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Acrimony   /ˈækrɪmˌoʊni/   Listen
Acrimony

noun
(pl. acrimonies)
1.
A rough and bitter manner.  Synonyms: acerbity, bitterness, jaundice, tartness, thorniness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Acrimony" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the whole," put in Judith, with as much acrimony as ever was displayed by Mr. Ketch, "is that them boys should not have got their deserts. They have not as much as had a birching; and I say that the college masters ought to be hooted. I'd ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... age must be passed over, as they belong rather to ecclesiastical and political than to literary history. Yet these are the most characteristic productions of the times, and display the effects of controversy in a very unfavorable light. The license, personality, acrimony, and grossness of the invectives published by the controversial writers, particularly of the sixteenth century, can hardly be imagined by a modern reader who has not read the originals. The better specimens ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... conspirators, in the third act, he threw a gallantry into his action, as striking as it was unexpected. But he greatly excelled in the vehement reproaches, which, in the fourth act, he poured, with acrimony and force, on the treachery and cowardice of Jaffier. The cadences of his voice were equally adapted to the loudest rage and the most deep and solemn reflection, which he judiciously varied." "Mr. Garrick," says Davies, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... felt and acknowledged by the people of England on his return, and the attempts of his enemies to undermine his reputation were confuted by the papers which he brought back with him. For a time Peterborough took a considerable part in politics, and his acrimony in debate so enraged his enemies that his conduct during the war in Spain was called into question. A debate on the subject took place. In this he successfully defended himself from the attacks made against him, and a formal vote of thanks ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... in our Sallet. The Limon is somewhat more acute, cooling and extinguishing Thirst; of all the [Greek: Oxubapha] the best succedaneum to Vinegar. The very Spoils and Rinds of Orange and Limon being shred and sprinkl'd among the other Herbs, correct the Acrimony. But they are the tender Seedlings from the Hot-Bed, which impart an Aromatic exceedingly grateful ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... food than others; but it sometimes becomes praeternaturally great, and then may be regarded as a morbid symptom. The appetite may be praeternaturally increased, either by an unusual secretion of the gastric juice, which acts upon the coats of the stomach, or by any acrimony, either generated in, or received into the stomach, or, lastly, by habit, for people undoubtedly may gradually accustom themselves to take ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... on, with less and less acrimony, all the rest of the day. And the next day, and the next. Then, argument having reached the point of diminishing returns, the three starships took the ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... when published in the first edition of Lockhart's Life, provoked strong protests from the representatives of the Ballantynes, and a rather acrimonious pamphlet war followed, in which Lockhart is accused by some not merely of acrimony, but of a supercilious and contemptuous fashion of dealing with his opponents. He made, however, no important retractations later, and it is fair to say that not one of his allegations has ever been disproved by documentary evidence, as certainly ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... beasts, who make no reply. Meantime, you examine out of the corner of your eye the persons alighting. They are well-clad and seem full of confidence. They are probably going to sit at the table of the gods. The proper thing is to bark without acrimony, with a shade of respect, so as to show that you are doing your duty, but that you are doing it with intelligence. Nevertheless, you cherish a lurking suspicion and, behind the guests' backs, stealthily, ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck

... detraction and whispers of suspicion. The genius, even when he endeavours only to entertain with pleasing; images of nature, or instruct by uncontested principles of science, yet suffers persecution from innumerable critics, whose acrimony is excited merely by the pain of seeing others pleased—of hearing applauses which ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... world. There have never been finer examples of this than during the present war. But in justice to ourselves and to the French during the Napoleonic wars, I think it was grossly impolitic to engender vindictiveness by unjustifiable acrimony. Up to the time that Nelson left the Mediterranean for England, except for the brilliant successes of the Nile and the equally brilliant capture of the balance of the French Mediterranean fleet, and subsequently the capitulation of Malta ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... with obvious acrimony. "I don't see no 'casion ter doubt the goodness o' God—I never war so ongrateful nohow as that comes to." He resented being thus publicly reproached, as if he were individually responsible for the iniquity of the bran dance—the scape-goat for the sins of all this merry ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968 "Communications of the ACM", "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars (text at http://www.acm.org/classics). Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "X ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... have come at last!" exclaimed the countess, with acrimony, as Maurice opened the door of his father's chamber. Then, pointing to the count, who still lay in a state of unconsciousness, she added, "Do you see what calamities you leave me alone to bear?