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Perpetrate   Listen
verb
Perpetrate  v. t.  (past & past part. perpetrated; pres. part. perpetrating)  To do or perform; to carry through; to execute, commonly in a bad sense; to commit (as a crime, an offense); to be guilty of; as, to perpetrate a foul deed. "What the worst perpetrate, or best endure."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perpetrate" Quotes from Famous Books



... the form of a great and solemn referendum, a referendum as to the part the United States is to play in completing the settlements of the war and in the prevention in the future of such outrages as Germany attempted to perpetrate." ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... among whom he had cast his lot. Of what use the money would be to him he knew not. He was an outcast from civilisation, he was quickly forgetting his mother tongue; but his criminal instincts, and his desire to be a "big man" with the savages among whom he had lived for so long, led him to perpetrate this one particular crime. In the dead of night he led a party of natives on board the schooner, and massacred every one of her crew, save one Fijian, who, jumping overboard, swam to the shore, and was spared. A few months later this man escaped to a passing whaler, and the story of the massacre ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke

... age. Their position at the helm of the greatest financial institution in the world gave weight and importance to their judgment and opinions. Nor had aught occurred between us to suggest they would dare perpetrate the crimes they did. Besides all this, indeed an integral part of it, my personal resources were completely involved in the transaction, for the most part pledged with Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller in stocks of the Butte & Boston ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... with Napoleon, paid small heed to the rights and dignities of neutral nations. The harsh and selfish maritime policy of the age, expressed in the British Navigation Acts and intensified by the struggle with Napoleon, led the Mistress of the Seas to perpetrate indignity after indignity on the ships and sailors which were carrying American commerce around the world. The United States demanded a free sea, which Great Britain would not grant. Of necessity, then, such futile weapons as embargoes and non-intercourse ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... plucked the chances Last Leap Year brought of wedded rapture, (Since Flattery wins, where Beauty's glances Have failed to perpetrate a capture)? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various

... thing that, slight as it seemed, wrought mightily towards their mutually petting each other, was that no amount of racket, hubbub, shouting, laughter, or noisy mischief which the two children could perpetrate, ever disturbed the Doctor's studies, meditations, or employments of whatever kind. He had a hardy set of nerves, not refined by careful treatment in himself or his ancestors, but probably accustomed from of old to be drummed on by harsh voices, rude ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... He had been heard of in Wyoming valley for years before the invasion of the Tories and Indians, and was looked upon as an outlaw who was compelled to live in the woods to escape the penalty of his innumerable crimes against civilization. There was no deed too dark for him to perpetrate. When the Revolution broke out he turned against the land that gave him birth, and committed atrocities that no other Tory or Indian had exceeded. It was well known that he had slain women and children in more than one instance, and ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... acting Governor until the arrival of Gov. Geary in September, the belligerents had matters pretty much their own way, and the ruffians improved the time, under pretense of authority from Woodson, to perpetrate with ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... pleasing prospect of fine weather and a full moon, to light them through Endeavour's dangerous straits, the unhappy and deluded Christian was, in all probability, brooding over his wrongs, and meditating on the criminal act he was to perpetrate the following morning; for he has himself stated, that he had just fallen asleep about half after three in the morning, and was ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... looked too full for utterance. He shook the general's hand, heartily kissed Isabella, and telling them he believed they had turned conspirators, and were about to perpetrate some fearful business against the government, and sagely hinting that unless he was also made a confidant of, he should forthwith denounce them to Tacon, he shook his hand with a most serious mock air ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... country-side. Incendiarism was the only cause that could be assigned, and many were the speculations as to who the guilty party could be. Of course, Isaac Williams had enemies. But who among them was mean, ay, daring enough to perpetrate such ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... become sensible, though too late, of their defenceless condition, and began already to experience those insults and injuries which a nation must always expect, that allows itself to be reduced to that abject situation. A secret conspiracy was entered into to perpetrate, in one day, a general massacre of the Normans, like that which had formerly been executed upon the Danes; and the quarrel was become so general and national, that the vassals of Earl Coxo, having desired him to head them in an insurrection, and finding him resolute ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... three representations, and, after receiving a grand civic banquet, set out for the next place, his portmanteau fuller of music-paper than of other effects, and perhaps a dozen sequins in his pocket. His love of jesting during these gay Bohemian wanderings made him perpetrate innumerable practical jokes, not sparing himself when he had no more available food for mirth. On one occasion, in traveling from Ancona to Reggio, he passed himself off for a musical professor, a mortal enemy of Rossini, and sang the words of his own operas to the most execrable music, in a cracked ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... rubbed the knuckles of his right hand where the skin was barked off. He thought of the silly joke he and McGuffey had thought to perpetrate on Captain Scraggs by leading him up against a beating at the hands of a cannibal king, and with the thought came a grim, hard chuckle, though there was the look of a thousand ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... faction has any job of lucre to obtain, or of vengeance to perpetrate, their way is, to select, for the execution, those very persons to whose habits, friendships, principles, and declarations, such proceedings are publicly known to be the most adverse; at once to render the instruments the more odious, and therefore the more dependent, and to prevent the people ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... United States, have violated our laws prohibiting the introduction of slaves, have practiced various frauds on our revenue, and committed every kind of outrage on our peaceable citizens which their proximity to us enabled them to perpetrate. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... gone. This was done more than once, and in the end the victim found that Mayes had only to raise the Triangle before him to send him to sleep instantly. Then he found that he must do certain things, whether he wanted or not. And it ended in complete subservience; so that Mayes could set him to perpetrate a robbery and then appropriate the proceeds for himself, for by post-hypnotic suggestion he could force him to bring and hand over every penny. More, the poor wretch was held in constant terror, for he knew that his very life depended on ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times. I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to perpetrate all sorts of humbugs. I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians, a solemn ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of age, seducing reason, first Made weakness a protection, and obscured The moral shapes of things. His tender cries And helpless innocence—do they protect The infant lamb? and shall the infirmities, Which have enabled this enormous Culprit To perpetrate his crimes, serve as a Sanctuary To cover him from punishment? Shame!