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Inapplicable   Listen
adjective
Inapplicable  adj.  Not applicable; incapable of being applied; not adapted; not suitable; as, the argument is inapplicable to the case.
Synonyms: Unsuitable; unsuited; unadapted; inappropriate; inapposite; irrelevant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inapplicable" Quotes from Famous Books



... they had not "set forth any circumstances, nor is the Government of the United States at present aware of any circumstances, concerning the use of war or merchant submarines which would render the existing rules of international law inapplicable to them." Moreover, "so far as the treatment of either war or merchant submarines in American waters is concerned, the Government of the United States reserves its liberty of action in all respects and will treat such vessels as, in its opinion, becomes the action of a power which may be said to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... difficulty with most systems for distributing the books in a library appears to lie in the attempt to apply scientific minuteness in a region where it is largely inapplicable. One can divide and sub-divide the literature of any science indefinitely, in a list of subjects, but such exhaustive sub-divisions can never be made among the books on the shelves. Here, for example, is a "Treatise on diseases of the heart and lungs." This falls ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... Society. At its outposts are flaming swords for women, though invisible to other eyes; men can venture without the lines, if they only return at roll-call. Let a woman receive or visit one of the demi-monde, (the technical use of the word is happily inapplicable here,) and she might as well earn her living by her own labor, or do any other disreputable thing; but her brother may pay court to the most doubtful, and mothers will only shake their heads and say, "He must sow his wild oats; he'll get over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... of Lakshmi. She became incarnate again, many centuries afterwards, as the wife of Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu [W. H. S.]. Reckoning by centuries is, of course, inapplicable to pure myth. The author ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... introductions to distinguished people, and his mission attracted a great deal of attention. The proposals which he made came under Flamsteed's notice, who pointed out that the Frenchman's projects were quite inapplicable in the present state of astronomical science, inasmuch as the places of the stars were not known with the degree of accuracy which would be necessary if such methods were to be rendered available. Flamsteed then goes on to say:—"I heard no more of the Frenchman after this; but was told that my ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... (p. 346). "The first cause of things is Deity" (Dr. Mayer, in "Correlation and Conservation of Force," p. 341). "Although the word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another" (p. 15). "Causation is the will," "creation is the act, of God" Grove on "Correlation of Physical Forces," (p. 199). "Between gravity and motion it is impossible ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... of law originating in custom and moral justice, and records of judgments based upon "the precedents and commentaries", in the sort of cases common to agricultural communities of the time, many of the provisions being as inapplicable to modern life as modern laws would be to ancient life. A reader is impressed by the extraordinary number and variety of cases with their still more numerous details and circumstances accumulated in the course of long ages, the manner in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... embodies this belief so far as our common activities go, give a general framework and direction how a man or woman should live. (I do throughout all this book mean man or woman equally when I write of "man," unless it is manifestly inapplicable.) ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... of the race in these last years are urged as a sufficient reason for annulling this law. It is admitted that it was righteous and beneficent in ages long past but with the new light and new conditions of the present it is effete, inapplicable and unjust. They call attention to the vast extension of commerce, to the marvelously increased facilities for travel, transportation and intercommunication; to the innumerable and wonderful inventions that in their ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the results have been astonishing. The Little Polands, Italies, ghettos, Germanies, and others in our great industrial centers are well known, though the word "Little" is not applicable in every case. It is especially inapplicable where the compact immigrant settlements exceed in numbers the largest cities of their home countries. For instance, according to the last census figures, there were in the city of New York more Italians (including their children) than the population of Rome, more Germans than in Cologne, about ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... sure from the first that the system called "The Wakefield" could never fairly represent the ideas of Mr. Wakefield himself, whose singular breadth of understanding and various knowledge of mankind belied the notion that fathered on him the clumsy execution of a theory wholly inapplicable to a social state like Australia. I am glad to see that he has vindicated himself from the discreditable paternity. But I grieve to find that he still clings to one cardinal error of the system, in the discouragement of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... merely pale or fresh, yet as we find decided colours attributed to mead elsewhere in the poem, such as "melyn," (yellow) and "gwyn" (white) we have thought proper to retain the literal acceptation in this place, as a poetical variety, however inapplicable to the beverage in question it ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... to be expected at the time when JESUS CHRIST was manifested upon the Earth, by reason of the exhaustion of all natural or unassisted human efforts for the amelioration of mankind;" (pp. 155-6;) whereas "our recently enlarged Ethnographical information shews such an argument to be altogether inapplicable to the case." "It would be more like the realities of things, as we can now behold them, to say that the Christian Revelation was given to the Western World, because it deserved it better and was more prepared for it than the East." (p. 156.)—The ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... colleague, San Giuliano, the following telegram: 'Austria has communicated to us and to Germany her intention to act against Serbia, and defines such action as defensive, hoping to apply the casus foederis of the Triple Alliance, which I consider inapplicable. I intend to join forces with Germany to prevent any such action by Austria, but it will be necessary to say clearly that we do not consider such eventual action as defensive, and therefore do not believe that the casus foederis ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... may come back after many days." Margarita, Sr., often got her Biblical metaphors mixed, but that troubled her little. There was, she thought, virtue in scriptural quotations, even though entirely inapplicable to the case ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... first visit, I made use of Byron's lines on Lisbon to express my impressions of Peking. Though there are now some signs of improvement in the city [Page 39] the quotation can hardly be considered as inapplicable at the present time. Here it is for the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... too able a mathematician to commit these elementary blunders; he did not assume to account for rotation by inapplicable laws, but took for granted that the sun revolved upon its axis, and thence communicated a corresponding motion to the bodies thrown from its surface. But our author has sought to advance beyond his teacher, and in this way has shown his ignorance of physics by an egregious mistake. At this point ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... inapplicable in the case of domestic servants (Gesinde) who are a part of the household, and who afford to their masters, besides their services, the advantage of having a person at their disposal always about them, and whose wages are therefore in great part their board and lodging. Still less can it ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... a collection like the present, with their varied associations, may be fairly estimated when we consider that the country printers in those days were not particular in making the same woodcut do duty in most incongrous and inapplicable positions ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson

... already said, displeased Jesus. Until then he had always avoided great centres, preferring for his action the country and the towns of small importance. Many of the precepts which he gave to his apostles were absolutely inapplicable, except in a simple society of humble men.[1] Having no idea of the world, and accustomed to the kindly communism of Galilee, remarks continually escaped him, whose simplicity would at Jerusalem appear very singular.[2] His imagination ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... nature be "delivered" from the law of gravitation, chaos would come again. No portion of this fair and beautiful natural world needs to become "dead" to the laws of nature. Such phraseology as this is inapplicable to the relation that exists between the world of matter, and the system of material laws, because, in this material sphere, there has been no revolution, no rebellion, no great catastrophe analogous to the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... the House of Commons, often with a fine irony, the Miltonic magnificence emphasizing the pettiness of the ordinary political squabbles. But, of course, the theological questions which are at the root of Milton's debate make many of the arguments inapplicable to politics: indeed, what is probably the most remembered passage in all the speeches has nothing to do with social or political activities but draws its poignant interest from the secret thoughts that visit the hearts of men when they ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... of carrying on war against the weak, effeminate, and disorganized Italians required many modifications when directed against the great military power of Russia. Moreover, the combinations of Eylau and Friedland were inapplicable to the contest with the maddened guerrillas of Minos, animated by the combined passions of hatred, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... the restoration of king Charles the Second, and the name not being inapplicable to our present situation (for we were restored to fresh life and strength), I named this Restoration Island; for I thought it probable that captain Cook might not have taken notice of it. The other names I have presumed ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh

... becomes barium dioxide (BaO{2}), and that this dioxide at a higher temperature is reconverted into free oxygen and baryta, the latter being ready for use again. For many years it was assumed, however, by chemists that this ideally simple reaction was inapplicable on a commercial scale, owing to the gradual loss of power to absorb oxygen which was always found to take place in the baryta after a certain number of operations. About eight years ago Messrs. A. & L. Brin, who had studied chemistry under Boussingault, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... probably is misled by the thought that the English are more sober in gesture than the Latin races: and his contempt for the work of the mime is based on a belief that certain purely conventional gestures, inapplicable save in wordless scenes, constitute the whole materials of the mime's art. The mime certainly has a kind of dumb language with a limited vocabulary, understood, unfortunately, by few English people save those connected with the stage; ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... really a hybrid conception, a spurious concept due to the illicit introduction of the idea of space, and to our application of the notion of space, which is applicable to physical objects, to states of consciousness, to which it is really inapplicable. Objects occupying space are marked out as external to one another, but this cannot be said of conscious states. Yet, in our ordinary speech and conventional view of things, we think of conscious states as separated from one another and as spread out like "things," in a fictitious, homogeneous ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... is involved in these and similar statements may be perfectly sound, when it is applied merely to natural events, occurring in the ordinary course, and according to the established constitution of the material and moral world; but it is manifestly inapplicable to supernatural events, such as the creation of the world, or the revelation of Divine truth, since these events cannot be accounted for by any known natural cause, and must be ascribed to the immediate agency of a Higher Power. Without some such ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... simple thing, but very important to the right understanding of these words, that none but Christian people have anything to do with them. To all others, to all who are not already resting on the finished salvation of Jesus Christ, this injunction is utterly inapplicable. It is addressed to the 'beloved, who have always obeyed'; to the 'saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi.' The whole Epistle is addressed, and this injunction with the rest, to Christian men. That is the first thing to be remembered. If there be any of you, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... desires "problem plays," second that he is "paradoxical," and third that in his dramas as elsewhere he is specially "a Socialist." And the interesting thing is that when we come to his philosophy, all these three phrases are quite peculiarly inapplicable. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... "gentlemen"; perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had gentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair, their intimacy with the stage and the Opera, made any old New York criterion inapplicable ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... be really adopted in modern life as the pattern and rule of conduct? Is there not something strangely impracticable in His Ethics; and, however admirably suited to meet the needs of His own time, utterly inapplicable to the complex conditions of society to-day? On the one hand, Tolstoy would have us follow the example of Jesus to the letter, and rigidly practise the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, even to the extent of refusing to resist wrong and possess property, and of holding ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... "smartness" and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable; sometimes he wore out their patience or was thought to be a dangerous dreamer. Whenever he found there was no hope of his ideas being adopted he lost interest in his work, came late and left early, or disappeared ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... grounds of this doctrine, I can discover but one, and that is wholly inapplicable to our case. The important distinction so well understood in America, between a Constitution established by the people and unalterable by the government, and a law established by the government and alterable by the government, seems to have been little understood and ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... and his neighbours to array himself becomingly, according to the fashion of the hour, but we are inclined to doubt the wisdom of this latest move. It is often said, that the grey mare is the better horse, but when the horse itself has a grey coat, the proverb seems inapplicable. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various

