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Debatable   Listen
adjective
Debatable  adj.  Liable to be debated; disputable; subject to controversy or contention; open to question or dispute; as, a debatable question.
The Debatable Land or The Debatable Ground, a tract of land between the Esk and the Sark, claimed by both England and Scotland; the Batable Ground.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books



... question which has two defensible sides, it does not make much difference whether one is easier to defend than the other: in a debate such a difference might destroy the usefulness of the subject. Though to some older minds the abolition of football is a debatable question, before an audience of undergraduates who had to vote on the merits of the question the subject would be useless, since the side which had to urge the abolition would here have an almost impossible ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... Ueskueb district in north-western Macedonia, which was still subject to Turkey; but in the summer of 1912 the two states compromised in a secret treaty upon their respective territorial ambitions, and agreed to refer the fate of one debatable strip to the arbitration of Russia, after their already projected war with Turkey had been carried through. There was a more formidable conflict of interests between Bulgaria and Greece. These two nationalities ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... possible to remove them from the domain of partisan politics. It would be a most desirable thing to put the fourth-class postmasters in the classified service. It is possible that this might be done without Congressional action, but, as the matter is debatable, I earnestly recommend that the Congress enact a law providing that they be included under the civil-service law and put in the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... a virgin solitude, unmarked by habitation, destitute of human inmate, abundant with game; for it was the debatable land between warring tribes, traversed only by hostile bands, the battle-ground of Iroquois and Algonquin hordes. None could dwell here in safety; even hunting-parties had to be constantly prepared for war. Through this region of blood and terror the canoes made their way, now reduced to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... softer materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying out ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... the Confederate cavalry leaders, was at the time a young officer in the Mounted Rifle Regiment, now known as the 3rd United States Cavalry. It was some years before the Civil War, and the regiment was on duty in the Southwest, then the debatable land of Comanche and Apache. While on a scout after hostile Indians, the troops in their march roused a large grisly which sped off across the plain in front of them. Strict orders had been issued against firing ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... premonition of his to-morrow, a vision of himself in skull-cap and seedy clothing (the trousers well-bagged at the knees) with rather more than a mere hint of an equator emphasized by grease-spots on his waistcoat, presiding over the fortunes of one of those dingy little Parisian shops wherein debatable antiques accumulate dust till they fetch the ducats of the credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a thrifty and respectable ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... bank your head thrice sweet and dear I lay, and spread your hair on either side, And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debatable borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... on the relation of eye to beak, as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual more than a sentence, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... and to scorn the base repose—to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the breezy leap of the torrent before the foetid stillness of the swamp. In the course of this Address I have touched on debatable questions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground—and this partly with the view of telling you that, as regards these questions, science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not to the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. [Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... singular, with such a weak link in the chain of communication from the Mediterranean to England, that the Admiralty, on the outbreak of the war with Spain, in the latter part of 1804, should have divided Nelson's command at this very point, leaving as a somewhat debatable ground, for mutual jealousy, that through which valuable interests must pass, and where they must be transferred. The reason and manner of this division, impolitic and inopportune as it was, and bitterly as Nelson resented it, seem to have been misunderstood. Convinced that he could not endure ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... heard the voice, in Canada. But the difference of time proves that the voice was heard several hours before the death. Here, then, is a chance coincidence, which looked very like a case of Telepathy. Another will be found in Mr. Dale Owen's Debatable Land, p. 364. A gentleman died 'after breakfast' in Rhenish Prussia, and appeared, before noon, in New York. Thus he appeared hours ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... opposed the policy of Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr O'Brien—whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable point with his friends—quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground, as he says himself, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... It is not proper, and my cap at home, too," Katy kept thinking as she fidgeted in her chair, and watched the girl setting the table so cosily for two, and occasionally deferring some debatable point to her as ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... weight. The general introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Another commentary on a very amusing ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so recently occupied on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... do we know or can we conjecture the number of the tablet whereon any law appeared. Consequently of the arrangement very little is ascertainable and the attribution of some items to certain tablets is debatable. The probable order of the fragments, which total over 115, has been inferred from various statements and from other indications ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous

... is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... illustrates one of the most debatable of all points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel clemency by which ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... restoration until it saw in the South what its majority believed to be loyal governments. Its majority could not believe that any party but its own was loyal, and was thus led to a policy much more debatable than that of actual reconstruction. Step by step it moved. The abolition of slavery, in the Thirteenth Amendment (effective December 18, 1865), was expected by all and accepted without a fight. The next amendment, inspired by a fear that the freedmen would be oppressed and ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... spread, gaping, yawning, unfolded, dehiscent; frank, unreserved, candid, ingenuous, guileless, overt, undisguised; generous, liberal, bounteous, open-handed; revealed, patent, manifest; unsettled, undetermined, debatable, undecided, controvertible; mild, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... America," by Annette E. Foth, is a pleasant juvenile story. E. Ralph Cheyney's extract from his essay on "Youth" is in many ways remarkable, and shows us that we have another recruit of choice quality. His rather peculiar ideas are well expressed, though their soundness is quite debatable. A few abnormal characters like Byron and Shelley doubtless experienced all the adolescent phenomena which Mr. Cheyney describes, but we believe that the average youth is a copyist, and for the most part reflects his environment. Radicalism and novel ideas arise just as much from blase, elderly ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... disposed to claim but little credit for a discovery which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the common insight of some hundred or more students in time past. The difficulty begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. There are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland between one period and the next, with one foot lingering and one advanced; and these must be classed according to the dominant note of their style, the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... power of analysis; a gift of shrewd speech, a command of hard words that will cut like a diamond; a mental vigour analogous to, though naturally not so powerful, as that displayed by Browning in The Ring and the Book. It is still a debatable proposition whether or not this is high-class poetry; but it is mixed with brains. Imagine the range of knowledge and power necessary to create two hundred and forty-six distinct characters, with a revealing epitaph for each one! The miracle of personal ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... everywhere here an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less mischievous, though it wear the ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... attitudes of men to women and of women to men are necessarily determined to a large extent by certain general ideas of relationship, by institutions and conventions. One of the most important and debatable of these is whether we are to consider and treat women as citizens and fellows, or as beings differing mentally from men and grouped in positions of at least material dependence to individual men. Our decision ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... business communities of the country is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation; and should also supplement that great act by legislation which will not only clarify it but also facilitate its administration and make it fairer ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... was clear to the leaders in Thebes that, unless some one struck the first blow, the Lacedaemonians would never be brought to break the truce with their allies. They therefore persuaded the Opuntian Locrians (4) to levy moneys on a debatable district, (5) jointly claimed by the Phocians and themselves, when the Phocians would be sure to retaliate by an attack on Locris. These expectations were fulfilled. The Phocians immediately invaded ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... not say whether he would or would not, and the talk went aside to less summary ways and means preservative of the Brentwood fortunes. But at the archway of the Camelot Club, where Kent paused, Ormsby went back to the debatable ground ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... brought on respiratory diseases, or bad beer dietary, is debatable, but the critics of the Company used the dreadful winter of 1622-23 to discredit its administration. They pointed out that the Company had sent large numbers of immigrants to Virginia without proper provisions, and to a colony ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... been to point out the controlling forces, the spiritual issues that lurk behind these problems. In debatable matters we always have tried to find that higher level which lies undisturbed by the cross-currents of opinions. Naturally there are conclusions we draw or forms of action we propose which may not find favour with ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... and a high estimate of wages; while others, actuated by a desire to emphasize the power of the capitalist classes, have minimized the share which goes as wages. At the outset of our inquiry, it might seem well to avoid such debatable ground. But the importance of the subject will not permit it to be thus shirked. The following calculation presents what is, in fact, a compromise of various views, and can only claim to be a rough approximation to ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... given above show some of the really minor debatable topics that arise under the larger question. They show, too, how differently the same incidents may appear to different eyes. Perhaps some of the "points" are stated unfairly, to give strength to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... dispute than is the existence of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority of the General's critics, and, on the other hand, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... following pages I have endeavoured to arrange briefly and concisely the various methods at present in use for the study of bacteria, and the elucidation of such points in their life-histories as are debatable or ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... against the troop of men that he heard. Collins, the liveryman, had told him that the country was full of trouble. This region was neither North nor South. It was debatable land, of which raiding bands would take full advantage, and, despite the risk, he wished to know what was on foot. He was almost invisible under the boughs of a great oak which hung over the road, and the horse, after so many miles of hard riding, was willing enough to stand still. The ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... that this week (the time of my wonderful experience with Mary Ryerson) was spent by the Committee of Twenty-one in explaining to the Crown Prince exactly what the Widding-Edison invention was. Models and blue prints were shown and American and German experts were called in to explain and discuss all debatable points. And the conclusion, established beyond reasonable doubt, was that German warships could not hope to defend themselves against the Widding-Edison method of torpedo attack. This was admitted by Field Marshal von Hindenburg and by Professor Hugo Muensterberg, ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... assumed such a geographical division of the kingdom into four provinces, as did not correspond with any ancient division, and still less with the modern, by which the number was multiplied to twelve. [3] The central portion, comprehending the Capitanate, the Basilicate, and the Principality, became debatable ground between the parties, each of whom insisted on these as forming an integral part of its own moiety. The French had no ground whatever for contesting the possession of the Capitanate, the first of these provinces, and by far the most important, on account of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... controllers, of those whom they represent but do not govern. It is much the same now. The peoples of European civilization, after a