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Blacken   /blˈækən/   Listen
Blacken

verb
(past & past part. blackened; pres. part. blackening)
1.
Make or become black.  Synonyms: black, melanise, melanize, nigrify.  "The ceiling blackened"
2.
Burn slightly and superficially so as to affect color.  Synonyms: char, scorch, sear.  "The fire charred the ceiling above the mantelpiece" , "The flames scorched the ceiling"



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"Blacken" Quotes from Famous Books



... leafy summit the tree. This cannot be here. The march of peaceful is scarce less wanton than that of warlike invasion. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day, whose bivouac fires blacken the sweetest forest glades. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or defame. On the contrary, while I will not be so obliging as to confound ugliness with beauty, discord with harmony, and laud and be contented ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... wrath. Thy mighty engines and gigantic towers With frowning aspect awe the trembling World. Destruction, bursting from thy sudden blaze Hath taught the Birds to tremble at the sound; And Man himself, thy terror's boasted lord, Within the blacken'd hollow of thy tube, Affrighted sees the darksome shades of Death. Not only mourning groves, but human tears, The weeping Widow's tears, the Orphan's cries, Sadly deplore that e'er thy powers were known. Yet let thy Advent be the Soldier's song, No longer doom'd ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... essentially aristocratic place be so ill-kept, not to say dirty? The town is no centre of industry. Tall factory chimneys do not disfigure its silhouette or blacken its walls. Handsome equipages enliven the streets. But the municipality, like certain saints of old, seem to have taken vows of perpetual uncleanliness. Alike the scavenger's broom and the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... rank infected air That taints those dungeons of despair, By those who there imprison'd die Where the black herd promiscuous lie, By the scourges blacken'd o'er And stiff and hard with human gore, By every groan of deep distress By every curse of wretchedness, By all the train of Crimes that flow From the hopelessness of Woe, By every drop of blood bespilt, By Afric's wrongs and ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... them to stock their farms and to assist them in their cultivation. He even went so far as to threaten to deprive the Senate of the regulation of the new province, and to bring the subject before the Assembly of the People. The exasperation of the Nobility was intense. They tried every means to blacken the character of the Tribune, and even spread a report that he had received, a diadem and a purple robe from the envoy from Pergamus, and that he meditated making himself King of Rome. It was evident that his life would be no longer safe when he ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... more powerful acids corrode or blacken organic compounds. This is a case of causation, but of remote causation; and is said to be explained when it is shown that there is an intermediate link, namely, the separation of some of the chemical elements ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... deal in unbecoming scandal, wanton, useless and injurious words of shame, abuse, filth and insult, scornful expressions, disparagements and taunts, such as human ingenuity knows how to devise; no one shall any longer venture to pick at, assail or blacken his neighbor with slanders, books of libel, prints, sayings, songs, verses and other means of provocation; but each one shall suffer his neighbor to remain quiet, undisturbed and in every way unmolested in the enjoyment of peace." The summer of the following year was fixed ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... into thick masses at the back of the head, through which a number of gold and silver or ivory arrows are placed, much in the manner of the peasant girls in some parts of Germany. The unmarried women have good eyebrows and beautiful teeth; but when they marry they blacken their teeth and shave off their eyebrows, to show their affection for their husbands, and that they no longer wish to win the admiration of others. The men have a curious way of saluting each other, passing their hands down the knee and leg, when they give a strong inhalation ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... that while we range with Science, glorying in the time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? There among the gloomy alleys Progress halts on palsied feet; Crime and hunger cast out maidens by ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... now. In a day or two they would forget about it, and the whole thing would blow over. Besides, he deserved the severest punishment for the way he had treated her; and as for anything he might say now (though as a gentleman he would hardly say anything and try to blacken a lady's character), of course nobody would listen ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... young and inexperienced fellow like Owen do? Will he not be hoodwinked by some specious story or another, framed to last till Manston gets tired of poor Cytherea? And then the disclosure of the truth will ruin and blacken both their futures irremediably.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... know thee, too,' said Conrad; 'thou art the marauding villain Slavata, whose body I intend to hang upon my topmost turret, to blacken in the sun and feed the ravens and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... you of that," she retorted, laughing a little in spite of herself. "If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes—" And she blushed hotly at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not filled the water bucket, and that without ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... they made, I'd like to know?" demanded Harriet Stephens scornfully. "If you mean the way they got back at us for ragging Miss Dean, I think that was simply disgraceful in them to call a meeting as they did and blacken our standing at Wayland Hall. It is a wonder we managed to keep our rooms at the Hall after all the row they made about a little bit ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... of the English Monasteries was a detail of the scandalous enormities practised in religious houses: compiled by order of the visiters, under King Henry the Eighth, to blacken them, and thus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various

