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Abortive   Listen
adjective
Abortive  adj.  
1.
Produced by abortion.as, an abortive child. (R.)
2.
Made from the skin of a still-born animal; as, abortive vellum. (Obs.)
3.
Rendering fruitless or ineffectual. (Obs.) "Plunged in that abortive gulf."
4.
Coming to naught; failing in its effect; miscarrying; fruitless; unsuccessful; as, an abortive attempt. "An abortive enterprise."
5.
(Biol.) Imperfectly formed or developed; rudimentary; sterile; as, an abortive organ, stamen, ovule, etc.
6.
(Med.)
(a)
Causing abortion; as, abortive medicines.
(b)
Cutting short the period of an illness; as, abortive treatment of typhoid fever.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books



... built though it was—swayed on its foundations. The howling of the wind in the rude, old-fashioned chimney and along the passage, and the frenzied beating of the snow against the diamond window-panes, deadened all other noises, and rendered any attempt at conversation absolutely abortive. So I ate my meal in silence, pretending not to notice the subtle interchange of glances that constantly took place between the strangely assorted pair. Whether they were husband and wife, what the man did for a living, were questions that continually ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... significance of this ultimate duality would be rendered abortive if the future were determined in any more definite way than by the premonition, the hope, the dream, the passion, the prophecy, the vision, of those invisible companions whose existence is implied ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... were thus taken were immediately set free by the captors, who judged that one would be quite sufficient to satisfy the curiosity of their emperor, and that the negroes would be the less offended. But after all, the design proved abortive; for though spoken to in various languages, the prisoner would neither speak or take any victuals, and died at the end of four days. On this account, the Melli negroes concluded that these other negroes were dumb; but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment my goodly aerial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to tell the destined name of my abortive play; in four ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... aerial vapours fly Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame? All the unaccomplish'd works of Authors' hands, Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mix'd, Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither— Play, Opera, Farce, with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... the exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... thriving mercantile business. Sarah Bland's only surviving son Giles had come to Virginia about the time of the untimely death of Theodorick Bland, who had managed the Bland interests in Virginia. Giles was a young "hot head," joined with the Bacon forces, and upon the collapse of that abortive revolution in the Colony, was apprehended, promptly condemned by Governor Berkeley's Court held at "Greenspring" and executed. Two years after her son's untimely death, and when some of the drastic measures confiscating the ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... where, according to the information of Captain Smith, who had frequently visited them, an outlet must surely be found. The choice of this crew, little accustomed to discipline, could not be doubtful. In order not to render the outlay of the Company completely abortive, Hudson was obliged to make for the Faroe Islands, to descend southward as low as 44 degrees, and to search on the coast of America for the strait, of the existence of which he had been assured. On July ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... detach none of the smaller incidents of the age; you are obliged to take count of the little Danish Campaign, which taught Prussia those deficiencies, impelling her directly to the attainment of her future military omnipotence, and which, under the abortive attempts of the Saxon minister, M. de Beust,* gave a timid reminder to Germany of what her unity had been and might once again be. Each incident, however local or however remote, formed a feature of the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... troubled by doubts and anxieties which are damaging to their intimate relationships. And, moreover, if this harmful restraint succeeds in preventing conception there eventuates the inevitable prevalence of sex excitement followed by abortive and half-realised satisfaction, and the enhanced risk of the man or woman yielding to outside ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson

... way to Washington, he visited Cleveland, where his westward journey had come so near an abortive ending, and then his home-folk at Canandaigua. He was but thirty years old, yet he had held five important political offices, he had risen to high rank in his profession, he was the leader of the dominant party in a great State; and all this he had done alone, unaided. Few aged ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... supply;—but his patient search was unrewarded. Eleanor had apparently vanished from the surface of the earth. The quest which had seemed to him so simple a matter when he first undertook it, now began to assume terrible and abortive proportions. It was unthinkable that one little slip of a girl untraveled and inexperienced should be able permanently to elude six determined and worldly adult New Yorkers, who were prepared to tax their resources to the utmost in the effort to find her,—but the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... from the beginning of the world. Finally, they brought the Hebrew nation into contempt, that they might themselves appear comparatively less impious with regard to strangers. They confessed what was true, that they were the slaves, the scum, and the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation, while they overthrew the city themselves, and forced the Romans, whether they would or no, to gain a melancholy reputation, by acting gloriously against them, and did almost draw that ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... professional dandy might die envying! As for the King of Hearts, he looks as much like a pet of the fair sex as Boanerges or Bung the Beadle. And what strange anatomical proportions they exhibit, with their gigantic heads, abortive necks, and the calves of their legs protuberant around their tibias and fibulas, alike before and behind! And then they are all left-handed! Were these the gay gallants and fair dames of the golden age of chivalry? Were these shapeless things the forms and costumes of the princes and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... predecessors of the North British Alizarine Company. These patents expire in about two months, and the lecturer explained that an attempt made by the German manufacturers to further monopolize this industry (even after the expiry of the patent) proved abortive. He also stated that alizarine, 20 per cent. quality, is sold to-day at 2s 6d. per lb., but that if the price were reduced by one-half there will still be a handsome profit to makers, and that the United Kingdom is the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... Through terror-haunted days. A shock, a cry Whose echoes ring the globe—the spectre's laid. Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie Resting in peace—fear, change, and death gone by. Fit end for nightmare—mist of blood and tears, Red climax to the slow, abortive years. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... the positive science of mathematics to great height, but physical science is the growth of comparative to-day; with habits of thought hampered by priesthoods and systems, the efforts of antiquity were like abortive shoots,—it is within the last four centuries that the strong stem has sprung up, and the plant has flowered. Neither do our youth study the classics for their science; and yet is not the pursuit of science nobler than all other pursuits, since it leads its followers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... Helen, will claim the reader's attention. The sketches of American life and tendencies, both Northern and Southern, are given with discrimination and truth. The dying scene, which closes the First Part, seems to us nobly wrought. The "death-bed hymn" of the slaves sounds a pathetic wail over an abortive life shivering on the brink of the Unknown. In the Second Part we find less of the color and music of a poem, and more of the rapid movement of a drama. The doom of Slavery upon the master now comes into full relief. The characters of Herbert and his father are favorable specimens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... the report of the Chief of Engineers as to the practicability of protecting our important cities on the seaboard by fortifications and other defenses able to repel modern methods of attack. The time has now come when such defenses can be prepared with confidence that they will not prove abortive, and when the possible result of delay in making such preparation is seriously considered delay seems inexcusable. For the most important cities—those whose destruction or capture would be a national humiliation—adequate defenses, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... de l'Academ. de Science, that the summer figs of Paris, in Provence, Italy, and Malta, have all perfect stamina, and ripen not only their fruits, but their seed; from which seed other fig-trees are raised; but that the stamina of the autumnal figs are abortive, perhaps owing to the want of due warmth. Mr. Milne, in his Botanical Dictionary (art. Caprification), says, that the cultivated fig-trees have a few male flowers placed above the female within the same covering or receptacle; which in warmer climates perform ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... happened to be awake, and the doctor permitted it, they would sit and chat with me for half an hour or so before retiring to their cabins, by which means I gradually acquired all the missing links in the story of the squadron's abortive cruise. ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... abortive literary community organised on Fourier's principles, 8 m. from Boston, U.S., by George Ripley in 1840; Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the community, and wrote an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the god of Darkness of the power of destroying the god of Light. And the distribution of the fragments of the mistletoe among their pious worshippers, was to assure them that henceforth a similar attempt of Lok would prove abortive, and he was thus deprived of the means of effecting ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... adopt some different course of action. Shalmaneser had discovered during his abortive campaign that there were discords and jealousies among the various Phoenician cities; that none of them submitted without repugnance to the authority of Tyre, and that Sidon especially had an ancient ground of quarrel with her more powerful sister, and always cherished the hope of recovering ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... woman is a monster—and, thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster—without man as her acknowledged principal! As true as I had once a mother whom I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the social stand which some of them,—poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only dream of such things because they have missed woman's peculiar happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor woman!—if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these petticoated monstrosities have in ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the greatest pains to conceal from his own government; that they met twice a day; and that their conversation chiefly turned on the vices of Napoleon, on his designs against Spain, and on the best mode of rendering those designs abortive. In truth, Barere's baseness was unfathomable. In the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower deeps. It is bad to be a sycophant; it is bad to be a spy. But even among sycophants and spies there are degrees of meanness. The vilest sycophant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... walk and read a great deal, ride and scribble a little, according as my lead allows, or my spirits prompt; to write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another, will only produce miserable, abortive performances. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... as the chief agent in bringing the Sicilian States together in conference at Gela B.C. 424, with a view to healing their differences and combining to frustrate the dangerous designs of Athens. In 415 B.C., when the attack came, he was again the master spirit in rendering it abortive (Thuc. vi. 72 foll.) In 412 B.C. it was he who urged the Sicilians to assist in completing the overthrow of Athens, by sending a squadron to co-operate with the Peloponnesian navy—for the relief of Miletus, etc. (Thuc. viii. 26, 27 ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... were baulked by its rugged steepness and the fire of the Afghans holding the sungahs on its face. Sir Frederick Roberts had to recognise that the direct attack by so weak a force unaided by a diversion, could not succeed, and he ordered further efforts to be deferred. The casualties of the abortive attempt included three officers, one of whom, Major Cook, V.C. of the Goorkhas, than whom the British army contained no better soldier, died of his wound. Macpherson was directed to hold the ground he had won, including the lower advanced hill, and was informed that on the following ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold." The design of the picture is to reveal the various causes which at different times and places render the husbandman's labour abortive and leave his garner empty. This done, there is no need of more. The seed, when none of these things impeded it, prospered as a matter of course, under the ordinary care of man and the ordinary ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... length join'd by France, which brought us into great danger; and the laboured and long-continued endeavour of our governor, Thomas, to prevail with our Quaker Assembly to pass a militia law, and make other provisions for the security of the province, having proved abortive, I determined to try what might be done by a voluntary association of the people. To promote this, I first wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled PLAIN TRUTH, in which I stated our defenceless situation in strong lights, with the necessity of union and discipline for our ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... Massachusetts to enter on such an undertaking so prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the beginning of settlement, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... it is impossible to express the abortive attempt at a bow which accompanied this salutation "I want to know if the minister ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... forgot to turn away his eyes, and, swinging the hammer with a will, discharged a smashing blow on his own knuckles. With admirable presence of mind he crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, "Butter fingers!" But the pain was sharp, his nerve was shaken, and after an abortive trial he found he must desist from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... watched, at first, with tolerable composure, in the confidence that his vanity would not be gratified by any further discoveries; for, though I must plead guilty to having disfigured the backs of several with abortive attempts to delineate that too fascinating physiognomy, I was sure that, with that one unfortunate exception, I had carefully obliterated all such witnesses of my infatuation. But the pencil frequently leaves an impression ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... made for the exchange and comfortable support of prisoners, all of which have proved abortive, from the resolution of the British not to pay arrears, they have incurred, which amounts to near L300,000 sterling. Some measures, which will surprise them not a little, will be taken. I shall write particularly to Mr Jay on this subject, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... of 1772 sobered the Polish people and brought them to a full realizing sense of the necessity of radical political reform. But the shameful and hypocritical attitude of the neighboring sovereigns continued to render their every effort abortive. For another twenty-one years the wretched country struggled on, a victim of selfish foreign tutelage. Although both Frederick and Maria Theresa died in the interval, their successors proved themselves quite as willing to cooeperate with the implacable tsarina. In 1793 Russia and Prussia effected ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... In an abortive attempt to preserve my youth I neither take tea nor drinks between meals. I will have one of your excellent cigarettes and get round to the club. Why, this is Enton over again, for ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that their design had proved abortive, went directly to the place of rendezvous, and told his troop that they had lost their labor, and must return to their cave. He himself set them the example, and they all ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda from its impoverished owner, laid the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... with the sad abortive laugh which was Mr. Hood's nearest approach to mirth, 'fortunately he left me alone, and spoke neither well nor ill. He didn't look angry, I thought, so much as put out ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... the pardon has proved abortive and ridiculous, and since the fact of his breach of the 'word of honour' can no longer be denied, their tone is changed. As usual, I am abused, not for the wrong I did, but for the wrong which has been committed upon me. They ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... is just about what I fancied it would be—an attempt at blackmail. But it's abortive. I do own the property of which you speak, but in understanding so precisely the sort of business done there, you have the advantage of me. This renting has all been conducted through agents whom I seem to have