mitre would descend on the head of Archdeacon Grantly, the old bishop's son. The archdeacon had long managed the affairs of the diocese, and for some months previous to the demise of his father rumour had confidently assigned to him the reversion of his father's honours. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... questioned by Columbus. Nowadays the dug-out is generally used for the dirtier work of 'longshore fisheries. It has lost its elegance of form, and may be said to have reverted to a lower type. But this reversion only serves the better to remind the twentieth century of what all sorts of craft were like, not twenty, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... of opinion between the King and his advisers, but William IV. nevertheless availed himself of the accident of Althorp's elevation to the peerage to dismiss the Ministry. The reversion of the leadership in the Commons fell naturally to Lord John, and Melbourne was quick to recognise the fact. 'Thus invited,' says Lord John Russell, 'I considered it my duty to accept the task, though I told Lord Melbourne that I could not expect to have the same influence with ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... inscription: This is the King of the Jews. There was the worn, buffeted, bloodspent body, and the lips were parted so it was easy to think the sufferer in mid-utterance of one of the exclamations which have placed his Divinity forever beyond successful denial. The swift reversion of memory excited in the beholder might have been succeeded by remorse, but ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... it! It is no use appealing to your feelings. Let us make it pure business then! I offer you a hundred pounds down for the reversion of ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... is well that there should be a reversion to the earlier types of thinking and feeling, to earlier ways of looking at human nature, and I will not altogether refuse the pleasure offered me by the poetic romancer or the historical romancer because I find my pleasure chiefly in Tolstoy and Valdes ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... cutting, and cameos began to improve, and to resemble once more their classical ancestors. Indeed, their resemblance was rather academic, and there was little originality in design. Like most of the Renaissance arts, it was a reversion instead of a new creation. Technically, however, the work was a triumph. The craftsmen were not satisfied until they had quite outdone the ancients, and they felt obliged to increase the depth of the cutting, in order to show how cleverly they could coerce the material; they ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... thought Jane's succession ensured. And by letters patent, dated the 21st of June, King Edward had bequeathed the realm to the heirs-male of his cousin the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk; and should she have no heirs-male before his death, the reversion was to pass to her eldest daughter, the Lady Jane Dudley, now Queen; and for lack of her issue, to her cousin Lady Margaret Clifford. The sisters of Jane were passed over, and also the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... and calculated the chance of a broken neck in reversion, with that of a broken crown in immediate possession. The former being at least contingent, appeared the milder alternative, and they might have been inclined to adopt it had not a further obstacle stood in their way. The gate was barred withinside, and the vergers ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... a sympathetick glow, Prompt to relieve man's variegated woe; Whose ardent hope, intensely fix'd on high, Saw future bliss with intellectual eye. Still in his breast Religion held her sway, Disclosing visions of celestial day; And gave his soul, amidst this world of strife, The blest reversion of eternal life: By this dispell'd, each doubt and horrour flies, And calm at length in holy peace he dies. The sculptur'd trophy, and imperial bust, That proudly rise around his hallow'd dust, Shall ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay

... 'joys expired like truthless dreams.' He built. He planted. He diverted himself with rural pastimes, especially with falconry. Throughout his career he always was ready for a hawking match or a bargain for falcons. He once offered the reversion in fee of an Irish leasehold for a goshawk. An incident of his Munster estate, which doubtless he valued highly, was his title to half the produce of an eyrie of hawks in the wood of Mogelly. Amidst the anxieties of his final expedition he found ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... the very whirlwind of passion acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.' 