... by afternoon soaring pinions of cloud pushed up from the western horizon. I watched their white edges curl and blacken, and when they began to be laced with red lightning I said to the woman that we should ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... plantation paths now began to blacken with slowly moving figures, but within the Big House there was no confusion. Colonel Blount paced slowly up and down the gallery. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... pan in the oven and bake 4 hours. They will blacken on the outside, but that does not matter; when they begin to shrink try them with a knitting-needle, and if quite tender strip off the skin. Add a little butter, pepper and salt on top and set into the oven again ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous

... the ruinous conflict which has been raging for seven years in the neighboring island of Cuba. The same disregard of the laws of civilized warfare and of the just demands of humanity which has heretofore called forth expressions of condemnation from the nations of Christendom has continued to blacken the sad scene. Desolation, ruin, and pillage are pervading the rich fields of one of the most fertile and productive regions of the earth, and the incendiary's torch, firing plantations and valuable factories and buildings, is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... has not failed to charge him with having retained them all for the sake of his own children. Surely a man's caring for his family's health and his children's education is, if a crime, a venial one, and ought not to be held up to blacken his reputation. Brother Marshman is no more perfect than other men, partakers like him of the grace of God. His natural bias and habits are his own, and differ as much from those of other men as theirs differ from one another. I do not deny that he has an inclination ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... longer preserved. Mr. Hazlitt prints a letter to a Miss Frances Brown, wherein Lamb offers the verses, adding "I hope your sweetheart's name is WHITE. Else it would spoil all. May be 'tis BLACK. Then we must alter it. And may your fortunes BLACKEN with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... said the knight, "that my writhen features should blacken, as they are like to do, in ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... Bismuth bismuto. Bit (piece) peco. Bit (horse) enbusxajxo. Bite mordi. Bitter akra—ema. Bitters vermuto. Bitumen terpecxo. Bivouac bivako. Blab babili. Black nigra. Blackboard nigra tabulo. Black-currant nigra ribo. Black pudding sangokolbaso. Blackbird merlo. Blacken nigrigi. Blackguard sentauxgulo. Blacking ciro. Blackish dubenigra. Blacksmith forgxisto. Bladder veziko. Blade (grass) trunketo. Blade (knife) trancxanto. Blamable mallauxdinda. Blame ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... know nothing of the contrivances which had been resorted to, and which the reader may lay wholly to the charge of Marchdale, to blacken his character, and to make him appear faithless to the love he ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson." But when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge, declared themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr. Causton's designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... attention to the above directions, annoying failures will not occur. It often happens that some accidental circumstance—generally a projecting film or a little dust—will occasion the mercurial vapor to act with great energy on one part of the paper, and blacken it before the other portions are at all effected. Again, the mercury will sometimes accumulate along the lines made by the brush, and give a streaky appearance to the picture, although these lines are not ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling

... from the sultry heat, We to our cave retreat, O'ercanopied by huge roots, intertwined, Of wildest texture, blacken'd o'er with age, Bound them their mantle green the climbers twine. Beneath whose mantle—pale, Fann'd by the breathing gale, We shield us from the fervid mid-day rage, Thither, while the murmuring throng Of wild bees hum their ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... to blacken the characters of prominent men Manufacturers of phrases More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one Necessary to let men and things take ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... pamphlet, contained allusions to certain "political heresies" of the day, which were understood to imply a serious censure on the opinions of the vice president: and the great object of the national gazette, a paper known to be edited by a clerk in the department of state, was "to calumniate and blacken public characters, and, particularly, to destroy the public confidence in the secretary of the treasury, who was to be hunted down for the unpardonable sin of having been the steady