—Justice, Admitting no resistance, bends alike The feeble and the strong. She needs not here Her bonds and chains, which make the mighty feeble. —We recognise in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... justice, the vengeance of the people, and the power of the devil; his fortunes were confiscated; his aged mother was cast into prison; [261] all his past services were buried in oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to perpetrate the crime of which he was accused. [27] From the review of his preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been guiltless of any treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his innocence must arise from the vehemence of his protestations, and the sublime purity which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... have misunderstood me, sir. I have no wish to burden you with the responsibilities I am about to assume. I should hardly choose the moment when I am on the point of being appointed Councillor to perpetrate such a blunder. I told you of my perplexity, and I asked ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... God's sake, are you furious?" asked Herr von Gualtieri. "Why do you perpetrate such vandalism upon that magnificent volume ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... that. If the doctor treats you less severely than you deserve, it will be because you have made this reparation, instead of carrying out the act of dishonesty you had it in your mind to perpetrate." ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... were distinguished for the multitude and quality of their madmen, who were a privileged class. Hence it was common for bad Indians to assume the character of maniacs in order to perpetrate crimes without fear of punishment. The Jesuits suffered very much from their malice. Some old men told them that the Neutrals used to carry on war "towards" a certain western nation, who would seem to have lived on the Gulf of Mexico, where the "porcelain, which are the ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... always with the Austrian queen, and for five of those years their armies fought side by side. In the year 1759, Elizabeth sent an army of one hundred thousand men into Prussia. They committed every outrage which fiends could perpetrate; and though victorious over the armies of Frederic, they rendered the country so utterly desolate, that through famine they were compelled to retreat. Burning villages and mangled corpses marked ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... evaded it, stumbles over it at Bunker Hill. And why? Because it is not political, but moral,—because it is not local, but national,—because it is not a test of party, but of individual honesty and honor. The wrong which we allow our nation to perpetrate we cannot localize, if we would; we cannot hem it within the limits of Washington or Kansas; sooner or later, it will force itself into the conscience and sit by the hearthstone of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... of the well-affected citizens, as well as of the executive officers, to conciliate a compliance with those laws have failed of success, and certain persons in the county of Northampton aforesaid have been hardy enough to perpetrate certain acts which I am advised amount to treason, being overt acts of levying war against the United States, the said persons, exceeding one hundred in number and armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, having, on the 7th day of this present month of March, proceeded ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson

... this rat that they are only second to the white ants for the mischief they perpetrate. "They burrow in the gardens, and destroy the sweet potatoes; they make their nests in the roofs by day, and visit our houses and larders by night. They will eat into teak drawers, boxes, and book-cases, and can go up and down anything but ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... surprise! Kesse ke say! vous permattay maydemosels etre lay filles d'ung seraglio! je ne vou pau! je vous defang! je suis biang atonnay!" And so she departed, with our prompter's copy, leaving us rather surprised, ourselves, at the unsuspected horror we had been about to perpetrate, and Mademoiselle Descuilles shrugging her shoulders and smiling, and not probably quite convinced of the criminality of a piece of which the heroine, a pretty Frenchwoman, revolutionizes the Ottoman Empire ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... amazing fact of history. It took the Methodist Church forty years to get a membership of 138,000. Mormonism in forty-four years counted 250,000. It seems incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. In this brief space of time it has also been able to nullify our laws, oppose our institutions, openly perpetrate crimes, be represented in Congress, boast of the helplessness of the nation to prevent these things, and give the Church supremacy over the State and the people. Bills introduced in Congress adequate to their overthrow have been year after year ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... at reorganizing Society were made about the same time by men of culture and experience, but in the A.C. we had neither. Our leaders had caught a few half-truths, which, in their minds, were speedily warped into errors. I can laugh over the absurdities I helped to perpetrate, but I must confess that the experiences of those few weeks went far towards making a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... had committed in the castle in the service of the Church. Thereat the Pope, raising his hand, and making a large open sign of the cross upon my face, told me that he blessed me, and that he gave me pardon for all murders I had ever perpetrated, or should ever perpetrate, in the service of the Apostolic Church. When I felt him, I went aloft, and never stayed from firing to the utmost of my power; and few were the shots of mine that missed their mark. My drawing, and my fine studies in my craft, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... contained in that Relation of Capello's to the Senate must by now have been widespread, and of a man who could perpetrate the wickednesses therein divulged anything could be believed. Indeed, it seems to have followed that, where any act of wickedness was brought to light, at once men looked to see if Cesare might not be responsible, nor looked close enough to make quite sure. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... disposition. He shewed us that grey hairs could add nothing but hypocrisy to him; for he avowed public prostitution, laughed at all honour, public spirit, and patriotism; and gave convincing proofs that the most phlegmatic old miser upon earth could not be sooner tempted with gold to perpetrate the most ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... exclaimed, stopping before the crowd of easels, the paint-boxes, the palettes on the thumbs, the sheaves of brushes, the maulsticks in the air. She glanced at the work, seeking eagerly for copies, worse than any she was likely to perpetrate. Mr. Hoskin assured her that there were many in the gallery who could not do as well as she. And she experienced a little thrill when he led her to the easel. A beautiful white canvas stood on it ready for her to begin, and on a chair by the side of the easel was her paint-box ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... was it not possible to enable the writer[1] to state them without the (purely gratuitous) error? The sufferance of such a strange and unnecessary mixture of error seems rather like that "putting to confusion" of the human mind, which we feel sure the Great Teacher would never willingly perpetrate. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... demand; their bodies were expeditiously transferred from the gallows or scaffold to the operating table, and their dead limbs were made to struggle and plunge, their eyeballs to roll, and their features to perpetrate the most horrible contortions by connecting nerves with one pole, and muscles with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... incredible assertion? Surely, you must know how preposterous the very idea is! I do not boast or brag, but it is common knowledge that my father was the richest man in the city, in this entire part of the country, in fact. The thought of such a thing is absurd. Who could have attempted to perpetrate such a senseless hoax, a ridiculous insult to your intelligence ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... No sense of meaning in their jargonings; Nor had cognizance from the stammered tones, Answered in turn, in verbal nothingness; The crabbed cynic might no longer rail; Nor those of sober countenance discourse In melancholy and foreboding strains; Nor light and frivolous sons of levity On others perpetrate the humorous jest; Fathers attempted to correct their sons, Who, listening with filial reverence, Heard but unknown ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... advice, uncertainty. Some illusions were still entertained. A workman, leaning close to me against the fireplace, said in a low voice to one of his comrades that the People must not be reckoned upon, and that if we fought "We should perpetrate a madness." ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... me merely to take off my hat: the bow and the general effrontery were of my own invention. God knows what instigated me to perpetrate the outrage! In my frenzy I felt as though I ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... covenant with God ought to engage all to duties to each one's self. The Divine law inculcates upon men, not selfishness, but love to themselves. The evils forbidden therein none should perpetrate, either on others or on himself. The good to all that is there represented as due, ought to be done not less to the individual who obeys, than to others. In the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," it is implied that men ought to love themselves. Calculated to show at once ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... Will. To this Bunco replied that he had not only heard their shots, but had seen them light their fire, and eat their supper, and prepare their couch, and go to sleep, all of which he enjoyed so intensely, in prospect of the joke he meant to perpetrate, that he was obliged to retire several times during the evening to a convenient distance and roar in imitation of a tiger, merely to relieve his feelings without betraying his presence. He added, that the canoe was about five ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... answered, with grim sarcasm in his face, "of course! I might have guessed it. If there IS an injustice or a barbarity possible, I might have been sure the law of England would make haste to perpetrate it. But you needn't fear, Frida. Long before the law of England could be put in motion, I'll have completed my arrangements for taking you—and them too—with me. There are advantages sometimes even in the barbaric delay of what your lawyers are ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... first place, Juan Soto, whom you hired to locate it, is not an American citizen and therefore his claim is void. In the second place the transfer for the nominal sum of ten dollars proves collusion to perpetrate a fraud. And ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... or otherwise, and especially the poor Church; like actual devils, they trample under foot pastors and preachers. Townsmen and farmers, too, are extremely avaricious, extortionate and treacherous; they fearlessly perpetrate every sort of insolence and wickedness, and without shame and unpunished. The earth cries to heaven, unable ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... indeed, credible that ambition may prompt an unscrupulous man to make the most enormous sacrifices of human life, and to perpetrate the most atrocious crimes, for the advancement of his views of conquest. But that this great man—as he is usually reckoned even by adversaries—this hero according to some—this illustrious warrior, and mighty sovereign—should have stooped to be guilty of an act of mean and ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... of the reproductive function is perhaps the highest physical act of which man is capable; its abuse is certainly one of the most grievous outrages against nature which it is possible for him to perpetrate. No observing person can doubt that the sexual relations of men and women determine in a great degree their happiness or misery in life. This subject, then, deserves due attention and careful consideration. It ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... most serious objections to the legal recognition of private "gross indecency" is the obvious fact that only in the rarest cases can such indecency become known to the police, and we thus perpetrate what is very much like a legal farce. "The breaking of few laws," as Moll truly observes, regarding the German law, "so often goes unpunished as of this." It is the same in England, as is amply evidenced by the fact that, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Patience is our part. To whom Gerenian Nestor thus replied. Young friend! (since thou remind'st me of that theme) Fame here reports that num'rous suitors haunt 270 Thy palace for thy mother's sake, and there Much evil perpetrate in thy despight. But say, endur'st thou willing their controul Imperious, or because the people, sway'd By some response oracular, incline Against thee? But who knows? the time may come When to his home restored, either alone, Or aided ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... trembled—yes, trembled at the contemplation of the wickedness she was about to perpetrate; but she did not draw back from it. She slid her arm around his neck and kissed him softly, and ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... tried the experiment, and knew what it was. Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a Roman censor, thus expressed himself in an exhortation to the people to perpetrate matrimony—'If, O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all dispense with that subject of care (ea molestia careremus); but since nature has so managed it, that we cannot live with women comfortably, nor without them at all, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... himself would blush to perpetrate such an act of arrogance as you have done, in thus volunteering your advice to the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church. An old political party hack, who is not now, and never was, a ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... capable of deliberately taking human life with the view of obtaining money, may be divided into two classes. The one class comprising such as prisoners who perpetrate the crime cunningly and in secret, in the firm belief that they will escape detection; the other class are the highwaymen and garotters, who go daringly and violently to work, pretty sure in their own minds that they will be ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... war was then carried on between the French and Italians with the utmost inhumanity, they were going at once to perpetrate those two extremes, suggested by appetite and cruelty. This base resolution, however, was opposed by a young officer, who, tho' their retreat required the utmost expedition, placed her behind him, and ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... detention and impositions, are ineffectual, and are generally regarded by the culprit as unjustly interfering with his liberty. Consequently the masters have not much hold over the boys, who might, if they chose, perpetrate endless mischief without fear of painful consequences so long as they did nothing to warrant expulsion; but the young Hollander does not appear to have much enterprise in that direction. Perhaps he is sometimes kept out of mischief by his devotion to the fragrant weed, for he ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... A. Oh, Farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed tomorrow; let me live till then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be some kind angel will show to you that I am not only the object of innocence, but one who never loved another but ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... Huguenots, and almost coerced the half-frantic and irresolute king to acquiesce in the plan. Perhaps, in gathering them into the city, she had foreseen the possible expediency of a change of policy, and that such a crime as she now undertook to perpetrate might be found desirable. In the night of the 24th of August, at a concerted signal, the fanatical enemies of the Huguenots were let loose, and fell upon their victims. Several thousands, including Coligny, were murdered. Couriers were sent ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... a little side-gate. The church was a grand pile of every style of architecture that had prevailed since the Cistercians had settled in Vale Leston, and of every defacement that the alternate neglect and good-will of the Underwoods could perpetrate. The grand tower at the west end was, however, past their power to spoil, and they had not done much damage to the exterior, except in a window or buttress here and there. But within! The brothers, used to the heavy correctness ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... story, printed a facsimile of one of these plates on the cover of his book, and seems to rest on Wiley's statement his belief that "Smith did have plates of some kind." Stenhouse,* who believed that Smith and his witnesses did not perpetrate in the new Bible an intentional fraud, but thought they had visions and "revelations," referring to the Kinderhook plates, says that they were "actually and unquestionably discovered by one Mr. R. Wiley." Smith himself, after no one else could ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... suggested must be resorted to; if their whole country must be laid waste, and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction, so let it be. I would rather, Sir, reduce them to a condition where their whole country is to be re-peopled by a band of freemen than to see them perpetrate the destruction of this People through our agency. I do not say that it is time to resort to such means, and I do not know when the time will come; but I never fear to express my sentiments. It is not a question with me of policy, but a question ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... to its lowest terms, ran thus: those wishing to free the Negroes illegally imported declared that to enslave them would be to perpetrate the very evil which the law was designed to stop. "By the same law," they said, "we condemn the man-stealer and become the receivers of his stolen goods. We punish the criminal, and then step into his place, and complete the crime."