—you who are the only stay I ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... of yourself which you purpose sending me, and not fail to tell you if I think you have spoken of others with more acrimony than you ought. There is no occasion for sending me with it your new publication. I shall get it as I have those before. I hope the last chapter of your memoir, if brought up to the present time, will record your children's having ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... of 867 and nationalize Merlin, when and if discovered and regardless by whom. The support seemed to come from an extremist minority; everybody else, including the Administration, was opposed to it. There was considerable acrimony, however, on the propositions: 1) that Merlin was too important to the prosperity of Poictesme to become a private monopoly; and 2) that Merlin was too important, etc., to become a political football and ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... suppressed for the time, could never be extinguished,—irritated by ungrateful neglect on the one hand, and by seditious advisers on the other, turned the guns which they had so often manned in defence of the English flag against their own countrymen and their own home, and, with all the acrimony of feeling ever attending family quarrels, seemed determined to sacrifice the nation and themselves, rather than listen to the dictates of reason and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... dropping into the gulf of pettiness in which the women among whom she lived were floundering. This repugnance, stamped on her forehead, on her lips, and ill-disguised, was taken for the insolence of a parvenue. Madame Graslin began to observe on all faces a certain coldness; she felt in all remarks an acrimony, the causes of which were unknown to her, for she had no intimate friend to enlighten or advise her. Injustice, which angers little minds, brings loftier souls to question themselves, and communicates ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... the time and nothing had been said between them. As soon as Brooke had got his tea he began to tell the story of his failure about Hugh. He was sorry, he said, that he had spoken on the subject, as it had moved Miss Stanbury to an acrimony ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... birds, and they hopped and pecked and squabbled without acrimony within feet of her seated figure. Bell knew that she had been waiting for a long time. He looked quickly at her face. It was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... documents unread. It was a sad farrago of enthusiasm and levity and heady writing. But Jove's thunder rolled and the bolt fell. A just man, whom I have never quite forgiven, to tell the truth, told me with unnecessary rigour and acrimony that I had made a pitiable exhibition of myself. But I have thanked God ever since, for I turned to ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... beneath his notice, and only felt himself called forth to do so by the dogmatism of those who laid down confident rules or laws in matters so trifling. This affectation of supercilious censure appears deeply to have provoked Dryden, and prompted the acrimony of the following Defence, which he prefixed to a second edition of the Indian Emperor published in 1668, probably shortly after the offence had been given. The angry friends were afterwards reconciled; and Dryden, listening more to the feelings of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... integrity. Religion had fallen into a controversial wrangle between contradictory dogmas; the most earnest of the Reformers have given us the blackest pictures of the prevailing irreligion and moral anarchy, rampant products of theological acrimony. It is true that the Moralists of all ages have usually been engaged in expressing a vehement conviction that the decadence of their own age exceeds that of any other known to history; and within the next decade, the denunciations of Latimer were to be lost in the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... occurred as to who was to blame, and many arrests and trials took place, but there had been such an interchanging of cap numbers and other insignia that it was next to impossible to identify the guilty, and so much crimination and acrimony grew out of the affair that it was deemed best to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... the two women had exchanged. Besides, in ageing, whether from repentance for her errors or from hypocrisy, Lady Douglas had become a prude and a puritan; so that at this time she united with the natural acrimony of her character all the stiffness of the new religion she ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... him that he was 'doing his best, by the Lord's help,' to get him appointed Principal of the University of Glasgow. In one of his letters to Lauderdale, after stating that the office, 'in the opinion of many,' would require a man 'of more acrimony and weight' than 'honest Baillie,' he urges that the presentation should be sent him, with a blank space, in which the name of the presentee might be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... acuity, acuteness, edge; asperity, acrimony, impatience; acumen, sagacity, shrewdness, astuteness, aptness; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... none could be more free. Dr. Kennicot often said that, of the many he had employed in his great biblical undertaking, none had shown more activity or more disinterestedness than our author. He was zealous in the cause of religion, but his zeal was without bitterness or animosity: polemic acrimony was unknown to him. He never forgot that in every heretic he saw a brother Christian; in every infidel he saw a brother man. He greatly admired Drouen de Sacramentis, and Boranga's Theology. Tournely he preferred ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... in the history of the American church has been more deeply marked by a sincere and serious earnestness, over and above the competitive zeal and invidious acrimony that are an inevitable admixture in such debates, than the controversy that was at once waged against the two new sects claiming the title "Liberal." It was sincerely felt by their antagonists that, while the one abandoned the foundation of the Christian faith, the other destroyed ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... nerves of the nose, which are endowed with exquisite sensibility, and of which an incredible number are spread over the inner membrane of the nostrils. This membrane is lubricated by a secretion, which has a tendency to preserve the sense. By the almost caustic acrimony of snuff, the mucus is dried up, and the organ of smelling becomes perfectly callous. The consequence is, that all the pleasure we are capable of deriving from the olfactory organs, the omnis copia narium, as Horace curiously terms ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... suppose that I am going to shut my eyes to the fact that this affair has been a very good thing for you, and that you owe your chances of a great fortune entirely to me? You don't pretend to forget that, I suppose?" said George Sheldon, with some acrimony. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... to forget that the relation is permitted, not legalised—that it exists on suffrance merely, and is therefore terminable at the will of either party. The last days of that same southern journey had been marked by misunderstandings and subsequent reconciliations, in an ascending scale of acrimony and fervour on the part of her companion. In Helen's case familiarity tended very rapidly to breed contempt. She ceased to be in the least amused by these recurring agitations. At Pisa, after a scene of a particularly excited nature, she lost all patience, frankly told her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... person present. He brushed aside Bower's acrimony as lightly as he had accepted Helen's embarrassed explanation. "This is not my hustle at all," he said. "Stampa heard that his ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... any other to that perfection of government, the democracy of Athens, he hoped one day to see revived; he mentioned the death of Charles the First, and the expulsion of his son, with raptures of applause; inveighed with great acrimony against the kingly name; and, in order to strengthen his opinion, repeated forty or fifty lines from one of the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... be no time to make life bitter by bad temper, slander, acrimony, sulking and other conjugal disputes. The husband will no longer behave with the despotism of a lord and master, and the wife will no longer think it her duty to humble herself. Religious dogmas will no longer separate man from woman. Priests will no longer be required in marriage. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... who would naturally rejoice in the disestablishment of the Church,—those members of the Lower House, who had always spoken of the ascendancy of Protestant episcopacy with the bitter acrimony of exclusion? After all, the success or failure of Mr. Daubeny must depend, not on his own party, but on them. It must always be so when measures of Reform are advocated by a Conservative Ministry. There will always be ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the badges of parties, respecting the limits of the authority of the federal and state governments. The eminently beneficial working of so singular a provision is probably, as M. de Tocqueville remarks, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... by the Prince, at about this time, of an interview between himself, the Queen, and the Prime Minister, we catch a curious glimpse of the states of mind of those three high personages—the anxiety and irritation of Lord John, the vehement acrimony of Victoria, and the reasonable animosity of Albert—drawn together, as it were, under the shadow of an unseen Presence, the cause of that celestial anger—the gay, portentous Palmerston. At one point in the conversation Lord John ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... every country, whether the inhabitants are lovers of tea or the contrary. How happy would it be for Europe, if, by unanimous consent, the importation of this infamous leaf was prohibited, which is endued only with a corrosive force derived from the acrimony of a gum with ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... acrimony about earnest students, whose motive, he thinks, is a small ambition. But surely a man may be fond of metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and, moreover, these students looked forward to days in which real work would ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... the payments now, and Ralph's popularity was increased fourfold. Mrs. Horsball got out from some secluded nook a special bottle of orange-brandy in his favour,—which Lieutenant Cox would have consumed on the day of its opening, had not Mrs. Horsball with considerable acrimony declined to supply his orders. The sister with ringlets smiled and smirked whenever the young Squire went near the bar. The sister in ringlets was given to flirtations of this kind, would listen with sweetest complacency to compliments on her beauty, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... appointed to the vacant gown. This is done by a court letter, signed with the King's sign manual. In the full flutter of his darling hopes, he one day encountered an old brother lawyer, notorious for the acidity of his temper, and the poignancy and acrimony of his remarks. "Weel, friend Robby," said the latter, "I hear you're to get the vacant gown."—"Yes, Mr. C—k, I have every reason to believe so."—"Have ye gotten doon your letter yet frae London?"—"No: but I expect an express ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... risks but magnificent if it came off. In a flash she guessed why all the Yoga-class had come so super-punctually; each of them she felt convinced wanted to have the joy of telling her, after everybody else knew, who the new tenant was. On the top of this bitterness was the added acrimony of Georgie, whose clear duty it was to have informed her the moment he knew, wanting to make the same revelation to her, last of all Riseholme. She had already had her suspicions, for she had not forgotten the fact that Olga Bracely and Georgie ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... also entered the lists in opposition to Kotzebue and Merkel in the Freimuthige (The Liberal), and the merits of the so-called modern school and its leaders, was the subject of a paper war, waged with the bitterest acrimony of controversy, which did not scruple to employ the sharpest weapons ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... tongue which was never at a loss either to praise or blame, and Zora was equally ready to retort, and defended herself with such acrimony that the lad, knowing himself to be in fault, entirely lost the small remnant of temper which he still possessed, and dashed out of the room, declaring that he never wished to set eyes upon Zora again, and that she might keep all the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... sufferings of others must afford you much joy, my friend," retorted Crevel with acrimony, "for you have come down with a face that is positively beaming. Is Lisbeth likely to die? For your daughter, they say, is her heiress. You are not like the same man. You left this room looking like the Moor of Venice, and you come back with ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... Gaveston, Vere, or Spencer, to have swayed alone, during forty-four years, which was a well-settled and advised maxim; for it valued her the more, it awed the most secure, it took best with the