and invariable friend of broad principles of national government." It was also said ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... for displaying his money. He explained this particularly well. One of his listeners observed that it was no good his "pretending"; that he had eaten and drunk and almost slept at Yulia Mihailovna's, yet now he was the first to blacken her character, and that this was by no means such a fine thing to do as he supposed. But ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... triumph by a winged demon. It is singular how legends of this nature should attach themselves to certain localities and persons; but the occupants of Pengersick appear to have had differences with the clergy in old times, and the priests generally contrived to blacken the characters of those who became obnoxious to them. It was a terrible power, the making ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... Yankee woman, and seeing the difficulties and embarrassments in which we were involved, and being in need of a little money, and knowing that we were willing to pay almost any price for something that would flatter ourselves, and blacken the characters of Southern people; she wrote her book. We received it with transports of joy, and cried aloud at the top of our voices, HUZZA FOR MADAM STOWE, and her incomparable negro novel; viz., ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... account of its admirable qualities that Germany has so many enemies. Friedrich v. Schiller says: "The world loves to blacken whatever is radiant and shining, and to drag what is exalted in the dust.... Socrates had to drain the bowl of poison, Columbus was cast into fetters, Christ was nailed to the cross,"—FELDMARSCHALLEUTNANT FRANZ RIEGER, quoted by KR. NYROP, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... Jew had the boy in his toils. Having prepared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it, and change ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... so has their malignity increased. Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. The separation from my wife was a subject that they never failed to urge against me, after having tortured it into a thousand aggravated shapes; not one of which was true. If, however, I would ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... is a cruel, infamous, wicked slander. These poor, ignorant people don't know what they are doing. Sooner than pay one penny in compromise, I will walk off this station a pauper. God will not let such villainy win. Mrs. Gordon, surely you don't think that I ought to blacken my father's and mother's name by paying money to ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... doctrinal system seems to us equally irreconcilable with history and with ethics: it seems to trample on the surest convictions of reason and conscience, and spurn the clearest principles of nature and religion, to blacken and load the heart and doom of man with a mountain of gratuitous horror, and shroud the face and throne of God in a pall of wilful barbarity. How can men be guilty of a sin committed thousands of years before they were born, and deserve to be sent to hopeless ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Black trader seized the latter, and took him away. He alleged in his defence, that the captain owed him goods to a greater amount than the value of the slave; and that he would not pay him. This being told on board, the captain, and a part of his crew, who were compelled to blacken their naked bodies that they might appear like the natives, went on shore at midnight, armed with muskets and cutlasses. They fired on the trader's dwelling, and killed three of his children on the spot. The trader, being badly wounded, died while ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... instantly directed the clutch of her right hand at his hair, and the clutch of her left hand at his throat, and held on to the object of her fond affection with such extraordinary fury, that his face began to blacken in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... makes Sodom of himself; And then to lessen those his hateful Crimes, He Rails at Wedlock in confused Rhimes, Calls Woman Faithless, 'cause she woun't consent, To humour what his Brutish Thoughts invent; No wonder then, if with his poisonous Breath, He strives to Blacken the Brightest thing on Earth: Woman! by Heaven her very Name's a charm, And will my Verse against all Criticks Arm; She Comforts Man in all his Sweats and Toils, And richly pays his Pains, with Love and Smiles. 'Tis Woman makes the ravish'd ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... stove can be used, the operations are all simpler. If not, it is always best to have dumped the grate the night before if coal is used, and to have laid the fire ready for lighting. In the morning brush off all ashes, and wipe or blacken the stove. Strong, thick gloves, and a neat box for brushes, blacking, &c., will make this a much less disagreeable operation than it sounds. Rinse out the tea-kettle, fill it with fresh water, and put over to boil. Then remove the ashes, and, if coal is used, sift them, as ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... the Mamelukes of the Sultan going abroad on some business. Next morning, the King and his Wazir repaired to the sitting-chamber and sent for Princess Dunya who came behind the curtain; and her father said to her, "O my daughter, what sayst thou?" Said she, "I say, Allah blacken thy Wazir's face, because he would have blackened my face in my husband's eyes!" Asked the King, "How so?"; and she answered, "He came in to me yesterday; but, before I could name the matter to him, behold, in walked Faraj the Chief Eunuch, letter ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... forbidden