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Abomination   Listen
noun
Abomination  n.  
1.
The feeling of extreme disgust and hatred; abhorrence; detestation; loathing; as, he holds tobacco in abomination.
2.
That which is abominable; anything hateful, wicked, or shamefully vile; an object or state that excites disgust and hatred; a hateful or shameful vice; pollution. "Antony, most large in his abominations."
3.
A cause of pollution or wickedness.
Synonyms: Detestation; loathing; abhorrence; disgust; aversion; loathsomeness; odiousness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abomination" Quotes from Famous Books



... must to the Chapter write To meet upon this grave occasion; The Damsel shall not wed the knight, For I'll prevent the abomination." ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise

... that our measures, remedial and punitive, against "pornographic publications" result mainly in creating "vested interests" (that English abomination) and thus in fostering the work. The French printer, who now must give name and address, stamps upon the cover Avis aux Libraires under Edition privee and adds Ce volume ne doit pas etre mis en vente ou expose dans les lieux publics (Loi du 29 Juillet, 1881). He also prints ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... unjustly) of selling their voices on certain occasions, as was done in Rome; this is the only resemblance. Besides, the two nations appear to me quite opposite in character, with regard both to good and evil. The Romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars, an abomination reserved for devout preachers of patience and humility. Marius and Sylla, Caesar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus, did not draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... public opinion. The first thing for the leader of a revolutionary movement to learn is a healthy contempt for the official public opinion of the 'civilised world.' He must resolutely harden his heart against its 'thrills of horror,' its 'indignation,' its 'abomination,' and its 'detestation,' and he must learn to smile at all the names it will liberally shower upon him ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... after the lapse of fifteen minutes for a young and forty for an old man) or waking from sleep.' (Q.) 'What of drinking wine?' (A.) 'Doth not the prohibition suffice thee in the Book of God the Most High, where He saith, "Verily, wine and casting lots and idols and divining arrows are an abomination of the fashion of the Devil: shun them, so surely shall ye thrive."[FN315] And again, "If they ask thee of wine and casting lots, say, 'In them are great sin and advantages to mankind, but the sin of them is greater ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... cry to hunt me. However, the bodies here were not numerous, most, as before, being foreigners: and these, scattered about this strict old English burg that mourning dark night, presented such a scene of the baneful wrath of God, and all abomination of desolation, as broke me quite down at one place, where I stood in travail with jeremiads and sore sobbings and lamentations, crying out upon it all, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... rather narrow passages, than which nothing can be conceived more close and squalid and obscure. Here during the days of business, the sound of the hammer and the file never ceased, amid gutters of abomination and piles of foulness and stagnant pools of filth; reservoirs of leprosy and plague, whose exhalations were sufficient to taint the atmosphere of the whole kingdom and fill the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... interesting. The Philanthropist,—what shall I promise to induce him to accompany me? I will exhibit a picture of savage man precisely as he is; as I saw him; and as I judged him, free from prejudice: painting also, in true colours, a picture of the abomination that has been the curse of the African race, the SLAVE TRADE; trusting that not only the philanthropist, but every civilized being, will join in the endeavour to erase that stain from disfigured human nature, and thus open the path now ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... for having disinterred and burned the dead body without his permission. As for the Turks, it is certain that at their first visit they did not fail to make the community of Maco pay the price of the blood of this poor devil, who in every way became the abomination and horror of his country. After this, must we not own that the Greeks of to-day are not great Greeks, and that there is only ignorance ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... supernatural knowledge—a knowledge which they obtain by their holding correspondence with spectres or evil spirits—as they themselves grant. This consulting of these afflicted children, as abovesaid, seems to me a very gross evil, a real abomination, not fit to be known in New England, and yet is a thing practiced, not only by Tom and John—I mean the ruder and more ignorant sort—but by many who profess high, and pass among us for some of the better sort. This is that which aggravates the evil and makes it heinous and tremendous; and yet this ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... is better to be without soap than without society. As a matter of fact, society without soap would be an abomination. Society without any brotherhood would soon cease to be a society at all. Utopia is a little soap, a little society, with a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... for the sustenance of their possessions, while ye were in Ireland or in the King's Bench laughing at them, or on the road with your wine and lemans." On leaving the furnace-like cave, I caught a glimpse of a haunt, which for loathsome, stinking abomination, went beyond anything (with one sole exception) that I had set my eyes upon in hell,—where an accursed herd of drunken swine lay weltering in ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... place the chair a steward was carrying for her. There was plenty of room on the quarter-deck. I could not imagine why she gazed about her with such obtrusive caution. She inspected the occupants of the various chairs around with deliberate scrutiny through a long-handled tortoise-shell optical abomination. None of them seemed to satisfy her. After a minute's effort, during which she also muttered a few words very low to her husband, she selected an empty