[5] They said that the objection to ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... steeple starts up from its green thickets; not one of the hideous objects which the architects of our district churches perpetrate, to puzzle the passer-by as to the purpose of its being,—whether a brewer's chimney, or a shot-tower,—a perch for city pigeons, or a standing burlesque on the builders of the nineteenth age of the fine arts in England. This steeple is an old grey turret, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... 'tis neither the one nor the other, and that her kinsmen are really to carry me to her house, I scarce believe that 'tis either that they would fain embrace Scannadio's corpse themselves, or let her do so: rather it must be that they have a mind to perpetrate some outrage upon it, for that, perchance, he once did them an evil turn. She bids me say never a word, no matter what I may hear or be otherwise ware of. Suppose they were to pluck out my eyes, or my teeth, or cut off my hands, or treat me to some other horse-play of the like sort, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... human fiends that have subdued his will. To condemn crimes like these we need not talk of laws or of human rules; their foulness, their deformity does not depend on local constitutions, on human institutes, or religious creeds; they are crimes, and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters, who violate the primitive condition on which the earth was given to man; they are guilty by the general verdict of human-kind." Sheridan concluded his speech by an appeal to British justice, which, as it is preserved to us, is a mere sonorous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... were in this deplorable state, the savages, about one hundred and twenty in number, made another visit to the camp. The shores were strewed with articles of inestimable value to these poor Indians. Sentinels were stationed to prevent any robbery; but the Indians manifested no disposition to perpetrate ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... or from several persons. Even in the latter case, although no one person suffers serious damage or prejudice, justice however is seriously violated and the intention of the guilty party is really to perpetrate ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments—what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... instituted a search for such a valuable piece of property, and for a person who could afford such a first-class gold plate to steal grapes, showed what some people were. It did indeed, for this person had been wont to clandestinely enter her premises to perpetrate a far lower grade of crime than pilfering her grapes or destroying her vineyard. The incident trickled into the columns of 'The Noonoon Advertiser,' in conjunction with the facetious remark that the invader would have had to take ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... only educational machinery provided for them,—and a very few have been converted to Christianity, but the vast majority are little influenced by the whites in any way. They are generally peaceable, and perpetrate few crimes of violence upon whites; but however peaceable they may have shown themselves, their numerical preponderance is disquieting. A Kafir may, by the Governor's gift, obtain the electoral suffrage when he has lived under European law for at least seven years; but it has been bestowed ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... sovereign some very pathetic elements. Prince Saho, elder brother of the Empress, plotted to usurp the throne. Having cajoled his sister into an admission that her brother was dearer than her husband, he bade her prove it by killing the Emperor in his sleep. But when an opportunity offered to perpetrate the deed as the sovereign lay sleeping with her knees as pillow, her heart melted, and her tears, falling on the Emperor's face, disturbed his slumber. He sought the cause of her distress, and learning it, sent a force to seize the rebel. Remorse drove the Empress to die with Prince Saho. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... It shows it vicious in its principle. Engaging to raise men for the common weal It sets a harmful and unequal tax Capriciously on our communities.— The annals of a century fail to show More flagrant cases of oppressiveness Than those this statute works to perpetrate, Which [like all Bills this favoured statesman frames, And clothes with tapestries of rhetoric Disguising their real web of commonplace] Though held as shaped for English bulwarking, Breathes in its heart perversities of party, And instincts toward oligarchic power, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... a conspiracy. Ay! ay! thought he; the Irishman is cunning enough! But we shall be too many for him: he wants to throw all the good sober folks of Hereford off their guard, by feasting, and dancing, and carousing, I take it; and so to perpetrate his evil designs when it is least suspected; but we shall be prepared for him, fools as he takes us plain Englishmen ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... inhabitants—is a degrading tyranny, which the sneers of Mr. Froude cannot make otherwise. The dignity of manhood, on the other hand, we are forced to admit, runs scanty chance of recognition by any being, however masculine his name, who could perpetrate such a literary and moral scandal as "The Bow of Ulysses." Yet the dignity of manhood stands venerable there, and whilst the world lasts shall gain for its possessors the right of record on the roll of [79] those whom the worthy of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... now thirty-two, and had spent those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a famous regiment of fops—the 10th ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... who never revelled in discreditable tricks Until he reached the comfortable age of thirty-six, May then for half an hour perpetrate a deed of shame, Without incurring ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... statement of Luther before him, and will be able to judge the connection in which the words occur. What caused Luther to write those words? Did Melanchthon contemplate some crime which he was too timid to perpetrate? According to the horrified expressions of Catholics that must have been the situation. Luther, in their view, says to Melanchthon: Philip, you are a simpleton. Why scruple about a sin? You are still confined in the trammels of very narrow-minded ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... suppose it is a bribe, a reward; it does not differ very much from the principle upon which all criminal legislation is founded, to say the least of it. We punish men when they do wrong. I never heard that it was an objection to legislation that it punished those who perpetrate a wrong. I never heard that it was an objection to legislation that it held out rewards ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... outwit our vigilance. The other, the grey fly, works jointly with the greenbottles, who do not venture inside our houses and who work in the sunlight. Less timid, however, than they, should the outdoor yield be small, she will sometimes come indoors to perpetrate her villainies. When her business is done, she makes off as fast as she can, for she does not feel at home ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... point they were very strict; even before each meal, the Catholics chanted the Canticle of Zacharias, the Magnificat, and the Miserere, and the Protestants of all nations read a chapter of the Bible and sang a psalm. For many a Huguenot was in these seas, revenging upon mankind its capability to perpetrate, in the name of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... that Ganymede of the Gilt House had at once detected our Britannic origin, conspicuous in our sober garb and shaven chins; and doubtless he anticipated one of those uncouth bills of fare, infamous by their gastronomical solecisms, which Englishmen are apt to perpetrate, for he smiles with an air of agreeable disappointment as he glances at our judicious menu. No cause for wonder, most dapper of garcons! 'Tis not the first time, by many, that we have tabled our Napoleons on your damask napery. Schooled by indigestion, like Dido by misfortune, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... produce, achieve, consummate, execute, perform; transact; perpetrate, commit; translate, render; suffice, answer; fare, prosper; vouchsafe, grant; (Colloq.) cheat, overreach, swindle, defraud. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... should not have the right of depriving ourselves beforehand of those rights which would then properly belong to us. On what ground, then, or by what authority, do we dare to deprive of their rights those children who will soon be men? Why are we not struck with the injustice which we perpetrate on our descendants, by endeavouring to transmit them as a vile herd to masters whose vices are all that can ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... perfect freedom to act according to their understanding of their best interests, the people of the Southern States should deliberately determine upon a permanent separation, our noblest hopes would be sadly disappointed. But this is utterly impossible. In moments of frenzy, men may perpetrate deeds of desperation. Among the masses of all communities, some are found who, under various impulses, will commit suicide. But the conduct of the great majority everywhere is controlled by the dictates of reason ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... in the course of this work, had to notice the very intimate connection which those concerned in the administration of justice, or ostensibly in the suppression of crime, had with those who perpetrate it. In all of our large cities, this occasionally forces itself into public notice. Anxious as the authorities always are to conceal any thing of this kind, it accidentally leaks out. The opportunity for concealment, and the advantages afforded by official station, have not been ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... Examining it, he found it, as Judith had stated, a certificate of his marriage, signed by Mark Vincent, the clergyman who had officiated, and duly attested. Having carefully perused it, he held it towards the taper, with the intention of destroying it. As he was about to perpetrate this unworthy action, he looked towards the bed. The soft sweet smile that played upon the sleeper's features, turned him from his purpose. Placing the parchment in his doublet, he left the room, and summoning a female attendant, alleged some reason for his unexpected ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... William of Orange, hired an assassin to deliver the new Republic of its new Stadtholder; and he, Tyckelaer was the person thus chosen; but that, horrified at the bare idea of the act which he was asked to perpetrate, he had preferred rather to reveal the crime than to ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... expected it of me—I suppose he knew that even for him, even in mercy to an old man whose only joy in life trembled at that moment in the balance, I could not perpetrate a cruel injustice. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... glaring truisms. Let me perpetrate one more,—one which is perhaps the most glaring of all. The process of growing must be done by the growing organism, by the child, let us say, and by no one else. The child himself must take in and assimilate the nourishment ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... and forcibly carry off his property. As the fitting end of his violent declamation, Ralph Blackadder had left the hotel hurriedly, calling upon his creatures to follow him, bent, as it seemed, to perpetrate some mad act. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... of your deeds, and insult the woman whom you have robbed and made a widow. It was with a prophecy on your lips that you went forth just now to perpetrate your greatest crime; but it falls on your own head, for you laugh over our misfortune—and it cannot regard me, for my blood does not run cold; I am not overwhelmed nor ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the charge of a sister, who was to act as regent until the boy became of age. The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother. She commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body in a thicket, in a certain cow-pasture at a place called Clent. The sister then assumed the scepter in her own name, and suppressed all inquiries in respect to the fate of her brother; and his murder ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... made the criterion of guilt and innocence on no grounds, which will not equally serve to justify the assassins who have been instanced. The conclusion cannot be eluded; no man was ever more fully persuaded of the innocence of any action, than these men were, that the horrid deed they were about to perpetrate was not lawful merely, but highly meritorious. Thus Clement and Ravaillac being unquestionably sincere, they were therefore indubitably innocent. Nay, the absurdity of this principle might be shewn to be even greater than what has yet ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... an enemy, or when a sanguinary tyrant crushed it by violence and arms. Every evil, conscript fathers, which captured cities suffer, we have suffered, and do now as much as ever suffer. All the enormities which the most cruel and savage tyrants are wont to perpetrate upon their oppressed subjects, Pleminius has perpetrated upon ourselves, our children, and ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... honour to the cleverest of women, but you must accept this dictum whether you understand it or not: I will listen to none of the confidences of your trusting anti-Federalists. Why cannot you come out honestly and declare your true politics? You could do far more good, and I leave you no excuse to perpetrate this lie." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... approached a woman, but, apparently, in order to make good his claim that there were charges which might lead to the death of an ambassador. But the envoys replied as follows: "The facts are not, O Ruler of the Goths, as thou hast stated them, nor canst thou, under cover of flimsy pretexts, wantonly perpetrate unholy deeds upon men who are envoys. For it is not possible for an ambassador, even if he wishes it, to become an adulterer, since it is not easy for him even to partake of water except by the will of those who ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... her thoughts having led her to the statement, "I do very much hope that neither of you will ever perpetrate that sort of marriage. It would be so ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... Oh, my poor uncle! Thank Heaven, you are spared the agony of this. Godfrey, Godfrey, what could induce you to perpetrate such ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... 2, Sc. 3), and Stephano, a drunken butler, adorns the stage in the "Tempest." We can not blame Shakespeare for making use of cutthroats and villains in developing his plots, but we might have been spared the jokes which the jailors of Posthumus perpetrate when they come to lead him to the scaffold, and the ludicrous English of the clown who supplies Cleopatra with an asp. The apothecary who is in such wretched plight that he sells poison to Romeo in spite of a Draconian law, gives us another unflattering ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... with me. He conjured me to tell him at once what was the cause of the fracas.—'Oh, my good sir!' said I to him, continuing to cry like a child, 'imagine the most horrible cruelty, figure to yourself the most inhuman of atrocities—that is what G—— M—— has had the cowardly baseness to perpetrate: he has pierced my heart. Never shall I recover from this blow! I would gladly tell you the whole circumstance,' added I, sobbing with grief; 'you are kind-hearted, and ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... all the efforts of Paco Gomez, Garnet could not be made to believe that he was acting in good faith. His jocose nature and the practical jokes he had been known to perpetrate had made an unfavourable impression on the Indian. It was in vain that he put on a grave and circumspect manner and held long conversations on the rise and fall of stocks, besides praising his house above all modern buildings, and giving him valuable ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... of his career he had contracted vicious habits, the most pernicious for him being that of drink, for when sober he was in his right mind, but the moment the drink was in his common sense departed, and he became a raving maniac, ready to fight or perpetrate any other act of folly. Up to this time he had never been tempted to steal only in order to supply ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... has done, I shall leave your house and disown you for my brother if you perpetrate this outrage upon my niece. She is dear to me as if she were my own child. Have I not brought her up since babyhood? If you carry out this order, brother, I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... Government; and of several other charges of "base and treacherous practises, discovered by the Bishop of Rochester, that the like had scarce been heard of, and seem'd to be what no man, endued with common sense, or the least drop of noble blood, could perpetrate; and that the King's friends were at a loss in not knowing what credit to give to such reports, tho' they apprehended the worst, from the directions he had lately given of having no correspondence with Mar or his adherents, from whom he ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... Cock-and-bottle captains, according to the special sort of marauding which they favoured. He met one party of the dreaded Mohocks, or Mohawks, reeling along half intoxicated already, and ripe for any offensive mischief, which later in the day they were certain to perpetrate. They eyed the young rustic askance as it was, and Tom heard a ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... witness such a state of things. They had through the Executive on another occasion, and, as was believed, with the approbation of the whole country, remonstrated against outrages similar but even less inhuman than those which by her new edicts and decrees she has threatened to perpetrate, and of which the late inhuman massacre at Tabasco was ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, "Mistress, I have no brass?" In a word, what vice and crime does he perpetrate—what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with his endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?—unless it be an admirer of Mr. Flamson—a clown—who will, perhaps, shout—"I say he is no gentleman; for who can be ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... avoiding it by a narrow inch. His breathing was quick and distressed, gasp tumbling over gasp, but still his eye was alert and his hand unerring. He had but a few moments' more effort left in him: it was enough if he could reach his goal and perpetrate the trick on which his mind, fertile in every base device, was set. For it was towards the mantelpiece that his retreat, seeming forced, in truth so deliberate, led him. There was the letter, there lay the revolvers. ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... he exclaimed. "To kill a man in cold blood! an innocent man! What harm has poor Geronimo ever done me? Stab him! My heart fails me—I cannot perpetrate such a cruelty. And yet, and yet I must! The crime horrifies me, but I have no alternative. Only by the sacrifice of his life can my master escape the scaffold, and I the gallows. Fate irresistibly pursues me; I am the slave of necessity—I ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... of the stairs and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM—not to perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders—which, I happened to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, assisted me in my purpose. Step by step, however, he disputed my advance; but I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... possible that at one moment, had Montevarchi known the truth, he would have drawn back; but it is equally sure that if he had done so he would sooner or later have regretted it, and would have done all in his power to recover lost ground and to perpetrate the fraud. The dominant passion for money, when it is on the point of being satisfied, is one of the strongest incentives to evil deeds, and in the present case the stake was enormous. He would not let it slip through his fingers. He rejoiced that the thing was ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... Jane; but cruel and heartless must the man be that could perpetrate a piece of such wanton mischief. I should rather think it is some idle boy who knows ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... characteristics of criminals have much to do with not only the crimes they commit, but the manner in which they perpetrate their deeds, and in a consideration of what has been accomplished, heredity plays a strong part. Some men are born with an adeptness for crime of a certain character. Let the opportunity arise, and they yield to the stress of circumstance ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... This he resorted to in order to prevent the doors from jarring open and admitting the dirt; and also that children might not be able to meddle with the works or hands. He had a great many small children himself and had perhaps learned from experience the pranks little people were likely to perpetrate. Besides these several trademarks there are in addition various ingenious tricks that belonged to Willard and to nobody else. These a trained clockmaker instantly recognizes—the use of brass pins to hold the dial in place, for one thing. So, you see, when a banjo clock comes ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... mine is not the tongue or pen for such a subject; and Oxford has, I hope, no lack of abler champions. But it was geese, you know, who once saved the Capitol; and I must have my hiss at the iniquitous quackeries which people seek to perpetrate under the taking title of University Reform. And when I, loving Oxford as I do, see some of her own sons arrayed against her, I can only remember this much of my philosophy—that there are cases when to be angry becomes a duty. Men who, knowing nothing of the universities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... essence of high treason. Upon such charges repeated trials took place in the courts of the English, and condemnations were pronounced, with sufficient justice, no doubt, where the connexion between the resort to sorcerers and the design to perpetrate a felony could be clearly proved. We would not, indeed, be disposed to go the length of so high an authority as Selden, who pronounces (in his "Table-Talk") that if a man heartily believed that he could take the life of another by waving ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... Cruel, Cruel Deed Which she had been Led by the Vitreous-Eyed Odalisque of Carved-Ivory to Unintentionally, Unconsciously, and Unresistingly Perpetrate Upon Him; And—to cut a Short Story shorter—she cast her 'Mind's Eye, Horatio,' upon his Queen Anne Mansion Front, and Determined to Bestow upon the Injured Innocent what remained—after Five Seasons—of the ...
— Love Instigated - The Story of a Carved Ivory Umbrella Handle • Douglass Sherley

... Granvelle to inquire where the secret instrument was to be found. The Cardinal replied that it was probably among his papers at Brussels, but that he doubted whether it would be possible to find it in his absence. Whether such a document ever existed, it is difficult to say. To perpetrate such a fraud would have been worthy of Charles; to fable its perpetration not unworthy of the Cardinal. In either case, the transaction was sufficiently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... propriety of amputating it in his hearing, he begged them to spare the leg, as it was very valuable, being an "imported leg." He was of Irish birth, and this well-timed piece of wit saved his leg, for the surgeons thought, if he could perpetrate a joke at such a time, they would trust to his vitality to save ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... and not a few had guns. Toward evening I struck a bit of level going amid dense vegetation without a breath of air along the bank of a river that must be forded lower down, which fact I took advantage of to perpetrate a general laundering. This proved unwise, for the sun went down before the garments had dried and left me to lug on along the stream those the unexacting customs of the country did not require me to put on wet. Every hundred yards the trail went swiftly down into the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... anabaptists mastered the city of Munster. Here they confiscated property, plundered churches, violated females, murdered men who refused to join the gang, and, in briefs practised all the enormities which humanity alone can conceive or perpetrate. The prophet proclaimed himself King of Sion, and sent out apostles to preach his doctrines in Germany and the Netherlands. Polygamy being a leading article of the system, he exemplified the principle by marrying ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... reach of tyranny? You see I pronounce the decisive word! I am really unable to comprehend it. Can she not go to Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London would be the right place! There she can perpetrate libels whenever she pleases. At all of these places I will leave her undisturbed with the greatest pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... main, coup d'etat [Fr.]; tour de force &c (display) 882; feat, exploit; achievement &c (completion) 729; handiwork, workmanship; manufacture; stroke of policy &c (plan) 626. actor &c (doer) 690. V. do, perform, execute; achieve &c (complete) 729; transact, enact; commit, perpetrate, inflict; exercise, prosecute, carry on, work, practice, play. employ oneself, ply one's task; officiate, have