trusted unduly. You have done me ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... himself to be a better composer than Sir John Stevenson, to whom the prejudices of the world gave the palm; and he eagerly caught at the opportunity which the verses and vanity of Reddy afforded him, of stringing his crotchets and quavers on the same hank with the abortive fruits of Reddy's muse, and the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... forced choice between suicide and abundant life. When interests war against one another they render the project of life, at best a hard adventure, futile and abortive. I hold it to be of prime importance for the understanding of this matter to observe that from the poorest and crudest beginnings, morality is the massing of interests against a reluctant cosmos. Life has been attended with discord and mutual ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... of three minutes ago—when the odds had been set at one in a hundred. He knew that he could not press the wolverines in again. Taggi's distaste was too manifest; Shann had been lucky that the animal had made one abortive attack. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... lawgivers in whom the speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in the English legislature the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... airing his abortive sense of humor overmuch, and he was a sound judge of horse and man. If he was right—but the major had to laugh at such a possibility. Garrison to ride like that! He who had confessed he had never thrown a leg over a horse before! By a freak ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... The abortive efforts to overawe St. Petersburg and the offers made to the British Ambassador, as if Great Britain's inaction could be sold to the highest bidder, brought results that ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... Rost. In Bot. Gaz., XV., p. 319, Dr. Rex shows that the relationships of the species are with Tubifera; that the so-called columella is probably an abortive sporangium, the so-called capillitial threads having no homology with the capillitial threads of the true columelliferous forms. It is a good species of Tubifera, nothing more. The tubules are shorter than in either of the preceding species; the spores ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... Yesterday had been wet, and the flooring of wooden blocks in the choir vestry bore witness to the fact that neither men nor boys had wiped their feet too thoroughly. Even in the clergy vestry, which was carpeted, there were boot marks, so it seemed probable that the weather had rendered abortive any clue there might have been in this direction. There were two safes in the clergy vestry, a large one standing out in the room and a small one built into the wall. It was in the latter that the chalice had been kept, and the door was open. Apparently two or three blows had ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... astute man of affairs, great loss and inconvenience would have ensued. The local union was very strong, very active and intensely popular. All its official machinery was thrown into the policy of obstruction, and all its efforts were abortive, for the Hebe was towed out of port with a full crew in spite of a continual shower of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... piecemeal character of civil emancipation in Russia. However, the modern history of Western Europe has shown more than once that such pre-emancipation periods, including those that evidently prove abortive, offer the most favorable conditions for all kinds of mental and cultural revolutions. Liberty as a hope invariably arouses greater enthusiasm for self-rejuvenation, than liberty as a fact, when the romanticism of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... excitement; and when Burr saw himself met with universal scorn, he knew it was the eruption of an accumulated hatred toward himself, and that all his ambition for future preferment and power was at an end. Immediately he left for the West, and commenced an abortive effort to break up ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... render the Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded, still vulnerable,—liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the early stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed, and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human charity, or given ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... in roundabout communication with provinces of the extreme south. His object was to tap the rice-fields of Central China and obtain a food supply which could not be interfered with by those daring sea-robbers, the redoubtable Japanese, who had destroyed his fleets and rendered abortive his attempt at conquest. Of the Great Wall, it may be said that the oppression inseparable from its construction hastened the overthrow of the house of its builder. The same is probably true of the Grand Canal. The myriads ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... at once taken to render such an attempt abortive. Our pickets were doubled; Admiral Porter was notified, so that the river might be more closely watched; material was collected on the west bank of the river to be set on fire and light up the river if the attempt was made; and batteries were established along the levee ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... plan, in that while He made an elaborate provision for plants which depended for its efficiency on the presence of quadrupeds, He nevertheless, after all, neglected to place the quadrupeds in the same islands as the plants! Now, I submit that such abortive attempts at adaptation bring the thesis of the special creationists to a reductio ad absurdum; so that the only possible explanation before us is, that while the seeds of these plants were able to float to the islands, the quadrupeds were not able ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes

... members of the Chamber of Deputies which was made the object of the criminal attempt of December 9, have the honor to address to the President of the Republic a last appeal in favor of the condemned."[10] It has long been the custom in France not to punish an abortive crime with the death penalty, and it was generally believed that Vaillant's sentence would be changed to life imprisonment. President Carnot, however, refused to extend any mercy, and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... diminishes; the passage of the Cape in the beginning of the sixteenth century places the commerce of Asia in the hands of the Portuguese; on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic the financial measures of Charles V., joined to bad usage by the Turks, render abortive the great maritime caravans which the state dispatches yearly between Alexandria and Bruges. In respect to industrial matters, the hampered artizans, watched and cloistered in their country, cease to perfect their arts and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception, however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... with Scotland on her behalf was now known to have been abortive. James had fallen into the hands of the faction most hostile to her, and though his mother still clung with desperate hope to the trust that he, at least, was labouring on her behalf, no one else believed that he cared for anything but his ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and science had this enterprise been concerted, that at the very moment when it assumed a specific direction, the enemy was no longer enabled to render it abortive. As the march was now to be bent towards the Danube, notice was given for the Prussians, Palatines, and Hessians, who were stationed on the Rhine, to order their march so as to join the main body in its ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... Church has always been directed against secret societies, and if their power has been great it is only because they have been in full sympathy with their flocks. In 1848 the clergy made such efforts to check the excesses of the abortive insurrection of that year that Lord Clarendon, the Viceroy, wrote to Lord John Russell to tell him that something must be done for the clergy, but the bigotry of the English and Scottish people stood in the way. The No Rent ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... overwhelming body of armed constabulary. Fifty men and a couple of sub-inspectors attended the serving of some civil-bill processes towards Newport only a few days ago, and a similar body attended to witness an abortive attempt at eviction on ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... warning and appeal, against criminations and proceedings of impending evil, which, if they be not checked and arrested, will accomplish more than the infamous ostracism of an Aristides, render every other effort to improve and elevate Canada abortive, and strew in wide-spread desolation over the land the ruins of the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... Messer Tommaso's uncle—Ser Francesco—was one of the principal opponents in the city counsels of Cosimo—"il Padre della Patria." Messer Niccolo, his brother, carried on the feud, and was, with Diotisalvi Neroni, Agnolo Acciaiuolo, and others, banished in 1455, for their complicity in the abortive attempt to ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... constrictor, the complete series of jointed finger-bones in the paddle of the manatee and the whale, are a few of the most familiar instances. In botany a similar class of facts has been long recognised. Abortive stamens, rudimentary floral envelope and undeveloped carpels are of the most frequent occurrence. To every thoughtful naturalist the question must arise, What are these for? What have they to do ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... prevalence, to an extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand for amusement out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it was swept away. And yet it was ministered to, in a dull and abortive manner, by all who made this feint. Looking in at what is called in Dullborough 'the serious bookseller's,' where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces of numbers of gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... necessary to find additional help, to escape in safety, and not bring both him and myself to destruction. At length we came to the following determination, which, however, after eight months' incessant labour, rendered my whole project abortive. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... error while retrieval was possible. The Persians, we may be sure, grew dispirited under such a leader; and the Egyptians naturally took heart. It seems to have been shortly after the return of Cambyses from his abortive expedition against Ethiopia that symptoms of an intention to revolt began to manifest themselves in Egypt. The priests declared an incarnation of Apis, and the whole country burst out into rejoicings. It was probably now that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... of the Corean contingent Kublai easily persuaded himself that this defeat did not indicate what would happen when he employed his own Mongol troops. He also succeeded in sending several envoys to Japan after his first abortive attempt, and they brought back consistent reports as to the hostility and defiance of the Japanese, who at last, to leave no further doubt on the subject, executed his envoy in 1280. For this outrage the haughty monarch swore he would exact a terrible revenge, and in 1280-81, when the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... then? They wretchedly stay at their own miserable homes, destitute of their well-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... black horse stumbled, the laden car ran on top of him like a landslip, and, with an abortive flounder, he collapsed beneath it. Once down, he lay, after the manner of his kind, like a dead thing, and the covered car, propped on its shafts, presented its open mouth to the heavens. Even as I sped headlong to ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... influence on its health. On the contrary, accumulation in the placenta and nerve centers explains the pathogenesis of abortion and the birth of dead fetuses ("mortinatatite") Copper and lead did not cause abortion, but mercury did so in two out of six cases. Arsenic is a powerful abortive agent in the guinea-pig, probably on account of placental hemorrhages. An important deduction is that whilst the placenta is frequently and seriously affected in syphilis, it is also the special seat ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... were built upon a ship of vast size; within the castles were 200 Turks, who were intended to distract the attention of the defendants by continually pouring in all sorts of artificial fireworks. This device was however abortive, as Jacome Leite went by night in two small vessels with twenty men, and though discovered he succeeded in setting the floating castle on fire, a great part of which blew up with all the Turks, and the remainder of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... on his own liver, and a belittling of an Englishman of such noble character and achievements that a rising nation has chosen him for their King, and one whom our own nation loves to honour. We shall not, of course, mention our abortive correspondent's name, unless compelled thereto by any ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... which stopped the hole in front of the bullet, together with a number of very minute fragments or flakes of lead; these proved that the extremely hollow projectile had broken up, and was rendered abortive ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... all forms of life, while in the grand total of living beings born into the world, a far larger number perish than can reach maturity. Wasted effort is the mildest judgment that can be passed upon these abortive attempts. And not only does death eventually win in the case of each individual, and against which may be set the consideration that in the economy of nature death plays a part in the development ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... and Harman, were reserved to fates not less abortive and wretched. The first entered the navy as surgeon-mate, but was discharged for drunkenness. He died in penury, an outcast. Harman became a portrait painter in New York, but he lost his strength of body and mind, and finally perished in an almshouse on Blackwell's Island. His body ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... the next day, after a sleep that was one prolonged nightmare, full of agonised, abortive striving after something that always eluded him, he knew not what. And when he woke—after a momentary breath of relief at the thought of the unreality of these vague horrors—he woke to the heavier nightmare of reality. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... forming this masonry all down the tree, protected a bud at the base of its own stalk. From this bud, unless rendered abortive, a new shoot would spring next year. Now, supposing that out of the leaf-buds on each shoot of a pentagonal tree, only five at its extremity or on its side were permitted to develop themselves, even under this limitation the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... tone. Lead me to one of your garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me, he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and solos on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... lean your trust Upon unstaid perverseness! Know ye not That we are worms, yet made at last to form The winged insect, imp'd with angel plumes That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars? Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg'd souls? Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, Like the untimely embryon of a worm! As, to support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Prussia, and Austria will not coerce the Dutchman; England and France will, if the others don't object. A French army is in motion, and a French fleet is off Spithead; so probably something will come of it. Nothing has damaged this Government more than these protracted and abortive conferences. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... allies, found it necessary to make peace upon such terms as they could obtain. Holland, in which a strong Republican party had always maintained connection with France, abolished the rule of its Stadtholder, and placed its resources at the disposal of its conquerors. Sardinia entered upon abortive negotiations. Spain, in return for peace, ceded to the Republic the Spanish half of St. Domingo (July 22, 1795). Prussia concluded a Treaty at Basle (April 5), which marked and perpetuated the division of Germany by providing that, although the Empire as a body was still ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... I have not once dared to look so high, as to such a proposal as your seventh article contains. Hence have proceeded all my little abortive artifices to escape from the confinement you have put me in; although you promised to be honourable to me. Your honour, well I know, would not let you stoop to so mean and so unworthy a slave, as the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... from his book (as just so much of nothing to the purpose) how little would remain to give the trouble of an answer! To which let me add, that the spirit or genius, which animates the whole, is plainly perceived to be nothing else but the abortive malice of an old neglected man,[8] who hath long lain under the extremes of obloquy, poverty and contempt; that have soured his temper, and made him fearless. But where is the merit of being bold, to a man that is secure of impunity to his person, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I can't say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full-bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... recess, I regret to say, it has been found that a few plates were purloined from art and other magazines, and cuttings made in the newspaper files. Whenever a case of this kind is detected, an attempt—unfortunately up to now abortive—has been made to detect the offender, and the art magazines are now filed in the staff-room, and not issued to those who use the Library during the recess, save members of Parliament. On the whole, however, ...
