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Groundwork   Listen
noun
Groundwork  n.  That which forms the foundation or support of anything; the basis; the essential or fundamental part; first principle; as, development of a convenient DNA sequencing technique layed the groundwork for many of the subsequent advances in molecular genetics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Groundwork" Quotes from Famous Books



... but he is seldom found, in Tristram Shandy, at any rate, to have transferred them to his own pages out of a mere indolent inclination to save himself the trouble of composition. He takes them less as substitutes than as groundwork for his own invention—as so much material for his own inventive powers to work upon; and those powers do generally work upon them with conspicuous skill of elaboration. The series of cuttings, for instance, which he makes from Burton, on the occasion of Bobby ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... little weak about the mouth. The brow indicated some degree of power, and the mouth and eyes no small capacities for affection and all sorts of human sympathy and kindness. These last, in varying lights, could change as often as the English climate; their groundwork, however, was blue, and they were honest and bonny. In short, a man in looking at Arthur Heigham at the age of twenty-four would have reflected that, even among English gentlemen, he was remarkable ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... not with them a mere fiction of poesy, but a daily fact. It was one of the loveliest of lovely spring mornings—the sky was clear as a pale, polished sapphire, and every little bib of delicate carving and sculpture on the Dom stood out from its groundwork with microscopically beautiful distinctness. And as his gaze rested on the perfect fairness of the day, a strange and sudden sense of rapturous anticipation possessed his mind,—he felt as one prepared for some high and exquisite happiness,—some great and wondrous celebration or feast of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... in English, some of them written by Caxton himself. One of the most important of them was Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur, the storehouse from which Tennyson drew the stories which form the groundwork of his Idylls of ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... and devotion. During the war he was employed under the Directorate of Military Aeronautics, and in 1916 was made Director of Aircraft Equipment, with the rank of brigadier-general. He wore himself out in the service of the country, and died in May 1918. These three men laid the groundwork of the plans which were approved by ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... whence the renewal of civilisations results, affect ideas, conceptions, and beliefs. The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought. The reason these great events are so rare is that there is nothing so stable in a race as the inherited groundwork of its thoughts. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... affected, though in different degrees, by its contact with the more cultivated languages into the use of which the nomads have been forced. German in one case and Spanish in the other have so modified the Romany groundwork that it would not be possible for a gipsy from the Black Forest to converse with one of his Andalusian brothers, although a few sentences on each side would suffice to convince them that each was speaking a dialect of the same language. Certain words in very frequent use ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... continually circumnutating, though often on a small scale. Even the stems of seedlings before they have broken through the ground, as well as their buried radicles, circumnutate, as far as the pressure of the surrounding earth permits. In this universally present movement we have the basis or groundwork for the acquirement, according to the requirements of the plant, of the most diversified movements. Thus, the great sweeps made by the stems of twining plants, and by the tendrils of other climbers, result from ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... more fascinating the erring mariner became, in his complex truth and falsehood, his delicately blended shades of artifice and naivete. He must, it was felt, have believed to a certain point in his own inventions: nay, starting with that groundwork of truth,—the fact that his wife was really dead, and that he had not seen his family for two years,—why should he not place implicit faith in all the fictions reared upon it? It was probable that he felt a real sorrow for ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... none at all, was to be found. Meanwhile another discovery was reported, and the young town was abandoned as completely as a camp made for a single night; and so on, until some really valuable lode was found, such as those of Eureka, Austin, Virginia, etc., which formed the substantial groundwork for ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... to these men is Thomas Kyd, who about the year 1590 attained a meteoric reputation with crude 'tragedies of blood,' specialized descendants of Senecan tragedy, one of which may have been the early play on Hamlet which Shakspere used as the groundwork for his masterpiece. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... conception of history. Now for the groundwork. As regards the character of the phenomena to be selected by the scientific investigator, Aristotle had laid down the general formula that nature should be studied in her normal manifestations. Polybius, true to his character of applying ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... is no false reflection of human happiness in the clouds. For it is to be sought for none the less, as our positivists decidedly tell us, even though all other happiness should be ruined by it. Now what on positive principles is the groundwork of this teaching? All ethical epithets such as sacred, heroic, and so forth—all the words, in fact, that are by implication applied to Nature—have absolutely no meaning save as applied to conscious beings; and as a subject for positive observation, there exists no consciousness ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... this doctrine conveyeth the ground or groundwork, which is the Spirit, so also it worketh in the heart those three graces, faith, hope, love, all which as naturally purify the heart from wickedness as soap and nitre cleanseth the cloth. He purified 'their hearts by faith,' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... moved by a brotherly pity towards Mr. Latimer, begged to wait upon him in his study, and to explain to him the groundwork of his (Mr. Bilney's) faith. This blessed interview effected his conversion: the persecutor of Christ became his zealous advocate, and before Dr. Stafford died he became reconciled ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... passions. At length his attachment to the feigned Rosario, aided by the natural warmth of his temperament, seemed likely to obtain the victory: The success was assured, when that presumption which formed the groundwork of his character came to Matilda's assistance. The Monk reflected that to vanquish temptation was an infinitely greater merit than to avoid it: He thought that He ought rather to rejoice in the opportunity given him of proving the firmness ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... take breath for a short time among the fashionable world of Paris, where we are but just arrived. Allow us to prepare at our leisure the groundwork of our novel, and do not hurry on ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... marveling over his marital complexities as he watched him go. Together with Rabbit, and the Mexican woman down El Paso way whom John had mentioned, but of whom Dad never had spoken, and no telling how many more scattered around the country, Dad seemed to be laying the groundwork for a lively roundup one of his days. He said he'd been marrying women off and on for forty years. His easy plan seemed to be just to take one that pleased his capricious temper wherever he found her, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... unravelled without order, and without connexion. They had no other end but to make the people laugh. Now and then there might be good sentences, like the sentences of P. Syrus, that are yet left us, but the groundwork was low comedy, and any thing of greater dignity drops in by chance. We must, however, imagine, that this odd species of the drama rose, at length, to somewhat a higher character, since