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Acute   /əkjˈut/   Listen
Acute

adjective
1.
Having or experiencing a rapid onset and short but severe course.  "The acute phase of the illness" , "Acute patients"
2.
Extremely sharp or intense.  Synonym: intense.  "Felt acute annoyance" , "Intense itching and burning"
3.
Having or demonstrating ability to recognize or draw fine distinctions.  Synonyms: discriminating, incisive, keen, knifelike, penetrating, penetrative, piercing, sharp.  "Incisive comments" , "Icy knifelike reasoning" , "As sharp and incisive as the stroke of a fang" , "Penetrating insight" , "Frequent penetrative observations"
4.
Of an angle; less than 90 degrees.
5.
Ending in a sharp point.  Synonyms: acuate, needlelike, sharp.
6.
Of critical importance and consequence.



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"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the army that poured out of the employees' entrances. It was an inundation of men, flooding street from sidewalk to sidewalk. It jostled and joked and scuffled, sweating, grimy, each unit of it eager to board waiting, overcrowded street cars, where acute discomfort would be suffered until distant destinations were reached. Somehow the sight of that surging, tossing stream of humanity impressed Bonbright with the magnitude of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, even more than the circuit of the ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... each to his face—The brow of Arthur So open and so clear, and yet a traitor. Indeed, methinks the countenance, which oft Is the mask fitted to the character Of gross and eager sensualists, is but A lying index to the subtle souls Of villains more acute. Come hither, Pearson! Thou know'st me well. Speak, wherefore doubting thus I feel my soul aghast at its own being? Methought just now all Hell did cry aloud, "Conscience can give no peace, the liar Conscience, That knows not what she prates"—Out, out ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... answering to WHO, and the objective to WHOM."—Hart's Gram., p. 46. "This depends chiefly on their being more or less emphatic; and on the vowel sound being long or short."—Churchill's Gram., p. 182. "When they speak of a monosyllable having the grave or the acute accent."—Walker's Key, p. 328. Here some would erroneously prefer the possessive case before "having;" but, if any amendment can be effected it is only by inserting as there. "The event of Maria's loving her brother."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 55. "Between that and the man being on ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but home-sentimentalism,—a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance, parents may weep over the wickedness of their ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... its texture. It may be rounded and depressed (concave), elevated (convex), level (plane), or with a little mound in the centre (umbonate). It may be covered with warts, marked with lines (striate), or zoned with circles. The margin may be acute or obtuse, rolled backward or upward (revolute), or rolled inward (involute); it may ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... at putting civil law and order into effect were just then being tried in the new and lawless frontier railroad town and the contest between the two elements of decency and of license had reached an acute pass when Rebstock and Seagrue were thrown into jail at Medicine Bend. A case of sympathy for them was not hard to work up among men of their own kind and threats were heard up and down Front Street that if the railroading of two innocent ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... little impatient gestures, he said a bad French word, he flung up a hand in despair, he turned to Bulldog with a frantic gesture, as of a man who thought he could have done something at once, and found he could not do it at all. Once more he faced the school, and then Speug, with that instinct of acute observation which belongs to a savage, began to understand, and gave Howieson ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... the morbid sensation. An anodyne may be a stimulant in one dose, and a narcotic in a larger one. The properties of different anodyne agents vary, consequently they produce unlike effects. The size of the dose required, differs according to circumstances and condition. An adult, suffering acute pain, requires a much larger dose to produce an anodyne effect than one who is a chronic sufferer. An individual accustomed to the use of anodynes, requires a much larger dose to procure relief than one who is not. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... returned, with the trunk on the truck, he found the stranger, with his hands in his pockets, standing before Dan'l Webster and gazing at that animal with an expression of acute interest. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... your periodical in eliciting the explanation of crabbed archaisms is highly to be commended. Shall I anticipate Mr. Bolton Corney, or some other of your acute glossarial correspondents, if I offer another suggestion, in reply to "C.H." (No. 21. p. 335.), regarding "gourders of raine?" I have never met with the word in this form; but Gouldman gives "a gord of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... from their own bodies. If you allow the sources of aerial impurity to exist in or around dwellings, he continues, you are poisoning the people; and while many die at early ages of fevers and other acute diseases, the remainder will have their health impaired and their ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... the only detestable specimen among us; sunbonnets, boots, and even ungenial New England proved on acquaintance kindly, simple, enterprising Americans; yet who knows if sunbonnets and boots and all of us wouldn't have become just as detestable had we but been as she was, swollen and puffy with the acute indigestion ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... there is a remarkably acute study by his fellow-countryman Brandes, in 'Kritiker og Portraite' (Critiques and Portraits), and a useful comment in Boyesen's 'Scandinavian Literature.' When not perverted by his translators, it is perhaps better suited than any other to the comprehension of children. His syntax ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... improved, the Court was of the opinion that there was reason to believe that "'the sudden termination of the legislation which has damned up normal liquidation of these mortgages for more than eight years might well result in an emergency