period of comparative repose, are again advancing all along the line, to occupy not only the desert places of the earth, but the debatable grounds, the buffer territories, which hitherto have separated them from those ancient nations, with whom they now soon must stand face to face and border to border. But who will say that this vast general movement represents the thought, even the unconscious thought, of any one man, as ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... such occasions, in the glow of Miss Limpenny's wax candles, Youth and Age held opposite camps, with the centre table as debatable ground; nor, until the rubber was finished, and the round game had ended in a seemly scramble for ratafias, would the two recognise each other's presence, save now and then by a "Hush, if you please, young people," from the elder sister, followed by a whispered, "What ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... expenditure of public money. In reply it is contended that the limitation of the tax to the wealthy or well-to-do classes is justified because these classes do not pay their fair share of the indirect national taxes, or of local property taxes. These debatable questions lie outside the scope of the present article. It is evident, however, that the income tax should not be criticized as if it were a single tax or formed the only source of revenue for the Federal government. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... Department with the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. Missouri on the Western side of the Mississippi, and Kentucky on the Eastern—respectively the Northernmost of the Western and Middle Slaveholding States—were debatable ground, and were already occupied, the former by both, the latter by one of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... room to any one curious as to the concerns of the Prince de Gonzague for other reasons than the presence of the three pictures, for to any one who knew anything about the arrangements of the palace this room represented, as it were, a kind of debatable land between the kingdom of Gonzague on the one side and the kingdom of Nevers on the other. A door on the left communicated with the private apartments of Louis de Gonzague. Cross the great room to the right, and you came to a door communicating with the private apartments of ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... to the modern. These then are two limits fixed in each direction; and somewhere between them must lie the frontier line. Now the era of Mahomet in the 7th century is evidently the exact and perfect line of demarcation; not only as pretty nearly bisecting the debatable ground, but also because the rise of the Mohammedan power, as operating so powerfully upon the Christian kingdoms of the south, and through them upon the whole of Christendom, at that time beginning to mould themselves and to knit, marks in the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... do anything wrong again as long as she lived! Her father paced up and down the room with a grave smile upon his lips, the little suppliant following with eager feet, ever renewing her request, and he answering little; for the matter was beyond her ken. But he was a Christian who kept off the Debatable land; and where his foot might not enter, he would not send his child. Had he not himself dedicated her to be the Lord's? She never went again. Never to the theatre; never again to any such place, until long afterwards; and with that going ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner

... this parable any important doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other aspects it may suggest solemn thoughts as a picture of successive ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... a hundred miles separated this mountain fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through this mountainous belt forbade any extended or continuous operations ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... however, of an unwritten constitution is that there are always a number of cases for which the law does not provide; and there were many more in the seventeenth century than there are to-day. These cases constituted the debatable land between the crown and parliament. Parliament assumed that the crown could neither diminish parliamentary privilege nor develop its own prerogative without parliamentary sanction; and it read this assumption back into history. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... room, slowly and with knitted brows. "If you mean the world-wide order,—the order of gentlemen,"—he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the table between him and Haward, "we may have that ground in common. The rest is debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a redresser of wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper I shall remain until the natural death of my term, two years hence. We ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... retailing. He paid ungraciously enough. If there was one man more than another in the camp he begrudged anything to it was Buck. Besides, it made him utterly furious to think that he never came up against this man on any debatable matter but what he managed to come ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... tobacco. For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but eventually found himself listening to a discussion—carried on over steaming tumblers of toddy—in regard to certain predispositions of the always debatable sex. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... moral, it is with special effort in favour of a limited class; but I yet trespass for a few moments on your patience in order to note that the acceptance of this second principle still leaves it debatable to what point the disfavour of the reprobate class, or the privileges of the elect, may advisably extend. For I cannot but feel for my own part as if the daily bread of moral instruction might at least be so widely ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... generations of rulers. Russia assumed guardianship of the nations having a preponderance of Slavic blood; Roumania with its Latin consanguinities was close to France and Italy; Bulgaria, Greece, and Balkan Turkey were debatable regions wherein the diplomats of the rival nations secured temporary ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... expressly granted, to be used in times of actual war, by the clause of the Constitution which we have just quoted, making him commander-in-chief of the national military force. Whenever the States, or any of them, cease to be debatable ground—that is, when the military force of the rebellion is put down, the military necessity ceases, and with it the authority of the President to appoint military governors. Nor is there danger of encroaching upon the liberties of the nation; for, as the power attaches ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorraine rather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable theory. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... flat, without water, and without any natural soil. The iron coast was surrounded on three sides, the north, the west, and the south, by a number of rocks and small islets, which fringed it like the trimming of a shawl. Its Phoenician occupiers early converted this debatable territory, half sea half shore, into solid land, by filling up the interstices between the rocks with squared stones and a solid cement as hard as the rock itself, which remains to this day.