spot midway between our group and the most distant group on the other side of us. In other words, she sat as far away ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... it by Cambyses and Ochus. From that time forth they were less and less known. It is said that one of the Roman emperors was obliged to offer a reward for the translation of an obelisk. To the early Christian the hieroglyphic inscription was an abomination, as full of the relics of idolatry, and indicating an inspiration of the devil. He defaced the monuments wherever he could make them yield; and in many cases has preserved them for us by plastering them over to hide ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... High hats are an abomination at opera or theater. Where anything is worn upon the head, it should be in the shape of a tiny bonnet, a dainty confection ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... to like me exceedingly; and, though very pretty, and not yet very old, all in a very proper and platonic manner. She was also a great giver of dignity balls, and when she was full dressed, Miss Belinda Bellarosa was altogether a very seductive personage. A warrant officer was an abomination. She had refused the hands of many master's mates, and I knew "for true," to use her own bewitching idiom, that several lieutenants had made her ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... abomination to some, a luxury to others—reminding one of that very ancient proverb, "Tastes differ." We cannot say whether on this occasion the uniformity of action in our heroes was the result of taste or haste, but certain it is that before the fowls were only half-roasted on one side, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... sprang forward with his hand outstretched for his secretary's throat. But his words were for his wife. "What does this mean? Why do you take your stand by the side of another man than myself? What have I done or what have you done that I should live to face such an abomination as this?" ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... are my aversion; public dinners are my abomination; all species of gormandizing, my utter scorn and contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine and viands, taken for society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... History, Criticism and Abstract Thought;—and that to make their results (if indeed they have ever deeply and honestly investigated the matter) the tests of his spiritual state, is to employ unjust weights and a false balance, which are an abomination to the Lord. To defraud one's neighbour of any tithe of mint and cummin, would seem to them a sin: is it less to withhold affection, trust and free intercourse, and build up unpassable barriers of coldness ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... Sixty-nine weeks; beginning to reckon from the same time, or from the command of the King of Babylon to restore Jerusalem, and continuing unto the death of Christ, which is referred to as the "cutting off of the Messiah." And lastly: One week, for the overspreading of abomination and that which is determined to be poured upon ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... once a year, though of that, I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my acquaintances gradually falling off. I shall by this time have taken myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was before) your abomination.... Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently, knowing all ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the two are separate and never to be confused. To neutralize the one with the other is unthinkable, an abomination. Confusion ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... especially curses the hour when white muslin cravats became the sine qua non of a gentleman's full dress. Just think how reverend he must look! I believe he would even rather wear a sword and cocked hat, for he declares a white muslin cravat the last abomination, the chief enormity of fashion, and that all the natural feelings of a man cry out against it; and that it is alike abhorrent to taste and to sentiment. To all this I reply that he looks a great deal handsomer with white about his throat than with a stiff old ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... cliff stood the village of Bryngelly, and at the back of the village was a school, a plain white-washed building, roofed with stone, which, though amply sufficient and suitable to the wants of the place, was little short of an abomination in the eyes of Her Majesty's school inspectors, who from time to time descended upon Bryngelly for purposes of examination and fault-finding. They yearned to see a stately red-brick edifice, with all the latest improvements, erected at the expense of the rate-payers, but as yet ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... They'd catch an animal by the leg and sometimes break the bone, the leg would bleed, and below the jaws of he trap it would freeze, there being no circulation of the blood. Those steel traps are an abomination. The people around here use one made on the same principle for catching rats. I wouldn't have them on my place for any money. I believe we've got to give an account for all the unnecessary suffering we put ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... going to deal in this sermon with that general principle, nor even to be drawn aside to speak of the tone in which the Apostle here treats the great abomination of slavery, and the singular advice that he gives to its victims; though the consideration of the tone of Christianity to that master-evil of the old world might yield a great many thoughts very relevant to pressing questions of to-day. But my one object is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... of Rabelais and the Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the minimus—digitulo caput scabere Juv. ix. 133).[FN381] The prostitution of boys was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi. 8); and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress it. At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacro-sanctum esse ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... me that their dietary laws did not allow the Susi to eat anything that had not been killed by bleeding in the orthodox fashion. Had they been with me, to turn wounded birds to the East and cut their throats in the name of Allah, all would have been well, but birds shot dead were an abomination to the righteous Susi. They scorned to avail themselves of the excuse afforded by their needs.