'I have some cousins german at Court,' wrote Dekker in 1602, in his 'Satiro-Mastix,' '[that] shall beget you the reversion of the Master of the King's Revels.' 'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe described as 'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' was in all probability the acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who, figuratively ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... doctrine announced by Edward III. that a claim to the crown descended through females was to be set aside. In fact the real importance of the change of kings lay not in what Henry said, but in what he avoided saying. It was a reversion to the old right of election, and to the precedent set in the deposition of Edward II. Henry tacitly announced that in critical times, when the wearer of the crown was hopelessly incompetent, the nation, represented by Parliament, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... refused to assent to these Acts, and prorogued Parliament from November, 1639, to June, 1640. The result of the king's evident disinclination to implement the Treaty of Berwick, was an interesting attempt to undo the work of the preceding century by a reversion to the old policy of a French alliance. It was, of course, impossible thus to turn back, and Richelieu met the Scottish offers with a decisive rebuff, while the fact of these treasonable negotiations became known to Charles, and embittered the already ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... Street had trembled at his name. It was, said one of them, as if Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his hat-band. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... neither sympathy nor confidence. Burnes had, indeed, no specific duties of any kind; in his own words, he was in 'the most nondescript situation.' Macnaghten gave him no responsibility, and while Burnes waited for the promised reversion of the office of envoy, he chiefly employed himself in writing long memorials on the situation and prospects of affairs, on which Macnaghten's marginal comments were brusque, and occasionally contemptuous. The resolute and clear-headed Pottinger, who, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... but a natural step from the pheasant to the poacher; he was not aware that he took it at the prompting of the Terror; and he bewailed the degeneracy of the British rustic, his slow reversion to the type of neolithic man, owing to the fact that the towns drained the villages of all the intelligent. The skilful poacher who harried the sacred ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... babe was left there would have come a tragedy in the extinction of a young and promising cave child, and the two would have been mourning, as even wild beasts mourn for their lost young. But there was little reversion to past possibilities in the minds of the cave people. The couple were not worrying over what might have been. The mother had found food of one sort in abundance, and the father's fortune had been royal. He had tossed ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... estimation of movements of approach and recession between the earth and the stars, were communicated by Sir William Huggins to the Royal Society, April 23, 1868. Eighteen months later, Zoellner devised his "reversion-spectroscope"[629] for doubling the measurable effects of line-displacements; aided by which ingenious instrument, and following a suggestion of its inventor, Professor H. C. Vogel succeeded at Bothkamp, June 9, 1871,[630] in detecting ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... the night but they ran over his face, and much disturb'd him in his rest: to prevent which having got a penny either for going of an errand, or for making clean boots or shooes or the like, with that he bought a young cat which he kept in his garret, and whatsoever he had from the reversion of the servants table he would be sure to reserve part for her, because he had found by experience that she had rid ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.

... pride sufficiently to ask help of his vassal Mehemet Ali. Mehemet was now in possession of a well-drilled army and a well-equipped fleet, which were placed at the service of the sultan, who promised him in return the sovereignty of Crete, the pashalic of Syria, and possibly the reversion of Morea for his son Ibrahim. The Greeks, deceived by their easy successes over the undisciplined Turkish hosts, failed to realise the greatness of the danger which threatened them. The Egyptian fleet managed, without ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... investigation I found that the grandparents of the baby's mother had just such eyes as the baby. The grandfather's were big, dark, flashing eyes, and the grandmother's the mild, blue-gray eyes. So 'bang!' went the theory of mental impression, and in its place came the physical law of reversion." ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... morose humours of his uncle, and the sneering reflections which his cousin cast on speculative men, lost in philosophical dreams, and too wise to be capable of transacting public business. At length the Cecils were generous enough to procure for him the reversion of the Registrarship of the Star-Chamber. This was a lucrative place; but, as many years elapsed before it fell in, he was still under the necessity of labouring ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... before the girl's eyes,—and there the Earl of Warwick embarked upon a sea of rhetoric. His French was indifferent, his periods were interminable, and his demands exorbitant; in brief, the King of England wanted Katharine and most of France, with a reversion at the French King's death of the entire kingdom. Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... month or more Virginia had been wearing black ribbons for the King, who died in June, but in the last day or so there had been a reversion to bright colors. This cheerful change had been wrought by the arrival in the York of the Fortune of Bristol, with the new governor on board. His Excellency had landed at Yorktown, and, after suitable entertainment at the hands of its citizens, had proceeded under escort to Williamsburgh. The ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... everybody how unworthy and incapable he is of succeeding him." The influence of Louvois and the king's ill humor against the Colberts peep out in the injustice of Madame de Maintenon. Seignelay had received from Louis XIV. the reversion of the navy; his father had prepared him for it with anxious strictness, and he had exercised the functions since 1676. Well informed, clever, magnificent, Seignelay drove business and pleasure as ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... marks of their attention; and a "spice-cake," which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted up his voice and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... nothing. (Ritter, X, 669; compare VIII, 468; IX, 900.) So, too, among the Fulah and Mandingo negroes, and even among the Tscherkessans. (Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, III, 337 ff.) As the latest stages of development so often present instances of a reversion to the earliest, we find that Theodosius and Valentinian decreed that the agri deserti should, after two years' cultivation, belong to the possessor. L. 8, Cod. Just., ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... to stand above all things, to call them to his feet and to compel their service. It is the reversion of the order for him to take the subordinate place and serve the inferior creation. Things subdued, such as wealth secured, is to minister to his highest good and to promote his noblest manhood. The order is ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... We never heard him so designated before except in pleasantry. "As honest as any man living, that is an old man, and not honester than I." We cannot go further than Verges; it is a stretch of charity to go so far when we call to mind the magnificent reversion and the French jobs. A ruined spendthrift, although he may have many good qualities, can never, strictly speaking, be termed honest. It is absurd to say of him that he is nobody's enemy but his own—with family, friends, and tradespeople paying the penalty for his self-indulgence. He must ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... behaves in the same way as the animals, to whom the danger is merely something out of the ordinary. He then comes under the domination of the instinct to panic. It will thus be seen that all the mental processes which came before the reversion to the animal standard in men, are unknown to animals, and are the outcome of the purely human faculty of reason. However, if reason can by any means retain its foothold and its entirety, there will neither be fear nor the consequent breakdown ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the nomadic temperament—these are the strains in the American character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to create a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of settlement westward across the American continent, with a reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... a curious and striking commentary upon the stage which leisure-class culture had reached, in the course of its reversion to savagery. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... mutual advantage of the triumvirs. Caesar got the promise of the introduction of a law giving him an additional five years of command in Gaul, with special privileges as to his candidature for the consulship of B.C. 48; while Pompey and Crassus bargained for a second consulship in B.C. 55, and the reversion of the Spains (to be held as a single province) and Syria respectively, each for five years. The care taken that none of the three should have imperium overlapping that of the others was indeed a sign of mutual distrust and jealousy. But the bargain was made with sufficient ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... say, to be married to Walpole; but as I have not heard that he is heir-apparent, or has even the reversion to the crown of Spain, I cannot ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... here! How you frighten me! See what a shy little thing I am? You do see, don't you, old sweeticums? Ta, ta, here's papa. Remember me by that rose, 'cause it's just like me. Me and it's twins, you see, cutie-sugar!" The diabolical boy then concluded with a reversion to the severity of his own manner: "If she was my daughter I'd ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... William was a curious reversion to the type of his grandfather: he was the Great Elector over again with all his practical good sense if without his taste for diplomacy. His own ideal of kingship was a paternal despotism, and his ambition, to use most advantageously ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... misdeeds of Mr Japp greatly annoyed me. I had the reversion of his job, and if he chose to play the fool it was all in my interest. But the schoolmaster was depressed at the prospect of such company. 