we are told that Plato, the philosopher, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... think it wrong that massacre and fighting should be written of,—except by special correspondents,—or that the sufferings of mankind beneath one of the world's most cruel tyrannies should form the groundwork of romance, may be invited to leave this book unread. Most, indeed nearly all, of the historical incidents here recorded are substantially true. Thus, it is said that Chaka did actually kill his mother, Unandi, for the reason given, and destroy an entire tribe in the Tatiyana cleft, ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... present name, the American Federation of Labor. It was built up by trade-union members of the skilled trades, and to them trade qualifications and trade autonomy were essential articles of faith. This was a much more solid groundwork upon which to raise a labor movement. But at first it worked none too well for the women, although as the national organizations with women members joined the Federation the women were necessarily taken in, too. Likewise they shared ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... in the season,—it is rather against him. In number three it is right in his teeth, whereas last year it was quite in his favour. In number four, which we will suppose is the trade-wind belt (of which more hereafter), he finds the wind still easterly. Here, then, is the groundwork of confusion in our sailor's mind. He has not the remotest idea that in belt number one the wind blows chiefly, but not always, in one particular direction; that in number four it blows invariably in one way; and that in number three it is regularly irregular. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... school of popular pseudo-psychological writers question the reality of mental inheritance, and allege that the proofs which the geneticist offers are worthless because they do not make account of the similarity in environment or training. Of course, it is admitted that some sort of a mental groundwork must be inherited, but extremists allege that this is little more than a clean slate on which the environment, particularly during the early years of childhood, writes ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... form the groundwork of the stories of the other sons of Jacob are also comparatively old. They afford us almost the only information we possess about the great change which must have taken place in the league of the tribes soon after Moses. This change principally affected the group of the four old Leah tribes which ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... gave him a new idea, and the following evening he made a groundwork of branches in the corner of the corral itself, and put down his blankets on the evergreens. Diablo was much concerned and walked about examining the new work from every angle. There Bull slept, and the next night he found ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... many particulars with such striking accuracy, offered an excellent groundwork for a political play, and the "Duke of Guise" was composed accordingly; Dryden making use of the scenes which he had formerly written on the subject, and Lee contributing the remainder, which he eked out by some scenes and speeches adopted from the "Massacre of Paris," then, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... Marlborough School the following summer, I found that my father, who knew perfectly the thorough groundwork I had received in Greek and Latin, had insisted on my being given a remove into the lower fifth form "in absentia." Both he and I were aware that I could do the work easily; but the form master resented it, and had already protested ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... entire records of his life and teachings, do we discover any significant emphasis? Preeminent above all other suggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ. Turn where I will, the redemptive work of the Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life. It is not only that here and there are solid statements of doctrine, wherein some massive argument is constructed for the partial unveiling of redemptive glory. Even in those parts of his epistles where formal argument has ceased, and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... the groundwork of modern constitutions—principles which were imperfectly known in Europe, and not completely triumphant even in Great Britain, in the seventeenth century—were all recognised and determined by the laws of New England: the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... of different patterns thrown in with the shuttle, or shuttles, sometimes as many as a dozen of which may be in use at a time. These can be used for the purpose of ornamentation. In weaving these no end of play of colour can be made, by using many colours in rotation, either as the groundwork of plain material, under the patterns, or as ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... Rosalba's milieu is a type of others of its class. She lives with her mother and sisters, an honest, cheerful, industrious existence. They are fond of old friends and old books, and indulge in music and simple pleasures. Her sisters help Rosalba by preparing the groundwork of her paintings. She pays visits, and writes rhymes, and plays on the harpsichord. She receives great men without much ceremony, and the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Mecklenburg, Frederick, King of Norway, and Maximilian, King of Bavaria, come to her to ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... of subjects a thousand leagues away. New France, accordingly must organize itself for defense and repel her enemies just as the earldoms and duchies of the crusading centuries had done. And that is just what the colony did, with the seigneurial system as the groundwork of defensive strength. Under stress of the new environment, which was not wholly unlike that of the former feudal days, the military aspects of the system revived and the personal bond regained much of its ancient vigor. ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung.... The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached"—for you must not forget that it is upon the roof of the mine that the impressions of the plants which have been turned into coal are found, not upon the coal itself, though even there they may be discovered ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... and enlarged edition was published in 1624. Cotta, who was a physician of great eminence and experience, residing at Northampton, has supplied in this very able, learned, and vigorous treatise, a groundwork which, if pursued to its just results, for he writes very cautiously and guardedly, and rather hints at his conclusions than follows them out, would have sufficed to have overthrown many of the positions of the supporters of the system of witchcraft. His work has a strong scholastic tinge, and ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... gradually departing from its original Teutonic character and deviating towards a Gallic structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavor to recall it, by making our ancient volumes the groundwork of style, admitting among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious, but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... than the Tories? Not at all. In tendency by principle they are the same. The real difference is not in the creed, in the groundwork, but in certain points of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... art or artificial fashion in which incongruity was a merit; the grosser the burlesque, the broader the parody, the greater was the success and the more effective was the result: but in a dramatic attempt of higher pretention than such as might be looked for in the literary groundwork or raw material for a pageant, this intrusion of incongruous contrast is a pure barbarism—a positive solecism in composition.... On the other hand, even Gifford's editorial enthusiasm could not overestimate the ingenious excellence of construction, the masterly harmony of composition, which every ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... discover either in Bohemia or elsewhere. Its bold and isolated character seems to have pointed it out as a fit situation for one of those keeps or strong-holds in which even monarchs were, during the middle ages, glad at times to seek refuge, and which constituted the groundwork of their power to chiefs of less elevated rank. So early as the year 1250, a castle accordingly was erected on it, in which the Baron von Ronow, a nobleman