[50] So my labour had been in vain, and I did not know what to do with the spoil. But I left the slain in ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... he sipped the cup of horror with unreluctant lips, and dashed the goblet with the residue over the pedestal and shrine. And there was not one there who shrank from that foul draught. With ashy cheeks indeed, but knitted brows, and their lips reeking red with the abomination, but fearless and unfaltering, they pledged in clear and solemn tones, each after each, that awful imprecation, and cast their goblets down, that the floor swam in blood; and grasped each others' hands, sworn comrades from that hour even to the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... was equally impossible to me. I could not ignore what had happened, and I could not have a friend who was jealous if I talked to others. Since my intellectual entity had awakened, all jealousy had been an abomination to me, but jealousy in one man of another man positively revolted me. I recognised Sebastian's great merits, respected his character, admired his wide range of knowledge, but I could not associate with him again, could ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... the Pharaohs chose the site of their tombs. Imagination could not conceive a greater abomination of desolation than the rocky mountainside in which these tombs are carved; but fortunes were lavished on the construction of these resting places of the dead. Historians and travelers have told of the great city which grew up about the tombs of the Egyptian kings—the temples, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... lecture their husbands, their sentence is the same. The sons of truth are to enjoy all the good things of this world, and must use their means to bring it about. Every thing that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation-full of all deviltry. In a short time, the world will take fire and dissolve; it is combustible already. All women, not obedient, had better become so as soon as possible, and let the wicked spirit depart, and become temples of truth. Praying is all mocking. When you see any one wring ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... keep the covenant of their own suggestion. Ten tribes went into an abomination of organized ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... subject if I dared to do so here, but I am bound now to confine myself to Miss Vavasor's room. The monstrous deformity of which I have spoken was not known when that house in Queen Anne Street was built. There is to be found no such abomination of shape in the buildings of our ancestors,—not even in the days of George the Second. But yet the drawing-room of which I speak was ugly, and Alice knew that it was so. She knew that it was ugly, and she would greatly have liked to banish ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... me his "daughter!" As I heard that word of love, which I had stolen, I realized the full shame and abomination of the thing I had done. My impulse was to cry out the truth. But it was only an impulse, such an impulse as lures one to jump from a height. I caught myself back from yielding, as I would have caught myself back from the precipice, lest ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... paramount; still the everlasting dolor interposes: the appetite is satiated, the aroma palls upon the nostrils, the nerves are affected by irritability, the harmony merges into dissonance; even the beautiful becomes so far an abomination that man is 'mad for the sight of his eyes that he did see.' Such is the sterile and repulsive penalty of the searcher after happiness. Happiness! O delusive phantom of humanity, how ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... Savonarola had prophesied his own fall like the man who paced around the holy city for eight days, crying, "Woe to Jerusalem!" and on the ninth day, "Woe be on my own head!" None the less, the Florentine reformer, who could not recoil from any danger, was determined to attack the colossal abomination that was seated on St. Peter's holy throne; each debauch, each fresh crime that lifted up its brazen face to the light of day or tried to hide its shameful head beneath the veil of night, he had never failed to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... This is, in fact, the earliest form of the modern pianoforte. Then, in the same instrument is an organ bellows and pipes, the music from which is evoked by means of a separate keyboard, the bellows is worked by a foot treadle, like that most detestable abomination known to moderns as a melodeon. Thus, in the same instrument, the performer is supposed to get the powers and effect both of an upright piano and a small organ. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this instrument (which, doubtless, originally ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... glad," said the latter, "that he is willing to fill Pat's place, for he keeps everything so clean. A dusty, slovenly store is my abomination. Then it shows that he has no silly, uppish notions so common to these Americans." (Though born here, Miss Ludolph never thought herself other than a German lady of rank.) "But I do not wish to see him blacking boots again. Yet he is an odd genius. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... its object.—With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You, Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are unconstitutional.—If you heard this asserted with much ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... of thine own corrupted Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of it in thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would defile it! And first for this flower-decked abomination, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that continually spies upon all religious and charitable institutions in Rome, and does not hesitate to invent stories of crime outright when it fails to detect one of those little flaws which its press magnifies to stains of abomination. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... and most striking instance of its manifestation which we come upon in Scripture is the treatment given by the Egyptians to the Israelites. "Every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians," so they counted themselves superior to the Hebrews, and subjected them to the greatest indignities, grinding them under the harshest oppression, and exacting from them, by the lash of the task-master, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... addicted himself to any out of door's sports whatever. He would, I fancy, as soon have thought of slaying his own mutton as of handling a fowling-piece; he used to shudder when he saw a party equipped for coursing, as if murder was in the wind; but the cool, meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination of abominations. His small elegant features, hectic cheek and soft hazel eyes, were the index of the quick, sensitive, gentle spirit within." "He would dismount to lead his horse down what his friend hardly perceived to be ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... he wrote, "leads a life that is the abomination of all, without respect for the seat he occupies. He cares for nothing save to aggrandize his children, by fair means or foul, and this is his sole desire. From the beginning of his Pontificate he has done nothing but disturb the peace, molesting everybody, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... harbours them whom his extortion hath spoiled; so while he makes many beggars he keeps some. He turneth all gnats into camels, and cares not to undo the world for a circumstance. Flesh on a Friday is more abomination to him than his neighbour's bed: he more abhors not to uncover at the name of Jesus than to swear by the name of God. When a rhymer reads his poem to him he begs a copy, and persuades the press there is nothing that he dislikes in presence that in absence he censures not. He comes ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... would happen. It would turn out that they were not truly the legitimate children of a real Marchioness. Some beautiful scheme of romance would discover itself to save her and her darlings, and all the Traffords and all the Montressors from the terrible abomination with which they were threatened by these interlopers. The idea dwelt in her mind till it became an almost fixed conviction that Lord Frederic would live to become Lord Hampstead,—or probably Lord Highgate, as there was a third title ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... the knavery of conjurers, the impiety of inchanters, the folly of soothsayers, the impudent falsehood of cozeners, the infidelity of atheists, the pestilent practices of pythonists, the curiosities of figure-casters, the vanity of dreamers, the beggarly art of alcumstrie, the abomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the virtue and power of natural magic, and all the conveniencies of legerdemaine and juggling, are ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... evil inclination, not only do not resist such solicitations, but, to the great scandal of this nation, seek and encourage sin. But God, who from evil produces good, has brought some of those women to fear Him; and they, esteeming purity as a heavenly thing and vice as a vile and repulsive abomination, have conquered some most fiery temptations, as will be seen from two or three incidents that occur to me. There was a Spaniard who held a mother and daughter so under his control that he was on the way to seducing the latter (who was a mere girl) by his blandishments and supplications, combined ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... a wretch, convinced that I was an angel. The period of my engagement did not last long. I cannot remember those days without shame. What an abomination! ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... Maduro in forty years. When Rime had sailed away to seek his fortune in Tahiti he and his people were heathens; when he returned he found them rigid Protestants of the Boston New England Cotton-Mather type, to whom the name of "Papist" was an abomination and a horror. And when Rime said that he too was a Christian—a Katoliko—they promptly told him to clear out. He was not an American Christian anyway, they said, and had no business ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... are you going to back up this yellow abomination against me? Are we public men and members of the Government? or are ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... a dainty slip of a girl, with deep grey eyes and wavy brown hair and a sea-shell complexion. I absently swallowed the abomination she handed me, for I was looking at her over the teacup and wondering how an exquisite-minded gentleman like Dale could forsake her for a Lola Brandt. It was not as if Maisie were an empty-headed, empty-natured little girl. She is a young person of sense, education, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... of their religion. A very natural association of ideas caused the protestant clergy to regard with suspicion and abhorrence such an approximation in externals to that worship which was in their eyes the abomination of idolatry; and several of the returned exiles, to whom bishoprics were now offered, scrupled to accept of them under the obligation of wearing the appointed habits. Repeated and earnest representations were made to the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... of all those little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansioned heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism of slavery. "My heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul." With apostolic faith and zeal he had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his bruised spirit. Sadly, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... senses, a sensuality higher but as intense as those which he so much reproved. Fear smouldered in his very entrails, and doubt fumed and went out like steam—long lines and falling shadows and slowly dispersing clouds. His life had been but a sin, an abomination, and the fairest places darkened as the examination of conscience proceeded. His thought whirled in dreadful night, soul-torturing contradictions came suddenly under his eyes, like images in a night-mare; and in horror ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... herds proceeded without end, and the space which was to support them widened itself on all sides. These three classes seemed from the very first to have regarded each other with dislike and contempt; and as the herdsman was an abomination to the townsman, so did he in turn separate from the other. The hunters vanish