Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Chaotic   Listen
adjective
Chaotic  adj.  Resembling chaos; confused.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Chaotic" Quotes from Famous Books



... Philosophy, and sometimes Theology, preparatory, in many cases, to succeeding his father in a sugar-cane and rice plantation. The average student had barely an outline idea of either physical or political geography, whilst his notions of Spanish or universal history were very chaotic. I really think the Manila newspapers—poor as they were—contributed very largely to the education of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... an architect as lightly as you would select a cravat. To him you are intrusting the task of putting your chaotic and half-expressed thoughts and desires into a set of plans that will guide and control masons, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and painters in their work. As your professional adviser, it will be his job to bridge the gap between the date of purchase and the happy occasion when your household ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... picture fastened itself firmly in Foma's mind, and growing clearer, larger and more vivid with each time it arose before him, rousing in his breast something chaotic, one great indefinite feeling into which fell, like streams into a river, fear and revolt and compassion and wrath and many another thing. All this boiled up within his breast into strained desire, which was thrusting it asunder into a desire whose power ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... of the cause. She was right, although she little imagines the reason; we could never have those readings together, and I fear I must manage with far fewer visits to my studio than I had hoped for. What an accursed chaotic old world it is anyway! How grateful she is because I merely treat her father politely! It would be impossible to do anything else, now that he is himself again, and yet, by this simple, easy method, I have won a friendlier ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... looked at him and grunted. "What difference does it make if it's good or not? It's happening. We're spreading our race out over tens of hundreds of new worlds in the most haphazard fashion. As a result, we of United Planets now have a chaotic mishmash on our hands. How we manage to keep as many planets in the organization as we do, sometimes baffles me. I suppose most of them are afraid to drop out, conscious of the protection ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... investigators who refused to work with it. In the old days it never missed a capable man. It paid his price. Its policy in those days was vigorous—unerring, and against it as it grew steadily and incessantly was only the chaotic selfish rule of the casually rich. In a hundred years Graham had become almost exclusive owner of Africa, of South America, of France, of London, of England and all its influence—for all practical purposes, that is—a power in North America—then ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... howling, empty, chaotic waste, for no purpose under heaven but to serve as food for idle fancies as to what might have been—such to me is the death of Brann, and my throat chokes with sorrow and my soul is sick ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... to do. He had a passion for organization, and fine capacity for work; he showed tact and skill in dealing with subordinates; he had a thorough knowledge and a high ideal of what an army should be. He seemed the Genius of Order as he educated and arranged the chaotic gathering of human beings, who came before him to be transmuted from farmers, merchants, clerks, shopkeepers, and what not into soldiers of all arms and into leaders of soldiers. To that host in chrysalis he was what each skillful drill-master is to his awkward squad. Under his influence privates ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... bodies they had to make those bodies capable of producing such a reflection. Therefore their activity began soon after the beginning of the Saturn evolution. When this happened, the body of Saturn was still chaotic material, which could ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... an eminent sense the right man in the right place. Besides publishing, from time to time, curious and interesting documents which he discovered in his office, he called attention, by a series of vigorous pamphlets, to the chaotic condition in which the public records of Great Britain were kept. Gradually these pamphlets made an impression, and they led at length to a reform in the office. The records were rearranged, catalogued, rendered safe, and ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... bodies have proclaimed have, no doubt, encountered a vast, unorganized, negative opposition from them, but the subtle and varied attack of natural forces they have neither the collective intelligence to recognize, nor the natural organization to resist. The shareholding body is altogether too chaotic and diffused for positive defence. And the question of the prolonged existence of this comparatively new social phenomenon, either in its present or some modified form, turns, therefore, entirely on the quasi-natural laws of the social body. If they favour it, it will survive; when they ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... conquerors. Further,—Ps. lxx. 4: "The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are melted,"—by the success of the conqueror of the world, the earth is, as it were, dissolved, and sunk back into the chaotic state of primitive time.—The words, "And it riseth up," are to be explained from the fact that the earth, changed into a great stream, cannot be distinguished from the water which covers it. The earth rises up, it is overflowed,—the earth sinks down, the water subsides. The last ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... he dashed his head against an overhanging rock, and fell. He retained sufficient consciousness, however, to be aware that a desperate struggle for life must be made, and, without knowing what he did, or at what he aimed, he fought with the strength of a giant in thick darkness against the chaotic flood; but his strength soon gave way, and in a few ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... the floating cloud transformed itself into the walls of the bateau cabin did the chaotic darkness of the sands fully possess him again. In that darkness he heard a voice. It was not the voice of Golden-Hair, or of Bateese, or of Jeanne Marie-Anne. It was close to his ears. And in that darkness ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... to wither his son with continued dignity and calm. The vagaries of Irish temper ordained otherwise. Kenny glanced at the fragments of a statuette conspicuously rearranged on a Louis XV table almost submerged in the chaotic disorder of the studio, and lost ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... house and the ordering of it were to be entirely Stella's, whereas it had been arranged that she and Amy should share in the management. So, leaving Vava with Eva to clear away, she followed Amy to her room, which did indeed look chaotic. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... thought that he also holds matter to be eternal. But when he speaks of God's almighty hand as having "created the world out of formless matter" (chap. 11:17), he may have reference simply to the chaotic state described ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... wholly unaware of it. Even if it had been otherwise, it is doubtful if Thorpe would have cared in the least. He was lost in a rushing train of thought. His brain had cleared under the stimulating potions of raw whiskey, and, just as before his chaotic state had made him unable to grasp things fully, now it was equally chaotic in an opposite direction. His brain was running riot with a clearness and rapidity that showed only too plainly the nervous tension under which he was laboring. He was piecing this latest ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... continually exposed, will account for the formation of many of those tremendous chasms and precipices which we see everywhere around us, as well as for the huge mounds of dislodged rocks and debris, which are piled up in such chaotic confusion on the ledges of the mountains ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... the habit of turning himself inside-out and gloating over the horrid spectacle. All his life he had been a simple soul with simple motives and a simple though possibly selfish standard to measure them. But now his soul was knocked into a chaotic state of complexity, and his poor little standards were no manner of use. He saw himself as in a glass darkly, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... an historical expression of the successive Ages of the world's growth. The central fountain symbolizes the nebulous world, with its innate human passions. Out of a chaotic condition came Water (the basin), and Land (the fountain), and Light (the Sun, supported by Helios, and the electroliers). The braziers and cauldrons symbolize Fire. The two sentinel columns to the right and left of the tower symbolize Earth and ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... were not in reality changed; they had only ebbed for the moment. No sooner did Congress meet in its second session in January, 1790, and undertake the task of reorganizing the chaotic finances of the country, than political unanimity vanished, and new sectional and class antagonisms came rapidly to the front in which could be traced the return of the old-time colonial habits. The central figure was no longer Madison, but Hamilton, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... had been informed A of the chaotic state of affairs, and arrived at Glencoe early the next morning. The burghers were called together, and the President, leaning out of the window of his railway carriage, asked them to join him in singing a psalm. He then offered up a fervent prayer for guidance, after which he addressed the ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar

... never dream of in all thy Pantheistic reveries. Search over all the religions of the world—the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the arrow-headed inscriptions of Assyria, the classic mythologies of graceful Greece and iron Rome, the monstrous shasters of thine Indian Pundits, or the more chaotic clouds of thy German philosophies—in none of them wilt thou ever find this divine thought, an end of destructions—a perpetual end. Cycles of ruin and renovation, and of renovation and ruin, vast cycles, if you ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Church in Canada is emerging from its first chaotic state. The visit of Mgr. Septeski to Canada, the appointment of the Very Reverend N. Budka as Bishop of all the Ruthenians in Canada, marked a turning-point in their history. Authority is, in the Church of God, the only great vital centre from ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... have plunged into a light wave and been transported instantaneously to Dona Rita's door it would no doubt have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this was impossible I elected to walk from end to end of that long way. My emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that they were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp. If one could have kept a record of one's physical sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... faced death. He had starved. He had frozen. He had run the deadliest gantlets of the elements, of beast, and of man. Yet was the strife in him now the greatest of all his life. His heart thumped. His brain was swirling in a vague and chaotic struggle for the mastery of things, and as he fought with himself—his unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared—he heard Nada's voice behind him, saying again that she was going with him and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... by no means so wild and imperfect as might be expected from a nation in such a chaotic and uncultivated condition. The people of Greece are hardly more civilized than the Servians, the Dalmatians, or any other of the half-savage tribes that inhabit the south-eastern corner of Europe, but the influence exercised by the antique glory of the land still remains ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... to the medical journals, but I would include with these the reports of medical associations, and those separate publications which, coming in the form of pamphlets, heap themselves into chaotic piles and bundles which are worse than useless, taking up a great deal of room, and frightening everything away but mice and mousing antiquarians, or possibly at long intervals ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a nation would be absurd, for nation, properly speaking, it is not; but to consider it in its present chaotic state, is well worth the labour. It would not only exhibit to the living a somewhat new picture of the human mind, but, as a curious page in the Philosophy of History, it would hereafter serve as a subject of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... absolutely certain that it cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time will come when it will cease to burn. We are led to look to a beginning in which the particles of matter were in a diffuse chaotic state, but endowed with the power of gravitation; and we are led to look to an end in which the whole Universe will be one equally heated inert mass, and from which everything like life, or motion, or beauty, ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... remains the one historian of the eighteenth century whom modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set aside." In preparing his History, Gibbon spent fifteen years. Every chapter was the subject of long-continued study and careful original research. From the chaotic materials which he found, he constructed a history remarkable as well for its scholarly precision as for the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... went far into Persia, which at that time was in a chaotic state, and where the Jews were much oppressed. From Basra, at the mouth of the Tigris, he probably visited the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf, which in the Middle Ages was a great emporium of commerce, and thence proceeded to Egypt by way of ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... he said, "why it should have any relationship to them. All the things we call good may really be bad; or some good and some bad in a quite chaotic fashion. There is no reason to suppose that our ideas about Good have any validity unless it were ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... cloak,—a garment of long ago,—in which he had constantly muffled himself during these days of easterly storm. He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together from the house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, in the lives of persons who lack real force of character,—moments of test, in which courage would most assert itself,—but where these individuals, if left to themselves, stagger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever guidance may ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... filled with the noise of voices, hammers, and laughter. Groups of distracted women were forming and dissolving everywhere around chaotic masses of boards and bunting. Whenever a carpenter started for the door, or entered it, he was waylaid, bribed, and bullied by the frantic superintendents of the various booths. Messengers came and went, staggering under masses of evergreen, carrying ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... great! Poor Tom had tried. Byrne ran to the bed and attempted to lift up, to push off the horrible lid smothering the body. It resisted his efforts, heavy as lead, immovable like a tombstone. The rage of vengeance made him desist; his head buzzed with chaotic thoughts of extermination, he turned round the room as if he could find neither his weapons nor the way out; and all the time he ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... Perhaps some wealthy admirer of Akbar and his achievements may appear and provide the considerable funds required for the preparation of the desired treatise. The Christian antiquities of Agra also deserve systematic treatment. At present the information on record is in a chaotic state. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... us," they replied; and with this answer, with his organization yet uneffected, his plans more than ever chaotic, the Maccabee began another day. Shrewd and resourceful as he believed himself to be, he beheld plan after plan reveal its inefficiency. Forced by some act of the city to abandon one idea, the next that followed ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... Then the gee-pole would be the easier task, and a man would come back to it to rest after having completed his spell to the fore, breaking trail with the snowshoes for the dogs. Such work was far from exhilarating also, they must expect places where for miles at a time they must toil over chaotic ice-jams, where they would be fortunate if they made two miles an hour. And there would be the inevitable bad jams, short ones, it was true, but so bad that a mile an hour would require terrific effort. Kama and Daylight did not talk. In the nature of the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... fairly communicative, but as soon as the actual struggle of achieving a personal religion sets in under the pubertal stress the sphinx itself is not more reticent. The normal boy is indisposed to talk about the affairs of his inner life. Probably they are too chaotic to formulate even to himself. If he is unspoiled he clothes his soul with a spiritual modesty which some of his sentimental elders might well cultivate. If he does break silence it will probably be in terms of the religious cult ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... accepted; withdrew to Southampton,—Olaf at least did,—till the money was got ready. Strange to think of, fierce Svein of the Double-beard, and conquest of England by him; this had at last become the one salutary result which remained for that distracted, down-trodden, now utterly chaotic and anarchic country. A conquering Svein, followed by an ably and earnestly administrative, as well as conquering, Knut (whom Dahlmann compares to Charlemagne), were thus by the mysterious destinies appointed ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... possessed power and wisdom to a great degree. As he intended the earth for the habitation of animals and vegetables, is it reasonable to suppose, he made two jobs of his creation, that he first made a chaotic lump and set it into rotatory motion, and then waited the millions of ages necessary to form itself? That when it had done this, he stepped in a second time, to create the animals and plants which were to inhabit it? ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... our spacious bay and view for the first time the eccentric sky-line of lower New York, he would rub his eyes and wonder if they were not playing him a trick, for distance and twilight lend the chaotic masses around the Battery a certain wild grace suggestive of Titan strongholds or prehistoric abodes of Wotan, rather than the business part of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... ratiocination, a mechanical swaying of rhetoric, are the grounds of dissertation. A pause for a few days, a visit to the country, anything that would seem designed to restore the mind to its normal state, destroys the faculty. The weary penman, who wishes his chaotic head could be relieved by being transformed even as by Puck, knows that very whirling chaos is the condition of his multitudinous periods. It seems as if some special sluices of the soul must be opened to force the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... fully matured in his Metamorphoses. It is a mixture of poetical and prose diction, of archaisms and modernisms, of rare native and foreign terms, of solecisms, conceits, and quotations, which render it repulsive to the reader and betray the chaotic state of its creator's canons of taste. The story is copied from Lucian's Aoukios ae Onos, but it is on a larger scale, and many insertions occur, such as adventures with bandits or magicians; accounts of jugglers, priests of Cybele, and other vagrants; details on ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... stresses and conflicts of that chaotic time there was already dawning the light of a new era. The spirit of humanity was escaping, even then it was escaping, from its extreme imprisonment in individuals. Salvation from the bitter intensities of self, which had been a conscious religious end for thousands of ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... color which is more particularly associated with the protection of British interests. The sunshine has appeared to rest upon scattered clusters of red-coats, while the background has been enveloped in a sort of chaotic and fuliginous dimness. The red-coats, according to their number, have been palpable and definite, though a great many other things have been inconveniently vague. At the beginning of the year, when Parliament was opened in the queen's name, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... more or less taken those into consideration and classified them under insects and diseases and marketing and harvesting and varieties. I will not have time to touch upon very many of these. Our harvesting situation is completely chaotic. Within the last two ot three years shaking machines have been developed, and we are indebted to the West Coast growers for these inventions, which are very helpful. Previous to that a, long bamboo pole was used to knock the pecans from the trees, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... Ministry undertook the government of the country"—"a policy," to adopt the equally strong and just language of an able writer, "replete with auspicious evidences of the efficacy of intellect, combined with firmness, activity, and integrity, in restoring to wholesome and honourable order a chaotic jumble of anomalies—of humiliations and dangers—of fears, hatred, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... elements are found in other tribes: most of them belong to the whole Indian race. Undoubtedly there was a distinct and definite effort of legislation; but Iroquois legislation invented nothing. Like all sound legislation, it built of materials already prepared. It organized the chaotic past, and gave concrete forms to Indian nature itself. The people have dwindled and decayed; but, banded by its ties of clan and kin, the league, in feeble miniature, still subsists, and the degenerate Iroquois ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... seemed to him as though ten thousand invisible hands were sweeping under the heavens extinguishing the lights first in ones and twos and then in whole constellations. It preceded by perhaps half an hour the utter and chaotic blackness that comes before the northern dawn, and it was this darkness that Philip dreaded as ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... recently there has been little or no organization of rural life. Communities have been chaotic, socially, economically, and educationally. Real leaders have been wanting—men and women of strong and winning personality. The rural teacher, if he were a man of power and initiative, often proved ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... of proper names is in a state of somewhat chaotic transition which makes it difficult to take a definite course. The precisians themselves are not consistent: they still speak of Troy, Athens, Plato, and Aristotle. In the versions themselves the Greek forms have been preferred, though a pedantic ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious instinct. ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... Chaotic political and industrial conditions are, of course, occasionally inevitable in modern society—torn as it is by the very bitter struggle going on constantly between capital and labor. When this struggle ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... put my reader in some perplexity by these cursory and desultory remarks on German literature, I have succeeded in giving them a conception of that chaotic condition in which my poor brain found itself, when, in the conflict of two epochs so important for the literary fatherland, so much that was new crowded in upon me before I could come to terms with the old, so much that was old yet made me feel its ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... percentage of average daily attendance (71.1 per cent.), though slowly improving, is still very bad.[59] Many of the school-houses are, in the words of the Commissioners, "mere hovels," unsanitary, leaky, ill-ventilated. The distribution of schools and funds is chaotic and wasteful. Out of 8,401 schools (in 1909-10)[60] nearly two hundred have an average daily attendance of less than fifteen pupils. In 1730 the number is less than thirty, and it is not only in sparsely inhabited country districts, but in big towns, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... inauguration of President Lincoln there seemed to be a kind of interregnum, during which the confusion of ideas in the Border States as to their rights and duties as members of the "old" Union, as it began to be called, became positively chaotic. Virginia, still professing neutrality, prepared to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the navy-yard at Norfolk; she would prevent the passage of the United States' forces "with a serried phalanx of her gallant sons," two regiments ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... limitations of its own age, and assumed a position sub specie aeternitatis, that it was able to free itself from the prevalent confusion of the imaginary and the real, the word and the idea, and to perceive that success in allegory depends, not on the chaotic intermingling of the attributes of the type and the thing typified, but on so representing the one as to suggest ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... chaotic situation came exactly the result that was intended—the press got off our backs. Captain James's answers about the possibility of the radar targets' being caused by temperature inversions had been construed by the press to mean that this was the Air Force's answer, ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... men who should stand gazing upon the ruins of Westminster Abbey, while the shadows of night crept into their dark caverns and into their yawning chasms of chaotic masonry, with a gleam of moon upon their riven towers and fingers of pale light touching the ribs of isolated arches. In the spaciousness of the Grande Place at Ypres my friend and I stood like the last men on earth in a city ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... three years at the East, Mr. Smyth accepted a call to the pastoral charge of a church in Michigan. It was a village of a few hundred people, in a new and wild region. Society was in a chaotic condition, and there were but few who had either the ability or the disposition to do much for the young pastor's support or encouragement. The locality was unhealthy, and Mr. Smyth suffered severely from prevalent diseases. But during a ministry there of four ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... 1871, we began the purchase of some of the more important of the refinery interests of Cleveland. The conditions were so chaotic and uncertain that most of the refiners were very desirous to get out of the business. We invariably offered those who wanted to sell the option of taking cash or stock in the company. We very much preferred to have them take the ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... irregular, desultory; anomalous &c. (unconformable) 83; acephalous[obs3], deranged; aimless; disorganized; straggling; unmethodical, immethodical[obs3]; unsymmetric[obs3], unsystematic; untidy, slovenly; dislocated; out of sorts; promiscuous, indiscriminate; chaotic, anarchical; unarranged &c. (see arrange &c. 60)[obs3]; confused; deranged &c. 61; topsy-turvy &c. (inverted) 218; shapeless &c. 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous[obs3]; riotous &c. (violent) 173. complex &c. 59a. Adv. irregularly &c. adj.; by fits, by ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... back to the chaotic street and the now breakfasting regiment, feeling that strikes, anarchists, and dynamite were only minor circumstances ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... will perceive that Dr. Blecker, like most men fighting their way up, was too near-sighted for any abstract theories. Liberty, he thought, was a very poetic, Millennium-like idea for stump-speeches and college-cubs, but he grappled with the time the States were too chaotic, untaught a mass for self-government; he cursed secession as anarchy, and the government at Washington for those equally anarchical, drunken whims of tyranny; he would like to see an iron heel put on the whole concern, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... one end to the unequal contest. The girl—a helpless spectator—realized that, though she could with difficulty perceive what took place, it was all so chaotic. She tried to draw nearer, but bearded faces intervened; rough hands thrust her back. She would have called out but the words would not come. It was like an evil dream. As through a mist she saw one among many who had entered from the deck—a giant in size. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... nurse. He very soon fell into a dream, which began quietly enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which dreams are in the habit of undergoing became successively anxious, distressing, terrifying. His earlier and later experiences came up before him, fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... discover the principles of the Rosicrucians, but it is much easier to discover the principles of the Rosicrucians than the principles of the United States: nor has any secret society kept its aims so quiet as humanity. The way to be inexplicable is to be chaotic, and on the surface this was the quality of Browning's life; there is the same difference between judging of his poetry and judging of his life, that there is between making a map of a labyrinth and making a map of a mist. The discussion of what some particular allusion in Sordello means has ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... young ice "rafts," so forming double thicknesses of a toffee-like consistency. Again the opposing edges of heavy floes rear up in slow and almost silent conflict, till high "hedgerows" are formed round each part of the puzzle. At the junction of several floes chaotic areas of piled-up blocks and masses of ice are formed. Sometimes 5-ft. to 6-ft. piles of evenly shaped blocks of ice are seen so neatly laid that it seems impossible for them to be Nature's work. Again, a winding canyon may be traversed between icy walls 6 ft. to ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... persons, any kind of movement, any jerk or chaotic action, is an exercise. They think that the more effort put forth, the better. Thus some teachers of voice contend that, to be an exercise, there must be muscular effort in producing tone. On the contrary, many movements ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... the fraction of a second. Yet in that brief time his eyes registered the chaotic sweep in advance of the cloud. There came a crashing of buildings in some monster whirlwind, a white cloud engulfing it all.... ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... to mind the dinner—the turtle, venison, and turbot—and the popping of the corks from the throats of the champagne bottles. I was conscious, too, that I had made a speech; but, beyond this point, all the events of the night were lost in chaotic confusion. One thing, however, was certain—I was a bona fide Lord Mayor—and being aware of the arduous duties I had to perform, I resolved to enter upon them at once. Accordingly I arose, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various