of vast influence, held his court, and frequently entertained the King of Bohemia himself, Wenzel I. By the ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... exaggerates everything, from the yearly number of bicycles sold to the yearly number of heathens converted—into the hope of salvation and more whiskey. Exaggeration is the basis of our trade, the fallow-field of our art and literature, the groundwork of our social life, the foundation of our political existence. As schoolboys, we exaggerate our fights and our marks and our fathers' debts. As men, we exaggerate our wares, we exaggerate our feelings, ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... of the plate with some water-color and sugar; then when the oil is partly dry, he dusts on the color in the form of powder. A plunge into water will wash away the water-color and leave the oil with the powder sticking to it. Shaded groundwork is made with an atomizer. Indeed, there are almost as many methods of decorating wares of clay as there are persons who work at it. The results are what might be expected from the prices; some articles are so cheap and gaudy that any one will soon tire of them. Others are ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... which everybody would be killed by everybody else. "It will come sooner than we think," she would observe darkly; a mathematical expert of exceptionally high powers would have been puzzled to work out the approximate date from the slender and confusing groundwork which ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... of the Canons soon after Rahere's death in the reign of Henry II. An illuminated copy of this work, made at the end of the fourteenth century, is preserved in the British Museum, with an English translation, which forms the groundwork of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... own devices, and she had forthwith broken the string, and scattered the beads of the rosary in every direction upon the floor, while he stood breathing upon a distant window-pane, and drawing pictures with his finger-tip on the groundwork thus effected, humming the while one of his favorite tunes ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... mythological in the history of AEsculapius, there is a groundwork of facts. Splendid temples were built to him in lovely and healthy places, usually on a hill or near a spring; they were visited by the sick, and the priests of the temples not only attended to the worship of AEsculapius, but took pains to acquire knowledge of the healing art. The chief ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... mind was busied elsewhere. Whole populations adopted this first essay of an art thereafter to be used by Loyola in his attempt to govern the world, an art of which his Exercises furnish the ingenious groundwork. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... hypostasis; person, being, thing, object, article, item; something, a being, an existence; creature, body, substance, flesh and blood, stuff , substratum; matter &c. 316; corporeity[obs3], element, essential nature, groundwork, materiality, substantialness, vital part. [Totality of existences], world &c. 318; plenum. Adj. substantive, substantial; hypostatic; personal, bodily, tangible &c. (material) 316; corporeal. Adv. substantially ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... never able to surpass Leonardo; and although it appears to many that he did surpass him in sweetness and in a kind of natural facility, nevertheless he was by no means superior to him in that sublime groundwork of conceptions and that grandeur of art in which few have been the peers of Leonardo. Yet Raffaello came very near to him, more than any other painter, and above all in grace of colouring. But to return to Raffaello himself; in time he found himself very ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... ere thou art that thus dost strive With fierce assault my groundwork to subvert, And boldly dost into Gods secrets dive, Base fear my manly face note make m' avert. In that odde question which thou first didst stert, I'll plainly prove thine incapacitie, And force thy feeble feet back to revert, That cannot climb ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... NET GROUNDWORK STITCH.—This stitch is also represented at No. 21, on page 13, but the method of making the knot is here illustrated. It is used for ground-work where Brussels net is not imitated, and is very effective wherever it is used. It is begun in the corner or crosswise of the ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.

... fanning the fire of his genius by pouring out his spirit in wonderful improvisations, which were often far more lofty in thought than many skilfully elaborated compositions. And here, too, he must have conceived the sublime melodies which afterward formed the groundwork ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... Wortley is arrived;(212) I have seen her; I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all increased. Her dress, like her languages, is a gralimatias of several countries; the groundwork rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black-laced hood represents the first; the fur of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... with which temporary stars usually spring into being is the groundwork upon which theories to account for their origin have been erected. That numbers of dark stars, extinguished suns, so to speak, may exist in space, there is a strong suspicion; and it is just possible that we have an instance of one dark stellar body in the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... theorist. The first ten minutes he devoted to explaining that he could not explain in the time; in the second, tempering the wind to the shorn lamb, he pointed out that it was no use his outlining schemes not yet completed, or that they could read for themselves, or that, possibly, without some groundwork, they could not understand; and in the third ten minutes he outlined the committees dealing with the work and containing such well-known names as Robert Smiley, Mr. Button, and Clydens. He sat down. Everyone applauded—the M.P., and possibly the A.C.G., because they honestly knew ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... that he ought to sacrifice another man's happiness to his own as to believe that three angles of a triangle are equal to one right angle.[192] It is true that a feeling and a judgment are both involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the groundwork of the feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.[193] In spite, however, of this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of the intellectual school, the substance of Stewart's ethics is essentially psychological. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... Berosus, and therefore we cannot be sure that we have really the belief of the ancient people, yet, judging from internal evidence of character, we may safely pronounce Berosus' account not only archaic, but in its groundwork and essence a primeval tradition, more ancient probably than most of the gods whom ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... indeed, when absorbed in the unsophisticated and genuine utterances of this great man, it seems as if these peculiarities and strange asperities were the results of some mysterious law of Nature, so that we are inclined to adopt the paradox by which a wit once described the singular groundwork of our nature,—"The faults of man are the night in which he ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... to me the groundwork of the following doubts, was the book commonly known by the name of Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, many parts and passages of which engaged my attention in my own study, in the house of a rural schoolmaster, in the year 1772. I cannot therefore proceed more fairly than ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... secured the ladder so firmly to the branch, that I had no hesitation in ascending myself. I carried with me a large pulley fixed to the end of a rope, which I attached to a branch above us, to enable us to raise the planks necessary to form the groundwork of our habitation. I smoothed the branches a little by aid of my axe, sending the boys down to be out of my way. After completing my day's work, I descended by the light of the moon, and was alarmed to find that Fritz and Jack were not below; and still more so, when ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... bbl/day by 2015. Libya faces a long road ahead in liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps - including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and announcing plans for privatization - are laying the groundwork for a transition to a more market-based economy. The non-oil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for more than 20% of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include the production of petrochemicals, iron, steel, and aluminum. Climatic ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and a DESCARTES began. The old theory of animal spirits, observes Professor Dugald Stewart, was applied by DESCARTES to explain the mental phenomena which led NEWTON into that train of thinking, which served as the groundwork of HARTLEY'S theory of vibrations. The learning of one man makes others learned, and the influence of genius is in nothing more remarkable than in its effects on its brothers. SELDEN'S treatise on the Syrian and Arabian Deities enabled MILTON to comprise, in one hundred and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... reader can hardly fail to see that many of the Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries—old wives' fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power of steam. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... cheer, for his self-accusations were the outcome of a melancholy humor. Tasso was, in fact, a Catholic molded by Jesuit instruction in his earliest childhood; and though, like most young students, he had speculated on the groundwork of theology and metaphysic, there was no taint of heresy or disobedience to the Church in his nature. The terror of the Inquisition was a morbid nightmare, first implanted in his mind by the experience of his father's collision with the Holy Office, enforced by Antoniano's strictures ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... racial instinct necessary to the absolute unison of a pair. Thus, though he might never love a woman of the island race, for lack in her of the desired refinement, he could not love long a kimberlin—a woman other than of the island race, for her lack of this groundwork of character. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... Shafton to pick his teeth, or to yawn, or to gabble like the beggar whose tongue (as he says) was cut out by the Turks, or to affect deafness or blindness, or any other infirmity of the organs. But though the embroidery of his conversation was different, the groundwork was the same, and the high-flown and ornate compliments with which the gallant knight of the sixteenth century inter-larded his conversation, were as much the offspring of egotism and self-conceit, as the jargon of the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... Devoid as it was of regular beauty, the face beneath, with its clear blue eyes, red lips, and pure complexion, the pink and white that reminds one of a sweet-pea or ocean-shell, had struck me as very lovely from the first; nothing to support this groundwork of excellence had I discovered, however, either in the form of the head, which was ignoble, or the expression of the face, which was both timid and defiant, or the tones of the voice, which were shrill and harsh ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... 288) years dissatisfied with himself, because, in his novel of "The Pilot," he had put the character of Paul Jones too high. He thought that the hero had been credited in that work with loftier motives than those by which he was actually animated. Feelings such as these formed the groundwork of his character, and made him intolerant of the devious ways of many who were satisfied with conforming to a lower code of morality. There was a royalty in his nature that disdained even the semblance ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... family, and as they had seen no ultra-abolition traits, they thought her "sound at heart" on that subject. And so she was; for had she known the true situation of the slaves, all the better feelings of her noble soul would have risen up in rebellion against the groundwork of the abominable "institution." But as the slaves were kept very much apart from the family, and by their master's peculiar training had very little to say when they did make their appearance, she had very little opportunity to study the workings of the system, if she had been disposed to do ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various

... same species and genus, and how they mutually arose from one another. I shall first show that Mr. Hastings's crimes had root in that which is the root of all evil, I mean avarice; that avarice and rapacity were the groundwork and foundation of all his other vicious system; that he showed it in setting to sale the native government of the country, in setting to sale the whole landed interest of the country, in setting to sale the British government and his own fellow-servants, to ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... groundwork for the more detailed provisions of the section by establishing the liability of a copyright infringer for either "the copyright owner's actual damages and any additional profits of the infringer," or statutory damages. Recovery of actual damages and profits under section 504 (b) or of statutory ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, varying in age from three hundred to five hundred years.[7] There is, e.g., the "Glenmasan Manuscript" of the year 1238, containing the story of "Darthula,"[8] which is the groundwork of the same story in MacPherson's "Ossian." There is the important "Dean of Lismore's Book," a manuscript collection made by Dean MacGregory of Lismore, Argyleshire, between 1512 and 1529, containing 11,000 lines of Gaelic poetry, some of which is attributed to Ossian or Oisin. One of the poems ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... refused. It is pleasant to know that Master Enger was "distrustfull of the truth" of this tale. One fears that these spectres were not the products of overwrought imagination, as were many others, but were merely fabrics of elaborate fiction.[29] In any case they were not the groundwork of the proof. In the Fairfax prosecutions at York in 1622 the charges against the six women accused rested entirely upon a great tissue of spectral evidence. The three children had talked to the spectres, had met them outdoors and at church and in the kitchen. The spectres were remarkably wise ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... the grasp of England. For this treachery, Philip was to endow him with the sovereignty of Scotland; and, as a pledge of the compact, he had invested him with the principality of Gascony in France. "This is the groundwork of his treason," continued Athol; "but the superstructure is to be cemented with our blood. I have seen a list, in his own handwriting, of those chiefs whose lives are to pave his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... must be cultivated. That the whole secret lay in the way a thing was presented to the mind of the student. For unless the sense of beauty and symmetry had been aroused in him, he would of necessity find far more difficulty in retaining the, so to speak, statistical Blue-book of the groundwork and rules of any science. Newman himself was an adept at putting a subject in an entirely new light, when some pupil failed, perhaps, to follow his calculations or explanations. In relation to the teaching of Greek, the following words of Miss Swanwick's (in the Memoir ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... commenced by giving all the preceding detail, in order to show the groundwork on which I base the estimate of the cost of compressed air power to consumers, in terms of indicated horse power per annum, as given in Table II. I may say that, in estimating the engine power and coal consumption, I have not, as in the original report, made purely theoretical calculations, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... Euhemerus to find any groundwork of history in these narratives. We must turn away from the "shadow-land" which the Egyptians called the time of the gods on earth, if we would find trace of the real doings of men in the Nile valley, and put before ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... I am fully aware that the deficiency lies in myself, and not in my subject. For truly there are few studies which offer so many tempting fields of observation and comment as Archaeology. Indeed, the aim and the groundwork of the studies of the antiquary form a sufficient guarantee for the interest with which these studies are invested. For the leading object and intent of all his pursuits is—MAN, and man's ways ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... one time or another