... the act of 1907. No great change in policy was effected by this law which, for the most part, only revised the wording of the old laws and modified the methods of regulation. The head tax of two dollars, hitherto levied on each alien, was doubled but was made inapplicable to immigrants from our insular possessions or to aliens who had resided for a year either in the British possessions in North America, or in Cuba or Mexico. All aliens suffering from tuberculosis or loathsome diseases or those ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... Ellen differed so far from the idea she had previously formed of her, as a daughter of one of the principal merchants, who were then, as now, like nobles in the land, that the stock of dislike which Mrs. Melmoth had provided was found to be totally inapplicable. The young stranger strove so hard, too (and undoubtedly it was a pleasant labor), to win her love, that she was successful to a degree of which the lady herself was not, perhaps, aware. It was ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... may from time to time advise the reconsideration by Members of the League of treaties which have become inapplicable and the consideration of international conditions whose continuance might endanger the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... the world, the Federal Government unhesitatingly applied the doctrine of "continuous voyage," seizing and condemning neutral ships even when bound from England to Bermuda or the Bahamas, if their cargo was ultimately destined for Southern ports. The doctrine was declared inapplicable when the last leg of the journey was by land,[1] doubtless because there was little danger of heavy traffic across the Mexican frontier. Blockade runners continued to pour goods into the South ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... these circles, which was that of 1 to 2, appeared to his eye to be identical with that of Jupiter's and Saturn's orbits. Hence he was led to compare the orbits of the other planets' circles described in pentagons and hexagons. As this hypothesis was as inapplicable to the heavens as its predecessors, Kepler asked himself in despair, "What have plane figures to do with solid orbits? Solid bodies ought to be used for solid orbits." On the strength of this conceit, he supposed ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the 'medio tutissimus ibis' is inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and all the attempts, as those of Baxter, though no more required than "I believe in God through Christ," prove only the mildness of the proposer's temper, but as a rule would be equal to nothing, at least exclude ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... he turned for the wine and water, his face, as so often with rude folk in a great emotion, browned as it was with wind and sun, seemed lighted from within; he seemed etherealized, yet with his virility all alive in him. A phrase, wholly inapplicable in its first sense, came irresistibly to the younger priest's mind as he waited on him. "When the strong man, armed, keepeth his house, his goods are ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... divine will. No doubt the principles which Samuel discerned written as with a sunbeam on the past of Israel were illustrated there with a certainty and directness which belonged to it alone; but we shall make a bad use of the history of Israel, if we say, 'It is all miraculous, and therefore inapplicable to modern national life.' It would be much nearer the mark to say, 'It is all miraculous, and therefore meant as an exhibition for blind eyes of the eternal principles which govern the history of all nations.' It is as true in Britain to-day as ever it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... instance before us. The temptation to drag it under what we already know is great and must be resisted. Proverbs and wise saws are more suitable to common life than to intricate relationships. They are inapplicable to deep ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed, and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed, may, during ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... actual proof of a general abuse could affect a practice the very principle of which tends to make the coercion as general as the trade. Mr. Hurst's reflection concerning the abuse of authority is just, but in this case it is altogether inapplicable; because the complaint was not of the abuse, but of the use of authority in matters of trade, which ought to have been free. He throws out a variety of invidious reflections against the Council, as if they wanted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... know what this earthwork was first called; but in time it came to be known as Fort Nonsense, simply because it appeared to the ordinary man as a great piece of work undertaken without any good purpose. But never was a name more inapplicable. If it had been called Fort Good Sense, it would ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... opportunity. It would be as ill-advised to follow a chivalrous impulse now, as it would in 1808 have been inexcusable to disobey it. Under the circumstances of 1808, I would again act as I then acted. But though inapplicable to the period to which it was applied, I confess I think the caution which I have just quoted does apply, with considerable force, to the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... Shaking Palsy is evidently inapplicable to the first of these cases, which appears to have belonged more properly to the genus Convulsio, of Cullen, or to ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson

... saw, no doubt, but totally inapplicable to the present situation; yet it continued to haunt me till the sight of the door to which I had been directed put every other thought to flight save that I was about to meet the stricken nieces of a brutally ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... proficient (after the present manner of proficiency) in tactics; and as for his school, he could himself learn at night what he was to teach others on the following day! Nor was this mere "conceit"—though, in some other respects, that word, in its limited sense, was not inapplicable—neither was it altogether ignorant presumption; for one of these men was seldom known to fail in anything he undertook: or, if he did fail, he was never found to be cast down by defeat, and the resiliency of his nature justified ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... to Odette) and whether it was not possible to apply to Odette, since he had known her (for he never imagined for a moment that she could ever have taken a penny from anyone else, before), that title, which he had believed so wholly inapplicable to her, of 'kept' woman. He could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent and providential, happened, at that moment, to extinguish ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... nearly always travelled, as it is more sheltered from the prevailing southerly winds. The term "Mud Lake" is, however, not applicable to this lake, as only a comparatively small part of it is shallow or muddy; and it is nearly as inapplicable to Marsh Lake, as the latter is not markedly muddy along the west side, and from the appearance of the east shore one would not judge it to be so, as the banks appear to be high ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... Cenci" as the best tragedy of modern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said: 'I have been cautious to avoid the introducing faults of youthful composition; diffuseness, a profusion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness, generality, and, as Hamlet says, "words, words".' There is nothing that is not purely dramatic throughout; and the character of Beatrice, proceeding, from vehement struggle, to horror, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... however, the recommendation of experience, to which, in general, more regard is properly enough shewn, than can be expected towards arguments drawn from merely abstract opinions, too often so remote from the common track of life as to be quite inapplicable to the diversities and complicated relations of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... old story—none the worse for being true—regarding a fine young Irish gentleman, who being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied he had no doubt he could, but he couldn't exactly say, for certain, because he had never tried. This is not inapplicable to my uncle and his fencing. He had never had a sword in his hand before, except once when he played Richard the Third at a private theatre, upon which occasion it was arranged with Richmond that he was to be run through, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... afterwards acquired by the Federal Government. We put aside, therefore, any argument, drawn from precedents, showing the extent of the power which the General Government exercised over slavery in this Territory, as altogether inapplicable to ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... use are substantially consumed in using: a phosphorus match, articles of food, and a cigar, are examples of this description. Some things after use become inapplicable to their former purposes, as paper which has been printed upon: but it is yet available for the cheesemonger or the trunk-maker. Some articles, as pens, are quickly worn out by use; and some are still valuable after a long ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... the experience of some time, proving not to be sufficiently blissful, we removed to Paradise Row; some furlongs nearer to the Father in