— Report of the Chief Librarian for the Year 1924-25 • General Assembly Library (New Zealand)

... has been quoted to show that the Essay on the Convention of Cintra was not an ephemeral production, destined to vanish with the occasion which gave it birth. If this were the case, the labour bestowed upon it was almost abortive. The author composed the work in the discharge of what he regarded a sacred duty, and for the permanent benefit of society, rather than with a view to any immediate results.'[5] The Bishop adds further these details: 'He foresaw and predicted that his words would ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... again he denounces the iniquity of the Zealots, who continued the resistance. "No age had a generation more fruitful in wickedness; they confessed that they were the slaves, the scum, the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation." John committed the heinous sacrilege of using the oil preserved in the Temple vessels for the starving soldiers. "I suppose," says the ex-priest writing in the Roman palace, "that had the Romans ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... habitually perverted judgment, and the other a colossal excess of self-esteem,[3120] constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more prolific than in Marat. Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess such an incurably perverted intellect. Never did a man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in him augments the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... most attracted by prurient sexual adventures. A vulgar work obviously meant to appeal to a neurotic taste for sexuality, it includes no attack on Swift as it explores at length some topics to which Gulliver in his memoirs only tangentially alludes. The second abortive effort, an animal satire of exotic talking fowl, also resembles Swift's satire as it touches on several similar topics—the hypocrisy of the people, the scepticism of their nobility, the love of luxury of the higher clergy—but again because it includes no comment on Swift's personal or public ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous

... good Poets stand in need of Assistance; but 'tis very much aggravated when they are deny'd it. A Man who is oblig'd to write for his Bread, is forc'd to be very hasty to prevent starving; And every Man's Genius is not so sharp as his Appetite. This may be one Reason we have so many things appear Abortive. Some Poets have not so much as to save their longing; and if their Muse miscarry, or come with an ugly Mark into the World, are rather to be pity'd than condemn'd. In what Pangs have I seen some poor Creatures to be deliver'd, when at the same time they have fear'd the Poverty of their Brats, ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous

... destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them so as to prevent their coming hither any more: but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... to be the case when the plans are laid so carefully, proved a very tame affair. Valeria, sitting rather dismally in the parlor with Mrs. Hawley for company, at midnight heard a banging of tin cans somewhere outside, a fitful popping of six-shooters, and an abortive attempt at a procession coming up the street. But the lines seemed to waver and then break utterly at the first saloon, where drink was to be had for the asking and Manley Fleetwood was pledged to pay, and the rattle ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... Spanish admirals to remove their fleet out of shell-range. This attack, like the first, ended in an encounter between the gun-boats. The third attempt, which was to have taken place on the 8th, was rendered abortive by a strong gale ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive, in His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong and open their eyes to the truth. And God shall be All in All. ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... should show boldly whether you have confidence in our management of your finances or not; if you disapprove, the sooner I know it the better. Then he dashed into a close and elaborate defence in detail, under all the heads of attack,—his manner of dealing with the unfunded debt, his abortive scheme of conversion, his mode of charging deficiency bills. This astonishing mass of dry and difficult matter was impressed in full significance upon the House, not only by the orator's own buoyant and energetic interest in the performance, but by the sense which he awoke in his ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the surface of this fair Earth, an erring and a wayward being, at times dejected by the trials of a solitary and an almost abortive life, or sustained or elevated by its prosperous incidents; I sometimes think that no one other blessing of existence hath ever comforted my heart and restored my soul so much, as the pleasures and delights of COLOUR. It is my wealth, my joy, my ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... others, you must first learn to understand yourself,' said he, as he came forward. Then, taking my hand, he continued,—'What if you should give up all this abortive labour, take a new pupil, and, instead of imparting to others what you have not very firmly grasped yourself, try if you can make a ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... cashiered. I suppose "he" (as Rogers calls everybody's husband) went out hunting with the idea of diverting his mind from dwelling on its loss. Abortive effort! ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... near the road, were alive with shadowy figures, running, yelling, hurling bricks and mud from a half-demolished shop near by. Two mounted police officers made abortive attempts to get a hearing; and a solitary Indian, perched on an electric standard, well above the congested mass, vainly harangued and fluttered a white scarf as signal of pacific intentions. Doubtless one of their 'leaders,' again making frantic, belated efforts to stem the torrent that ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... experience of what it was to will what was good, and not to find how to perform, 'who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' It is an awful thing to have to carry a corpse about on your back. And that was what Paul thought the man did who loaded his own shoulders with abortive resolutions, that perished in the birth, and never grew up to maturity. Weak and miserable is always the man who is swift to resolve and slow to