to a lover; therefore, thy love is false.' But it is her love for thee that is false; for she saw thee asleep, yet awoke thee not, and were her love for thee sincere, she had aroused thee. As for the charcoal, it means, 'God blacken thy face, for that thou makest a lying presence of love, whereas thou art but a child and hast no concern but to eat and drink and sleep!' This is the interpretation of her signs, and may God the Most High deliver thee ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... written in great part by enemies of Frontenac, contains the slightest allusion to any such story, and many of them are wholly inconsistent with it. It may safely be set down as a fabrication to blacken the memory of the governor, and exhibit the bishop and his adherents as victims ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... Yet in her nervous state of health, her ever-quick and uncontrollable feelings, if you were to meet her, she would disguise nothing, conceal nothing. The veil would be torn aside: the menials in her own house would tell the tale, and curiosity circulate, and scandal blacken the story of her early errors. No, Maltravers, at least wait awhile before you see her; wait till her mind can be prepared for such an interview, till precautions can be taken, till you yourself are in a calmer state ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of iron has also the same effect, and, if blotted off at once, it will not blacken by the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... the like of which the eye of man will never look upon again. At last, in some short respite of those fighting days, came back the conquerors themselves, to enjoy a fleeting period of rest and fame ere they should stiffen on Russian snows, or swell the streams which bathe the walls of Leipsic, or blacken, with countless dead, the plains stretching between the Rhine and their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... style Smedley takes exception to Swift's divinity and politics and attempts to blacken Swift's character. As we should expect, differences over politics and religion were determining causes. Thus Smedley adores the outstanding literary Whig Addison, contrasting the polish and beauty of Addison's style with Swift's failures, ugliness, ineptitude, ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous

... buffalo, of the North American prairie is gregarious; in other words, it loves society and travels in herds. These herds are sometimes so vast as absolutely to blacken the plains for ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... the skies, clearing his way with his fists, wearing a disordered periwig, swearing, shouting, joking, never dirty, and, at need, ready to blacken an eye or pay ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... sentence—but enough to blacken an honest name for life, enough to break a sensitive heart ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... her being all veiled. Reason and common-sense at last found an advocate in Robert Calef, a citizen of Boston, sneered at by Cotton Mather as "a weaver who pretended to be a merchant." And afterward, when he grew more angry, as "a coal sent from hell" to blacken his character—a man, however, of sound intelligence and courageous spirit. Calef wrote an account, also handed about in manuscript, of what had been said and done during a visitation of the Mathers to this afflicted damsel, an exposure of her imposture and their credulity, which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... the Thorough Research into the state of Creation from remote ages to the present day," Pao-y went on to explain, "that, in the western quarter, there exists a stone, called Tai, (black,) which can be used, in lieu of ink, to blacken the eyebrows with. Besides the eyebrows of this cousin taper in a way, as if they were contracted, so that the selection of these two characters ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... not. You have rejoiced my old heart. I can die; I shall have a successor. Ah! that Gevrol who betrayed you—for he did betray you, there's no doubt about it—that obtuse, obstinate 'General' is not worthy to blacken your shoes!" ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... questioned whether he was one of its tenants. Puckering, Egerton, and Francis Bacon certainly inhabited it in succession. On Bacon's fall it was granted to Buckingham, whose desire to possess the picturesque palace was one of the motives which impelled him to blacken the great lawyer's reputation. Seized by the Long Parliament, it was granted to Lord Fairfax. In the following generation it passed into the hands of the second Duke of Buckingham, who sold house and precinct for building-ground. The bad memory of the man ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... And now again Within that square of darkness, look! a light That feels its way with hesitating pulse, As we do, through the darkness that it drives To blacken into ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... woman, named Ta-ki. One suspects that neither one nor the other stood in need of such prompting. According to history, bad kings are generally worse than bad queens. In China, however, a woman is considered out of place [Page 82] when she lays her hand on the helm of state. Hence the tendency to blacken the names of ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... was a 'Gospel Sonnet on Tobackka and Pipes'; pipes, mind you, as well—all about this Indian weed, and the pipe which is so lily white. Oh, sir, it was most improvin'. And that fanatic of a praycher, not fit to blacken the Erskines' shoes, even if they were Sesayders! I went home and I says, 'Rufus, my son,' and he says, 'Yes, fayther!' Says I, 'Rufus, am I a Christian man, though frail and human, am I a Christian man or am I not?' Rufus says, 'You are a Christian, fayther.' Then says ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... were the trees beginning to blacken in the heat, and the grass looking like a sea of fire along the plains; ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang

... pay them back generously," muttered the bell-boy. "I've a score to settle with them for trying to blacken good old Saunders! But see here! Up to date, at least, they're guests of the hotel, and I'm an employe there. Now, if they get too much the better of matters in a scrimmage, I'll sail in with you boys, even though I have to resign my hotel job. But, if I see that ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... for the face of Dundee was beginning again to blacken. "I've no a word to say against her ladyship. I gather she has been doing what she can for the cause wi' them slippery rascals o' dragoons and their Laodicean commander, of whom I have my ain thoughts. I fear me, indeed, to say ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... to see. In their country all the men of a certain standing blacken their teeth, and I suppose the dye makes their teeth fall out, as they hadn't any apparently, and when they opened their mouths the black caverns one saw were terrifying. I had been warned, but notwithstanding it made a most disagreeable impression on ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the promise of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom deceived; but the riches ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... promotion through his legate Quintillus, sold me—me—to him. He himself brought the old man—who had often followed me about—into his house, but our hostess, a good woman, had overheard the matter, and betrayed it all to me. It is so base, so vile—it seems to blacken my soul only to think of it! The legate got little enough in return for his sesterces, but Phoebicius did not restore his wages of sin, and his rage against me knew no bounds when he was transferred ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... stays away; whether he is really a shirk, or absents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the risk of being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to raise that question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in a word, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. To that end I return to the story of ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... foot-lights. But instead of the shepherds in white satin who ought to be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work on his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... the outer tough coat {194} of the eyeball (the "sclerotic" coat) taking the place of the wood or metal of which the box is built, and the deeply pigmented "choroid" coat, that lines the sclerotic, corresponding to the coating of paint used to blacken the inside of the camera box and prevent stray light from getting in and blurring the picture. At the front of the eye, where light is admitted, the sclerotic is transformed into the transparent "cornea", ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... no rest, nor eat any but the commonest food, until he shall have carried out the wishes of his one Jade Star, she whose teeth he is not worthy to blacken. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... Napoleon dropped a tear: but that, said the tutor, meant as much as the flood of tears from Joseph. Love of his relatives was a potent factor of his policy in later life; and slander has never been able wholly to blacken the character of a man who loved and honoured his mother, who asserted that her advice had often been of the highest service to him, and that her justice and firmness of spirit marked her out as a natural ruler ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... for the way he's treated Emma, and last night they up an' spoke—you should just a' 'eard them. Then someone set it goin' as the fault wasn't Dick's at all. See what I mean? I don't know who started that. I can't think as he'd try to blacken a girl's name just to excuse himself; that's goin' ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... pure ether its brilliancy was so unbearable that Barbicane and his friends were obliged to blacken the object-glasses of their telescopes with gas-smoke in order to support it. Then, mute, hardly emitting a few admirative interjections, they looked and contemplated. All their sentiments, all their impressions were concentrated ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... mixture of carbon, sulphuretted iron, and copper, appears to me to augment with the relative antiquity of the formations.) The strata of marl effervesce with acids, though silex and alumina predominate in them: they are strongly impregnated with carbon, and sometimes blacken the hands, like a real vitriolic schistus. The supposed gold mine of Cuchivano, which was the object of our examination, is nothing but an excavation cut into one of those black strata of marl, which contain pyrites in abundance. The ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... pray'd, their pray'r the Goddess heard; Then, their devotions ended, on they far'd Through the deep dead of night, like lions twain, 'Mid slaughter, corpses, arms, and blacken'd gore. ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... clouds began to blacken the horizon, the Army, having so little sympathy with the vast and complex civilisation which it was to defend, felt convinced that the national feelings and political sense of the nation would be slumbering so soundly ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... uncommon topic—it was very much his practice, instead of listening to it patiently, to bring up matters discreditable to Great Britain. There was unquestionably ample material on both sides with which each could blacken the other. But while this tended to make the conversation less monotonous, it likewise tended to make the converser less popular. Cooper lost early by his bearing in English society much of the favor which he had won from his writings. To this we have positive evidence. It is specifically mentioned ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... like myself, have served in South Africa, fought against him, and frequently met men who have been prisoners under him, look, I believe, with shame and indignation on the attempts made to advertise and magnify such incidents as the alleged flogging and shooting of peace envoys, so as to blacken the character of a man who, throughout the war, held a reputation with our troops in the field of being not only a gallant soldier, but a humane and honourable gentleman. We may deplore the desperate tenacity of his resistance. Our ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... So with the humbler houses in the little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light, into the street—ate or drank or wore what they sold, with the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... of odd disturbance. "I can do no good by going," he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for nothing;" and the combat began again within him, but with far less fury. It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)—it was Antonia. It was not fair to her to put himself in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... cheap photographs are, how they distort and blacken. The girl who looked at me from this one appeared to ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold

... to that great lawyer in talents, and equally ill-treated by the calumny or just satire of his contemporaries as an unjust and partial judge. Some of the notes are by that curious and laborious antiquary, Robert Milne, who, as a virulent Jacobite, willingly lent a hand to blacken ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... day, she required me, too, to exert myself; and then all my heavy despair returned. I let her dye my fair hair and complexion with the decaying shells of the stored-up walnuts, I let her blacken my teeth, and even voluntarily broke a front tooth the better to effect my disguise. But through it all I had no hope of evading my terrible husband. The third night the funeral was over, the drinking ended, the guests gone; the miller put to bed by his men, being too drunk to help himself. They ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... their high sense of honour, and they would maintain their reputation for honourable dealing untarnished. (Cheers.) To forget their loyalty to the Empire in this hour of trial would be scandalous and shameful, and would blacken South Africa in the eyes of the whole world. Of this South Africans were incapable. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... we are to operate. We must know what the sights are and how to use them. We should know how those men most successful in the science and art of shooting hold the rifle under different conditions, how they adjust their slings, how they prepare (blacken) their sights and care for their rifles, what practice and preparation they take, and what bits of advice they ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... faction fight in ould Ireland, they say, Was all on account of Saint Pathrick's birthday, Some fought for the eighth—for the ninth more would die. And who wouldn't see right, sure they blacken'd his eye! At last, both the factions so positive grew, That each kept a birthday, so Pat then had two, Till Father Mulcahy, who showed them their sins, Said, "No one could have two ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... grisly forms again began to stalk the land; the people perished by tens of thousands, and the tales told by eye-witnesses of what they themselves had seen at this time are too sickening to be allowed needlessly to blacken these pages. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... love, would be impossible. She could not say No to him. She had struggled often in reference to Mr. Gilmore, and had found it impossible to say Yes. There was now the same sort of impossibility in regard to the No. She couldn't blacken herself with such a lie. And yet, though she was sure of this, she was so astounded by his declaration, so carried off her legs by the alteration in her position, so hard at work within herself with her new endeavour ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... mass of such a work would not really be affected; such flaws—and what book of the kind escapes them—which can most easily be removed, would not weaken the central argument, and after the Apologist's ingenuity has been exerted to the utmost to blacken every blot, the basis of Supernatural Religion would not be made one whit more secure. It is, however, because I recognise that, behind this skirmishing attack, there is the constant insinuation ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... kind of thing and will probably dissolve partnership and lie quiet for a bit, and still less to folk like myself, who are only servants. But if you were still here it would have mattered a great deal to you, for it would blacken your name and break your heart, and then what's the good of the money? I tell you, Major," the clerk went on with quiet intensity, "though I am nobody and nothing, if I could afford it I would follow your example. But I can't, for I have a sick wife and a family of delicate children ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... themes of war! away with war itself! Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of blacken'd, mutilated corpses! That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-tongued wolves, not reasoning men, And in its stead speed industry's campaigns, With thy undaunted armies, engineering, Thy pennants labor, loosen'd to the breeze, Thy bugles sounding ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... hear that you have now on hand five times as much matter against the Sabbath as you have for it. This is all natural enough, God's word has ever been advocated by the minority. And when such blasphemous language against the Saviour we are looking for, was permitted to blacken your columns, and again reiterated that he was right, and you not only let it pass unnoticed, but was endeavoring to screen him by withdrawing his real name from God's children. The inference is, and must be, strong against you. Look at your position now! THE BIBLE ADVOCATE!! Show if ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded: Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast Fortune's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... one of them to the editor of the Star, "that Mr. Seekamp can, in his endeavour to blacken the fair fame of a woman, insinuate that he is also guilty of the most shocking immorality? I blush to think it." There was also a letter in a similar strain from "John Bull," and another from "An Eton Boy," animadverting upon Mr. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... laugh, which caused the minister to have a sleepless night, which has caused the minister's secretaries to blacken several sheets of paper, but which has cost ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... which everywhere vividly marks their monotonous lives. Indeed, this is true of the whole area through which I have traveled. No furniture brings confusion to their rooms, no machinery distresses the ear with its groaning or the eye with its unsightliness, no factories belch out smoke and blacken the beauty of the sky, no trains screech to disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simplest of simple beds—in most cases merely a few boards with a straw mattress placed thereon—the straw sandal on the foot, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... is taken by his assistant. Water is sprinkled on the stone and huge fires are kindled. No layman may approach the sacred spot while the mystic ceremony is being performed. When the Sulka of New Britain wish to procure rain they blacken stones with the ashes of certain fruits and set them out, along with certain other plants and buds, in the sun. Then a handful of twigs is dipped in water and weighted with stones, while a spell is chanted. After that rain should follow. In Manipur, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... conduct of the Prince of Orange in this meeting of the council has been appealed to by historians of the Spanish party as a proof of his dishonesty, and they have availed themselves over and over again to blacken his character. "He," say they, "who had, invariably up to this period, both by word and deed, opposed the measures of the court so long as he had any ground to fear that the king's measures could be successfully carried out, supported them ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... your head, blacken your face, "make up" your features, and when you have finished and are completely unaware of your changed appearance, look into the mirror for your reflection and feel the sensation of the startling fact that ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis

... to realize all the bearin's of the case. The town is down on you. Respectable people won't have nothin' to do with you, any more than they would walk arm in arm with the charcoal-man in their Sunday toggery. I aren't respectable, so you can't blacken me. I've showed you I'm not afraid to trust you. You can't sleep in the streets, you can't eat pavin'-stuns and mud, and you won't go home. This brings me to the question again: Can you stand me? I warn you I'm an awful oncomfortable customer to live with; I won't take ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... ne'er want pretence to blacken kings, And this, it seems, is yours: Do you produce him, Or ne'er hereafter sully my renown With this aspersion:—Sure he dare ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... day—shall ye blush for its story? Or brighten your lives with its glory?— Our women—O say, shall they shriek in despair, Or embrace us from conquest, with wreaths in their hair? Accursed may his memory blacken, If a coward there be that would slacken, Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from, and named for, the godlike of earth. Strike home!—and the world shall revere us As ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Japan by the Spaniards, and these by the Dutch, each trying to blacken the character of the others. The Catholics abused the Protestants, and were as vigorously abused in return. Each trading nation lied with the most liberal freedom about its rivals. To the seaports of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... side with these damn'd Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price." "The governor," says I, "has not yet blacked them enough." He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his colouring as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... before he was born, that she had a dreadful countenance, that the doctor affirmed her to be not mad but malicious, that his father had stated in 1822 he—Honore—would never have a worse enemy than his mother. Had his mother been all this and more, it would have been ungenerous and unfilial to blacken her reputation to a stranger. And, being false, it was odious. Madame Balzac's partiality towards the second son—heavily enough punished—did not prevent her from loving the elder, though their characters ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... took to drinking, used to get constantly drunk, and rolled from public-house to public-house, and bar to bar, and as the worst glass of vitrol still cost a penny, he became reduced to undertaking the part which you have seen, to dabble in the water, to blacken himself, and to allow himself ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... people Wide o'er the land.