'Besides you and me, he's the only white man in the place. It's a poor look-out on ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... scene-painting; there are several stories in this book that show it at its best. I wish I could avoid adding that there are others that seem to me entirely unworthy of their author, at least for any other purpose than that of boiling the pot. One of the best of the tales, "A Reversion," is both dramatic and realistic; it bears a strong resemblance to a sketch that recently made a successful appearance at the Hippodrome; indeed the good qualities of Miss MORDAUNT'S stories are precisely those that would help their development into excellent little plays. One thing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... had obtained the reversion to the office of custos rotulorum brevium, and, according to his autobiographical notes, sat in parliament in 1543; but his name does not occur in the imperfect parliamentary returns until 1547, when he was elected for the family borough of Stamford. Earlier in that year he had accompanied ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... next sheriff, And beg the first reversion of a rope: Dispatch is all my business; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... quite a little lad—but his youth had taught him the conventions, and he had never forgotten those traditions of what his dead father used to call the "decent life." In his case the experience was but a reversion to the primitive, and he dressed with every satisfaction, delighted to put off the shabby old clothes and no less content with his new appearance as a ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... with the good bishop, whom I had taxed with being my father, he united us both to our respective partners. My father made over to me the sum which he had mentioned. Mr Masterton gave Susannah ten thousand pounds, and her own fortune amounted to as much more, with the reversion of Mr Cophagus's property at the decease of his widow. Timothy came up to the wedding, and I formally put him in the possession of my shop and stock in trade, and he has now a flourishing business. Although he has not yet found ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... derived from judicious, and the mischief from injudicious, crossing; and this, in its turn, is seen as part of the same story, as the good we get from change of air and scene when we are overworked. I will not amplify; but reversion to long-lost, or feral, characteristics, the phenomena of old age, the fact of the reproductive system being generally the last to arrive at maturity—few further developments occurring in any organism after this has ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... intended to introduce the novices to the ancestral spirits and endow them with the powers of the dead, 434 sq.; the rites seem to have been imported into Fiji by immigrants from the west, 435 sq.; the licence attending these rites perhaps a reversion to primitive communism for the purpose of propitiating the ancestral spirits, 436 sq.; description of the Nanga or sacred enclosure of stones, 437 sq.; comparison with the cromlechs and other megalithic monuments ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... varieties as distinct species. It will be noticed that all these flowers have their anthers erect in the bud but reversed at flowering time, each of the two sacs opening by a pore which, in reality, is at the base of the sac, though by reversion it appears to be at the top. To these pores small bees and flies fasten their short lips to feed on pollen, some of which will be necessarily .jarred out on them as they struggle for a foothold on the stamens, and will be carried by them to another flower's protruding stigma, which impedes their ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... palace. I stoutly battled the foe, for I "took no note of time" during the next day and night; and when at last I walked forth into the air, I found that I had relieved myself of the burden of three-fourths of my reversion. A weak mind on such an occasion would have cursed the cards, and talked of taking care of the fragment of his property; but mine was of the higher order, and I determined on revenge. I had my revenge, and saw my winners ruined. They had their consolation, and at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various

... ever met with. A more versatile, inconsistent, prejudiced, and faulty person than myself, I do not believe the earth to contain. Profession I have none, and am not acquiring any, nor expect ever to acquire. Of fortune I am wholly destitute: not a farthing have I, either in possession or reversion." ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... between their houses, the ambition that had possessed many a Vaufontaine to inherit the dukedom of Bercy, and the Duke's futile revolt against that possibility. But for himself, now heir to the principality of Vaufontaine, and therefrom, by reversion, to that of Bercy, it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... countries. There was some surplus wheat in the Banat, some surplus coal in Czecho-Slovakia, some extra locomotives in Vienna. So under the arbitrage of himself and his lieutenants there was set up a wholesale international bartering, a curious reversion to the primitive ways of early ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... read—explaining exactly how to deal with people so that from one sort of human being they might become another, and going on to prove that if, after this conversion, they showed signs of a reversion, it would then be necessary to know the reason why—fell dryly on ears listening to that eternal question: Why is it with me as it is? It is not fair!—listening to the constant murmuring of her pride: I am not wanted here or anywhere. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... abolished individuals would be best able to take care of themselves. The aim of anarchism is to destroy force by force; the aim of Tolstoy is to allow force to do its worst. Such a spirit of non-resistance would mean the overthrow of all security, and the reversion to wild lawlessness. It is an utter travesty of Christ's teaching. Extremes meet. Violence and servility join hands. Anarchism and Tolstoyism reveal the total bankruptcy ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... arrived at by Hume and Mrs. Eastham, Capella must be deemed capable of murdering his wife's brother, of bringing about the death of his wife after securing the reversion of her vast property to himself, and of falling in love with Helen—all in the same breath. This species of criminality was only met with in lunatics, and Capella impressed the barrister as an emotional personage, capable of supreme ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... son, had well considered the large sum for which I stood accused; so he begged the reversion of it from his most holy father, and asked that he might have the money made out to himself. The Pope granted this willingly, adding that he would assist in its recovery. Consequently, after having kept me eight whole days in prison, they sent me up for examination, in order to put an end ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... speculate on the contingency of her husband's death, to talk of it in language the coarsest, as 'waiting for dead men's shoes,' and bandying to and fro the chances that this man or that man, according to the whim of the morning, should 'have her,' or should not 'have her'—that is, have the reversion of the queen's person as a derelict of the king. All this, though most injurious to her prospects, was made known by Anne Boleyn herself to the female companions who were appointed to watch her revelations in prison. And certainly no chambermaid ever rehearsed ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Havre," cried Butscha, beginning to count on his fingers. "Two to three hundred thousand in ready money," bending back the thumb of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, "that's one item; the reversion of the villa Mignon, that's another; 'tertio,' Dumay's property!" doubling down his middle finger. "Ha! little Modeste may count upon her six hundred thousand francs as soon as the two old soldiers have got ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... differ in physical form from the people of other localities that did not suffer such an invasion. Does this mean that gradually the children of the invaders have dwindled and died out; or, as the blood is mixed with the ancient blood, has there been a change, part reversion and part assimilation, to the ancient type in its old surroundings? Do tint of skin, eyes and hair, shape of skull, and stature, change in the new environment, so as to be like those of the older people who dwelt in this environment? Do the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... Mouret to his uncle Eugene Rougon. I have also but one example of transmission by influence, Anna, the daughter of Gervaise and Coupeau, who bore a striking resemblance, especially in her childhood, to Lantier, her mother's first lover. But what I am very rich in is in examples of reversion to the original stock—the three finest cases, Marthe, Jeanne, and Charles, resembling Aunt Dide; the resemblance thus passing over one, two, and three generations. This is certainly exceptional, for I scarcely believe in atavism; it seems to ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... queen's death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the accession of George the first was made earl of Halifax, knight of the garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the exchequer. More was not to be had, and this he kept but a little while; for, on the 19th of May, 1715, he died of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... distress of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of the few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future. Seventy thousand persons of all ages had already perished; exclusively of the many thousand allies who had been cut down by the Cossack sabre. And the losses in reversion were likely to be many more. For rumors began now to arrive from all quarters, by the mounted couriers whom the Khan had despatched to the rear and to each flank as well as in advance, that large masses of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the free Negro. The first part of the nineteenth century brought two movements: among the free Negroes an effort at self-development and protection through organization; among slaves and recent fugitives a distinct reversion to the ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... into her dead tone: "Money is required for establishments. I have a Reversion coming some day; I don't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... matter was settled.[27] On March 12 Holdernesse was dismissed. It was not a creditable business; four months before he had signified his readiness to make room for Bute,[28] and he received a present pension of L4,000 a year and the reversion of the wardenship of the Cinque Ports, which was at least equally valuable, as a reward for his complaisance. He was succeeded by Bute as secretary of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt



Words linked to "Reversion" :   backsliding, turnabout, jurisprudence, interest, about turn, genetics, mutation, failure, about-face, escheat, genetic science, revert, return, chromosomal mutation, law, change of direction, stake, recurrence, recidivism, genetic mutation, reorientation, u-turn



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