passed all or nearly all those who were to found additional colonies in New England; and from that portal, willingly or unwillingly, men and women journeyed north, south, and west, searching for favorable locations, buying land of the Indians, and laying the groundwork for permanent homes and organized communities. In this way were begun the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Haven, and New Hampshire, each of which sprang in part from the desire for separate religious and political life and in part from the migratory instinct which has always characterized ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... Indian tribes are untrustworthy. They show signs of aggressiveness. Father Ribaut finds the Indians of the Sierras a century behind those of the coast. They are devoid of spiritual ideas. Contact with traders, and association with wild sea rovers, have given the Indians of the shore much of the groundwork of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... their corn on sleds. The cheerful scene is often witnessed of the whole family— father, mother, and children— at work gathering the crops. These pictures of cottage life in the mountain glens, with the beautiful variegated foliage of October for groundwork, are objects which neither weary nor ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these is the same in the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... by Walter Parker, 1645, and from thence transcribed by G.G. 1649; and from thence by W.A. 1655." This last copy may have been read by, or its story reported to, Bunyan, and may have been the groundwork of his Pilgrim's Progress. It will be edited for the E.E.T. Soc., its text running under the earlier English, as in Mr. Herrtage's edition of the Gesta Romanorum for the Society. In February 1464,[5] Jean Gallopes—a clerk of Angers, afterwards chaplain to John, Duke of Bedford, Regent ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... hand kindly on Eddie's shoulder, "if you really are determined to become an artist, I will do all I can to assist you on certain conditions, and subject to the approval of your other guardian. You can come and live with me, and I'll teach you the groundwork and details of art: inspiration, genius, success are not mine to bestow; nor shall I send you to a university. In the first place, I can't afford it; in the next, I don't think it necessary; but if I see you have a real love of and taste for art, I'll send you to study abroad ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 'passim'. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuising to Bayes' tragedy [('vide The Rehearsal'), 'British Bards'], unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... Italy, by the varied size and shape of its meshes and a resemblance in the style of its embroidery to the Punto tagliato; whilst the netting of France, known by the name of Cluny guipure, consists of a groundwork of fine meshes with stiff close designs embroidered upon it, outlined ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... of course, it was mere heedlessness, mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have been the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard to bar on that account—and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was selfishness. There is no avoiding that conclusion. In the instance under consideration, I did think the indecency of running on in that way might occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad, that was sufficient—he cared not a straw for MY feelings, or my loss of such ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the groundwork for his history, and his researches in making it thorough, were such as to have liberated him to the knowledge of other manners and ideals, but he remained strictly a Bostonian, and as immutably of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Moses may not. God comes near: man must stand back. In the same breath God says, Draw nigh, and, Draw not nigh. There can be no knowledge of God or nearness to Him, where we have not first heard His, Draw not nigh. The sense of sin, of unfitness for God's presence, is the groundwork of true knowledge or worship of Him as the Holy One. 'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.' The shoes are the means of intercourse with the world, the aids through which the flesh or nature does its will, moves about and does its work. In standing upon holy ground, all this ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... thus describes the men in the year 1776. 'The deceivers of this denomination are generally descended from families of some repute, have had the groundwork of a genteel education, and are capable of making a tolerable appearance. Having been equally profuse of their own substance and character, and learnt, by having been undone, the ways of undoing, they lie in wait for those who have more wealth and less knowledge of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... enough, and it was subtle also, and, moreover, it was wondrous comely. All the courtiers in the banqueting-hall raved about Phorenice's face and the other beauties of her body and limbs, and though not given to appreciation in these matters, I could not but see that here at least they had a groundwork for their admiration, for surely the Gods have never favoured mortal woman more highly. Yet lovely though she might be, for myself I preferred to look upon Ylga, the girl, who, because of her rank, was privileged to sit on ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... such a man fell into errors, it must be from defects not intrinsical; they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his life, which, though they do not alter the groundwork of character, yet tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a profession. He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences,—a science which does more to quicken and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... every literary traveller in Spain thinks it incumbent on him to describe them. But this is the first instance we remember where the incidents of the bull-ring, and the exploits and peculiarities of its gladiators, are taken as groundwork for a romantic tale. The attempt has been crowned with very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... time-honoured argument is now completely overthrown, unless it can be proved that there is some radical error in the reasoning whereby I have endeavoured to show that natural causes not only may, but must, have produced existing order. The overthrow is complete, because the very groundwork of the argument in question is knocked away; a third possibility, of the nature of a necessity, is introduced, and therefore the alternative is no longer between Intelligence and Fortuity, but between Intelligence and Natural Causation. Whereas ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean, in the arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper" (as compared with iron), "and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in many points the poems are certainly later than the prime, at least, of the Mycenaean age"—which we are the last to ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... caste, has furnished the principal groundwork of many admixtures and subdivisions, until at the present time there are endless subcastes, to each of which a particular kind of employment is assigned. The Sudras are still the menials, but there are different grades ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... concern in the hygiene of the skeleton is the proper adjustment of its parts. The efficiency of any of the body machines is impaired by lack of proper adjustment. Not only this, but because of the fact that the skeleton forms the groundwork of the whole body—muscles, blood vessels, nerves, everything in fact, being arranged with reference to it—any lack of proper adjustment of the bones interferes generally with the arrangement and work of tissues and organs. The ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... started in 1919, the National Coffee Roasters Association promoted two national coffee weeks, one in 1914 and another in 1915, wherein excellent groundwork was done for the big joint coffee trade propaganda that followed. Some original research also was done along lines of proper grinding and correct coffee brewing. A better-coffee-making committee, under the direction of Edward Aborn of New York, rendered yeoman's service ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Byron's school-fellow at Harrow Elliston, Robert William, comedian, Lord Byron's wish that he should speak his 'Address' at Drury Lane theatre Eloquence, state of Endurance, of more worth than talent ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS, the groundwork laid before the appearance of the critique in the 'Edinburgh Review' Sent to Mr. Harness Success of the satire The author's regret in having written it Refusal to republish it Attempted publication of Englishman, Otway's three requisites for an Envy Ephesus, ruins ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... trace of their existence except in certain relics which have been borrowed from true poetry and converted into the half fabulous history of the infant ages of Rome. That the Romans, as a people, had no great national drama, and that their poems never became the groundwork of a later polished literature was due to the incorporation of foreigners into their nation who took little interest in the traditions of their earlier achievements. Father Ennius (239-169 B.C.), as Horace calls him, was the true founder of Latin poetry. ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... evening when, the last hook fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the cheval glass. I was a dream. I say it who should not; but I am not the only one who said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with gold braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and where there was no more possible room for gold braid there hung gold cords, and tassels, and straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me, gold embroidered belts and sashes ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... to imagine all the enjoyable part of it," he answered. "I must have a groundwork to go upon. She's got to have feelings come to her upon this horse. You can't enter into a rider's feelings when you've almost forgotten which side of the horse ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... mostly two-handled, and of all sizes, some being nearly three feet in height, and running from that down to as many inches. In shape they vary, but all are exceedingly beautiful and graceful, being made of a very fine black ware, not lustrous, but slightly rough. On this groundwork are inlaid figures much more graceful and lifelike than any others that I have seen on antique vases. Some of these inlaid pictures represent love-scenes with a childlike simplicity and freedom of manner which ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... Eunice upon being assigned to membership in the Negro race are by no means overdrawn. The refined, cultured and most highly respected young woman whose actual experiences form the groundwork of that part of the story was not only thus accosted and insulted by a white man of the order indicated, but was actually beaten in a most brutal manner and fined fifteen dollars in ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... which I hope the learned will approve; and though we have not anything of Andronicus remaining to justify my conjecture, yet it is exceeding probable that, having read the works of those Grecian wits, his countrymen, he imitated not only the groundwork, but also the manner of their writing; and how grave soever his tragedies might be, yet in his comedies he expressed the way of Aristophanes, Eupolis, and the rest, which was to call some persons by their ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... [Putting in order] arrangement &c. 60; clearance; adjustment &c. 23; tuning; equipment, outfit, accouterment, armament, array. ripening &c. v.; maturation, evolution; elaboration, concoction, digestion; gestation, batching, incubation, sitting. groundwork, first stone, cradle, stepping-stone; foundation, scaffold &c. (support) 215; scaffolding, echafaudage[Fr]. [Preparation of men] training &c. (education) 537; inurement &c. (habit) 613; novitiate; cooking[ Preparation of food], cookery; brewing, culinary ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... tragedy and comedy on one another, of which he gives the reason in the Laws—'For serious things cannot be understood without laughable, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either'; here he puts forward the principle which is the groundwork of the thesis of Socrates in the Symposium, 'that the genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy, and that the writer of comedy ought to be a writer of tragedy also.' There is a truth and right which is above Law (Laws), ...
— Laws • Plato

... He addressed a series of thirty-one printed questions to prominent persons in different parts of the Province, asking for topographical and other information. The thirty-first question was so framed that, if truthfully replied to, it was certain to elicit facts which would form the groundwork of damnifying strictures on the principal abuses of the time. "What, in your opinion," asked Mr. Gourlay, "retards the improvement of your township in particular, or the Province in general?" Throughout the Home District the influence of the Compact ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... red. The design retains the lozenge form, though in a different arrangement, and the introduction of the blue border is adapted after patterns observed among their white neighbors. In the former is presented also what the Ojibwa term the groundwork or type of their original style of ornamentation, i.e., wavy or gently zigzag lines. Later art work consists chiefly of curved lines, and this has gradually become modified through instruction from the Catholic sisters at various early mission ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, as belonging to the groundwork of the story rather than to the drama itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's division of his kingdom, and the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... funds for the purpose, has the duty before him of forming a Public Library, sets forward on a pleasant task. He has the catalogues of all kinds of libraries to guide him, and he will be able to purchase the groundwork of his library at a very cheap rate, for probably at no time could sets of standard books be bought at so low a price as now. Many books that are not wanted by private persons are indispensable for a Public Library, and there being little demand for them they can be obtained cheap. ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... sensible friends, that the history of this country from the Revolution is not to be met with in books yet printed, but from MSS. in this country, to which he is sure you will have ready access, from all accounts he learns from the great here; and therefore you should lay the groundwork here after your perusal of the MSS. you may have access to, and doing it below will be laying the wrong foundation. I think it my duty to inform you the opinion of your most judicious friends, and I think he and Sir John Pringle may be ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... probably indeed much more impulsive, much more liable to be whirled about by gusts of emotion than we are; yet it would be unfair to judge his life as a whole by these occasional outbursts rather than by its general tenour, which to those who know him from long observation reveals a groundwork of logic and reason resembling our own in its operations, though differing from ours in the premises from which it sets out. I think it desirable to emphasise the rational basis of savage life because it ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... toiling up the Righi. Mr. Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humored, humane old bachelor; remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he met; and to every old man, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... What will be the consequence? The first effect on the minds of all who come to understand it, is terribly iconoclastic. It drives out before it everything else in the shape of religious belief. It leaves no room for any conceptions belonging even to the groundwork or foundation of ordinary religious faith. And what becomes then of all rules of right and wrong, of all sanctions for morality? Most assuredly there are rules of right and wrong thrilling through every fibre of occult philosophy really higher than any which commonplace ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... Christianity has been occupied two thousand years in putting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, and in organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possible with crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent. The leaven has worked into human nature and Christianity ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... a priestly book; but it is not entirely a priestly book. Much of the thought to which it gives utterance is popular in origin and sentiment, and is by no means of the lowest order. On this groundwork the priests have built up a system of hieratic thought and ritual of their own, in which there is much that deserves a certain respect. There is a good deal of fine poetry in it. There is also in it some idea of a law of righteousness: in spite of much wild ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... catastrophe which natures in other respects much less happily compounded would easily avoid. Nothing can permanently secure our moral being in the absence of a restraining will basing itself upon a strong sense of the difference between right and wrong, upon the firm groundwork ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... not only keenly interesting from an antiquarian point of view, but one deserving the attention of the general reader; for in exploring the gloomy hiding-holes, concealed apartments, passages, and staircases in our old halls and manor houses we probe, as it were, into the very groundwork of romance. We find actuality to support the weird and mysterious stories of fiction, which those of us who are honest enough to admit a lingering love of the marvellous must now doubly appreciate, from the fact that ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... the unjust judge; God and those who seek his help, are closer than two hands clasped hard in love: he will avenge them speedily. It is a bold assertion in the face of what seems great delay—an appearance acknowledged in the very groundwork of the parable. Having made it, why does he seem to check himself with a sigh, adding, Howbeit when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?' After all he had said, and had yet to say, after all he had done, and was going on to do, when he came ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... of variability that has been shown to exist in all organisms, the exceptional power of rapid increase possessed by insects, and the tremendous struggle for existence always going on, the difficulty will vanish, especially when we remember that nature has the same fundamental groundwork to act upon in the two groups, general similarity of forms, wings of similar texture and outline, and probably some original similarity of colour and marking. Yet there is evidently considerable difficulty in the process, or with these great resources at her command nature would ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... benevolent West Indian merchant, read before the Royal Society his paper proving the animal nature of corals, and followed it up the year after by that "Essay toward a Natural History of the Corallines, and other like Marine Productions of the British Coasts," which forms the groundwork of all our knowledge on the subject to this day. The chapter in Dr. G. Johnston's "British Zoophytes," p. 407, or the excellent little RESUME thereof in Dr. Landsborough's book on the same subject, is really a saddening one, as one ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... says Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige." That this was the case, many expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he only ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... itself in the development of all Vertebrates. Duges, in his Recherches sur l'osteologie et la myologie des Batraciens (1834), distinguished between such bones as are formed by direct ossification of the cartilaginous groundwork of the skull, and such as are developed in the periosteal ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... bears, without for twelve years ever having discovered any traces of this Alberto, or of his son Horatio. This is the substance of the story, which I have repeated so that you may better remember the groundwork of the plot. Now, you are to personate an Armenian merchant, who has seen them both safe and sound in Turkey. If I have invented this scheme, in preference to any other, of bringing them to life again according ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere

... sure the principles and groundwork of reasoning are there; but the office of the advocate was to draw them from the dust and darkness, to gather these scattered articles, statutes and precedents into his capacious brain, and from them evolve a framework of argument to fit his ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... may well say we must be sorry for it, having so lately seen it in all its gay spring beauty—and though no doubt the surface, which is all we saw of its inhabitants, is better than the groundwork, how much of good and great it contains! How the best Frenchmen everywhere, and the best Parisians in particular, must grieve over the deep corruption which has done much to bring their country to its present dreary prospects. I did not mean that any mediation or interference of other ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... the city, and is made but of an old quarry. I liked it better than any cemetery I ever saw; it is unlike all I had seen, and, though comparatively small, is very picturesque, I may almost say romantic. The walls are lofty, and are devoted to spacious tombs, and the groundwork abounds in garden shrubbery and labyrinth. Some of the monuments are striking. The access to this resting-place is by a steep cut through the rock, and you pass under an archway of the most imposing character. At the entrance of the ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... none of these things, nor all combined, would have given to Defoe that immortality which is his as the author of Robinson Crusoe. Of the groundwork of the story not much need ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... reveal the whole body. For this reason I do not sharply define lineaments; I diffuse about their outline a haze of warm, light half-tints, so that I defy any one to place a finger on the exact spot where the parts join the groundwork of the picture. If seen near by this sort of work has a woolly effect, and is wanting in nicety and precision; but go a few steps off and the parts fall into place; they take their proper form and detach themselves,—the body turns, the limbs stand ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac

... Dr. Ebers's birth in Berlin, to 1863, when An Egyptian Princess was finished. The subsequent events of his life were outwardly calm, as befits the existence of a great scientist and busy romancer, whose fecund fancy was based upon a groundwork ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... reflections may be some explanations in fact for the opposition to the commissioning of Negroes, there was no one with hardihood enough to bring them forward. Such notions might form the groundwork of a prejudice, but they could not become the reason of a policy. It is an instinctive tribute to the good sense of the American people that the opponents of colored officers were compelled to find reasons of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... system of metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which are impressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they remain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thought and unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects to which it might be applied, for ever ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... of true woman—the Christian wife, mother, and daughter. The influence of Christian woman on society is incalculable. Admitting it possible, for a moment, that irreligious men might construct or direct an atheistical State, yet it would be utterly vain to build up the family, the groundwork of all organized communities, without the aid of the Christian woman. She it is who, in the deep and silent recesses of the household, puts together those primitive and enduring materials, each in its place ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... moderns nearly as much as its false direction in the ancients, my task will naturally divide itself into three portions. In the first, I shall endeavor to investigate and arrange the facts of nature with scientific accuracy; showing as I proceed, by what total neglect of the very first base and groundwork of their art the idealities of some among the old masters are produced. This foundation once securely laid, I shall proceed, in the second portion of the work, to analyze and demonstrate the nature of the emotions of the Beautiful ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... attitude of the order. That article, by whomsoever written, is one of the great documents of mankind, and it would be an added joy to know that it was penned by a minister.