more acute than that which the original legislation was ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... tunic studded with pearls wherein sombre lights scintillated. She went nearer, curious to know her face of that day. The mirror returned her look with tranquillity, as if this amiable woman whom she examined, and who was not unpleasing to her, lived without either acute joy ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... that Gnosticism was fundamentally a perversion of Christianity finds its most striking expression in the phrase of Harnack that it was "the acute secularizing or Hellenizing of Christianity" (History of Dogma, English translation, I, 226). The foundation for this representation is the later Gnosticism, which took over many Christian and Greek elements, and the opinion of Tertullian that Gnosticism ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... this journey had so preyed upon her mind that it robbed her of her sleep; and now, as the time more nearly approached, her anxiety deepened into anguish which was all the more acute because she dare not make a confident of him from whom she kept no other secret. Only to Him from whom no thoughts are hidden, did she go and tell her anguish, and pray for strength to bear up under her great sorrow. She also prayed that God would protect him who was ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... the revelation prepared and announced. When an instrument of more than ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine—when the Gospel, recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile—the Supreme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learning and genius of St. Paul—not holier than the others—calling himself the least, yet laboring more abundantly than them all—making ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... to Dot. The tender little gum was sore, and the nerve telegraphed a sense of acute pain to Dot's mind whenever she touched the tooth. One ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... speak freely of this,' returned Mr. Wyvern. 'You seem to me to be very unjust. Your personal feeling makes you less acute in judging than I should have expected. Surely ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... for the two that they were some distance away, and that the bushes grew thick and long! And well for them, too, that it was night! The warriors looked keenly on every side as they passed, apparently seeking out the last little leaf and twig; but, acute as were their eyes, they did not see the boys in the bushes. And perhaps it was well for some of them that they did not find what they sought, as the wilderness furnished no more formidable antagonist than Henry Ware, and Paul Cotter, too, was both ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Many acute deficiency symptoms have been identified by authorities and photographed, and I am able to show Kodachrome ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... it may, the storm had made the air much cooler and the horses in bivouac suffered from this and also from eating wet grass and lying on muddy ground. So that the army lost several thousand from acute colic. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... not a step could come up that gravel path, or through the grass itself, but I would hear it"—Jennie was proud of her nocturnally acute sense of sound, or suspicion of mere noises—"and you may sleep sound as Michael himself, for nothing will come near this lodge unbeknownst to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... increase it, and no longer expose myself to meet his glance. Contained in this manner, attentive in devouring the aspect of all, alive to everything and to myself, motionless, glued to my chair, all my body fixed, penetrated with the most acute and most sensible pleasure that joy could impart, with the most charming anxiety, with an enjoyment, so perseveringly and so immoderately hoped for, I sweated with agony at the captivity of my transport, and this agony was of a voluptuousness ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to pass through a paroxysm of acute calculation, ending in a lucid calm with particulars. "Seven minute and a half," said he resolutely. "Wanted my ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... seemed to gather strength—but not clear vision. She went to the small hotel and secured a room. She meant to telegraph and buy her ticket South—but instead she fed Cuff, took a little food herself, and fell asleep. It was late when she awakened to a realization of acute suffering that seemed confused and spasmodic. It was like being partially conscious. She was frightened and tried to fix upon some direct and immediate means of securing help for herself. She did not want to call assistance from the office, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... to Willard. The Easterner was examining a small pistol that he had drawn from a yellow holster at his waist, so high on his waist that he had been compelled to bend his elbow in an acute angle to get it out. His hands were trembling, whether from the wetting he had received or from doubt as to the rider's intentions, was a question that the rider did not bother with. He looked again at the girl. Doubt had come into her eyes; she was ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... out without an instant's warning, and for a brief day our friends speak of us with subdued voices. The following morning, while the first worm is busily engaged in testing the construction of our coffin, they are teeing up for the first hole to suffer more acute sorrow over a sliced ball than they did over our, to us, untimely demise. The labyrinthodon was coming more slowly now. He seemed to realize that escape for me was impossible, and I could have sworn that his huge, fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... an uncommon thing for people who have suffered from an acute septic fever to find albumen temporarily present in the urine. This is due to the irritant action of the toxins and other poisons (which the fever is the means of ejecting) upon the structure of the kidneys. The kidneys are filters and they remove the bulk of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... to Europe. A physician should be indicted for going to Europe. Well—I don't know what to tell you, or where to begin. She—she frightens me, I say. I never know what she is going to do next. Yesterday—I felt wretchedly yesterday, Margaret; I was in acute pain all day. I suppose I was pretty impatient. I—well, I threw something out of the window in a pet,—my amethyst rope