[436] The north-eastern portion, which has a length of 150 yards by a breadth of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... present it. Knowledge consists in being able to find a thing when you want it and accordingly an attempt has been made to pigeonhole each joke where it would be most useful. Such a classification is at best a difficult and debatable question, and numerous cross references have been placed wherever it was thought they might direct the reader to ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... woman, she has none the less misunderstood herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground, that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared to assert herself, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... seen on the west coast of Bali but not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[333] Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east of the Indus, which is the border district between the Oriental ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... air. There was a subdued, almost stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman, when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust over the crater, likely at any ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... remains have been found here. The Dee now runs with swift current past Overton to the ancient town of Holt, whose charter is nearly five hundred years old, but whose importance is now much less than of yore. Holt belongs to the debatable Powisland, the strip of territory over which the English and Welsh fought for centuries. Holt was formerly known as Lyons, and was a Roman outpost of Chester. Edward I. granted it to Earl Warren, who built Holt Castle, of which only a few quaint pictures now exist, though it ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... of warm sunshine and cool shade, of flowers and singing birds and sparkling waters, of blue skies and cloud-capped mountains—not unlike, it will be observed, the very scene which at the moment stretched before them. In so much they were all agreed, but there were several debatable points. Whether the stones were made of gold, and whether the houses were not gold too, and, that being the case, whether it would not hurt your eyes to look at them. Marietta declared, blasphemously, as the others thought, ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have 'shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots.' He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... are to assume that Poe is one of the most debatable figures in our literature. His life may be summed up as a pitiful struggle for a little fame and a little bread. When he died few missed him, and his works were neglected. Following his recognition in Europe came a revival of interest here, during which Poe was absurdly overpraised ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... sons—I want either to know them better, or not to know them at all. I want to enter the house, the furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing enough to throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to stand and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, happy and useful. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud listening, with rapt interest, to the chronicles ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... This was not a debatable question; undeniably he did need to be brought up with a sharp turn. It was in her mind that perhaps she had said enough; but she wished ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... appearance of aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But whether these "protoplasts" would, if we could examine them, be reckoned among the lowest microscopic algae, or fungi; or among those doubtful organisms which lie in the debatable land between animals and plants, is, in my judgment, a question on which a prudent biologist ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... criminals under a treaty on the demand of a foreign government presents a debatable ground in respect to the subject now under consideration. The surrender is an executive proceeding and a political act. But the laws may provide for a preliminary inquiry before a court into the propriety of complying with the demand. They certainly provide ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... a long shot, Katie," said Mrs. Bates. "Life has made a real woman of you. I kept watchin' you to-day comin' over; an' I was prouder 'an Jehu of you. It's a debatable question whether you have thrown away your time and your money. I say you've got something to show for it that I wish to God the rest of my children had. I want you should brace your back, and stiffen your neck, and make things hum here. Get a carpenter first. Fix the house ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... secretary of the navy, serving until 1846, when for a month he was acting secretary of war. During this short period in the cabinet he established the naval academy at Annapolis, gave the orders which led to the occupation of California, and sent Zachary Taylor into the debatable land between Texas and Mexico. He also continued his pleadings for the annexation of Texas, as extending "the area of freedom," and though a Democrat, took high moral ground as to slavery; he likewise made himself the authority on the North-Western ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... seem entrenched. A French post-office, a French hospital, French shops, hotels, missions, and above all the huge consulate, are there like advance posts of a greater invasion. There is an ominous look to these pretentious establishments holding strategic points in this or that debatable territory. Take the French consulates, here in Yunnan-fu and in Hoi-hou, or the Russian in Urga, the North Mongolian capital, they have more the aspect of a fortified outpost in a hostile country than the residence of the peaceful representative ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... courts; but with the development of ecclesiastical law in the middle of the twelfth century, it was inevitable that difficulties should spring up. The boundaries of civil and ecclesiastical law were wholly uncertain, the scientific study of law had hardly begun, and there was much debatable ground which might be won by the most arrogant or the most skilful of the combatants. Every brawl of a few noisy lads in the Oxford streets or at the gates of some cathedral or monastic school was enough to kindle the strife as to the jurisdiction of Church or State which ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... tells people how they may test any action so as to know what they ought to call it; it leaves well alone by avoiding all such debatable matters as reflex action, consciousness, intelligence, purpose, knowledge of purpose. &c.; it both introduces the feature of inheritance which is the one mainly distinguishing instinctive from so-called intelligent actions, and shows the manner in which ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... possession of Kansas. When the National Government adopted the popular sovereignty doctrine in solution of the Territorial problem between the two halves of the Union, freedom and slavery thereupon precipitated their forces upon the debatable land, and, for the first time, the men of the North and the men of the South came into actual physical collision in