God, his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have a laudable pride in showing that I had a respectable—I beg pardon, the word is inapplicable—I mean a grand neighbour. "I am not the rose," said the flower in the Persian poem, "but I have lived near the rose." I did not bloom in the archbishop's garden, but I flourished under the wall, though on the outside. The ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... tie is applied to hold the opposite sides of the roof together at its base, where alone a tie can be fully efficient, and thus the roof is made to act upon the walls wholly in the direction of gravity; or where an efficient tie is inapplicable, as in the case of a hammer beam roof, buttresses or counterforts are added to the walls, to enable them to resist the pressure outwards. A beam laid horizontally from wall to wall, as a girder to carry a floor and its load, may sag or bend downwards, and tend thereby to force ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... harpsichord. We cannot attribute this to the mechanism of the body, which might gradually accustom itself to the accurate placing of the fingers. This could be applied only where we place a piece of music, frequently practised; but it is totally inapplicable to a new piece, which is played by the professor with equal facility, though he has never seen it before. In the latter case there must arise, necessarily, an ideal representation, or an act of judgment, previous to ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... continued, "were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that my very metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my own mental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable physical analogy. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... active participation of a smaller number in public affairs, who would indignantly resent any intimation that they did not accept the plenary inspiration of the Bible.[16] The declarations of Paul, while in harmony with accepted ideas in his day, are absurd, and inapplicable to our age and generation, and as such are being discarded by enlightened public sentiment, as was the old theory of a flat earth finally given up after science fully exposed its falsity. Another duty of woman ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... supposed the appellation inapplicable to a gentleman!" answered Sercombe, with entire coolness. "But by all means take me ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... next place, the considerations which would naturally guide an author of established reputation in the selection of early compositions for subsequent republication, are obviously inapplicable to the preparation of a posthumous standard edition of his collected works. Those who read the tale of "Falkland" eight-and-forty years ago' have long survived the age when character is influenced by the literature of sentiment. ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... absolutely nothing. They do not stand for ability, for public service, for social importance, for large possessions; but, on the contrary, are oftenest found in connection with personalities to which they are supremely inapplicable. We can hardly afford to quarrel with a national habit which, if lightly handled, may involve us in serious domestic difficulties. The "Right Worshipful" functionary whose equipage stops at my back gate, and whose services are indispensable to the health ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... for this reason that the defensive measures which are practised in the waters of the earth are inapplicable to the atmosphere. Movement by, or in, water is governed by the depth of channels, and these may be rendered impassable or dangerous to negotiate by the planting of mines. A passing ship or submarine may circumvent these explosive obstructions, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... with a delighted sense of discovering the country,—"why, you read about them in Dickens!" Who shall say but that this instinctive association was an involuntary severe, but not inapplicable, criticism? A nightingale suggests Keats; a ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... after exposure to infection. This is called "early treatment." This term is inapplicable, as a disease cannot be treated before it exists. It is also likely to be confused with "abortive treatment," which implies treatment immediately on ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... rules, the observance of which is deemed necessary for his own preservation, and consequently for the preservation of his people and the world. The idea that early kingdoms are despotisms in which the people exist only for the sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for his subjects; his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his people's benefit. So ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... have excepted the soldier with his weapon in his right hand), I think there is a peculiar seat proper to many different styles of riding. The extremes of these are the manege and the Eastern styles, both admirable in their way, and perfectly practical, but each wholly inapplicable to the performances of ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... only the Sharpe version, he was the last man to "pitchfork" into it, "accidentally," a stanza from "some other ballad," that stanza being as Colonel Elliot says "inapplicable" to Telfer and his circumstances. Poor Jamie, a small tenant-farmer, with ten cows, and, as far as we learn, not one horse, had no hawks and hounds; no "vassal lands," and no reason to say that at the Dodhead he "maun never be again." He could return from his long run! Scott certainly ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the elements as to render my remarks inapplicable. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... Experimentalis.—The new method is valueless, because inapplicable, unless it be supplied with materials duly collected and presented—in fact, unless there be formed a competent natural history of the Phaenomena Universi. A short introductory sketch of the requisites of such a natural history, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... hand of the world. They do not direct their own Education as though they had any object in life. They seem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthings of the day. These remarks are not very inapplicable to young men also. There is a great body of young men who float on the stream of life with no self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tell you, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... of the new boiler invented by Ericsson led to the employment of steam in many instances in which it had been previously inapplicable. Among these may be mentioned the steam fire-engine constructed by him in conjunction with Mr. Braithwaite, about the same time with the Novelty, and which excited so much interest in London at the time the Argyle Rooms were on fire. A similar engine of greater power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... and it was at least amusing to the naughty players on its stage to begin with, and long afterwards to the guiltless spectators of the commonty. In Delphine there is not a glimmer of amusement from first to last, and the whole story is compact (if that word were not totally inapplicable) of windbags of sentiment, copy-book headings, and the strangest husks of neo-classic type-worship, stock character, and hollow generalisation. An Italian is necessarily a person of volcanic passions; ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... advocate remarked, with a thrust at the public prosecutor, that "the brilliant observations of that gentleman on heredity, while explaining scientific facts concerning heredity, were inapplicable in this case, as Botchkova was of unknown parentage." The public prosecutor put something down on paper with an angry look, and shrugged his ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... and origin. The rules of evidence current in our law courts were constructed specially with a view to the protection of the accused, and upon the assumption that it is better nine guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned. Clearly such rules will be inapplicable to the historical question which of two hypotheses is most likely to be true. The author forgets that the negative hypothesis is just as much a hypothesis as the positive, and needs to be defended in ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... committee of the revised code, in 1776, and decided in the negative, by the opinions of Wythe, Mason, and myself, against Pendleton and Thomas Lee. Pendleton proposed to take Blackstone for that text, only purging him of what was inapplicable, or unsuitable to us. In that case, the meaning of every word of Blackstone would have become a source of litigation, until it had been settled by repeated legal decisions. And to come at that meaning, we should have had produced, on all ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... whole country. The choosing of professors was immeasurably more difficult than at present. With reference to this point, a very eminent graduate of Harvard then volunteered to me some advice, which at first sight looked sound, but which I soon found to be inapplicable. He said: "You must secure at any cost the foremost men in the United States in every department. In this way alone can a real university be created.'' Trying the Socratic method upon him, I asked, in reply, "How are we to ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... follow suit. When, in 1848, Lord Palmerston offered his services as mediator between Austria and revolted Italy, it was on a minimum basis of a frontier north of Trento. The arguments for the retention of Trieste—that Austria had made it what it was; that Germany needed it as a seaport, etc.