it was,—and she stood and looked at me quietly, as if she were taking notes ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... forwards got the ball, and heeled with their usual neatness. The Ripton half who was taking the scrum gathered it cleanly, and passed to his colleague. He was a sturdy youth with a dark, rather forbidding face, in which the acute observer might have read signs of the savage. He was of the breed which is vaguely described at public schools as "nigger", a term covering every variety of shade from ebony to light lemon. As a matter of fact he was a half-caste, sent ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... Mr. Brown was a man famous in his day, both for learning, faithfulness, warm zeal and true piety. He was a notable writer, a choice and pathetical preacher; in controversy he was acute, masculine and strong, in history plain and comprehensive, in divinity substantial and divine; the first he discovers in his work printed in Latin against the Sodinians, and his treatise de causa Dei contra anti-sabbatanios, which the learned world know better than can be here described. There ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... communicates C. E. L., "it would be interesting to a lot of folks to know just what standing he has in literature." Oh, not much. Aside from being one of the best editors the Saturday Review ever had, one of the best writers of short stories in English or any other language, and one of the most acute critics in the profession, ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... expectant rabble, and it was the privilege of members of the club, seated in the balcony, to watch the grimaces and to hear the shrieks of the victims, as they stamped and capered about with the hot coppers sticking to their hands, divided in their minds between an acute sense of pain and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... The first to emigrate had been the Comte d'Artois and his friends, who had conspired against Necker and the new Constitution. They fled, because their lives were in danger. Others followed, after the rising of the peasants and the spoliation of August. As things grew more acute, and the settlement of feudal claims was carried out with unsparing hostility, the movement spread to the inferior noblesse. After the breach with the clergy and the secularisation of Church property, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... young Englishmen whom he calls "Will Wimbles," after one of Sir Roger de Coverley's friends in Addison's Spectator, is said to be a failure, owing mainly to the poverty of the land and the remoteness of the markets. An acute writer in the Pall Mall Gazette maintains that there is another and more potent cause to be found in the quality of the Will Wimbles. The Will Wimbles are the young men who are educated in the public schools and universities, or at least in the public schools, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... was too acute to be caught in a trap so patent. He knew that Basterga would not believe in his courage, if he swore to it. "No, I said I would be silent," he answered. "And I should have been," he continued with candour, "if I had not ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... by the baker's window, and gazing at the crisp loaves, with no more chance to eat one of them than you have. He is worse off than you. You have other food—plenty of it—he has none; and, moreover, his hunger is rendered more acute and painful by the sight of the tempting food— separated from his hand only by a pane of glass. Poor boy! that pane of glass is to him a wall of adamant. Think upon this, my son, and learn ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... exercise. In the country this is much more easily accomplished. City problems bearing on this question are among the most acute of ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... with his beak; the paper was then instantly torn off with fury, and at the same moment, every bird in the long row began struggling and flapping its wings. Under the same circumstances, it would have been quite impossible to have deceived a dog. The evidence in favour of and against the acute smelling powers of carrion-vultures is singularly balanced. Professor Owen has demonstrated that the olfactory nerves of the turkey-buzzard (Cathartes aura) are highly developed, and on the evening when ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... term in medicine applied to a class of diseases of the kidneys (acute and chronic nephritis) which have as their most prominent symptom the presence of albumen in the urine, and frequently also the coexistence of dropsy. These associated symptoms in connexion with kidney disease were first described in 1827 by Dr Richard Bright (1789-1858). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... remarks, that, had it not been for the cries he sent forth when any one approached near enough to touch him, for his peculiar dress, slight food, strange manner of eating, and sleeping in the air, or buried in straw, as we have related, no one could have supposed but that he was one of the most acute ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the first thirty-three pages form an able survey of the history of Hayti since its independence, and of the rule of Emperor Soulouque. Nowhere is there, in the same compass, more of authentic information and acute ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... baffled but still hopeful. Something there was in the smell of the place which threatened to unnerve him; or perhaps in its silence, which remained quite unbroken save when, by acute listening, one detected ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... shops by the fezzed or turbaned dealers was generally three times the price that they would accept before losing a sale; but much tact was required on the part of the purchaser, and much valuable time was occupied in the diplomatic struggles between the acute Yankees and clever Moslems. When, however, the battle was won and the desired article secured at one-half or one-third the price at first demanded, the joy of the purchaser was doubled. The person, who, after an hour's dickering, bought a bronze ornament for twenty piasters, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... powerful mind in the earlier half of the nineteenth century this realization of the true form of life came with quite overwhelming force, and that was to Schopenhauer, surely at once the most acute and the most biassed of mortal men. It came to him as a most detestable fact, because it happened he was an intensely egotistical