people, and it staved off all emulations, which are apt to rise and vent in obloquious acrimony even against the prince, where there is ONE ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... the sum of a criticism so strongly felt that it raises a barrier to appreciation, almost a gate shut against knowledge between the good American readers and the progressives in our literature. Sandburg and Lindsay between them will cause more acrimony in a gathering of English teachers than even Harold Bell Wright. Miss Lowell carries controversy with her, triumphantly riding upon it. Their critics wish form as they have known form, want beauty such as they possess ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... and Laura formed no exception. Pin, her most frequent companion, had to bear the brunt of her acrimony: hence the two were soon at war again. For Pin was tactless, and took small heed of her sister's grumpy moods, save to cavil at them. Laura's buttoned-upness, for instance, and her love of solitude, were perverse leanings to Pin's mind; and she spoke out against them ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... to the dean, in the delivery of this sentence, a satirical acrimony, which his irritability as an author could but ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... distinguished for extraordinary ability in the capacity of a legislator. His conspicuous position and commanding talents pointed him out as one to take a foremost rank with the first of the nation; and his friends urged his name as a fit representative in Congress for the State. At this time the acrimony of party was intense; the Republican, or Jeffersonian party, was largely in the ascendant in the State, and would accept no compromise. It was willing to receive new converts and prefer them according to merit, but would accord no ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... exerted greater convincing power, upon the minds of those to whom it was addressed. It was a far more valuable exposition of the Reconstruction question than that given by Mr. Stevens. It was absolutely without acrimony, it contained no harsh word, it made no personal reflection; but the whole duty of the United States, and the whole power of the United States to do its duty, were set forth with absolute precision of logic. The Reconstruction debate continued ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... ever reads the so-called "religious" newspapers. It is not an occupation which I should commend to any one who wishes to employ his time profitably; but a very short devotion to this exercise will suffice to convince him that the "pursuit of disputation," carried to a degree of acrimony and vehemence unsurpassed in lay controversies, seems to be found quite compatible with the "work and calling" of a remarkably large number of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... the usual harmonious discord that will occur among men hard-pressed and over-worked, where nerve-tension finds vent at times in acrimony. But through all the nine long, weary years before the British had had enough, Paine was never censured with the same bitterness which fell upon the heads of Washington and Jefferson. Even Franklin came ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... the ancient traditional theological conception of libido that we must largely attribute the sharp difference of opinions among physicians on the question of sexual abstinence and the otherwise unnecessary acrimony with which these opinions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... unshaken in your resolutions on this head, if you marry you are miserable. The task of man and wife is reciprocally arduous. She should be mild, good-humoured, cheerful and tender; he cool, rational, and vigilant; without acrimony, devoid of captiousness, and free from passion. It is mutually their duty to inspect and to expostulate, but to beware how they reprove. Where gentleness and equanimity of temper are wanting, happiness never can be obtained. Believe me, my dear boy, I have never stood so low in my own ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... am no Paris demoiselle!" said Cigarette, with a dash of her old acrimony. "Ceremony in a camp—pouf! You must have been a court chamberlain once, weren't you? Well, I have done it. Your officers were talking yonder of a delicate business; they were uncertain who best to employ. I put in my speech—it was dead against military ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... such a medicinal drink might be prescribed also with great advantage in SCROPHULOUS COMPLAINTS, when not attended with a hectic fever; and in other disorders in which a general acrimony prevails, and the crasis of the blood is destroyed. Under such circumstances, I have seen vibices which spread over the body, disappear in a few days from ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly Colonel Pyncheon had joined in the general cry, to purge the land from witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was an invidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought the condemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well known that the victim had recognized the bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor's conduct towards him, and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... confidence of the public, and to renew the guarantee of the charter. Such was not their conduct. On the contrary, M. Ferrand, the government orator, one of the men who did most mischief to the King and the kingdom, abandoned himself—we borrow the expression of the reporter of the committee—to all the acrimony of his passions, and all the profligacy of his principles. His fury could only be equalled by his folly. He did not scruple to maintain, in the midst of the representatives of the nation, that the emigrants had the greatest right to claim the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... no sign of any: the fact that she was so backward was a sore point with all the family. Job Grinnell suddenly dropped the perforated gourd, and started down toward the fence. The acrimony of the old feud was as a trait bred in the bone. Such hatred as was inherent in him was evoked by his religious jealousies, and the pious sense that he was following the traditions of his elders and upholding the family honor blended in gentlest satisfaction with his personal ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... its coarse and exaggerated acrimony, this passage doubtless expresses a great truth, which presently I shall go on to consider. But it contains also a very