from our sight among the hills, and reappear only ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... a—vision, you might say. There are going to be riots and fires and shouting, around the time of the Hearings. People will be killed. Lots of people—spontaneous outbursts of passion, of course, the great voice of the people rising against the Abomination. And against you, Dan. A few Repeaters may be taken out and hanged, and then when you have won against Rinehart, you'll find people thinking that you're ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... am not blaming the animals—they are just splendid; but betting, especially among women, is my abomination. It is an open gate through which feminines slide into a habit of gambling. I don't like it, and the sooner our American feminine women know my opinion, the sooner they will be ready to turn back and consider what they ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... music appears to me very poor; I cannot find words to express my aversion to it." "Lortzing's operas meet with success—to me almost incomprehensible." To Carl Reinecke he writes that he is "no friend of song-transcriptions (for piano), and of Liszt's some are a real abomination to me." He commends Reinecke's efforts in this direction because they are free from pepper and sauce a la Liszt. Nevertheless, those of Liszt's song-transcriptions in which he did not indulge in too much bravura ornamentation are ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... of the servant girls said I wanted to kiss her—lies and falsehood. I was kissing my finger after kissing the Mezuzah, and the stupid abomination thought I was kissing my hand to her. It sees itself that they don't kiss the Mezuzahs often in that house—the impious crew. And what will be now? The stupid boy will go home to breakfast in a bazaar of costly presents, and he will make the stupid ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... were like men amazed for very horror; and Mr. Oxenham said, 'You incarnate fiends, if you had taken these fellows for slaves, it had been fair enough; for you were once slaves to them, and I doubt not cruelly used enough: but as for this abomination,' says he, 'God do so to me, and more also, if I let one of them come into your murderous hands.' So there was a great quarrel; but Mr. Oxenham stoutly bade put the prisoners on board the ships again, and so let the prizes go, taking with him only the treasure, and the lady and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... of his own. Much of the night he spent in prayer, his eyes glancing continually at the low arch of his cell door, with its curtain of deep purple wrought with stars. At any instant some crouching monster, some homed abomination, might peer in upon him; and he clung with frenzied appeal to his crucifix, as his human weakness quailed at the thought. But at last his fatigue overcame his fears, and falling upon his couch of dried grass, he slept until the bright daylight ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and spoons—which had, in fact, been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy's friends—(I know, for instance, that he had my six, among others, and only returned five, along with a battered old black-pronged plated abomination, which I have no doubt belongs to Mrs. Gashleigh, whom I hereby request to send back mine in exchange)—their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy that every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray

... They crowned the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This "flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners, and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote was reared up, with a peare of bucks horns nayled on ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... typewriting should be relegated to technical colleges where, according to general testimony, proficiency can be gained by well-educated girls in a period varying from six to nine months. 'Commercial correspondence' is an abomination; a sufficient knowledge of the ordinary forms of letter-writing should be imparted in every course of English composition ... while the special jargon of each business or office can be readily acquired by any intelligent girl ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... paid for a baseless claim ten millions of dollars, one-half of which, as a sharp critic declared, was hush-money, the other half blood-money. They regarded the cruel law for the return of fugitive slaves as an abomination in the sight of God and man. In their judgment it violated every principle of right. It allowed the personal liberty of a man to be peremptorily decided by a United- States commissioner, acting with absolute power and without appeal. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... arrived at a more opportune time, but you must excuse all shortcomings. We keep up old English customs as well as we can, and can give you coffee and eggs. No fried bacon, squire," he added laughingly to Ned. "You are where our genial useful old friend the pig is an abomination. Why, it's five years since I've tasted a sausage, or a bit of ham. But we can give you a curry of which I am ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... since the said jewels would so affect their hearts, was so rapturously delicious, so titillatingly voluptuous, that a woman would no longer consent to dwell in the cold regions of domestic life; and he declared this marital abomination to be a great felony, because the least thing a man could do in recognition of the virtuous life of a good woman and her great merits, was to overwork himself, to exert, to exterminate himself, to please her ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... shoulders straightened and purpose seemed to flow into the man. "No," he said quietly, "I will not have it. It was not altogether I who made a brain-sick beast of you, my prince; but even so, I have never been too nice to profit by your vices. I have taken my thrifty toll of abomination, I have stood by contentedly, not urging you on, yet never trying to stay you, as you waded deeper and ever deeper into the filth of your debaucheries, because meanwhile you left me so much power. Yes, in some part it is my own handiwork ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... vilest of sinners, am the object of God's highest care,—not the failure and mistake I seem, not the slag and refuse of Nature's