man. But his intellect was of that noble and exceptional sort that aversion may tint indeed but cannot blind, and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... instinctively, as it were, know and feel how other women are regarded by men, and how also men are regarded by other women, is equally strong, and equally incomprehensible. A glance, a word, a motion, suffices: by some such acute exercise of her feminine senses the signora was aware that Mr Arabin loved Eleanor Bold; and therefore, by a further exercise of her peculiar feminine propensities, it was quite natural for her to entrap Mr Arabin into ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... extent of what you had surmised and learned, falsified though the picture was, this presented a serious problem. It was made more acute by the fact that the association is embarking on a "five-year-plan" of some importance. Publicity during this period would be more than ordinarily undesirable. It will therefore be necessary to see to it that you have no opportunity to tell what you know before the plan is ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz

... people generally; that they may be rightly instructed in the doctrine of salvation and of Christian morals. In the meantime we must do our best to satisfy all; that the simple be not left without needful teaching; the more acute find no want of force and argument; nor the learned charge the preacher with a pride of knowledge foreign to the occasion and not ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... on the ground; the air was solid enough to bear us. I felt that we were rising above the city. My senses seemed magnified. The comprehension of all I did was very acute. We kept along the earth's atmosphere ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... I was there the situation was "acute." In Valencia the situation always is acute, but this time it looked as though something might happen. On the day before I departed the Nitrate Trust had cabled vehemently for war-ships, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had refused to receive our minister, ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungraceful animal." This was written by Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, in 1791, in allusion to Dr Johnson's depreciation of Thomas Gray the poet.[192] It is an acute observation, well worth being wrought out. There is a grandeur and even a grace about this bulky beast and its motions well deserving the study of any one who has the opportunity. Elephants in our streets are not now so rare ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... he'd bite) - "Observe, my friends, the frailty of our race When age unmans us—let me state a case: There's our friend Rupert—we shall soon redress His present evil—drink to our success - I flatter not; but did you ever see Limbs better turn'd? a prettier boy than he? His senses all acute, his passions such As Nature gave—she never does too much; His the bold wish the cup of joy to drain, And strength to bear it without qualm or pain. "Now view his father as he dozing lies, Whose senses wake not when he opes his eyes; Who slips and shuffles when he means to walk, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... intensified by the sound of the night wind in the trees around us, followed my uncle's words. The going out of the light he had seemed to regard as a signal from the spirit world, and I sat still as he bade me, not doubting that his acute senses had penetrated the veil which limited my own vision. I had seen so many revelations of his strange power that I now sat awestruck and afraid, waiting for some word from him to end my suspense. I could see nothing in the darkness, but I could hear ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... thorough study of the politics of Europe in relation to the affairs of the nation—a proceeding in which she was aided by her extraordinary intelligence, acute perception of difficulties and conditions, domestic and foreign; by the exercise of these qualities, she put herself in touch with the politics of France, always consulting the best of minds and winning many friends among them. In 1749 she succeeded ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... more so than usual, and he not only received many impressions, and ordered them with ease and despatch, but his very senses seemed more than ordinarily acute. He could distinguish even by day, when the night stillness had withdrawn its favouring conditions, the borings of the sawdust insects in the logs of the cabin. Only he was very tired. His hands seemed a long distance away, as though it would require an extraordinary effort of the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... wars in Sicily and Apulia, and quelling the insurrection of Louis of Durazzo, who ended his days in the castle of Ovo, Louis of Tarentum, worn out by a life of pleasure, his health undermined by slow disease, overwhelmed with domestic trouble, succumbed to an acute fever on the 5th of June 1362, at the age of forty-two. His body had not been laid in its royal tomb at Saint Domenico before several aspirants appeared to the hand of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... things: hold fast that which is good," and encouraged the discussion of every imaginable proposition with complete freedom, the leading professors taking opposite sides; a discipline which, admirable as it may be from a purely scientific point of view, would seem to be calculated to make acute, rather than sound, divines. Priestley tells us, in his "Autobiography," that he generally found himself on the unorthodox side: and, as he grew older, and his faculties attained their maturity, this ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... go through the living system in sixty or seventy years, should the injured system last so long! And how many bad feelings, and how much severe pain and suffering, and chronic and acute disease, must ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... to the hall came the whole body, romping and laughing round Old Colonial, the acute and wise diplomatist, who had made matters straight and pleasant once more. And we, standing in a body near the hall, heard the rippling laughter of the merry band, and saw their white muslin dresses and bright ribbons glancing among ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... go, holding the end of their veil between their teeth so as to conceal one half of the face, and bearing on their heads Theban jars or copper vases; while the men, squatting on the ground or on small carpets, their knees up to their chins, forming