characteristic falsehood, of which we must first divest it. God is here represented as making a hell, with the express ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... against the allies, which the deputies sent to the king from Rome had brought against them; and partly in preferring accusations themselves against the allies of the Roman people, but particularly against Marcus Aurelius, whom they inveighed against with much greater acrimony; for they said that, being one of the three ambassadors sent to them, he had staid behind, and levying soldiers, had assailed them with hostilities contrary to the league, and frequently fought pitched battles ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... great apparent content. Having finished, and washed his dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to unsuperintended man, and having given Rufus the second call to breakfast with the vigor and acrimony that usually mark that unpleasant performance, he strode to a high point on the riverbank and, shading his eyes with his hand, gazed ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... wonder if they have begotten a son who is mad. (To the 2ND PHYSICIAN) Come, let us begin the cure; and, through the exhilarating sweetness of harmony, let us dulcify, lenify, and pacify the acrimony of his spirits, which, I see, are ready ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere

... Demulcents correct acrimony, diminish irritation, and soften parts by covering their surfaces with a mild and viscid matter, such as linseed-tea, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... that if you would so far yield to the opinions of your friends, as to publish what you have writ concerning the peace, and leave out everything that savours of acrimony and resentment, it would, even now, be of great service to this nation in general, and to them in particular, nothing having been yet published on the peace of Utrecht in such a beautiful and strong manner as you have done it. Once more, my dear ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... and the other Religious Orders mutually entertained for each other. Each sacred fraternity laboured incessantly to gain the ascendancy in the conquered territories, and their Divine calling served for nothing in palliating the acrimony of their reciprocal accusations and recriminations, which ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... acrimony of the tears, the lining of this duct may be inflamed and thickened, or some foreign body, or some unctuous matter from the ciliary glands, may insinuate itself into the duct, and the fluid accumulates in the sac and distends it, and it ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... of American officials have been discussed with more or less acrimony, and always from the standpoint of personal experience. The Custom-House is the centre of attack, and critics for the most part agree that the men whose business it is to "hold up" returning citizens perform their ungracious task ungraciously. Theirs is rather the attitude of the detective ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... him sums of money, well knowing there would be but little chance of a demand for repayment. Dr. Parr, who was one of Farmer's intimate friends, remarked of him 'that his munificence was without ostentation, his wit without acrimony, and his learning without pedantry.' Farmer was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Society of Antiquaries. His only published work was an Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, which appeared in 1767 and went through ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann Glynn gasped by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... express the slighter forms of anger. Irritation, petulance, and vexation are temporary and for immediate cause. Fretfulness, pettishness, and peevishness are chronic states finding in any petty matter an occasion for their exercise. Compare ACRIMONY; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... the Christian minister will never by laxity of expression or conduct encourage in any an indifference to truth and error, nor countenance the insidious workings of latitudinarian principles. He will ever maintain the truth, but never with acrimony; and, whilst his duty compels him to banish and drive away all false doctrine, he will feel and show towards the persons of such as are in error compassionate indulgence and forbearing tenderness. He knows that truth ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... in the year 31 that the most important of these visits took place. Jesus felt that to play a leading part he must leave Galilee and attack Judaism in its stronghold, Jerusalem. There the little Galilean community was far from feeling at home. Jerusalem was a city of pedantry, acrimony, disputation, hatreds, and pettiness of mind. Its fanaticism was extreme. All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical instruction, even the legal business and civil actions—in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown, or sufficiently near to be enjoyed. The lower orders are agitated by the chance of success, they are irritated by its uncertainty; and they pass from the enthusiasm of pursuit to the exhaustion of ill-success, and lastly to the acrimony of disappointment. Whatever transcends their own limits appears to be an obstacle to their desires, and there is no kind of superiority, however legitimate it may be, which is ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated. The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, in Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard. What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about Cameron himself. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... attacked, on behalf of the opposition, in a weekly paper called the Plebeian, written by Steele. Addison answered the attack in the Old VVhig, and this belum plusquam civile—as Johnson calls it—was continued, with increased acrimony, through two or three numbers. How Addison, who was dying, felt after this painful controversy we are not told directly; but the Old Whig was excluded from that posthumous collection of his works (1721-1726) for which his executor Tickell ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the birch is esteemed to have all the virtues of the spirit of salt, without the danger of its acrimony; most powerful for the dissolving of the stone in the bladder, bloody water and strangury: Helmont shews how to make a beer of the water; but the wine is a most rich cordial, curing (as I am told) consumptions, and such interior diseases as accompany ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... against revealed truth, which it is distressing to think of. Again; in many men of science or literature there may be an animosity arising from almost a personal feeling; it being a matter of party, a point of honour, the excitement of a game, or a consequence of soreness or annoyance occasioned by the acrimony or narrowness of apologists for religion, to prove that Christianity or that Scripture is untrustworthy. Many scientific and literary men, on the other hand, go on, I am confident, in a straightforward impartial way, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... says with acrimony as he enters his wife's room, where she is finishing her toilette, "you seem to have lost your habitual tact. This is a nice time to be giving dinner parties! Twenty persons ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... spoke) believed him thoroughly, I assure you. Though I doubt if the portly tenor was much flattered, for he had accepted the role with the idea of carrying off the honours of the evening, and exhibited, in the event, not a little of that acrimony which is so curiously inseparable from any collection of the world's great song-birds. Ever since Music, heavenly maid, was young, she has been so notoriously at variance with her fellow-musicians as to force the uninitiated into all sorts of cynical ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... and week after week the debates continued, sometimes with great courtesy, and sometimes with considerable acrimony, until the tenth of September, when all plans and amendments which had been adopted by the convention were placed in the hands of a committee for revision and arrangement. Hamilton, who had returned to the convention at the middle of August, was placed ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... office for less than a year as one of the Under Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next year we find him making a happy retort on Pitt, who had somewhat vulgarly alluded to his being a dramatic author. It was on the American question, perhaps the bitterest that ever called forth the acrimony of parties in the House. Sheridan, from boyhood, had been taunted with being the son of an actor. One can hardly credit this fact, just after Garrick had raised the profession of an actor to so great an ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... aspiring captains to sea to increase his wealth by plunder, his consequence by the hordes of slaves which they swept into the awful bagnios of Algiers; and Sandoval, that quaint and delightful historian, is moved to indignation and complains with much acrimony of "las malas obras que este corsario hizo a la Christiandad" (the evil deeds done to Christianity by this corsair). These were on so considerable a scale at this time that he had to devote to them far more space than he considered consonant with ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... acquaintance. Ingram, a squire and son of squires, was perhaps a shade above her degree; she may have required him to give a tone. This, considering that wretched marriage of his—a month's engagement in defiance of head-shaking, a blazing Hanover Square wedding, a year's bickering, one month's acrimony (done by letter) and Ingram's unquenchable hatred of the woman—this, I say, you may well doubt. But I can give no other explanation. He came, he talked in his high-voiced, querulous, bitter-humoured way, he saw and sought ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... obscure origin, who by strong blows had hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the interest was really absorbing. Even the Herald's rival, the Evening Times, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the Herald, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... conqueror with those which constitute the successful organizer of a State. Brave and enterprising in war, prompt to seize an occasion and to turn it to the best advantage, not even averse to severities where they seemed to be required, he yet felt no acrimony towards those who had resisted his arms, but was ready to befriend them so soon as their resistance ceased. Mild, clement, philanthropic, he conciliated those whom he subdued almost more easily than he subdued them, and by the efforts of a few ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... Under this double title they found, with partisans and adversaries, points of contact which drew them together, if not with active sympathy, at least with solid esteem: the right-hand party looked upon them as sincere royalists; and the left, while opposing them with acrimony, could not avoid admitting that they were neither the advocates of the old system, nor the defenders ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... The acrimony in domestic affairs began to reach its climax in October, when the prospects of the Priory's own ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... noise to let them know whither the chase is proceeding. They often did this out of sport, in order to tease their opponent; for of all pesterers that ever fastened on man he was the most insufferable: knowing that his coat protected him from manual chastisement, he spared no acrimony, and delighted in the chagrin and anger of those with whom he contended. But he was sometimes likewise of real use to the heads of the Presbyterian faction, and therefore was admitted to their tables, and of course conceived himself a ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... arose, who, in one of the most judicious and spirited essays that our nation has produced, on a point of classical literature, completely overturned this ill-founded edifice, and exposed the arrogance and futility of its assuming architect." He even condescends to justify an acrimony of style, which had been gently blamed by the more unbiassed German; "Paullo acrius quam velis - - -,perstrinxit." But I cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a span who, with all his faults, was entitled ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... had to pay the debts and hush up the scandals of my handsome and agreeable son, find Ralph, who has not a feature in his face, the better-looking of the two. I know Charles is head over ears in debt at this moment, but,"—with sudden acrimony—"he will not get another farthing from me. It is pouring water into ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... and forced them out through a well-grounded fear that they would fester if left within. His comedies of "The