... Despite the chaotic confusion, the boys managed to locate the plant superintendent—a harried, middle-aged man named Simkins—who was doing his best to restore order. Simkins, who had not been injured, informed them that electricians were rigging an emergency telephone line in order to ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... himself, consisted of four men and four ponies. Leaving Cape Royds, where the expedition wintered in a hut, in November, they marched due south on the Barrier outside Scott's track until they were stopped by the eastward trend of the range of mountains, and by the chaotic pressure caused by the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... with sights, our minds were chaotic with strange ideas and tongues, but yet we felt how misunderstood that beautiful county is, how well worthy of careful study, and what a delightful new field it opens up to the traveller who, though he ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... not properly tidy now,' said Elizabeth, opening a most chaotic table-drawer, 'see, there is a proof of it. However, I do not think I have been shamefully slovenly in my own person since that explosion, and I have scarcely been spoken to about it. Who could disregard such an appeal? But, ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of a League of Free Nations must necessarily be the creation of an authority that may legitimately call existing empires to give an account of their stewardship. For an unchecked fragmentary control of tropical and chaotic regions, it substitutes the possibility of a general authority. And this must necessarily alter the problems not only of the politically immature nations and the control of the tropics, but also of the regulation of the ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... hull at each successive blow she received from the seas, mingled with the cries and shrieks of those who had remained on deck, or had fallen from the rigging and been washed overboard, together with the oaths and blasphemies of many of the survivors, mingled in one chaotic and terrific uproar, which stunned and bewildered the senses. Some hours thus passed. At last Hemming's voice was heard calling them quickly out of the rigging; without hesitation they obeyed him. The brig had heeled over on her side, and her decks were ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... nothing; here sunset and sunrise were as incidents of an uncalendared, everlasting day; here chaotic grandeur was that of the earth's crust when it cooled after the last ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... deadly fighter known to the mahouts, was exulting in strength. It was his joy-song. It came from straight ahead. Mitha Baba answered with a rollicking squeal. But the wild herd voices were savage—chaotic. Now Nut Kut's challenge came back—looming. The situation was ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... Eddic trinity. This trinity is represented in a number of ways: by Odin, Vile and Ve in the creation of the world, and by Odin, H[oe]ner and Loder in the creation of Ask and Embla, the first human pair. The number three figures extensively in all mythological systems. In the pre-chaotic state we have Muspelheim, Niflheim and Ginungagap. Fornjot had three sons: Hler, Loge and Kare. There are three norns: Urd, Verdande and Skuld. There are three fountains: Hvergelmer, Urd's and Mimer's; etc. (See Norse Mythology, pp. ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... This chaotic state of things has brought some botanists to the conviction that even in systematic studies only direct experimental evidence can be relied upon. This conception has induced them to test the constancy of species and varieties, and to admit as real ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... Christian soul, and is to be found by us all upon the path so plainly marked out in our text and its connections—'believe,' 'love,' 'obey.' Then the Dove of God will flutter down upon our heads and nestle in our hearts, and brooding over the solemn and solitary sea of our chaotic spirits, will bring up from it a new world glistening in fresh order and beauty, and 'very good' in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... things to say, he can get nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, is stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;—they are not shaped at all, these thoughts of his; flung-out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. We said "stupid": yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of Mohammed's Book; it is natural un-cultivation rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... Harold Frederic's philosophy of the Irish Question was that he had arrived at a diagnosis of the Irish mind not substantially different from my own. Since that evening I have come across a passage in one of his novels, which clothes in delightful language his view of the chaotic psychology ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... was not yet very high; it was besides rather foggy, so that in the darkness all objects seemed mingled in chaotic confusion. At the next corner hung a votive lamp before a Madonna, but the light it gave was little better than none at all; indeed, he did not observe it before he was exactly under it, and his eyes fell upon the bright colors of the pictures which represented ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... chaotic and even contradictory,[3] without order, a medley of outbursts of joy and bitter sobs, of hopes and regrets. There are passages in which the passion of the soul speaks in every possible tone, runs over the whole gamut from the softest note to the most ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... long sigh of relief. That intelligence simplified existence enormously. He had had a hopeless feeling, of late, that life was too complex an affair for him to grapple with. Now, as by a flash, order was restored in his chaotic universe. He stood gazing in rapture at Miss Jones's blushing face, which seemed angelic in its purity and its dignified maidenhood. That there dwelt a sweet young soul behind those blameless ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... people of that age were phrase slaves. The abjectness of their servitude is incomprehensible to us. There was a magic in words greater than the conjurer's art. So befuddled and chaotic were their minds that the utterance of a single word could negative the generalizations of a lifetime of serious research and thought. Such a word was the adjective UTOPIAN. The mere utterance of it could damn any scheme, no matter how sanely conceived, of economic amelioration ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... failure of nerve.'—We are treading here upon somewhat firmer ground than in the first two essays. The field for mere conjecture is less: we are supported more continuously by explicit documents. Yet the subject is a very difficult one owing to the scattered and chaotic nature of the sources, and even where we get away from fragments and reconstructions and reach definite treatises with or without authors' names, I cannot pretend to feel anything like the same clearness about ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... customary ways and forces were abolished. The country was about to be governed by new principles, new forms, and new men. All the assistance that order derives from habit and tradition, from local connection and personal credit, was lost. Society had to pass through a dangerous and chaotic interval, during which the supreme need was a vigorous administration. That is the statesmanlike idea which held possession of Mirabeau, and guided him consistently through the very tortuous and adventurous course of his last ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... scouting party decided to stop and investigate a huge opening in the rocky mountainside. How suspiciously regular and even it looked, particularly in comparison to the rest of the countryside which was jagged and chaotic. ...
