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Rudiment   Listen
noun
Rudiment  n.  
1.
That which is unformed or undeveloped; the principle which lies at the bottom of any development; an unfinished beginning. "but I will bring thee where thou soon shalt quit Those rudiments, and see before thine eyes The monarchies of the earth." "the single leaf is the rudiment of beauty in landscape."
2.
Hence, an element or first principle of any art or science; a beginning of any knowledge; a first step. "This boy is forest-born, And hath been tutored in the rudiments of many desperate studies." "There he shall first lay down the rudiments Of his great warfare."
3.
(Biol.) An imperfect organ or part, or one which is never developed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rudiment" Quotes from Famous Books



... way of contemplating form is, in spite of exaggeration, valuable as showing that our distinctions of form and expression are not absolute. Just as there is the rudiment of ideal significance in colour, not so form, even in its more abstract and elementary aspects, is not wholly expressionless, but may be be endowed with something of life by the imagination. The recognition of this truth does not, however, affect the validity of our treating form and expression ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... males alone have them well-developed, while they are rudimentary in the females. In some cases, however, both sexes possess them in a well-developed form. But how could a spur be evolved in either sex? As a rudiment, it would for many generations be entirely useless for any purpose, and consequently it would not be preserved by natural selection, nor in any other possible way, so far as I can see. The spurs are in ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... twisted, were distinctly visible (when not too far off) as a black thread hanging down on each side of his mouth. But the beard to match was the difficulty, for nature had cruelly refused to give him a rudiment of hair on his chin, and the most talented gardener could not do much if he had nothing to cultivate. But true genius triumphs over difficulties. Although there was no hair proper on the chin; there happened to be, rather on one side of it, a small mole or freckle which ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... changed its skin. The very constitution of the Christian church is not attacked by it. There is always the same internal woodwork, the same logical arrangement of parts. Whatever may be the carved and embroidered envelope of a cathedral, one always finds beneath it—in the state of a germ, and of a rudiment at the least—the Roman basilica. It is eternally developed upon the soil according to the same law. There are, invariably, two naves, which intersect in a cross, and whose upper portion, rounded into an apse, forms the choir; there are always the side aisles, for interior processions, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... couldnt stand her sister-in-law being a clean, sound woman, and she simply a whited sepulchre. So she insisted on my operating on her, too. And by George, sir, she hadnt any sac at all. Not a trace! Not a rudiment!! I was so taken aback—so interested, that I forgot to take the sponges out, and was stitching them up inside her when the nurse missed them. Somehow, I'd made sure she'd have an exceptionally large one. [He ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... we have overcome these difficulties, and successfully bridged over the gulph between the abstract and the concrete, it is not a mere piece of knowledge that we have obtained: we have acquired the rudiment of a permanent mental endowment. When, by a repetition of efforts of this kind, we have more fully developed the scientific faculty, the exercise of this faculty in detecting scientific principles in nature, and in directing practice by theory, is no longer irksome, but ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... next succeeding row will be in a less matured state, and so the development diminishes towards the apex. Some of the compartments are occupied by shells transparent, colourless and fragile in the extreme, some by shells having merely the rudiment of form, until at the apex the cells contain but a drop or ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... to anticipate astonishment, or go in search of a surprise. To all of which there is only one answer; that such anticipation is absurd, and such realisation will be disappointing, that images will seem to be idols and idols will seem to be dolls, unless there be some rudiment of such a habit of mind as I have tried to suggest in this chapter. No great works will seem great, and no wonders of the world will seem wonderful, unless the angle from which they are seen is that ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... wore a loose swallow-tailed coat with bright brass buttons, and pants which were several inches too short. The Committee employed him, not because he was a superior teacher, but they could get him for twelve dollars a month, while Mr. Rudiment, who had been through college, and who was known to be an ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... always in a more advanced state than the others, the full-grown ones being whitish and scarcely a line long. Some of this size are translucent, the insect having escaped; the darker ones still retain it within, of an oblong form, with the rudiment of a wing on each side attached to the lower part of the thorax and closely applied to the sides; the legs are six in number, the four hind ones being directed backwards, the anterior forwards (a ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... From this early rudiment was derived, by gradual elongation, that well-known under habiliment, which in Hebrew is called Ch'tonet, and in Greek and Latin by words of similar sound. [Footnote 2] In this stage of its progress, when extended to the neck and the shoulders, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... one of those who hold that the command of the seas is the defence of this country. I believe that the British Army exists mainly for the reinforcement of the Indian garrison, and, if necessary, as the rudiment of that army which, in the event of a great war, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... it, but he argued quietly that it was very good and very wholesome, that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him. This gave me an idea, or the rudiment of one. I must watch how he gets rid ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... Here the rudiment of a thought struck her and changed the current of her reason. A thought so winged with hope that she dared not even try to complete it! . . . She thought, and thought till the long autumn shadows fell around her. But the misty ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... until it was given in part exchange for a piano-player. And now the thing is the joy of the family, and the home is filled with color and effervescence, and every one's head is filled with at least a rudiment of living, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... How many of our native wars may not have had as their cause that last sentence in the plaint of the Matabele, a cause carefully concealed from the public eye? For God's sake, let mothers teach their sons that first rudiment in manly character, the recognition that the girls of a conquered race, or of a barbarian tribe inhabiting one of our spheres of influence, from the very fact that they are a conquered race, or, if not conquered, hopelessly and piteously in our ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... space upon the wall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window, become to her, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of apprehension and door-ways to things beyond—the germ or rudiment of certain new faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends a matter lying beyond her actually attained capacities ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater



Words linked to "Rudiment" :   body part, plural, first principle, bedrock, basics, plural form, rudimentary, ABC's, fundamental principle, alphabet



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