Malcontent," "The Fawn," and "What You Will," have no genuine mirth, though an abundance of scornful wit,—of wit which, in his own words, "stings, blisters, galls off the skin, with the acrimony of its sharp quickness." The baser its objects, the brighter its gleam. It is stimulated by the desire to give pain, rather than the wish to communicate pleasure. Marston is not without sprightliness, but his sprightliness is never the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... consideration of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... be stood up and lammed over the head with a club!" observed Mr. Shrimplin, with considerable acrimony of tone. "You'd have thought that being a witness would have made a man out of Joe if anything would,—and how does he act? Why, he lights out; he gets to be good for something beside soaking up whisky and spoiling his insides, and he skips the town; ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... There was a great many. A number of Jews and Jewesses, amiable, prosperous, and kindly, an artist or two, a novelist, a lady pianist, two or three actors. I noticed these. Then there was an old maid, a Mlle. Finisterre, famous in Petrograd society for her bitterness and acrimony, and in appearance an exact copy of Balzac's ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... a cat, is that Susan Peckaby!" decided he, with acrimony, in the intervals of his whistling. "It was her as put mother up to the thought o' sending me to-night: Rachel Frost said the things 'ud do in the morning. 'Let Dan carry 'em up now,' says Dame Peckaby, 'and ask her about the print, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... at the little provincial court, as all ladies were, made herself by no means popular there by the hot and eager political tone which she adopted. She assailed all the Government measures with indiscriminating acrimony. Were they lenient? She said the perfidious British Government was only preparing a snare, and biding its time until it could forge heavier chains for unhappy America. Were they angry? Why did not every ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his admission to the bar, settled in Buffalo. He was then twenty-two years old. Four years later he entered Congress. He had earned this quick start by good ability; and so acceptably did he maintain himself, that, in spite of the acrimony existing between Clintonian and Bucktail, his name was regarded with much favour in 1825 as the successor of Rufus King in the United States Senate. Tracy was a man of marked ability. Though neither brilliant nor distinguished as a public speaker, he was ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... faults of this plan. Next to a Tenure or a Militia Bill, it is the most important possible. Questions must arise on every section of it; and, however these questions be decided, we trust in God they will be decided without acrimony or recrimination, and that so divine a subject as Education will not lead to disunions ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... was doubt with acrimony among the beasts as to whether the Hare or the Tortoise could run the swifter. Some said the Hare was the swifter of the two because he had such long ears, and others said the Tortoise was the swifter because anyone whose shell ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... a low estimate, was complaining to him of being passed over in a recent appointment to the bench, and expressed his sense of the injustice with which he had been treated. He was very indignant at his claims and merit being overlooked in their not choosing him for the new judge, adding with much acrimony, "And I can tell you they might have got a 'waur[54].'" To which, as if merely coming over the complainant's language again, the answer was a grave "Whaur[55]?" The merit of the impertinence was, that it sounded as if it ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... to Halifax, he continued always of his patron's party, but, as it seems, without violence or acrimony; and his firmness was naturally esteemed, as his abilities were reverenced. His security, therefore, was never violated; and when, upon the extrusion of the whigs, some intercession was used lest Congreve should be displaced, the earl of Oxford ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... prospective European war as unworthy of further attention and held forth with extreme acrimony on the subject of the Great Colorado Strike; which rose to passionate denunciation of the miserable make-shift called civilization which, would permit such a horror in the very heart of a great and prosperous nation. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... result to them. Reports too, were in circulation, proceeding from restored captives, at war with the general pacific profession of the Moravians, and which, whether true or false, served to heighten the acrimony of feeling towards them, until the militia of a portion of the frontier came to the determination of breaking up the villages on the Muskingum.[16] To [230] carry this determination into effect, a body of troops, commanded by ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... some remarks that have been made during this discussion, that not only my motives, but the terms in which I have expressed them, have been misapprehended. I have been untrue to every purpose of my mind, if I have spoken with any bitterness or acrimony. I thought it was my duty to be plain—at the same time temperate though emphatic. I thought I had been so. Nothing is farther from my purpose than the irritation of any section, much less of any member here. Most assuredly I did not ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... fill a large newspaper, and immediately afterwards, in a new edition of his book, renounce the errors which had been pointed out to him, stealing the very language of his amendments from the man whom he had so grossly vilified! It is true that grammarians have ever disputed, and often with more acrimony than discretion. Those who, in elementary treatises, have meddled much with philological controversy, have well illustrated the couplet of Denham: "The tree of knowledge, blasted by disputes, Produces sapless leaves in stead ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken—if more calmly and critically so—in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The edge of acrimony crept ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... self as to wander out bareheaded in the evening air and recite the commencement of the burial service like a man distraught when Maryllia's crushed body had been brought home, and she thought of it often with an inward rage she could scarcely conceal. Almost,—such was her acrimony and vindictiveness—she wished Maryllia ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... of Colonel Samuel B. Davis of Delaware who rendered such distinguished service during the War of 1812, told me a few years ago that his father was present at a dinner where Paine was asked what he thought of Washington. Doubtless in a spirit of acrimony he uttered ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... denotes gold at the bottom, but attended with a great proportion of a sharp corrosive, sometimes amounting to a half of the whole, whence half the character expresses acrimony; which, accordingly, both alchemists and physicians observe of iron, and hence that common opinion of the adepts that the aurum vivum, or gold of the philosophers, is contained in iron, and that the ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear

... honorable member has satirized, with peculiar acrimony, the powers given to the general government by this Constitution. I conceive that the first question on this subject is, whether these powers be necessary; if they be, we are reduced to the dilemma of either submitting to the inconvenience, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... of the sixty-eight which have elapsed since it was established: namely, from April, 1841, to August, 1854; and from October, 1861, until the present time. A standing dispute on the subject of the government of the armory, which was kept up with much heat and acrimony for many years, culminated, in 1854, in the passage of a law by Congress, in favor of the civil administration. This continued until after the breaking out of the Rebellion, when Congress restored the military superintendency. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... of custom, wherever it interferes with the affirmation of the great principles of life; who disdains to follow the multitude in doing not only what is palpably wrong, but what is morally unfine. He seeks to be a free man, an independent being, and to assert without acrimony or invidious criticism of others, yet firmly and unflinchingly, a strong and self-poised manhood. This, then, is one consequence that flows from our point of view: namely, that in the moral sphere the small occasions are to be treated as if they ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... the story (for me) has yet to come. We all know how easy it is to turn obstinate and defend a pet theory with acrimony. Mr. Dobell did nothing of the sort. Although his enthusiasm had committed him to no little expense in publishing The Prospect, with a preface elaborating his theory, he did a thing which was worth a hundred discoveries. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... injudicious and wicked acrimony of this letter, and some other like conduct of the then Secretary of State, that occasioned me, in a letter to a friend in the government, to say, that if there was any official business to be done in France, till a regular Minister could be appointed, it could not be trusted to ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... the tone, but I did not let on; for he was excited, you know. But I was calm; so I said softly, and without acrimony: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Since first I took my place among them, seven or eight years have now rolled by. They have been years of severest trial, years of suffering and sorrow, years of passion and prejudice and calumny, years of rude and bitter conflict, years of suspicion and acrimony, and finally of defeat and shame; still, in that eventful course of time, to me at least, there has occurred no moment wherein I would exchange the faintest memory of our mutual trust, unreserved enjoyment and glad hope ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... all made up of sorrow and tenderness, there is a mixture of satire and indignation: for in part of it, the poet taketh occasion to inveigh against the corruptions of the clergy, and seemeth to have first discovered his acrimony against Arb. Laud, and to have threatened him with the loss of his head, which afterwards happened to him thorough the fury of his enemies. At least I can think of no sense so proper to be given to these ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... was wise, Philip, or I should not have taken the trouble to do so," said Venner, with much less acrimony. "So be a man always, Philip, and never a flunky. You have played your part admirably this morning. Let it be played as well, Philip, even to the finish—even to ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... Germany was there any peace from acrimony. There the Allies walked contentedly about, fed well, looked kindly at each other. There were no epithets to fling—they had all been ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... which a spoonful may be taken every hour or two. These gelatinous mixtures are likewise an useful injection in some diarrhoeas, particularly where the lower intestines have their natural mucus rubbed off by the flux, or are constantly irritated by the acrimony of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... and made his escape certain, urged Socrates to fly; "where shall I fly," he replied, "to avoid the irrevocable doom passed on all mankind?" Christians! wonder at this heathen, and profit by his example! in his last days he enlarged upon the wicked crime of suicide, which he reprobated with an acrimony not usual with him, declaring it to be an inexpiable offence to the gods, and degrading to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... of the new Administration, Congress passed the several compromise measures in Mr. Clay's bill as separate acts. The debate on each one was marked by acrimony and strong sectional excitement, and each one was signed by President Fillmore amid energetic protests from the Northern Abolitionists and the Southern Secessionists. The most important one, which provided for the rendition of fugitive slaves, he referred ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... their sex: but the large-boned, stiff and meagre Sabina had none of the yielding and tender grace of these gentle creatures. Her feeble health, which was very evident, became her particularly ill when, as at this moment, the harsh acrimony of her embittered soul came to light with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers



Words linked to "Acrimony" :   acrimonious, jaundice, acerbity, thorniness, disagreeableness



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