—were inapplicable here; and even after the defeat of Custoza, an occupation of the Trentino, had it happened in conjunction with a naval victory, would have opened a fair prospect to possession. But there was no time to lose, and much time was lost by ordering Garibaldi ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... the fourth section of the act of Congress of January 7, 1824, of discriminating duties upon the cargoes of Portuguese vessels imported into the United States; but being informed that the act alluded to was inapplicable by reason that discriminating duties upon the cargoes of American vessels still existed in a part of the dominions of Portugal, he has requested that the principle acted upon in regard to Holland may be extended to Portugal, and that discriminating duties may be abolished in respect to Portugal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... diameter in one line, by 34 miles in another line; Rimsky is 54 by 20 miles across, and it has a strangely sinuous margin; Bow atoll is 30 miles long, and on an average only 6 in width; Menchicoff atoll consists of three atolls united or tied together. This theory, moreover, is totally inapplicable to the northern Maldiva atolls in the Indian Ocean (one of which is 88 miles in length, and between 10 and 20 in breadth), for they are not bounded like ordinary atolls by narrow reefs, but by a vast number of separate little atolls; other little atolls ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... and his forces, instructed delegates to support the General as a candidate for the nomination and endeavored to forestall opposition to a third term. It declared that the objection to a third presidential term applied only to a third consecutive term and hence was inapplicable to the re-election of Grant. Grant, meanwhile, presented a spectacle that was at once humorous and pathetic. He had not expected, on leaving the presidency, to return to power again, had dropped consideration of the political future and had given himself up to the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... determined by a small adjusting screw shown in the figure. This arrangement of stop is identical in principle with that adopted by Messrs. Siemens Brothers in their "abutment pole" lamp, and is found to work very well in practice on the negative electrodes, but is inapplicable on the positive carbons on account of the higher temperature of the latter, which is liable to destroy the metallic stop by fusion, and it is for this reason that the positive carbon in Mr. Hedges' lamp is controlled by the method we have already ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... with copious rains, we learn to measure the productive capacity of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this rule is almost wholly inapplicable here, for, notwithstanding its savage nakedness, scarce at all veiled by a sparse growth of sage and linosyris [16], the desert soil of the Great Basin is as rich in the elements that in rainy regions rise and ripen into food as that of any other State ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... territory of a European power" in the New World, and "that the United States is bound to protest against the enlargement of the area of British Guiana against the will of Venezuela"; and she was invited to submit her claims to arbitration. Her answer was that the Monroe Doctrine was "inapplicable to the state of things in which we live at the present day" and a refusal to submit her claims to arbitration. The President then asked and received authority to appoint a commission to examine the boundary and report. "When such report is made and accepted," said Cleveland, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... remark. "In order to judge," said he, "of the truth or falsehood of such predictions, one ought to collect fifty of them. It would be found that they are almost always made up of the same phrases, which are sometimes inapplicable, and sometimes hit the mark. But the first are rarely mentioned, while the others are always ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... bow,—the weapon of semi-barbarians. The spear, the sword, the battle-axe were the weapons of the baronial family,—the weapons of knights, who fought on horseback, cased in defensive armor. The peasant fought on foot; and as the tactics of ancient warfare were inapplicable, and those of modern warfare unknown, the strength of armies was in cavalry and not in the infantry, as in modern times. But armies were not large from the ninth to the twelfth century,—not until the Crusades arose. Nor were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... underground, and their engineerings there become very daedalean. In fact, such unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we call Pedants; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions; not coveting, rather avoiding the general daylight of common-sense, as very extraneous to them and their procedure; by long persistence in which course they become Completed Pedants, hidebound, impenetrable, able to defy the hostile extraneous ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... soul inherit an old cause that links them together in a long descent; but the battle is always to a present age. Continually something is becoming superfluous, inapplicable, or wanting in the work of the past. Victory itself makes arms useless, and consigns them to dark closets. New times, new weapons, is the history of all warfare. The doubt of the validity of the ideal, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... illustrious Washington. Washington knew better, perhaps, than any other man what the white man could do; his power of endurance and strength of wind under a given speed of motion. Yet he found that all his observations on the white race were inapplicable to negroes. To know what they could do, and to ascertain their power of endurance and strength of wind, new observations had to be made, and he made them accordingly. He made them on his own negroes. He saw they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... rendering such a theory of things a rational theory; for so long as the quality of self-existence was supposed to reside in phenomena themselves, the very simplicity of the theory, as expressed in words, must have seemed to render it inapplicable as a reasonable theory of things. The astounding variety, complexity, and harmony which are everywhere so conspicuous in the world of phenomena must have seemed to necessitate as an explanation some one integrating cause; and it is impossible that ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... have them at all must place them along your wall or scattered through the grounds, you can still give them an excellent start by enriching the soil in spots beforehand, as suggested above in growing lima beans. In the event of finding even this last way inapplicable to your land, the following method will make success certain: Dig out holes three to six feet in diameter (if the soil is very hard, the larger dimension), and twelve to eighteen inches deep. Mix thoroughly with the excavated soil a good barrowful of the oldest, finest manure ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... by the atomic character of our words, and the flat juxtaposition of our clauses. The art which was capable of making a gem