[122] The Book of Constitutions, which is still the groundwork of Masonry, has been printed in many editions, and is accessible ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... sixth of April, the Durbeyfield waggon met many other waggons with families on the summit of the load, which was built on a wellnigh unvarying principle, as peculiar, probably, to the rural labourer as the hexagon to the bee. The groundwork of the arrangement was the family dresser, which, with its shining handles, and finger-marks, and domestic evidences thick upon it, stood importantly in front, over the tails of the shaft-horses, in its erect and natural position, like some Ark of the Covenant that ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Esarhaddon was a Babylonian, by name Nakia; and as soon as her son came into possession of his inheritance, an impulse of filial piety moved him to restore to his mother's city its former rank of capital. Animated by the strong religious feeling which formed the groundwork of his character, Esarhaddon had begun his reign by restoring the sanctuaries which had been the cradle of the Assyrian religion, and his intentions, thus revealed at the very outset, had won for him the sympathy of the Babylonians;* ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... 3. "As the wax takes all shapes, and yet is wax still at the bottom; the [Greek: spokeimenon] still is wax; so the soul transported in so many several passions of joy, fear, hope, sorrow, anger, and the rest, has for its general groundwork of all this, Love." (Henry More, quoted in Carey's Dante, Purgatorio, c. xviii.) Hence, says Carey, Love does not figure in Collins's ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... fabulous incidents of the simplest kind. Then we advance to contrasts between town and country, between Egypt and foreign lands. Then personal adventure, and the interest in schemes and successes, becomes the staple material; while only in the later periods does character come in as the groundwork. The same may be seen in English literature—first the tales of wonders and strange lands, then the novel of adventure, and ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... power and absorbing topic of Indian lore. Their agency is at once the groundwork of their mythology and demonology. They supply the machinery of their poetic inventions, and the belief in their multitudinous existence exerts a powerful influence upon the lives and character of individuals. As their manitoes are of all imaginary kinds, grades, and powers, benign ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... departments to which the vast building of the College of Sages was appropriated, that which interested me most was devoted to the archaeology of the Vril-ya, and comprised a very ancient collection of portraits. In these the pigments and groundwork employed were of so durable a nature that even pictures said to be executed at dates as remote as those in the earliest annals of the Chinese, retained much freshness of colour. In examining this collection, two things especially struck me:—first, that the pictures said to be between 6000 ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... lay no groundwork sooner than that? Sometime in the foreseeable future, at least! Take it up with Propaganda, Blauvelt! It seems to me that the briefing mentioned an indigenous race ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe

... fully understand the deep sadness which was the groundwork of her nature. It certainly did not prevent the most intense enjoyment of her rich temporal and spiritual blessings, while it indicated depths which her friends did not fathom. It was partly constitutional, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... all things: flowers blowing, trees waving, men and women moving and speaking in densest crowds among the flaming rocks of hell, the steps of purgatory, the planispheres of heaven's stars making the groundwork of that wondrous tapestry. But it is better to read Dante than to read about Dante, so I let ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... he summoned the Commission on the League of Nations to meet on February 3, eleven days before the date fixed for his departure for the United States, and laid before that body his revised draft of a Covenant which formed the groundwork for the Commission's report presented to ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... mental tapestry, into which she had woven exquisite shades of thought, and curious and quaint devices and rich, glowing imagery that necked the groundwork with purple ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... omit the duty of stern-worded protest against the aggressions of Parliament; and in an elaborate and admirable paper, marked with Joseph Warren's energy of soul, they alleged the unconstitutional imposition of taxes as the groundwork of the recent troubles. It was oppression, and it "came down upon the people like an armed man, though they were the subjects of an empire which was the toast of the nations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... voyage down to the Congo on the British and African S.S. M'poso gave time for the groundwork of Coast language and Coast thought (which are like unto nothing else on this planet) to soak into his system. The steamer progressed slowly. She went up rivers protected by dangerous bars; she anchored in roadsteads, off forts, and straggling towns; she lay-to off solitary whitewashed factories, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... family were the happier for having listened reverently (if with some surprise) to Tom's thanksgiving. They were not an ill-disposed set of people, but wanted thoughtfulness in their every-day life; that sort of thoughtfulness which gives order to a home, and makes a wise and holy spirit of love the groundwork of order. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... science. If, indeed, they could have prevailed on us to view all advances in science as dangerous innovations, and to look back to the opinions and practices of our forefathers, instead of looking forward, for improvement, a promising groundwork would have been laid. But I am in hopes their good sense will dictate to them, that since the mountain will not come to them, they had better go to the mountain: that they will find their interest in acquiescing in the liberty and science of their ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... The groundwork of the following pages,— This Romance, undertaken at his suggestion, is inscribed by his old, and sincerely attached friend, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... square of No. 2-1/2 sandpaper folded in half, so that in size it is about 2-1/2 inches all ways, and this again folded crosswise, giving me a firm point as would be a rasp so formed, I work out the corners, and all about them for, say, an inch, until I get a beginning and an example of groundwork from which to smooth down the whole. Then I take the cork rubber, tool 67, and a piece of sandpaper as last, rather larger than the one just used, so that I can bend it firmly over both sides and as I want, when I change it about to secure ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... him with scientific theories. All that the great comedian required of him was to observe and to imitate. Observation, imitation, lo! the groundwork of all art! the primal elements of all genius! Not there, indeed to halt, but there ever to commence. What remains to carry on the intellect to mastery? Two steps,—to reflect, to reproduce. Observation, imitation, reflection, reproduction. In these stands a mind complete and consummate, fit to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... resembled in the pattern a piece of marbled paper, save that the circular or oval patches of which it was composed, and which had as their nuclei, stones, rocks, shell-fish, bunches of fuci, and fronds of laminaria, were greatly larger. There spread around a misty groundwork of green intensely deep along its horizon, but comparatively light overhead, in its middle sky, which had always its prodigy—wonderful circlets of light, that went widening outwards, and with whose delicate green there mingled occasional ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller



Words linked to "Groundwork" :   supposal, construction, base, bed, support, explanation, readying, understructure, cornerstone, structure, preparation, foundation, substructure, raft foundation, assumption



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