an acute angle like the legs of locusts, in an attitude which no European could assume, and recalling the judges of Amenti ranged in rows one behind another on the papyri of funeral rituals, preserve that dreamy ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... eminently a means of mental training; and while it will train the student in subtle and acute reasoning, it will at the same time, if rightly presented, lay the foundation of a keen observation and a correct literary taste. The continued contact with the highest thoughts of the best minds will create a thirst for ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... institution of slavery, that she was sure it was born in her. Several of her brothers and sisters felt the same. But she differed from other children in the respect that her sensibilities were so acute, her heart so tender, that she made the trials of the slaves her own, and grieved that she could neither share nor mitigate them. So deeply did she feel for them that she was frequently found in some retired spot weeping, after one of the slaves had ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... said Roundjacket, in a tone of acute agony; "it is more than I can bear. See here, sir, again: 'High Jove! great father!' is changed into 'By Jove, I'd rather!' and so on. Sir, it is more than humanity can bear; I feel that I shall sink under it. I shall be in bed to-morrow, sir—after all ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... spinning with a feeling of absolute relief. As one looks down from here one cannot help speculating as to what is to be the future of what lies below. Is it going to be the greatest city that the world has ever seen—in real greatness, or only in acute development of material civilisation; and are the multitudes that populate it going to get more happiness from the arcs of their little lives than those of Carthage and Rome, or Pekin, or Babylon, or London? Or are they going at the pace that kills? Or at least the pace that tires ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... believe that too confidently, madame," said De Motteville. And, as if to justify her caution, a sharp, acute pain seized the queen, who turned deadly pale, and threw herself back in the chair, with every symptom of a sudden fainting fit. Molina ran to a richly gilded tortoise-shell cabinet, from which she took a large rock-crystal bottle of scented salts, and held it to the queen's nostrils, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... laugh and language, forming a strange and most unseemly coalition, degenerated at last into a dolorous sniffle, indicating the rapid departure of the few mental and animal holdfasts which had lingered with him so long. While thus reduced, his few surviving senses were at once called into acute activity by the appearance of a sooty little negro, who thrust into his hands a misshapen fold of dirty paper, which a near examination made out to take the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... gone—oh, thank God, she was gone! Rilla was alone again, staring out at the unchanged, dream-like beauty of moonlit Four Winds. Feeling was coming back to her—a pang of agony so acute as to be almost physical seemed ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... said, I was next sent to the United States Army Hospital for Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Before leaving Nashville, I had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the real presence of these missing parts, that I found it hard at times to believe them absent. Often, at night, I would try with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... careless melody, and with no particularly acute observation of anything beyond the woman's window, which now monopolised his keenest interest in Doom, Count Victor leaped out of the boat as soon as it reached the rock, and entered the castle by the door which Mungo ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... prefer the vin du Pays, of the better sort [138]—which is red, and called vin d'Offner (or some such name) to that at Paris. But the meats, are less choice and less curiously cooked; and I must say that the sense of smelling is not very acute with the Germans. The mutton can only be attacked by teeth of the firmest setting. The beef is always preferable in a stewed or boiled state; although at our Ambassador's table, the other day, I saw and partook of a roasted ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... for ever, and to advance nothing, is an easy method of disputation upon any question, but contributes very little to the increase of knowledge: an artful and acute objector may confound, and darken, and disturb, but never assists ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... was induced to send the challenge to the Sun newspaper which led to the debate in the preceding pages. It is not improbable that while thinking on the points he proposed to defend, his naturally acute mind perceived their fallacy, as there was a gradual shifting of his position from the subject of the original challenge, till on the last evening of the debate he ended with the astonishing announcement that on the Tuesday following he would deliver a lecture ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... New York Times at this date described Grant as "a tall, thin, repulsive-looking man, of acute, vigorous intellect, a thorough-paced scoundrel, and the most essential blackguard in the pulpit. He was sometimes ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... began to change visibly. The shades of ugliness that had so long hung over it vanished away. Its very angles seemed to grow less acute, and never, in its palmiest days, had it rejoiced in such bright coats of paint. But, with all the brightening up without and within, there was one most cozy place of all where the family was wont ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... Wolves are very acute judges; desperate fighters for their lives and when driven by hunger, but at no time really brave. If Jan had fallen by the way, these two would have been into him like knives. While he ran, exhibiting his fine powers, and ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... soon enough to see the person who had just disappeared through an opposite door but he knew that it was a woman. Directly in front of him as if she had been expecting his arrival was a young girl, and no sooner had he put a foot over the threshold than she hurried toward him, the most acute anxiety and fear written ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... reasons all eyes and ears