in hand &c (business) 625; labor &c 686; be at work; pursue a course; shape one's course &c (conduct) 692. act, operate; take action, take steps; strike a blow, lift a finger, stretch ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still he might find more occasions to work on. He is the general corrupter of spirits yet untainted, inducing them by gradation to much lascivious depravity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices as otherwise they had haply ne'er heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and is indeed what he seems not. And if he lose one of his fellow strolls, in the summer he turns king of the gipsies; if not, some great man's protection is a sufficient ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... public will always remember Eugene Field as the author of Little Boy Blue, the many friends of Field, in addition to their memory of him as the charming poet of childhood, will always think of him as the irrepressible prince of merry-makers. To perpetrate a joke Field spared neither labor nor his friends. Many of his pranks were mere whimsicalities, innocent pleasantries that hurt no one. He would spend three hours in illustrating a letter to a friend, filling the letter with gossipy trivialities ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... the upper floor. But for all that, I felt sure that I would never use the bow even after I had thrust it near to hand behind the tapestry masking the secret entrance to this passage. One dreams of such things but they do not perpetrate them. I might approach the deed, I might even make every preparation for its accomplishment, but that did not mean that the day would ever come when I should actually loose an arrow from this bow against a human ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... violently upon Physco's friends, and slew a great number of them; nay, after this Ptolemy saw a terrible ghost, which prohibited his hurting those men; his very concubine, whom he loved so well, [some call her Ithaca, and others Irene,] making supplication to him, that he would not perpetrate so great a wickedness. So he complied with her request, and repented of what he either had already done, or was about to do; whence it is well known that the Alexandrian Jews do with good reason celebrate this day, on the account that they had thereon been vouchsafed such an evident deliverance ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... family had been obliged to take flight, in charge of an armed police force, and his steward had been murdered by one of the labourers, having been chosen by lot at a meeting held to decide who should perpetrate the deed. Mr. Vandeleur came to England to seek someone who would aid him in organising the labourers into an agricultural and manufacturing association, to be conducted on co-operative principles, and he was recommended to Mr. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... yet I find a sly Little twinkle in your eye; And your whisperingly shy Little laugh is simply an Internal shout of glee That betrays the fallacy You'd perpetrate on me, Old Man. ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... dawning days?— Precocious shall he prove, and harass The world with inconvenient ways And lisped conundrums that embarrass? (Such as Impressionists delight To offer each aesthetic gaper, And faddists hyper-Ibsenite Rejoice to perpetrate on paper?) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various

... said the Prince. "I bade you choose between me and your brothers. Had you believed me that you could not serve both, it had been better for you. I credit not that you incited them to the assassination; but your tidings led them to perpetrate it. I cannot retain the spy of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... foundation of negatives. Life can only be constructed positively. The soul cannot flourish on a principle of subtraction; it can only prosper on a principle of addition. It is at this point that we perpetrate one of our commonest blunders. Between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, we invariably frame a variety of good resolutions; we register a number of excellent resolves. But, for the most part, they come to nothing; and they ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... secured by this imperial law, the Church still suffered occasionally in particular districts. Hostile magistrates might plead that certain edicts had not been definitely repealed; and, calculating on the connivance of the higher functionaries, might perpetrate acts of cruelty and oppression. The Emperor Aurelian had even resolved to resume the barbarous policy of Decius and Valerian; and, in A.D. 275, had actually prepared a sanguinary edict; but, before it could be executed, death stepped in to arrest his violence, and to prevent the persecution. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... act, did they perpetrate, connive at, or tolerate such atrocities as were brought to light during the Andover inquiry, such cold blooded heartlessness would at once be laid to the account of their principles. Oh yes, Christians are ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... forebodings. They also had been led to suppose that Sir Francis Head was a Reformer of wide experience, who was coming among them to introduce a new order of things. They resolved to put forth one great effort while the chance remained to them. They induced Sir John, before his departure, to perpetrate what may fitly be characterized as the most unstatesmanlike act of his life: an act which aroused a perfect transport of public indignation, and caused the name of the perpetrator to be execrated throughout the length and breadth of ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... little by little, in the gossip of those who were obliged to perpetrate them. It seemed as if every time you met a person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new crimes. There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the plant where Marija had worked, which ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... advancement, will stir up their feelings and incite one another to fight. They will fight hard among themselves. The rebels, who are now exiles in foreign lands, taking advantage of the chaos in China, will return in very little time to perpetrate the worst crimes known in human history. The royalists who are in retirement will likewise come out to fish in muddy waters. Persons who have the qualifications of leaders will be used as tools to fight for the self-aggrandizement of those who use them. I do not wish to mention names, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... murder of an innocent and helpless infant, for the sake of sparing those feelings in another, of which the supposition implies she could not possibly partake; and if she should be encouraged by the father, whose affections for an infant child may be more gradually unfolded than the mother's, to perpetrate so horrid an act, we must allow that to the evidence of unnatural and murtherous parents must be added that of hired ruffians; so that Chinese virtue would gain ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... he thinks that it is his fortuitous science that has dragged me out of the Valley of the Shadow and set me in the Garden of Life. Good, deluded man! He does not realise that he has been merely the tool of the Arch-Jester. He has no notion of the sardonic joke his knife was chosen to perpetrate. That naked we should come into the world, and naked we should go out is a time-honoured pleasantry which, as far as the latter part of it is concerned, I did my conscientious best to further; but that we should come into it again naked at the age of eight-and-thirty ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... how my secret came into his possession. Soon after he committed his crime he felt sure that I was in possession of his secret, and he thought to steal into my tent and murder me. He stole in there one night to perpetrate the crime. I was talking in my sleep. In my slumber I told the story of my secret marriage in such circumstantial detail that it impressed him as being true. Feeling that he could hold me with that, he spared my life, determined to wound me deeper ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... will find one in manuscript of 550 pages, compiled in 1766, in the Cuomo Library at Naples.] treated in the heroic style and metre, as though he were a new Achilles. As a jeu d'esprit the book might pass; but it is deadly serious. Single men will always be found to perpetrate monstrosities of literature; the marvel is that an entire generation of writers should have worked themselves into a state of mind which solemnly approved ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... pass her—you look back—wonderful! she has a beard! Deluded stranger, this is only another disappointment; it is a Cingalese Appo—a man—no, not a man—a something