defence of their respective ideas and institutions. The possession of land is nine points of the law among Anglo-Saxons, and for this immense advantage both sides flung themselves ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... you were coming. I am very glad to see you." They took each other's hands, and Mrs. Warrender bent forward to give the kiss of welcome. They were two equal powers, meeting on debatable ground, fulfilling all the necessary courtesies. Not like this should Theo's mother have met his wife. It should have been a young creature whom she could have taken into her arms, who would have flung herself upon the breast of his mother, or at her ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... ministry constructed, containing both Baldwin and the French, then Bagot had better obtain from the new cabinet some assurance of "their intention of standing by the provisions of the Act of Union, including the Civil List, and every other debatable question." Then, fearing lest the very citadel of responsibility and control should be surrendered, he set forth his theory of government in an elaborate letter which revealed distinct distrust of his correspondent's power of resistance. "Your ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... made that it would seem clearly to be the development of a northern influence which first took shape after a definite form in a region safely comprehended as lying within the confines of northeastern France, the Netherlands, and the northern Rhine Provinces. Much has been written on this debatable subject and doubtless will continue to be, either as an arrow shot into the air by some wary pedant, or an equally unconvincing statement, without proof, of some mere follower in the footsteps of an illustrious, but behind the times, expert. It matters not, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... a half grown lad, with a rosy face, and laughing blue eyes. Larry Densmore expected to become a lawyer some fine day, and in evidence of his fitness for the business he was constantly asking questions, and finding debatable points in such matters as naturally ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... will have to be careful of the involuntary, unconscious and almost inevitable interference of telepathy, which is also very interesting, though it is a phenomenon of a different class, much less surprising and debatable than pure psychometry. He must also learn the art of interrogating the medium and refrain from asking incoherent and random questions about casual or future events. He will not forget that "clairvoyance is strictly limited to the perception of human ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... the argument two cases in which scrub fowl (MEGAPODIUS DUPERREYI TUMULUS) are concerned may be cited. Being a previously recorded fact, the first is excusable only on the grounds of its applicability to a debatable point. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, committing a breach of contract by this ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw "cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona's plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively, where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was the field of the travelling cider-maker. His press and mill ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... which were later included in books. Nor is there any reference to works of fiction. These are frequently important, and books of unusual interest are sometimes considered in the body of the work; but in such a study as the present imaginative literature can be hardly more than a secondary and a debatable source of information. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... now that I am concluding my story, how little I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy. My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, but ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... pretensions only to be justified by a revival of the sovereignty which was extinguished by the Treaty of Utrecht. Thus, they attempted systematically to prevent any English settlement at all upon the debatable shore. For residential, mining and agricultural purposes this strip would thus be withdrawn from colonial occupation. It is much to be regretted that these claims were not summarily repudiated. The Imperial Government, however, encouraged them by forbidding any grants of land along the area ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... other mention of Mr Walter than a proviso in relation to the subscriptions he had taken." Dr Wilson evidently writes under some conviction that his assertions are liable to scrutiny, and that the matter of his remarks is debatable; hence his allegation that other friends of Mr Robins are witnesses as well as himself, and his insinuation that what he testifies was no secret. But it is obvious, that, were his own assertions of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... were, a personal matter, at least in so far as love is concerned. For although the principal subject in Parsifal is not love, yet it plays a very prominent part in it. I am only touching upon these two alternatives. But if the latter debatable point be omitted, my analysis of Wagner's emotional life must have shown in which sense the inspired man may be rightly regarded as typical of the race. He leads the broadest and at the same time the most personal life, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... ungracious. It may have been due to irritation caused by the appearance of a second edition of Priestley's "Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland." Nevertheless the thoughtful and dignified men of the City—men who admired Priestley's broad catholic spirit and brave attitude upon all debatable questions, men who appreciated his scientific attainments, invited him to the following subscription dinner, as announced ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... cooked food; all animals do better fed on what they can digest. A lot of people have taken Pottenger's data and mistakenly concluded that humans also should eat only raw food. This idea is debatable. However, the most important result of the cat experiments took years to reveal itself and is not paid much attention to, probably because its implications are very depressing. Dr. Pottenger continued his experiments for several generations. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... publishers have my full permission to appropriate this story in the next edition of his "Debatable Land between this World and the Next." Should they do so, their readers will doubtless be favoured with an elaborate analysis of the facts, and with a pseudo-philosophic theory about spiritual communion with human beings. My wife, who is an enthusiastic ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft. Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... It was a debatable point, of course, why treacherous, sneaking hounds should be considered ineligible to talk about beetles, and I dare say a good cross-examining counsel would have made quite ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... the man whom he had been trained from boyhood to hate. As long as Ibraheim Omair remained within his own territory Ahmed Ben Hassan held his hand and kept in check his fierce followers, whose eyes were turned longingly towards the debatable land, but once let the robber Sheik step an inch over the border, and it was war, and war until one or both of the chiefs were dead. And if he died who had no son to succeed him; the huge tribe would split up in numerous little families for want of a leader ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... Foolish of him, for, man of the world to his fingertips, he knew perfectly well that a woman living with a man to whom she was not married could not be recognized by people with any pretensions to orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood those who have been divorced and are married again. But even a man of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... diplomatic covering of ceremony and further presents, the Aztec Emperor's reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... change their mills over to the gradual reduction process, that is, how far they can utilize their present plan of milling machinery in making the change. Of course the cleaning machinery is the same In both cases, so are the elevators, conveyors, bolting chests, etc. But to use the millstone is a debatable question. After carefully considering the matter I have come to the conclusion that it has its place, and an important one at that, under the new regime, viz., that of reducing the finer purified middlings ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... border-line between Russia and Turkey and with further indefinite promises, but he dared not. Accordingly he devised the plea that the aggrandizement of the Eastern and Western empires must keep equal pace, not in the West, for that was his by right, but in those debatable lands wherewith Russia hoped to secure a permanent seat in the councils of Europe. He was confirmed in his desire to postpone the partition of Turkey by finding that Mustapha, the Sultan who had overthrown Selim in defiance of France, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... of celebrated trials which for many years had been a feature of its volumes. The question whether "the appetite for the strange and marvellous" has abated in an appreciable degree with the passing of time and is not perhaps keener than it ever was, is a debatable one. But it is undeniable that the present volumes of the Annual Register have fallen away dismally from the variety and human interest of their predecessors. Of the trial and execution of Peace the volume for 1879 gives but the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... can take out that interest shortly. The road runs through debatable ground from St. Resa to de la Pama. Not an inch of it but what is being hotly contested. But it isn't the regulars that make the trouble, for at present the territory belongs to Peru, though how soon she will lose it is not ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... Protestant governments and Protestant nations. In the South were governments and nations actuated by the most intense zeal for the ancient Church. Between these two hostile regions lay, morally as well as geographically, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the contest was still undecided. The governments of those countries had not renounced their connection with Rome; but the Protestants were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... brings us back to that debatable thing—the pathos of Dickens—from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell is another. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... and, therefore, is obviously not Pantheism. Whether we should recognise as true Pantheism any theory involving the evolution of a finite world or worlds out of the divine substance at some definite epoch or epochs, may be a debatable question, provided that the eternity and inviolability of the divine oneness is absolutely guarded in thought. Yet I will anticipate so far as to say that, in my view, the question must be negatived. At any rate, we must exclude all creeds which tolerate the ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a hypothesis, not ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... waiting for him, and, after being duly cautioned by her mother to "be careful," though whether that was of any value or not is possibly debatable, the small, speedy craft again ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... Paul de Virieu would have found it very difficult to give an honest answer to the question. He was in a strange, debatable state of mind about ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they returned to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a horse,—such a horse as never yet bowed head to bit,—would stable it, with a companion, some twenty miles from London, and ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... Owen's consulting-room—a little woman with beautiful, melancholy eyes and a pretty figure. Illiterate, common, affected, and vain to a degree, hideously misusing the English language in that low, dulcet voice of hers, ludicrous in her application of the debatable aspirate to words in the spelling of which it has ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... drive of the Dead, Striving before the irresistible will Through the strange dusk of this, the Debatable land Between ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... of ready money, which, on being communicated to Deronda in private, might immediately draw from him a question as to the amount of the required sum: and it was this part of his forecast that Lapidoth found the most debatable, there being a danger in asking too much, and a prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire gave him no limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of Deronda's willingness. But now, in the midst of these airy conditions preparatory to a receipt ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... drink of the period was sizzling in the fire, Mr. Meredith recovered enough to pull out his purse and pay up the debatable levy. A moment later the steaming drink was poured into glasses, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... and historical sense and wrote freely and convincingly in support of his own views and in generous recognition of the ideals of his contemporaries. Many of his swans, to be sure, proved later to be geese, and it is debatable how much good was done by his rhapsodic praise to young Brahms; whether in fact he did not set before the youngster a chimerical ideal impossible of attainment. Schumann early came under the influence of Jean Paul Richter, that incarnation of German Romanticism, whom he placed on the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... proposes that they shall use the two speeches as illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection in his words ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... old Friends; to all who dwell Where Avon dhu and Avon gel Down to the western waters flow Through valleys dear from long ago; To all who hear the whisper'd spell Of Ken; and Tweed like music swell Hard by the Land Debatable, Or gleaming Shannon seaward ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... afternoon, in that debatable time when the owls in their corner were just beginning to wake up, two of the youngsters ran over quite near them. The temptation was irresistible. There was a light pounce, a light squeak instantly strangled, and one of the youngsters, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... but it is clear from his other work and from his private letters that they were his foibles. The figure of the Shepherd, who