carry out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... lost his voice on the way, or when the male prima donna[4.1] of the Valle theatre is laid up with a cold,—in brief, when the chief source of recreation which the Romans were hoping to find proves abortive, and then comes Holy Thursday and all at once cuts off all the hopes which might perhaps have been realized It was just after one of these unlucky Carnivals—almost before the strict fast-days were past, when a certain Nicolo Musso opened a theatre ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... observe a conduct just and impartial to all nations, a sacred regard to our national engagements, and not to impair the rights of our Government, contains principles which can not fail to secure to your Administration the support of the National Legislature to render abortive every attempt to excite dangerous jealousies among us, and to convince the world that our Government and your administration of it can not be separated from the affectionate support of every good citizen. And the Senate can not suffer the present occasion to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson

... informing them, as Dale supposed, of the weakness of his force, which they had not yet discovered. Dale called to the men on the other side of the river to cross and assist him, but they, after making an abortive attempt to send a canoe load across, remained idle spectators of the terribly unequal conflict. Dale, seeing that no help was to come from them, and knowing that the Indians would shortly overcome him by sheer force of numbers, resolved upon a recklessly daring manoeuvre, namely, an ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Pretender," also as the "Young Chevalier" and "Bonnie Prince Charlie," was born in Rome in 1720. From his earliest years he was the hope of the Jacobites, as the political descendants of the partisans of James II were called. In 1743 Charles headed an abortive expedition for the invasion of England from France. In August, 1745, he landed with seven followers in the Hebrides, and on the 19th raised the standard of his father in Glenfinnan, Scotland. There at once the Highland clans rallied to his support and began ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, where is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... as the greatest part of them relate to such islands or coasts as have been hitherto not at all, or erroneously described; and where the want of sufficient and authentic information might occasion future enterprizes to prove abortive, perhaps with the destruction of the ships and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... interesting. The public has a fawning respect for fame. One or two abortive attempts convinced Mr. Early that his literary efforts would bring him not even the distinction of infamy. At last he hit upon an idea. He would be a patron of the Arts—not one of your little ordinary ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... The abortive attempt of the brigantine to stem the tide at the western end of Blackwell's, will be remembered. It had no other effect than to place her pursuer more in advance, and to convince her own commander ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... of severe dearth; and, as a rule, the crisis ended long before the cumbrous machinery of the law enabled the new lands to come under the plough. It is, however, possible that he hoped to inaugurate a system of enclosures of waste lands by a clause which appeared in his abortive proposals of the year 1797 for the relief of the poor. His Bill on that subject comprised not only very generous plans of relief, but also the grant of cows to the deserving poor, the erection of Schools of Industry in every parish or group of parishes, and facilities ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... revolution of 1830, these Templars have made public, but abortive efforts, to bring themselves into notice, by instituting some ceremonies, in which they appeared ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... failed in Italy; whereas in Spain, on the contrary, all endeavours to model the theatre according to the rules of the ancients, and latterly of the French, have from the difference of national taste uniformly been abortive. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... their first perusal left upon our mind. Notwithstanding the glimpses of natural feeling and of truthful portraiture which caught our eye, they were so evidently deficient in some of the higher qualities which ought to distinguish a writer, and so defaced by abortive attempts at fine writing, that they hardly appeared deserving of a very critical examination, or a very careful study. But now there has lately come into our hands the autobiography of Hans Christian Andersen, "The True Story of my Life," and this has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... of women's unnatural lusts in copulating with other creatures shall perish as the brute beasts by whom they were begotten, not having a reasonable soul nor any breath of the Almighty infused into them; and such can never be capable of resurrection. And the same is also true of imperfect and abortive births. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... Rocky Mountains realize—nay, exceed—the dream of my childhood. It is magnificent, and the air is life giving. I should like to spend some time in these higher regions, but I know that this will turn out an abortive expedition, owing to the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... pay off the mortgage; but his brother-in-law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were owing, and he would accept all or none. The negotiation, which was the beginning of much litigation, thus proved abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor, John Brown, was embarrassingly importunate, and, after obtaining a writ of distraint, Brown informed the local court that the debtor had no goods on which distraint could be levied. {12b} On September ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... appear to be anything more to say, nor did Lord Jasper seem anxious to continue the conversation; but just when it appeared that the effort to be pleasantly chatty was likely to be abortive, Lord Jasper suddenly walked towards the door of the box. "Come and have a drink!" ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine



Words linked to "Abortive" :   abort, unfruitful, stillborn



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