male in petticoats; a petty thief, a treacherous, cowardly villain, who would perpetrate the greatest rascality had he only the pluck to dare it. In fact, in this petticoated wretch you see a type of ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... had attacked and defeated the English garrison at Waterford, but without any advantageous results. Roderic's weakness now led him to perpetrate an act of cruelty, although it could scarcely be called unjust according to the ideas of the times. It will be remembered that he had received hostages from Dermod for the treaty of Ferns. That treaty had been openly violated, and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... house, letters from the widow were found, warning him not to come to her apartment, and appointing to meet him in Charonne Cemetery. Gaudry made a full confession. It was his passion for the widow, and a promise on her part to marry him, which, he said, had induced him to perpetrate so abominable a crime. He was sent to ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... Saint Reynard through the hedge had made his way; The pale was next, but proudly with a bound He leapt the fence of the forbidden ground: Yet fearing to be seen, within a bed Of coleworts he conceal'd his wily head; Then skulk'd till afternoon, and watch'd his time (As murderers use) to perpetrate ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... infamous Borgias, as you can see," she continued, shrugging. "Perhaps it was fate then, that her devoted new husband tired of her once her fortune was assured him, took a young mistress for himself, and disposed of the unfortunate wife, using her own pin to perpetrate her murder. She was excommunicated by her church, too, which must have made it most unpleasant for her, poor old dear." The slim shoulders straightened. "But let's not discuss such unpleasant things, ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad

... natural depravity of human affections, purposely inflicted upon us because of another's transgression, we are taught, as a direct corollary from this, that the Deity is no more moral in his emotions than ourselves; for, in order to right the first wrong, he is made to perpetrate another which no one would hesitate to pronounce immoral in us, viz., the chastisement of the innocent in the place of the guilty. We need say nothing of the lie direct and overwhelming which the unanswerable facts of science, in many of its departments, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... wrong, sir, and I ask your forgiveness—in no common phrase, or show of sorrow; but with earnestness and sincerity. In the same spirit, I acknowledge to you both that the time has been when I connived at treachery and falsehood—which if I did not perpetrate myself, I still permitted—to ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... dubious flag—I made the latter from descriptions furnished by Monsieur Auguste and The Young Pole himself—intended, I may add, to be the flag of Poland. Underneath which beautiful picture I was instructed to perpetrate the flourishing inscription ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... 3,000 miles over the ocean to England, for trial before a special commission, for treason or misprision of treason, show what unjust, unconstitutional, and foolish things Parliaments as well as individuals may sometimes perpetrate. Nothing has more impressed the writer, in going through this protracted war of words, preliminary to the unhappy war of swords, than the great superiority, even as literary compositions, much more as State documents, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... Periwig peruko. Periwinkle (plant) vinko. Perjury jxurrompo. Permanent konstanta, dauxra. Permeable penetrebla. Permission permeso. Permissive permesa. Permit permesi. Permutation intersxangxo. Pernicious pereiga. Perpendicular perpendikulara. Perpetrate elfari. Perpetual eterna. Perpetuate dauxrigi. Perplex konfuzi, cxagrenegi. Perplexity konfuzeco, sxanceligxo. Perron perono. Perruquier perukisto. Persecute persekuti. Persecution persekutado. Perseverance persisto. Persevere persisti. Persist persisti. Persistance persisto—ado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... the Indians prevented any general organization of the tribes, vagabond Indians, entirely lawless, were wandering in all directions, ever ready to perpetrate any outrage. Civil society has its highway robbers, burglars and murderers. Much more so was this the case among these savages, exasperated by many wrongs; for it cannot be denied that they were more frequently sinned against than sinning. Their untutored natures made but little ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... fields, and fifty more, after setting fire to a farm-house while my back was turned, escaped to join a gang of their companions, who are now robbers in the woods. These fellows, however, are the last of the troop who will perpetrate such offences. With the concurrence of my patron, I have adopted a plan that will henceforth tame ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... I find a sly Little twinkle in your eye; And your whisperingly shy Little laugh is simply an Internal shout of glee That betrays the fallacy You'd perpetrate ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... over the whole length and breadth of the city,—some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin; others with clubs and weapons in their hands, prowling round apparently with no definite atrocity to perpetrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer,—and, by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer, or solitary soldier, or inoffensive negro, who crossed the line of their vision; these three ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... heart of his," in spite of all his oddities, all his "cantankerousness," to use one of his own words, he was a singularly steadfast and loyal friend. Indeed, it was the very steadfastness of his friendship that drove him to perpetrate that outrage at Mr. Bevan's house, recorded in Dr. Gordon Hake's "Memoirs." I need only recall the way in which he used to speak of those who had been kind to him (such as his publisher, Mr. John Murray for instance) to show that no one could be ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the last line of a couplet or triplet stretched out to twelve syllables."—Adam's Lat. and Eng. Gram., p. 282. "Nouns which follow active verbs, are not in the nominative case."—Blair's Gram., p. 14. "It is a solemn duty to speak plainly of wrongs, which good men perpetrate."—Channing's Emancip., p. 71. "Gathering of riches is a pleasant torment."—Treasury of Knowledge, Dict., p. 446. "It [the lamentation of Helen for Hector] is worth the being quoted."—Coleridge's Introd., p. 100. "Council is a noun which admits of a singular and plural form."—Wright's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the indignities they had suffered. Women of the lower classes fared similarly at the hands of the soldiers, but were not unwilling to survive their shame. With what show of consistency is the Occident to denounce the barbarity of the Chinese, when Occidental soldiers go to China and perpetrate the very acts which constitute the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... "many of the pictures exhibited another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian campaign organized for the unloading of these works. Editions de luxe ... were published and sold by the picture dealers; ...every crafty device ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear so long ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... his cruelties, and his sympathy with paganism, and he was visited in his latter days by a terrible disorder which racked his body with pain, and inflamed his soul with suspicions, while his court was distracted with cabals from his own family, which poisoned his life, and led him to perpetrate unnatural cruelties. He had already executed two favorite sons, by Mariamne whom he loved, all from court intrigues and jealousy, and he then executed his son and heir, by Doris, his first wife, whom he had divorced ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... change but only a modification, since the root idea is the same in each. Is it not strange how the two great brothers are led to misunderstand each other? A man is punished for private libel (over here at any rate), although the consequences can only be slight. But a man may perpetrate international libel, which is a very heinous and far-reaching offence, and there is no law in the world which can punish him. Think of the contemptible crew of journalists and satirists who for ever picture the Englishman as haughty and h-dropping, or the American as vulgar and expectorating. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro



Words linked to "Perpetrate" :   commit, perpetration, make, perpetrator



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