of every prose sentence, — the art which, carried, perhaps, to, a pitch at which it became too conscious, made the phrases of Tacitus a series of cameos, — that art is inapplicable to our looser medium; we cannot give clay the finish and nicety of marble. Our poetry and speech in general, therefore, start out upon a lower level; the same effort will not, with this instrument, attain the same beauty. If equal beauty is ever attained, it comes ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... had previously been called natural history and the observational branches—those in which experiment was (or appeared to be) of doubtful use, and where, at that time, mathematical methods were inapplicable. Under these circumstances the old name of "Natural History" stuck by the residuum, by those phenomena which were not, at that time, susceptible of mathematical or experimental treatment; that is to say, those phenomena of nature which come now under the general heads of physical geography, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... favours, and employments. When, in the first General Assembly which succeeded the Revolution, an overture was made for the revival of the League and Covenant, it was with horror that Douce David heard the proposal eluded by the men of carnal wit and policy, as he called them, as being inapplicable to the present times, and not falling under the modern model of the church. The reign of Queen Anne had increased his conviction, that the Revolution government was not one of the true Presbyterian complexion. But then, more ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... species. The test would be an admirable one, if, in the first place, it were always practicable to apply it, and if, in the second, it always yielded results susceptible of a definite interpretation. Unfortunately, in the great majority of cases, this touchstone for species is wholly inapplicable. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... L16 per ton, a sample containing 10 per cent of impurities ought to be purchased for L14: 8s., and so on for any other quantity. This system which answers perfectly with sulphate of ammonia, nitrate of soda, or any other substance whose value depends on one individual element, is inapplicable in the case of complex manures, such as guano and the like, in which several factors combine to make up the value. In such cases, manures of very different composition may have the same value, the deficiency in one particular element being counterbalanced by ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... that he had spoken while at Richmond as a friend of the Union, and a friend of all parties, but that the particular language which he had intended to hold was entirely inapplicable to the state of mind in which he found the Confederates one and all. It was idle to tell them that they were worsted on all sides; that the time was come for making terms with the North. What he had said to them about the recognition of their Independence ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... not be inapplicable to the subject, to endeavour to define what is to be understood by a generation, in the sense the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... this is probably the cause of the discrepancy. It will be recollected that the essence of the process consists of the comparison of the small ellipse made by the distant star with the larger ellipse made by the nearer star. If the two stars were at the same distance, the process would be wholly inapplicable. In such a case, no matter how near the stars were to the earth, no parallax could be detected. For the method to be completely successful, the comparison star should be at least eight times as far as the principal star. Bearing this in mind, it is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... pretend to do much, being but a shallow philologist; yet, since I received your last Number, I have lighted on a passage in that volume of "omnifarious information" Croker's Boswell, which will not be deemed inapplicable. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various

... point of Froude's Erasmus is the inaccuracy of its verbal scholarship. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson of a loose scholar, "he makes out the Latin from the meaning, not the meaning from the Latin." This biting sarcasm would be inapplicable to Froude, who knew the dead languages, as they are called, well enough to read them with ease and enjoyment. But he took in the general sense of a passage so quickly that he did not always, even in translating, stop to ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... aphorism, invented when man's mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of "the survival of the fittest," meaning only the survival of the survivors; or wherever a man says that the rich "have a stake in the country," as if ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... dialogue relating principally to English Postal Reform. Being inapplicable to any condition of things existing in the United States, it ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock's testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial soldiers, and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness, alienated the respect and confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory, and cost him his life. Benjamin Franklin had warned him against the imminent risk ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... lower plane, of the same Word Who is the Life of nature and the Light (the higher reason and spiritual life) of man. Nor (b) is it the same thing as to say that the desires of the animal nature are selfish. For selfishness is a moral term and, as we have seen, moral attributes are inapplicable except to a ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... The great thing, and the one thing, was to push the Gospel and the Reformers' own interpretation of it. Whatever helped was good; whatever hindered was evil; and if this simple classification proved inapplicable over the whole field, it was no business of his to stop and reconcile incongruities. He had more pressing concerns on hand; he had to save souls; he had to be about his Father's business. This short-sighted view resulted in a doctrine that was actually Jesuitical in application. They had no serious ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with the various classes of evidence which had been brought to light since his time. Moreover his one suggestion as to the cause of the gradual modification of species—effort excited by change of conditions—was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who reads the 'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism (published as far back as 1830), will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher place ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... Greeks, was essential to all grave and important transactions. This was signified by the presence of the chorus, whose presence during many secret transactions has been judged of according to rules of propriety inapplicable to the country, and so ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... intelligent, and the speculation of the learned. Things are presented to our view, in a variety of forms, which must have been the result of great labour and cost, and which appear utterly useless and inapplicable to any ostensibly known purpose. Respecting many of these mysterious records of a past age, page after page has been written to prove, and even disprove, the supposed intent of their constructors; and it cannot but be admitted that ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... part of the country, we passed several flocks of sheep, the true moutons du pays, a large breed, with red legs and red spotted faces. Their coarse wool serves to make the ordinary cloth of the country, but is inapplicable to any of a finer texture. To remedy this deficiency, and, if possible, improve the local manufactures, some large flocks of Merino sheep were imported at the time when the French occupied Spain; and they are said to thrive. But ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... the best basis of society. But if the hereditary peerage can not maintain itself, I certainly shall not endow it. I was once a Republican; but I am convinced that a Republic is inapplicable to such ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... sycophant, a mere reptile of a minister, would allow this act to prevent him doing what, in his own judgment, circumstances might require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, the scheme is nugatory and impracticable; the inaptness of the project is only equalled by the vanity of the attempt." This bill, however, passed into a law, and was adhered to in the numerous loans advanced during the whole of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... in one's fancy, for example, how the common budget decreed by the Delegations would be provided for by taxation imposed by the Irish Parliament, is enough to show that the Dual system is absolutely inapplicable to our circumstances. It could not last for a year, and if by any miracle it did last for that time, the whole British Empire would be reduced to confusion or ruin. The advocates of innovation exhibit the most singular mixture of despair and hopefulness. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... great sectional contest was renewed. Mr. Toombs offered an amendment that the Constitution of the United States, and such statutes thereof as may not be locally inapplicable, and the common law, as it existed in the British colonies of America until July 4, 1776, shall be the exclusive laws of said Territory upon the subject of African slavery, until altered by the proper authority. This was rejected by the House. On September 6 the ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... undersigned to have viewed the rivers St. John and Restigouche as possessing both a specific and a generic character; that considered alone they were specific', and the designation in the treaty of "rivers falling into the Atlantic" was inapplicable to them; that considered In connection with other rivers they were generic and were embraced in the terms of the treaty, but that as their connection with other rivers would bring them within a principle which, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... commands. Command only when other means are inapplicable, or have failed. "In frequent orders the parents' advantage is more considered than the child's," says Richter. As in primitive societies a breach of law is punished, not so much because it is intrinsically ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... a constricting bandage is inapplicable, for example, in cold abscesses, tuberculous glands or tendon sheaths, Klapp's suction bell is employed. The cup is applied for five minutes at a time and then taken off for three minutes, and this is repeated over a period of about three-quarters of an hour. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... in our native land. The fundamental principles of the republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or elsewhere, may appeal with confidence in the hope of awakening a favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious teachings of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities,—human and divine. We plead for our ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... at first adopted by the Colonial Government, was founded, probably, on a want of exact knowledge of the peculiar nature of the gold-district, and the consequent expectation that the experiences of California and Australia, in panning and washing, were to be repeated here. This totally inapplicable system in a manner compelled the early single adventurers to abandon their claims, as soon as the surface-water began to accumulate in their little open pits or shallow levels, beyond the control of a single bucket, or other such primitive contrivance for bailing. Even the more active and industrious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... increased with the agitation amongst the thoughtful. Naturally a stranger to politics properly so called, constantly engaged as he was in finance or administration, the minister's constitutional ideas were borrowed from England; he himself saw how inapplicable they were to the situation of France. "I was never called upon," he says in his Memoirs, "to examine closely into what I could make, at the time of my return to office, of my profound and particular esteem for the government of England, for, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... action.[9-54] Yet, as Nelson pointed out, such corrections, often in the form of "clarifying directives," were usually directed to specific commanders and tied to specific incidents and were ignored by other commanders as inapplicable to their own racial experiences.[9-55] Despite the existence of the racially separate Steward's Branch, the Navy's policy seemed so unassailable to the Chief of Naval Personnel that when his views on a congressional ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted, he knew nothing; and that those ideas, which in theory appeared the most advantageous, were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. —TERENCE. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... courts of law, applying the principles of law to new cases as they emerge, is altogether frivolous, inapplicable, and arises from a total ignorance of the bounds between civil and criminal jurisdiction, and of the separate maxims that govern these two provinces of law, that are eternally separate. Undoubtedly the courts of law, where a new case comes before them, as they do every hour, then, that there ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... taste in proteges was so remarkable, seems to have descended upon Colonel WEDGWOOD. His request for the return to this country of LAJPAT RAI, "the Indian patriot," aroused a storm of objection from other hon. Members, who considered the description inapplicable to a person deported for sedition. But it was quickly quelled by the SPEAKER with the unanswerable assertion that "everybody calls himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... The spur is inapplicable to the requirements of ordinary side-saddle riding; because, in order to use it properly, it should be applied, as nearly as practicable, at right angles to the side of the horse, so as to touch him only on one spot, in which case the knee would have to be brought well away from ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... be distinguished from those taken from the types from which they were cast. Some years afterwards, Lord Stanhope, to whom the art of printing is much indebted, greatly improved the art of stereotyping, though it was still quite inapplicable to newspaper printing. The merit of this latter invention is due to the enterprise of the present proprietor ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... experience, Mr. Bryant mentioned that I had passed many years of my early life in Italy, and while he was so doing there arose in my memory a little incident not inapplicable to my present position. I passed some time at Venice; and one summer evening, on the Piazza di San Marco, my attention was attracted by an old man, who walked up and down with a mingled air of wonder and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... the unfortunate estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is frequently a resident in one of the towns, with perhaps as little knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the sweeper of the chancery office; and indeed it would not be inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of chancery-sweepers. These gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than, in a lumping way, to make as much ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... divided subcutaneously. Since the discovery of the principle by Delpech, and the application of it by Stromeyer, Dieffenbach, Little, and countless successors, it has been used for very many cases for which it is totally inapplicable, e.g. for the division of the muscles of the back in spinal curvature. Still there remain several deformities for the relief of which subcutaneous tenotomy is a most important remedy; chief among these are Wry ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... Even in Christianity, beyond the priestly privilege which belongs to all believers, I object to the ministers of any denomination or church calling themselves or being called "priests;" and much more is the name inapplicable to the sramanas or bhikshus of Buddhism which acknowledges no God in the universe, no soul in man, and has no services of sacrifice or prayer in its worship. The only difficulty in the use of "monks" is caused by the members of the sect in Japan which, since the middle of the fifteenth century, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... discussion in this and other countries down to the very eve of the occurrence. In these Mr. Proctor took a leading part; and it was due to his urgent representations that provision was made for the employment of the method identified with the name of