on the drifter were strained to catch the first glimpse or sound, and dead silence was maintained. It is in times like this that one discovers how acute the senses become when danger lurks in the darkness around. Things undetectable under normal conditions can be seen or heard distinctly when life depends on ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... managed by some method to keep up in gaiety and in consequence of mind with the other, though every now and then he would fall away from the point, as a ship without a steersman falls away from the wind, and lapse for a moment into what an acute observer might have deemed to be the fundamental ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... tell Hugo that also? Once or twice she really came very near doing it. For as her mind had become released from her first acute apprehensions, it had seemed to insist on turning inward a little; and there grew within her a sense of unhappiness, of loneliness, a feeling of her poor little self against the world. She longed for some one to explain it all to, to justify herself before; and who more appropriate ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... "from the nursery to the throne." It was quickly noticed that the part of Queen and mistress seemed native to her, and that she filled it with not more grace than propriety. "She always strikes me as possessed of singular penetration, firmness, and independence," wrote Dr. Norman Macleod in 1860; acute observers in 1837 took note of the same traits, rarer far in youth than in full maturity, and closely connected with the "reasoning, searching" quality of her mind, "anxious to get at the root ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... only why, if it were true, he did not use it, seeing that he must hate Saracinesca with all his heart. Del Ferice knew so much about people, so many strange and forgotten stories, he had so accurate a memory and so acute an intelligence, that it was by no means impossible that he was in possession of some secret connected with the Saracinesca. They were, or were thought to be, wild, unruly men, both father and son; there were endless stories ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play the game of a generation—old and young. However, the situation is too acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pang as great as when a giant dies;' if the vital faculties of a sprat are equal to those of a whale; why may not the feelings of an humble retailer of 'live cod,' and 'dainty fresh salmon,' be as acute as those of the highest rank in society?" Another aggravation of this case, the learned counsel said, was, that his client was an Old Maid; with what indignation, then, must she hear that foul word applied to her, used ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... architect, mathematician, politician, musician, man of science, and courtier. His disposition was so joyous, his manner so captivating, his form and countenance so beautiful, that wherever he went all things were his. And he was so well ballasted with brains, and so acute in judgment, that flattery spoiled him not. His untiring industry and transcendent talent brought him large sums of money, and he spent them like a king. So potent was his personality that wherever he made his home there naturally grew up around him a Court ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... presentative cognition is, in truth, partly representative. A feeling as pure feeling is not known; it is only known when it is distinguished, as to quality or degree, and so classed or brought under some representation of a kind or description of feeling, as acute, painful, and so on. The accurate recognition of an impression of colour depends, as we have seen, on this process of classing being correctly performed. Similarly, the recognition of internal feelings implies the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... The answer is, Knowledge. Thought, research, criticism, have shown that the traditional theories of the Bible can no longer be maintained. The logic of facts has confirmed the reasonings of the independent thinker, and placed the dogmatist in a dilemma which grows ever more acute. The result is not pleasant for the believer; but it is well that the real state of things should be known, that the kernel of truth should be separated from the overgrown husk ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... the New York Sun can say without too great exaggeration, that if the war had lasted two more years the cost of living in Berlin and Vienna would have risen to the level of that of New York. In particular the serious position of the wheat market and the fairly certain prospect of an acute rise in the price of wheat in the course of the winter or next spring prompt the Press to constant discussion, the burden of which is the question whether the Government of the United States should or should not prohibit the exportation of corn. The opponents of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... a singularly acute critic of the work of others, but when he came to write himself he cast his thoughts in a style that has been the despair of many admirers. In this he resembled Browning, who never would write verse that was easy reading. Meredith's thought is usually ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... hues, in the Old Temeraire. The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings. Another feeling traceable in several of its former works, is an acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for labor, or knowledge, or delight is passed for ever. There is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... interests. The cause of this is that those who preach on the subject are in the habit of depicting only the pains of that prison, and say not a word on the joy and peace which the souls therein detained enjoy. It is true that the torments of Purgatory are so great that the most acute sufferings of this life cannot be compared with them; but, then, on the other hand, the inward satisfaction of the sufferers is such that no amount of earthly prosperity or contentment can equal it. 1 deg.. The souls ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... wild thought flew through his mind that she had been induced to drink by one of the men, but a closer look on her wan, pale face and into those dilated eyes of hers convinced him that the girl was in real and acute mental distress. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... painting, nor the ordinary round of accomplishments; neither at present had he displayed much of the hard and useful talent for action and business. But Ferrers had what is often better than either genius or talent; he had a powerful and most acute mind. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... had nearly come to Hyde Park Gate, he was confronted by one of the loungers—an old acquaintance of his—whose woe-begone countenance seemed expressive of acute mental distress. ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... after, as the Saint suffered most acute pain in her side, she made an inclination before a crucifix; and Our Lord freed her from the pain, and granted the merit of it to these souls, recommending them to make her a return by ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... from passion and bitterness; in his acute sense of justice; in his courageous faith in the right, and his inextinguishable hatred of wrong; in his warm and heartfelt sympathy and mercy; in his coolness of judgment; in his unquestioned rectitude of intention—in a word, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that prevented him from living and growing fat on them. There were not enough squirrels. So he was driven to hunt still smaller things. So acute did his hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with a weasel as hungry as himself and many times ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... especially the upper classes who have maintained the purity of their blood, are the finest, physically, to be found in the Himaliya. They are stout, well-built, and pleasing in countenance, resembling Europeans, except in having a darker complexion. They are more acute and intelligent than the Sikhs and than the Dogras or Hindus of Jummoo, their present superiors politically. They are industrious, manufacturing besides shawls other stuffs and much fancy-work in wood. The beauty of the women is as much remarked upon now as in the old days, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... is forty miles deep all round the globe, no man can do more than fill his own lungs. No man can see, hear, or smell but just so far; and though hundreds are deprived of these senses, his are not the more acute. Though rights have been abundantly supplied by the good Father, no man can appropriate to himself those that belong to another. A citizen can have but one vote, fill but one office, though thousands are not permitted to do either. These axioms prove ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... of Joseph II. at Frankfort, the annual mass, and the noble old city itself, with its associations of feudalism and German art, are portrayed by him seventy years after the feelings they had excited, with all the vividness of yesterday's impressions. It is probable that no one ever possessed such acute sensibility as Goethe. He could "hang a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... swiftly seize upon and appreciate the specific achievements of the race behind them; they are profoundly sensitive to the aspirations of their time and to the deep-lying currents of their age; they are suggestible in an acute degree, through heightened interest, to certain ideas or truths or principles which they synthesise by such leaps of insight that slow-footed logic seems to be transcended. Then these unifying and intensifying experiences to which they are subject give them irresistible conviction, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... upon the table and spread its fateful contents again before him. His hand flew over the papyrus with marvellous speed and skill. He knew that all his faculties were at his full command and unwontedly acute. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... laughing, pierced the diadem-decked Arjuna, that foremost of men, in the shoulder with a straight shaft. Equipt with feathers, that shaft penetrated Arjuna's body like a snake penetrating on an anthill. Piercing the son of Kunti through, the shaft went deep into the Earth. Feeling acute pain, the intelligent Dhananjaya rested awhile, supporting himself on his excellent bow. He stood, having recourse to his celestial energy and seemed to outward appearance like one deprived of life. That foremost of men, then regaining consciousness, praised his son highly. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... made him mad. Adolphe is not like other men; his passions are stronger; his feelings more acute; his regrets more poignant." ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... your paw," said the smith, giving so violent a wrench to the leg of the quarryman, that the latter uttered a cry of acute pain, and, with the rage of a wild beast, butting suddenly forward with his head, succeeded in biting Agricola in the side ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... against such outcome in the lift of cloud and lightening of burden. We forget sleep is God's rest-hour for spirit; and, besides, we read in God's Book how, "at eventide, it shall be light," an expression at once of exquisite poetry and acute observation. Our lives are healthy when natural. The crude Byronic misanthropy, even though assumed, finds ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... autumn and winter of 1645-46 Exeter was gradually hemmed in by bodies of Parliamentary troops stationed at posts in the neighbourhood, and with the new year the siege became a closer one. It would seem, however, that there was no very acute distress from lack of food; but Fuller, who was in the city at the time, mentions with satisfaction the appearance of 'an incredible number of Larks ... for multitude like Quails in the Wildernesse, and as fat as plentifull ... which provided a feast for many ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... whose mind Soared above her native tutors, Imperturbably declined All these brave and dusky suitors. Finally she hailed a tramp And, contriving to decamp To the shores of Patagonia, Finding them too chill and damp, Perished of acute pneumonia. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... I could not help thinking of the wonderful chain of proof in Spinoza's 'Ethics,' the straining after demonstration by Spinoza gives me the impression that this acute thinker could not have believed in his own doctrines with his whole heart, and that he therefore felt the necessity of fastening every mesh of his net with the utmost care. "Still," I continued, "I must acknowledge I do not share this great admiration for ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer's ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly lit by the bull's-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of some dead knight, standing for ever ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... its being an accidental error; so that, in order to draw the eye to it, and show that it is done on purpose, the upper triangles are made about two inches higher than the lower ones, so as to be much more acute in proportion and effect, and actually to look considerably narrower, though of the same width at the base. By this means they are made lighter in effect, and subordinated to the richly decorated series of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... the course of the trial. A man who cashes a forged cheque and declines to say where he got it, how it came into his possession, is quickly disposed of by a British jury, than which there is no body of men more acute ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... multiplying; while the names of its tyrants are forgotten, and their kingdoms, like snow-flakes on the wave, have left no trace behind. No inborn strength will account for this mystery. No advance of intelligence nor philosophic enlightenment will explain this phenomenon. The acute observer, if faith have cleared his eye or opened an inner one, will go back for the explanation to an old and unforgotten promise, and will exclaim when he sees the Church struggling, but triumphant, like the fire-girdled bush at ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... Have no fear," said Mr. Wrandall, with an acute sense of divination. "You will also find it to be in the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... clear sailing until she hit the lower part of Nova Scotia on Saturday. Electrical storms, which the dirigible rode out, and also heavy head winds, kept her from making any progress, and used up the gasolene. About noon of Saturday the gasolene situation became acute, and Major G.H. Scott, her commander, sent a wireless message to the United States Navy Department at Washington, asking for destroyers to stand by in the Bay of Fundy in case the gasolene should run short and the airship get ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... pleased Johnny very much. When he had his million he intended to ask her to marry him; and it was pleasant to have her, all unaware of his purpose, of course, taking such an acute ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... of this most solemn time will, I hope, be very useful. I wonder if I ever went through such acute mental suffering, and yet, mind! I feel perfectly hardened at times—quite devoid ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was Lady Statham's voice, and she leaned forward eagerly as she said it, then abruptly left the sentence incomplete. Henriot started; a sense of momentary acute discomfort again ran over him. The same second she continued, though obviously changing the phrase—"we wondered how you spent your day there, during the heat. But you paint, don't ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... prisoner. Dismissing the girls to their own chambers, with strict injunctions not to quit them unpermitted, I was left alone with Eveena. We were silent for some minutes, my own heart oppressed with mingled emotions, all intensely painful, but so confused that, while conscious of acute suffering, I scarcely realised anything that had occurred. Eveena, who knelt beside me, though deeply horror-struck, was less surprised and was far less agitated than I. At last, leaning forward with her arms ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... is no acute necessity for the place to be kept going, as you express it. I entertain a hope that if you have ever taken part in that orgie, at which every one with the exception of the croupiers looks greedy and hungry, that you will in the future abstain from it. Gambling ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... Petrograd gave birth to the revolution, and Russian famine was the mother of Russian terrorism. German men and women, starved of fats and sweets, deteriorated so rapidly that the crime ratio both in towns and country districts mounted appallingly. Conditions in Austria-Hungary were even worse. Acute distress arising from threatening famine was instrumental in driving Bulgaria out of the war. The whole of Central Europe indeed was in the shadow of famine and the masses were crying out for peace ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... mounted Rocinante, and at a leisurely pace they proceeded to take shelter in a grove which was in sight about a quarter of a league off. Every now and then Sancho gave vent to deep sighs and dismal groans, and on Don Quixote asking him what caused such acute suffering, he replied that, from the end of his back-bone up to the nape of his neck, he was so sore that it nearly drove him out ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... alpha. o: and e: represent omega and eta. "i" represents upside-down i (used in I.3.6). {gh} represents yogh (used in I.4.10). {L} represents the "pounds" symbol. Letters with diacritics are "unpacked" and shown within braces: {a'} {e'} a with acute accent, e with grave accent Irregularities in chapter numbering are explained at the end ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... meanings relative to their future triumph over the heathens whom they cursed and hated. If any of you ever come across the popular Jewish interpretations of The Song of Solomon, you will there see the folly in which acute and learned men can indulge themselves when they have lost hold of the belief in anything really absolute and eternal and moral, and have made Fate, and Time, and Self, their real deities. But this dream ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... Perugia and some other places belonging to the church. After this, peace was made between the queen and the pontiff; but King Alfonzo, expecting she would treat him as she had her husband, endeavored secretly to make himself master of the strongholds; but, possessing acute observation, she was beforehand with him, and fortified herself in the castle of Naples. Suspicions increasing between them, they had recourse to arms, and the queen, with the assistance of Sforza, who again resumed her service, drove Alfonzo out of Naples, deprived him of his succession, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... laws," said Manison. "Let's consider James just as we know him now. Who says, 'go ahead,' if he has an attack of acute appendicitis?" ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith



Words linked to "Acute" :   medical specialty, perceptive, accent, chronic, critical, pointed, acuteness, sharp, medicine, accent mark, obtuse



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