working, but the object of this most stupendous mystery of the Divine economy. It is no purification or idealizing that is needed,—any such attempt must be abomination,—but a new birth of the self, by devotion of it to the purpose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... towards his people; but he was a practical man, who, in his closet and in the library growing up about him, took thought for the interests of his kingdom as well as for his own; he had at heart the public good, and lawlessness was an abomination to him. He had just purchased, at a ransom of a hundred thousand francs, the liberty of Bertrand du Guesclin, who had remained a prisoner in the hands of John Chandos, after the battle of Auray. An idea occurred to him that the valiant Breton might be of use to him in extricating ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... ways and who partake of all manner of food without any scruple. Brahmanas and Kshatriyas can partake of food given by such Vaisyas as tend the sacred fire every day, as are faultless in character, and as perform the vow of Chaturmasya. But the man who takes food from a Sudra, swallows the very abomination of the earth, and drinks the excretions of the human body, and partakes of the filth of all the world. He partakes of the very filth of the earth who takes his food thus from a Sudra. Verily, those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... crime unheard of, an abomination! Their beloved would die of discomfort in a single night. No, that should never be, so long as he (Elias) enjoyed life and health, with some slight credit among honest people. He would himself provide two upright men, a cook and a waiter, at his own expense. He knew them well. They had ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... learn the trade of a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh. Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... exhilarating perspective of possibility and endeavor. It was common talk that when the foe, whose criminal lust for power had precipitated the mighty tragedy, should be vanquished, things would "no longer be the same". All would then agree that war was the abomination of abominations, the world would be made safe for right-minded democracy, and the nations would ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... The abomination and desolation set up in South Carolina — the author, with sorrowful heart, quits his native land, and flies to the north in quest of warlike friends — fortunate rencontre with his gallant friend colonel Marion ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... endeavours to extirpate the rising heresy, he should publicly protest against their conduct; that, in quality of defender of the faith, he would exhort all Protestant churches to join in one general resolution to extinguish the abomination, and would, as sovereign of his own dominions, prohibit his subjects to frequent so pestilential a place as the University of Leyden. To his menaces he added the terrors of his pen, and published ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of the early fifteenth century, in which ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in ten minutes from this time you are not almost led to conclude that there is nothing left in this world but wretchedness and filth and abomination." ...
— Three People • Pansy

... they all set out, and, with few interruptions, arrived at a place half-way up the mountain called The Hermitage. Here they rested, and leaving their horses behind, walked on over a barren region to the foot of the cone. All around was the abomination of desolation. Craggy rocks, huge, disjointed masses of shattered lava-blocks, cooled off into the most grotesque shapes, mixed with ashes, scoriae, and pumice-stones. The cone towered frowningly above their heads. Looking up, the aspect was not enticing. A steep slope ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... man protested that strong drink was an abomination unto him,—that what his nature most craved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... well imitated by the college clubs of the United States (pitiful things, indeed, from an artistic point of view), there is a survival of an old element in the male alto singing above the melody voice, generally in a painful falsetto. This abomination is unknown to the German part-songs for men's voices, which are written normally, but are in the long run monotonous in color for want of the variety in timbre and register which the female voices contribute ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... filled with money which was probably not his own; and they will insist that there is hope for the blackguard yet. But these persons will tightly shut their eyes against a great many substantially good deeds done by a man who thinks Prelacy the abomination of desolation, or who thinks that stained glass and an organ are sinful. I grant you that there is a certain fairness in trying the blackguard and the religionist by different standards. Where the pretension ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... words of his mother, who constantly admonished him how much better it was to suffer wrongfully than do wrong; and bitter was his self-reproach, that for the sake of a paltry sixpence he had told a lie, and in doing so sinned against the God of truth, whose word declares that "lying lips are an abomination to the Lord." ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... quote the Bible; but those who are not for us must be against us. You will agree to that. Now that you've freed yourself from the iniquities of that sink of abomination in Downing Street, I look upon ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... upon me; for in this, be sure, thou hast intruded a proposal not to be borne. How is it that thou urgest me to practice baseness? Along with him here I am willing to endure what is destined, for I have learned to abhor traitors; and there is no evil which I hold in greater abomination. ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... the same position as the heroine of her father's book. Like the girl Ione, in "The Unexplored," she had lived in a charmed seclusion, far from the roar of modern civilization, far from the great cities which are the abomination of desolation in our time. Knowledge had come to her filtered through the minds of those who closed their eyes to evil and their ears to tales of sin. She did not know how the poor lived: she had only the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Vere. The second of these books was a mere rifacimento of the first; and, fortunately for what remained of his reputation, Mr. Robert Ward has made no third attempt. He has much to answer for; e.g. if we were called upon to point out the most disgusting abomination to be found in the whole range of contemporary literature, we have no hesitation in saying we should feel it our duty to lay our finger on the Bolingbroke-Balaam of that last and worst of an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various