is the chief speaker and on the whole the most interesting, is a more debatable one. It is certain that many of Hogg's friends, and, in his touchy moments he himself, considered that great liberty was taken with him, if not that (as the Quarterly put it in a phrase which evidently ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... paper, rather dusty, as though it had lain by for some time. But it was the label that was attracting Poirot's attention. At the top, it bore the printed stamp of Messrs. Parkson's, the well-known theatrical costumiers, and it was addressed to "—(the debatable initial) Cavendish, Esq., Styles Court, ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... like a racing-yacht in a squall. We had met opposing currents of air in the debatable area where wind and fog struggled for the mastery. The fog had the mighty trade wind behind it, forcing it landward. Already we were approaching the sand-dunes, the very spot for an easy descent if ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... impartial sovereignty has been employed by His Excellency for partial purposes; that an undue and an unconstitutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our constitutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving classes of Her Majesty's subjects in this Province; that His Excellency has also employed the influence of the high office of the Queen's representative to procure and afterwards ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... demonstrates its fitness to undertake this work, as the state, when once it has achieved certain standards, is a more certain and reliable agency than private institutions or societies. But there is in philanthropic work, a large place for the private society or institution. There will probably always be debatable cases which may better be looked after by private agencies than by public. There is, therefore, in every well-developed community, room for both public and private agencies, although there should be close coperation where both exist one with the other. The church, through all its history, ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... We have passed the fortifications. The stuccoed houses of the suburbs, the factories, taverns, and gloomy hovels in the debatable land round Paris are so many points of sunshine in the far distance. The train is going at full speed. The fields of green or gold are being unrolled like ribbons before my eyes. Now and again a metallic sound and a glimpse of columns ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... points" (Mr. Playmore wrote) "which the recovery of the letter does not seem to clear up. I have done my best, with Mr. Benjamin's assistance, to find the right explanation of these debatable matters; and I have treated the subject, for the sake of brevity, in the form of Questions and Answers. Will you accept me as interpreter, after the mistakes I made when you consulted me in Edinburgh? Events, I admit, have proved that I was entirely wrong in trying ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... the "continuity of the germ-plasm," maintained by Weismann, the sexual elements of the generating organism pass on their properties directly to the sexual elements of the organism engendered. In this extreme form, the theory has seemed debatable, for it is only in exceptional cases that there are any signs of sexual glands at the time of segmentation of the fertilized egg. But, though the cells that engender the sexual elements do not generally appear at the beginning of the embryonic ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... Billy!" cried the young man, or boy—for he was on the debatable ground of eighteen, when one may be either boy or man, according to one's acts, deeds, or exploits, as it used to say in ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... the resolutions be made the order of the next morning at ten o'clock; Mr. Hall, of Marion county, moved to amend the motion to the effect that it be laid on the table. Mr. Battelle deplored the application of the gag rule. The question not being a debatable one, the vote was taken. By a majority of one vote of the forty-seven cast, the resolutions were indefinitely laid ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... our troops with undivided enthusiasm were his main theme. But he delivered himself on other subjects almost equally important. He paid his respects to the "Conscientious Objector," and he insisted at all times that "Murder is not debatable." "Murder is murder," he wrote Professor Felix Frankfurter, "and it is rather more evil when committed in the name of a professed social movement." * Mr. Frankfurter was then acting, by appointment of President Wilson, as counsel to a Mediation Commission, which was dealing with recent ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... disappointed in the practical result of our didactic reprehensions. In truth, the principle of non-interference is one on which we were already irrecoverably at variance in opinion with the allies; it was no longer debatable ground. On the one hand, the alliance upholds the doctrine of an European police; this country, on the other hand, as appears from the memorandum already quoted, protests against that doctrine. The question is, in fact, settled, as many questions ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... wild glen it was, to which, far back in times unknown to its annals, the family had given its name, taking in return no small portion of its history, and a good deal of the character of its individuals. It lay in the debatable land between highlands and lowlands; most of its inhabitants spoke both Scotch and Gaelic; and there was often to be found in them a notable mingling of the chief characteristics of the widely differing Celt and Teuton. The country produced more ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... topic as "Reprisals" (Art. 8), upon which the Brussels, and after it The Hague, Conference preferred to keep silence; and they take a definite line on many questions upon which there are wide differences of opinion. On most debatable points, the rules are in accordance with the views of this country—e.g. as to the right of search (Art. 22), as to the two-fold list of contraband (Arts. 34-36), as to the moment at which the liability of a blockade-runner commences (Art. 44), and as to the capture of private property (Art. 14), ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... by since men of no low standing in the science disputed the very existence of this formation—or system, rather, for it contains at least three distinct formations. There are some of our British geologists who still regard it as a sort of debatable tract, entitled to no independent status, a sort of common which ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... doctors, the odd surveyors and engineers, were inclined, by their greater detachment, to theories and prejudices, delightful luxuries where a certain rigidity of opinion is dictated by considerations of bread and butter. They made a factor debatable, but small. The farmers had everything to win, nothing to lose. The prospect offered them more for what they had to sell, and less for what they had to buy, and most of them were Liberals already; but the rest had to be convinced, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... advised Bassett to avoid the Court of Chancery in a matter so debatable; and Sir Charles felled all the more for the protest. The dead bodies of the trees fell across each other, and daylight peeped through the thick woods. It was like the clearing of ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... to give, first, the missionary account in 4o 44' N., and then the Arab one in 2o N.