— Longevity • Therese Windser

... city passed into the control of the Bolsheviki but not without severe fighting in which more than three thousand people were slain. On the collapse of the Kerensky government conditions throughout Russia became chaotic. Ukraine declared its independence, and Finland also severed its connection with Russia. General Kaledines declared against the Bolsheviki, and organized an army to save the country. Siberia, Bessarabia, Lithuania, the Caucasus and other districts ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... whirring engines and Nolan's pleasant eyes were harmoniously mingled. And when at last she started up into active consciousness again, and rushed pellmell to bed, mindful of her responsibility as a business girl, sleep came very slowly. And when it came at last, it was a chaotic jumble of excited ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... fantastic-looking dishes of food, and the revellers, with their flushed faces and feverish eyes and loud laughter. Above all the tumult was the voice of the orchestra, calling, calling, like the storm wind upon the mountains; the music was wild and chaotic, and produced an indescribable sense of pain and confusion. When one realized that this same thing was going on in thousands of places in this district it seemed that here was a flood of dissipation that ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... the spell of such a master, might indeed be able to comfort the sick and sorry, and to whisper in their ears that cosmic secret—"Bon Espoir y gist au fond!" "Good Hope lies at the Bottom!" "Good Hope" for all; for the best and the worst—for the whole miserable welter of this chaotic farce! ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... was growing in strength and numbers, it was also becoming more definite and coherent. Prior to 1530 it was almost impossible to tell where Lutheranism began and where it ended. There was a large, but vague and chaotic public opinion of protest against the existing order. But after 1530 it is possible to distinguish several parties, three of which at first reckoned among the supporters of the Reformation, now more or less definitely ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... sadly and started to walk slowly across the sunlit grass. Mortimer watched her, his brain in a whirl of chaotic thoughts. She disappeared through ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... regiments had thrown down their arms, which were lying in regular lines on the ground, as if for inspection; suppers just prepared had been abandoned; tents, baggage, wagons, cannons, half-slaughtered oxen, covered the foreground in chaotic confusion, while in the background a host of many thousand Yankees were discerned scampering for their lives as fast as their limbs could carry them, closely followed by our men, who were taking prisoners by the hundreds, and scarcely ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... when I eyed the transfigured scene it did not seem exactly like a bonfire or any ritual illumination. It was too chaotic, and too close to the houses of the town. All one side of a cottage was painted pink with the giant brush of flame; the next side, by contrast, was painted as black as tar. Along the front of this ran a blackening rim or rampart edged with a restless red ribbon that danced and doubled ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... faculty indeed brilliant, clear, prompt, not deficient in depth either, or in any kind of active valour, but wanting the stern energy that could long endure to continue in the deep, in the chaotic, new, and painfully incondite—this marked out for him his limits; which, perhaps with regrets enough, his natural veracity and practicality would lead him quietly to admit and stand by. He was not the man to grapple, in its dark and deadly dens, with the Lernaean coil of social Hydras; perhaps ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... to have been an intention of editing the course of moral philosophy which, with more or fewer variations, obtained him the agreeable income of a thousand a year or so for thirty years. But whether (as Mrs. Gordon seems to hint) the notes were in too dilapidated and chaotic a condition for use, or whether Professor Ferrier, his son-in-law and editor (himself, with Dean Mansel, the last of the exact philosophers of Britain), revolted at the idea of printing anything ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible,—the only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... All these chaotic thoughts surging through her, and ever beside her the voice of Kenneth McVeigh, not the voice alone, but the eyes, at times appealing, at times dominant, as he met her gaze, and forbade that ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... insignificant medley of elements drawn from the experiences of waking life, but, in spite of their fantastic character, bear some semblance of ordered reality, so the impulses of even the most unintelligent and inconsequent of human beings are not wholly chaotic, but differ only in the degree of their organization from those of the most rational ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... intellect, in which all distinct traces of thought, and all memory of the past were momentarily lost. Her frame, too, at the best but slender and much enfeebled by the preceding interview with Osborne, and her present embarrassment, could not bear up against this chaotic struggle between delight and pain. It was, no doubt, impossible for her relatives to comprehend all this, and hence their alarm. She was too pure and artless to be suspected of concealing the truth; and they consequently entertained not the slightest suspicion of that ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... loomed up by their side, grim and pitiless as doom—a very door of adamant closed against all hope. Nearer and nearer they drew, until the roar of the baffled Pacific was deafening, maddening, in its overwhelming volume of chaotic sound. All hands stood motionless, with eyes fixed in horrible fascination upon the indescribable vortex to which they were being ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... mass of vapors in which perhaps, all the oceans of the earth are suspended as clouds. I see that the sun still rises and sets to give the succession of day and of night, but the day and the night together only amounted to three hours, instead of twenty-four. Almost touching the chaotic mass of the earth is another much smaller and equally chaotic body. Around the earth I see this small body rapidly rotating, the two revolving together, as if they were bound by invisible bands. The smaller body ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... foolishly called double or multiple "personality." This is a disease proper to the passive-minded, to those who give way to a "drifting" tendency, and habitually suffer their whole interests to be absorbed by the strongest sensation or emotion that presents itself. Such minds are generally chaotic and unorganized, as is revealed in the rambling, involved, interminably parenthetical and digressive character of their conversation. But when, as with Mother Juliana, we find unity and coherence, we may infer that there has been a life-long habit of active mental ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... when once the die was thrown, With what unselfish patient skill, Clear-piercing flame of changeless will, The one high heart that moved alone Sedate through the chaotic strife,— He ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... the music and papers on the table; in chaotic drawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the washstand; between door and stove, through a kind of rubbishheap that had formed with time, of articles of dress, spoiled sheets of music-paper, soiled linen, empty bottles, and boots, countless boots, single and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... to say, know exactly what he means, in words, or mean exactly what, to souls less gloriously chaotic, his words appear to express? I have always felt this ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... sort of emotion was surging through him in a chaotic tangle. Nothing seemed clear; anger, revolting, even hatred, all fought for place. And through it all the pleading tones of the girl would not ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... as I did so, an icy touch fell on my shoulder. I dared not turn; I sat motionless, petrified, frozen. The touch passed to my forehead and from thence to my chin, my head swung round forcibly, and I saw—nothing—only the shadow; but how different, for out of the chaotic blotches there now appeared a well—a remarkably well—defined outline, the outline of a head and hand, the head of a fantastic beast, a repulsive beast, and the hand of a man. A flock of swallows swirled overhead, a grasshopper chirped, a ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... Consciousness of God's forgiveness to us; or even with the effort, we become capable of believing that God can forgive us. No man who will not forgive his neighbour, can believe that God is willing, yea, wanting to forgive him, can believe that the dove of God's peace is hovering over a chaotic heart, fain to alight, but finding no rest for the sole of its foot. For God to say to such a man, "I cannot forgive you," is love as well as necessity. If God said, "I forgive you," to a man who hated his brother, and if (as is impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... considered to be the most available spot and drew his horse up. The rest must be done on foot. No horse could hope to struggle over such a chaotic path. At his suggestion both animals were tethered within the shelter of trees. At least the trees would afford some slight protection should any more of the cliff ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... disadvantage, with the progeny of Lahmu and Lahame, the gods on high. As the ways of these last were not those of Tiawath's brood, and Apsu complained that he had no peace by day nor rest by night on account of their proceedings, the three representatives of the chaotic deep, Tiawath, Apsu, and Mummu, discussed how they might get rid the beings who wished to rise to higher things. Mummu was apparently the prime mover in the plot, and the face of Apsu grew bright at the thought of the evil plan ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... brain, where all the monsters are made, moved horribly in the Gaelic O'Brien. He felt the chaotic presence of all the horse-men and fish-women that man's unnatural fancy has begotten. A voice older than his first fathers seemed saying in his ear: "Keep out of the monstrous garden where grows the tree with ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... into the empire at the beginning of the 4th century, and in the confusion which followed, an adventurer named Liu Yuen established himself (in 311) as emperor, first at P'ing-yang in Shan-si and afterwards in Lo-yang and Chang-an. The history of this period is very chaotic. Numerous states sprang into existence, some founded by the Hiung-nu and others by the Sien-pi tribe, a Tungusic clan, inhabiting a territory to the north of China, which afterwards established the Liao dynasty in China. In 419 the Eastern Tsin dynasty came to an end, and with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... No, but I have tried to read him, and failed. I think he had a very crude, chaotic mind ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... soothed and satisfied with a rapidity and completeness unattainable by other and more polite methods. Do you suppose," he went on, flicking a twig off a tree with his whip as we passed, "that the intellectual husband, wrestling intellectually with the chaotic yearnings of his intellectual wife, ever achieves the result aimed at? He may and does go on wrestling till he is tired, but never does he in the very least convince her of her folly; while his brother in the ragged coat has got through the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... with intimations, I am clothed with consequences, And the air I breathe is coloured with apocalyptic blush: Ripest-budded odours blossom out of dim chaotic stenches, And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... in the shape of a most chaotic pure experience which sets us questions, of a SECOND in the way of fundamental categories, long ago wrought into the structure of our consciousness and practically irreversible, which define the general frame ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... brightest wit must say some dull things, and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a double-entendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... this hour I invite you to seek with me some principle to make our tolerance less chaotic. And, as I began my previous lecture by a personal reminiscence, I am going to ask your indulgence for a similar ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... be in the way, Sylvia departed to the barn, where she found her party in a chaotic Babel; for the offshoots had been as fruitful as the parent tree, and some four dozen young immortals were in full riot. The bashful roosting with the hens on remote lofts and beams; the bold flirting or playing in the full light of day; the boys whooping, the girls screaming, all effervescing ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... in Virginia that he began the composition of his only novel, Tiger Lilies, which was not completed, however, till 1867. It is now out of print. Though immature and somewhat chaotic, it clearly reveals the imaginative temperament of the author. War is imaged to his mind as "a strange, enormous, terrible flower," which he wishes might be eradicated forever and ever. As might be expected, music finds an honored place in its pages. ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... American education of to-day is in a chaotic condition, due to the want of any definite idea of what education is aiming at. There is evidence that the ancients of New England used to birch their boys, but after independence had been fought for and won, higher aims prevailed. The ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... the lieutenant's body dragged heavily upon his left arm. His strength was ebbing away fast. His arm became numb and his senses chaotic. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll

... restoring public credit, of drawing order and arrangement from the chaotic confusion in which the finances of America were involved, and of devising means which should render the revenue productive, and commensurate with the demand, in a manner least burdensome to the people, was justly classed among the most arduous of the duties which devolved ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... these were overshadowed by others of a conflicting nature, and though he did not array himself as a champion of Rationalism, he proved himself one of the strongest promoters of its reign. He considered his age torpid and sluggish. It was his desire to awaken it. And he did succeed in giving to the chaotic times in which he lived that literary direction which we now look back upon as the starting-point of recent German literature. The chief evil that he inflicted was due to the position in which he placed himself ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... fitting the thing to an accurate fraction of a millimetre, as we always fit these things—we who are careful and honest workmen—to show an idle man's friends the hairs on a flea's fore-leg. If that isn't enough to make a man ashamed of our present wasteful and chaotic organisation, I should think he must be a survival from the preglacial epoch—as, indeed, most of ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... in the matter, I contented myself with making a mental note of the name which appeared above the establishment—J. Salaman—and walked on, my mind in a chaotic condition and my heart beating with ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... said at last, resuming his dismal endeavor to arrange and assort the chaotic remnant of his goods, 'I got your box under weigh last night. There's a friend of mine going to see it; and you needn't be worrying on account of this—this fire; for I shall have money enough to push your business pretty soon; and there are two good fellows standing ready to buy your rights ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Hospital Transport service was under the management of the Sanitary Commission, we have elsewhere detailed, and have also given some glimpses of its chaotic confusion, its disorder and wretchedness under the management of government officials, early in the war. Under the efficient direction of Surgeon-General Hammond, and his successor, Surgeon-General Barnes, there was a material improvement; ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... meetings with enemies. In the midst of all there were moments of perfect peace made up of reminiscences of a high-porticoed house, the grass-grown wheel-tracks and the sandy beach of the village on the Connecticut coast where his early home had been. His fancies were rich and full, but slightly chaotic. So also his will was strong and imperious ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... He felt as if seized with vertigo; and a stunned, chaotic sense of mortal peril shot through his brain, as Marie's solemn warning with respect to Derville rose up like a spectre ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... was in its usual chaotic turmoil and it was impossible to get a taxi, so we had to walk. But the general did not seem at all averse to the exercise. It seemed to me he rather enjoyed returning the salutes with the greatest punctilio and flourish. On our way we came to one of the capital's most famous taverns ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... cool on the surface, but in a chaotic, almost idiotic inward condition: "I've sat here for days, wishing all the while that I might really know you. Would you care to let ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers

... things in such a chaotic state, military operations in the Indian country, during the autumn and early winter were almost negligible.[892] Steele expected that the Federals would attempt a drive from Fort Smith to the Red ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... in a tumult as he ran down the line of cabins. From every doorway men were now stumbling, half-dressed, half-asleep. Behind them, in many cabins, alarmed, agitated women appeared. Farther on there were lanterns and a chaotic mass of moving objects. Above the increasing clamour rose the horrible, uncanny wail of a woman. Percival's blood cooled, his brain cleared. Men shouted questions as he passed, and obeyed ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... probatalanto. Chance hazardo. Chance (to happen) okazi. Chancel hxorejo. Chancellor kanceliero. Chandelier lustro. Change sxangxi. Changeable sxangxebla. Channel kanalo. Chant kantado. Chaos hxaoso. Chaotic hxaosa. Chapel kapelo. Chaplain ekleziulo. Chapter cxapitro. Char bruleti. Character karaktero. Character (theatre) rolo. Characterize karakterizi. Charge (attack) atakegi. Charge (price) kosto. Chariot cxaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... clean-cut line. And beyond lay the rampart hills, fringed and patched with disheveled bluff, split by rifts and yawning chasms. And ever they rose higher and higher as the distance gained, and, though summer was not yet at its height, it was gaunt-looking, torn, chaotic, a ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... the blaze of sunshine, which it distils into venom. Sometimes the level plain is broken up into savage ridges and awful canons, along whose arid bottoms no water streams. As you stagger through their chaotic bottoms, you see vast boulders poised overhead, tottering to a fall; a shiver of earthquake, a breath of hurricane, and they come crashing and splintering in destruction down. Along the sides of these acclivities extend long, level lines and furrows, marks ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... scarcely recognized by the nobility of Germany, and only partially by that of England. The habits of refined society are very much the same everywhere. The man or woman of real culture recognizes certain forms as necessary, that social intercourse may be ordered instead of being arbitrary and chaotic; but these forms must not be allowed to limit the free, expansive contact of mind with mind and character with character, which is the charm and blessing of society. Those who meet within the same walls meet upon an equal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... a principle of public relations, furnished no bond whatever which was stable enough to countervail the alliances of religion. In a condition, therefore, of public law which was little less than chaotic, those views of a state system to which the Roman jurisconsults were supposed to have given their sanction alone remained standing. The shape, the symmetry, and the prominence which they assumed in the hands of Grotius are known to every educated man; but the great marvel of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... had become undisputed queen. Spain, to which Borrow speedily betook himself, was even in a worse state. She was in the throes of a six years' war. Queen Isabel II., a child of three, reigned over a chaotic country with her mother Dona Christina as regent; her uncle Don Carlos was a formidable claimant to the throne and had the support of the absolutist and clerical parties. Borrow's political sympathies ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter



Words linked to "Chaotic" :   disorganised, disorganized, helter-skelter, chaotic attractor



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com