... having abandoned their wandering life and become inmates of the towns, where to the original bad traits of their character they have super-added the evil and vicious habits of the rabble. Their mouths teem with abomination, and in no part of the world have I heard such frequent, frightful, and extraordinary cursing ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... talked and thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending cards round to their friends announcing what they have done. Young women come to me and ask me whether I think they ought to consent to marry the man they have decided to live with; and they are perplexed and astonished ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... occasionally into that distant Past of mediaeval Italy; and as to the Ezzelinos, Borgias, and Riarios, and the foul-mouthed humanists, good heavens! why should we sicken ourselves with the thought of this long dead and done for abomination? ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Hannah," squeaked the little man; "but we'll try and rescue him when he comes out from the house of wickedness and abomination." ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... to a climate whose vicissitudes are extreme, never appear voluntarily to face the cold, but for the most part, abide below, congregated in concentric circles, of which a red-hot stove, filled with that to me deadly abomination, anthracite ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... And the Prince bowed down his head for fear and apprehension, and his brow and face were beaded and spangled with sweat; and shame and confusion troubled him sorely. Thereupon his father abused him and reviled him and cried, "Woe to thee, thou son of adultery and nursling of abomination![FN234] How durst thou answer me on this wise before my captains and soldiers? But hitherto none hath chastised thee,"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... a Jewish family named Hyman, who lived next door to him. Though the Jews are supposed to hold what was Crowley's stock-in-trade in abomination, the two old ladies—Mrs. Crowley, who used to say she was of "Cork's own town and God's own people," and Mrs. Hyman, who came from Cork, too, though, needless to say, without a drop of Irish blood in her veins—were ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir

... seen issuing from a shapeless mass that once had been the stately home of some proud Austrian noble. Pale, ghastly figures wandered among the ruins, searching for food, which, alas! they rarely found. But, amid this "abomination of desolation," they still lifted their eyes to heaven for help, and still clung ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... also to have entered into some examination of the specific prophecies; for he objects to the application of the words "the abomination of desolation" to other objects than that which he considers its original meaning. See Hieronym. on Matt. xxiv. 15, the reference to which is given in ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... represent the surface of the water as seen from below. Have seaweed and kelp in place of ivy, and a fish net or two caught up in the corners of the room, with here and there a starfish or a crab—not too many, for profuseness in this sort of decoration is an abomination. Then you will have a restaurant that will be talked about wherever people sit at meat. But to get back to our talk about fish, and where to get it prepared and cooked the best. We must say that the finest fish we have eaten in San Francisco was ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... as for the sake of money constitute themselves the creators of ugliness, not to speak of far worse evils in the land, live—or die, I care not which—to know in their own selves what a lovely human Psyche lies hid even in the chrysalis of a railway-director, and to loathe their past selves as an abomination—incredible but that it had been. He who calls such a wish a curse, must undergo it ere his being can ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... stationed here and there. I go from one to another, trying to gather what these open-air politicians think of all this Masonic parade. Shortly fugitives are seen hurrying back from the Champs Elysees, shouting, and gesticulating. "Horror! Abomination! They respect nothing! Vengeance!" I hear a brother-mason has been killed by a shell opposite the Rue du Colysee; that the white flag is riddled with shot; that the Versailles rifles have singled out, killed and wounded ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... taken away, the natural sun would have no vital power. For this reason the worship of the sun is the lowest of all the forms of God-worship, for it is wholly dead, as the sun itself is, and therefore in the Word it is called "abomination." ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... would-be murderesses now," cried Hippy. "They actually managed to stop and turn around, and now they are coming this way. One of them is my pet abomination—Miss Wright. She used to call me 'fatty' when I was little, and I've never forgiven her. But who is the reckless young person playing chauffeur? She ought to be put in jail for exceeding ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... her throat that was not pure, free, and firm? Frequently the tremolo is an affectation like the excessive vibrato of a sentimental fiddler; sometimes it is the product of weakness due to abuse of the vocal organ. In all cases it is the sign of bad taste or vicious training, or both, and is an abomination. On the opera stage to-day Italian prima donnas are most afflicted with it. In turn Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Wagner have been accused of having caused it, but anyone who has listened intelligently to the opera singers of the last forty years will