—a debatable bit of ground, extending over 2o 44', or 160 English miles. Talking of the missionaries, "these two men," says Dr Petermann, "kept an annual hygrometrical and meteorological register with great precision and scientific regularity.[64] They had various instruments ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... possessed any previous scruples about that act, he would have overcome them. As it was, the scruples came only when he thought of that new, chastened, subdued look on her face. Only then did he feel that his trick might be debatable, as to whether it became a gentleman. Only then did he take the trouble to seek justifiable circumstances. Only then did he have a dim sense of what might be the feelings of a girl suddenly stormed into love. He had never been sufficiently ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... himself, he wanted everything; and those with this aspiration must necessarily be heedless of their neighbours' smaller ambitions. "Without genius, I am undone!" he cried in despair; but when it was proved beyond dispute that this gift of debatable beneficence was ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... this observation of things is not to be denied, Balzac's observation of persons is a matter much more debatable. To listen to some of the more uncritical—especially among the older and now almost traditional—estimates of him, an unwary reader who did not correct these, judging for himself, might think that Balzac was as much of an "observational" realist in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... penumbra of the Renaissance. The students who carve the first gashes in the new desks will learn, if perchance they listen in intervals of whittling, that this World on which they live is perhaps not flat, but actually round, like a ball. It is debatable doctrine, to be sure, but we must not forget that Signor Columbus, recently dead, found land off to the west which is probably a part of the Asiatic continent. If the earth be indeed a ball, then the sun and stars whirl clear around it in twenty-four hours, travelling ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... Johnny had heard them during the day, but he was struck by the fact that Uncle Ben seemed to be seeking information from the paragon and was perfectly submissive and humble. But the boy was considerably mystified when after a tramp of half an hour they arrived upon the debatable ground of the Harrison-McKinstry boundary. Having been especially warned never to go there, Johnny as a matter of course was perfectly familiar with it. But what was the incomprehensible stranger doing there? Was he brought by Uncle Ben with a view of paralyzing both of the combatants ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... was awakened which helped not a little to deflect many strong spirits from a life of warfare to a life of study. They made the problems of learning seem much more worth while, and their work helped to create a more tolerant attitude toward the supporters of either side of debatable questions by revealing so clearly that there are two sides to every question. This new learning, new interest in learning, and new spirit of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... 1848—and the concurrent return of the Mexican soldiers—seems but yesterday. We were in Nashville, where the camp fires of the two parties burned fiercely day and night, Tennessee a debatable, even a pivotal state. I was an enthusiastic politician on the Cass and Butler side, and was correspondingly disappointed when the election went against us for Taylor and Fillmore, though a little mollified when, on his way to Washington, General Taylor grasping ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... met with severe reverses and been compelled to withdraw into Hungary, they at length settled down under an established government. The first king was undoubtedly Stephen (997 or 1008 A.D.), and they annexed Transylvania, which up to that time had been a debatable territory, either about 1002 according to some writers, or, as others affirm, not until the time of ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... night I had fixed for the destruction of the enemy outpost two companies of enemy infantry and three guns marched out of Shmakovka as a reinforcement to the debatable position. I watched through my binoculars their slow movement along the dusty road. I judged what the enemy's intentions were, and knew also that I was powerless to prevent them. He quickly placed his guns in position, and the following day sent a few trial shots at Kalmakoff's ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... letters to him have been preserved, with their fond messages and faulty spelling. Now and then, it is recorded, he would gratify her by setting her to transcribe his "Homer," an assistance of which the advantages must have been debatable. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... what had been the debatable ground, as much the enemy's as ours, and had not gone far before we were suddenly aware of a group of Spanish horsemen over the hedge of cactus to the left of the road, brightly dressed young fellows wearing the blue linen and ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris

... middle of January, when a small, accidental happening drew all his growing but still debatable intentions into one sharp point of resolution. It was such an afternoon as comes rarely, even in the exhilarating winter of New York—an afternoon when the unfathomable blue of the sky overhead runs through all the gamut of tones from lavender to indigo; when ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... upon them, from which they were awakened by the distant roar of cannon. The village, though no longer a depot for Confederate stores, was not to be given up without a struggle. It now became a sort of debatable ground, and cannonading, more or less distant, told the anxious ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... older than herself, such as the literary Lady Charleville, and Mrs. Lefanu, sister of Sheridan, who were always ready with advice and sympathy. With Mrs. Lefanu Sydney corresponded regularly for many years, and in her letters discusses the debatable points in her books, and enlarges upon her own character and temperament. Chief among her ambitions at this time was that of being 'every inch a woman,' and she was a firm believer in the fashionable theory that true womanliness was incompatible ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... looking toward a gap in the hills that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... many a year afterward and pondered them, and perhaps they enlarged his understanding. She also often thought of his condemnation of love-making out-of-doors. Kissing in public, especially promiscuous kissing, she knew to be a debatable pastime, but she also knew that there was not a flat in the Big Barracks in which a girl could carry on a courtship. Fancy her attempting it in her front room, with the room choked with people, with ...
— Different Girls • Various



Words linked to "Debatable" :   problematical, debate, arguable, disputable, questionable



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