Halley,[766] which had been too hastily assumed inapplicable to the first of each transit-pair. It depends upon the difference in the length of time taken by the planet to cross the sun's disc, as seen from various points of the terrestrial surface, and requires, accordingly, the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... wants, all the public will remember; to him will be the glory; and when the case is finally reversed he will probably be out of office. These "requests" cover pages, and touch upon every phase of law applicable or inapplicable to the case. Frequently they number as many as fifty, sometimes many more. It is "up to" the judge to decide "off the bat" which are right and which are wrong. If he guesses that the right one is wrong or the wrong one right the defendant gets ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... the United States and Germany, under which the nonworking provisions of the German patent law are made inapplicable to the patents of American citizens, was concluded on February 23, 1909, and is now in force. Negotiations for similar conventions looking to the placing of American inventors on the same footing as nationals have recently been initiated with other European ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... cited a passage from Grotius, with regard to the definition of the word right. "The chancellor, in his reply," says the bishop in his memoirs, "boldly asserted that he perfectly well remembered the passage I had quoted from Grotius, and that it solely respected natural, but was inapplicable to civil, rights. Lord Loughborough, the first time I saw him after the debate, assured me that before he went to sleep that night he had looked into Grotius, and was astonished to find that the chancellor, in contradicting me, had presumed on the ignorance of the house, and that my quotation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various

... abandoned its non possumus attitude in the matter. It will, however, be found to be the case, as was pointed out by Mr. Balfour, that the sharp distinction between combatants and non-combatants contemplated by the ordinary laws of war is inapplicable (without the exercise of undue severity) to operations such as those now being carried ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... system which we could simply transplant from some other country. The system adopted in Great Britain, where each county or group of counties maintains an agricultural college and an experimental farm, and many more elaborate systems on the continent, were all found on examination to be inapplicable to our own rural conditions, unsuitable to the national character, and unrelated to the history of our agriculture. Many of these schemes might have turned out a few highly qualified authorities on the theory ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... inapplicable, the next resort is to cut off one or both hind limbs at the hip joint. Free incisions are made on the side of the haunch so as to expose the hip joint, and the muscles are cut away from the head of the thigh bone down to its narrow neck, around which a rope is passed ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... are large, and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass, however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay was observed, and in which weight ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... sharp criticism passed in the House of Commons on the smallness of the recognition, the Prime Minister replied that Nelson's glory did not depend upon the rank to which he might be raised in the peerage; a truism too palpable and inapplicable for serious utterance, the question before the House being, not the measure of Nelson's glory, but that of the national acknowledgment. As Hood justly said, "All remunerations should be proportionate to the service done to the public;" and if that cannot always ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... deduced from him, appeared to be a unity, which derived all its coherence and vitality from a belief in the Second Person. The word "Lord" became clothed with a majesty and power which rendered it inapplicable, in my views, to any human person. The assiduity that I had devoted, night and day, to my manuscripts, in the search after scientific truths, and the knowledge arising from study, did not appear to me to be wrong in itself, but was thought to be pursued with an intensity that withdrew ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. 'Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,' and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them. But I don't think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... partly, also, because it is of supreme importance that the great experiment of democracy should not be unduly hampered by excessive inpourings of ill-assimilable foreign blood, and by dangerous contacts with obsolete or inapplicable European institutions. As an economist, steeped in the principles of Cobden and his British school of liberals, my predilections (prejudices if you will) have always been in favor of the freest possible movement, alike of trade and persons, and ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... consulted as to the construction of a bridge over Runcorn Gap on the Mersey, above Liverpool. As the river was there about 1200 feet wide, and much used for purposes of navigation, a bridge of the ordinary construction was found inapplicable. But as he was required to furnish a plan of the most suitable structure, he proceeded to consider how the difficulties of the case were to be met. The only practicable plan, he thought, was a bridge constructed on the principle of suspension. Expedients of this kind had long been ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... say, could find no better name for him than a Gott trunkner Mann—a God intoxicated man: an expression which has been quoted by everybody who has since written upon the subject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describe tolerably the Transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or a Swedenborg; but with what justice can it be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... a work of this nature a style ornamental and luxuriant would have been evidently inapplicable, yet the author has not been wholly inattentive to this particular, but has endeavoured to temper the dry and formal manner of the mere journalist, with something of the historian's ease. Long sequestered, however, from ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... instrumentalities of the Federal Government. Only once since the turn of the century has the national taxing power been further narrowed in the name of Dual Federalism. In 1931 the Court held that a federal excise tax was inapplicable to the manufacture and sale to a municipal corporation of equipment for its police force.[229] Justices Stone and Brandeis dissented from this decision and it is doubtful whether it would be ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... of superfluous demonstration. Examined in detail, this and much of the show of testimony brought up to stare the daylight of conviction out of countenance, proves to be in a great measure unmeaning and inapplicable, as might be easily shown were it necessary. Nor do I feel the necessity of enforcing the conclusion which arises spontaneously from the facts which have been enumerated, by formally citing the opinions of those ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... thereby, according to the words of an early author, not merely knight or burgess of the county or borough which elected him, but knight or burgess of England.[18] If these two principles are not entirely inapplicable to our political system, then the seat of Andrew Johnson was not in any respect affected by the subsequent madness of his State, nor can the legality of his seat be any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... all involuntary emissions of semen, whether nocturnal or diurnal; and, secondly, to denote involuntary sexual orgasm in the female as well as in the male. In the case of the female, the term "seminal emission" is inapplicable; but the term "pollution" may be applied in English (as it is in German) to such phenomena in either sex. By American writers the term "pollution" is now generally used (e.g., Allen, "Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs," Twentieth Century Practice, vol. vii. p. 612 et seq.). ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll



Words linked to "Inapplicable" :   unsuitable



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