testify with me that ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... is desirable. But there is one particular form of propaganda which no one, if he has any reverence at all for the individuality of his pupils and the freedom of the world, can regard as anything but an abomination. And here we meet with the most serious criticism which can be, and has been, levelled against the project of political education. Suppose, it has been urged, that your scheme is adopted by a number of the public schools; suppose that by a steady process of attack, this new and very ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... iconoclasts, that the destruction became final. To these new believers, who, in their simplicity, imagined themselves to be possessed of the ultimate religious formula and to know by His right name the great Unknowable, Thebes became the haunt of "false gods," the abomination of abominations, which it ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... brought the proud city of the Seven Hills, the holy place, watered with the blood of the martyrs and hallowed by the steps of the saints, the goal of the earthly pilgrim, the seat of the throne of the Vicar of God. No Jew saw the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not with keener anguish than the devout sons of the Church heard of the desecration of Rome. If a Roman Catholic and an imperialist could term it the just judgment of God, heretics and schismatics, preparing to burst the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... "Come out of the abomination, and let us make haste back to the boat. He may be this moment marshaling all his Indians ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... just what I was on my way to do, Goza." (This was not true, but it didn't matter, for, if a lie, in the words of the schoolgirl's definition, is an abomination to the Lord, it is a very present help in time of trouble.) "After we have eaten I and my friends will accompany you to ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... that Congress then meant by non-intervention that Congress should legislate in no regard in respect to property in slaves? Why, sir, the very acts which they passed at the time refute it. There is the fugitive slave law, and that abomination of laws which assumed to confiscate the property of a citizen who should attempt to bring it into this District with intent to remove it to sell it at some other time and at some other place. Congress acted then upon the subject—acted beyond the limit of its authority, as I believed, confidently ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... in this way, Sir. I have already described my father's state of mind, and the distempered view he has been accustomed to take of all things. Yesterday, May-day sports were held in the village of Tottenham, where we dwelt; and as such things are an abomination in his sight, he took upon him to reprove the actors in the pastimes. They who witnessed his conduct on that occasion would hardly hold him to be under the due control of reason. Amongst the spectators was the son of an old friend, whose name having ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... Troubadours, the old language, the old customs, and burn them on a pyre. Well, France is a great people and Vive la nation. But some would go further, some would suppress the nation: "Down with the frontiers, national glories are an abomination! Wipe out the past, man is God! Vive l'humanite!" Our patrimony we repudiate. What are Joan of Arc, Saint Louis, and Turenne? ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... such a gentleman in the country-side, but have no acquaintance with him,' answered Mr. Trumbull; 'he is, as I have heard, a Papist; for the whore that sitteth on the seven hills ceaseth not yet to pour forth the cup of her abomination on these parts.' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... The trend of good is always towards Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in the swamps of Jamaica or the salons of Paris, always insist upon the shapelessness, the wordlessness, the unutterable character of the abomination. They call him "horror of emptiness," as did the black witch in Stevenson's Dynamiter; they worship him as the unspeakable name; as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the void in the heart of the whirlwind; the cloud on ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... but they were never the views of a suspicious or a disappointed man. It was not that he had great faith in human nature. He had, I think, very little. Nor was he without curiosity—far from it. But once a thing was really there he wasted no time over exclamations as to the horror or beauty or abomination of its actual presence. There was as he once explained to me, "precious little time to waste." Those who thought him a dull, silent fellow—and they were many—made of course an almost ludicrous mistake, but ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in a holy place—let him that reads understand,— [24:16]then let those in Judea flee to the mountains. [24:17]Let not him that is on his house come down to take the things from his house; ...
— The New Testament • Various

... the congregation, or, failing this, the daughter of a charity collector, or even the daughter of a schoolmaster; but let him not marry the daughter of an illiterate man, for the unlearned are an abomination, as also their ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... properly,' said the butcher. 'What right has any one to bring an abomination like that into our city? The horror is enough to make an idiot of every child in ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... crowning event of his life, and as the dawn of a new existence in some novel, enchanted world. It was to bring his triumph, and even more, his release. It was at once to crown him as a hero and chieftain among City men, and transfigure him into a being for whom all City things were an abomination. In his waking hours, the conflict between these aims did not specially force itself upon his attention: he mused upon, and spun fancies about, either one indifferently, and they seemed not at all irreconcilable. But his dreams were full of warfare,—wearily ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic



Words linked to "Abomination" :   disgust, hate, odium, someone, soul, individual, mortal, person



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