(386) "Is the Lord not in Sion, 19 Is there no king?(387) [Why have they vexed Me with idols, Foreigners' fancies?](388) "Harvest is past, summer is ended, 20 And we are not saved!" For the breaking of the daughter of my people 21 I break, I blacken! Horror hath fastened upon me Pangs as of her that beareth.(389) Is there no balm in Gilead, 22 Is there no healer? Why do the wounds never close(390) Of the daughter of my people? Oh that my head were waters, IX. 1 Mine eyes a fountain ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... Of course the greatest excitement followed. Peggy was next examined, but she denied Mary Burton's story in toto—swore that she knew nothing of any conspiracy or of the burning of the stores; that if she should accuse any one it would be a lie, and blacken her own soul. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... unnecessary remark with reference to the recent occurrence in Hyde Park, and to Mr. Raeburn. I listened to it with pain, for, if there can be degrees in the absolute evil of injustice and lack of charity, it seems to me that the highest degree is reached in that uncharitableness which tries to blacken the character of an opponent. Since the subject has been introduced, the House will, I hope, bear with me if for the sake of justice I for a moment allude to a personal matter. Some years ago I myself was an atheist, and I can only say ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... the strength from his muscles, the courage from his heart, sap the very foundation of his existence, unsex and unnerve him, render him feeble, wavering and imbecile, dog his footsteps to the very steps of the altar, to curse and blacken and disappoint those joys of parentage and marital right that should be his. The shadow deepens with him as life advances, and follows him, bringing shame and misery and despair at every step, until the poor victim, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... entered the neighbouring Republic singing the pathetic airs of the Old Dominion, artfully interspersed with the soul-stirring strains of the "British Grenadiers" and "Rule Britannia." He thought, moreover, that if the grave and reverend seigniors of the "Family Compact" would blacken their faces as they had blackened their hearts, and "star" it through the lowly hamlets of the Province, singing, say, the Jacobite airs of a previous generation, it would do more to cement the attachment of Canada to ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... in it. Miss Browning sent for me this evening to tell me how people were talking about you. She implied that it was a complete loss of your good name. You do not know, Molly, how slight a thing may blacken a girl's reputation for life. I had hard work to stand all she said, even though I did not believe a word of it at the time. And now you have told me that much of it ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... opportunity next day and told mother and daughter the rest, excusing himself characteristically for not letting Cornelis and Sybrandt hear of it. "It is not for me to blacken them; they come of a good stock. But Gerard looks on them as no friends of his in this matter; and I'm Gerard's comrade and it is a rule with us soldiers not to tell ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... metal knows how very hard it is to judge of the correctness of the drawing by merely looking at it, because the light is reflected in all directions into one's eyes, not only from untouched parts of the plate, but from the freshly cut lines. The best way of testing the work is to blacken it with some kind of colour that is free from acid, such as a mixture of lampblack and oil, to rub the surface clean so as to leave the ink only in the engraved lines, and then take an impression of the drawing upon ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... York, or was merely a country landowner, can never be decided. The charges made against him after his death were not supported by a shred of evidence, but it was necessary then for the Government to blacken the character of the Captain of Kent for the utter discouragement of his followers. All we know of Cade is that by the Act of Attainder he must have been a man of some property in Surrey—probably a squire ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... It sticks to her throat, as though 'twere glued by blood. Tear me away. I have not force enough to liberate myself. Why do you grin at me? The corpse grins likewise. It is jugglery. I am innocent. You would take away my life. Tear me away, I say: the veins rise; they blacken; they are filling with new blood. I feel them swell; they coil like living things around my ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... birth Since God first kneaded man from earth; O, I have come to know him well, As Ferroe's blacken'd rocks can tell. Who was it did, at Suderoe, The deed no other dared to do? Who was it, when the Boff had burst, And whelm'd me in its womb accurst, Who was it dashed amid the wave, With frantic zeal, my life to save? Who was it ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow



Words linked to "Blacken" :   discolour, nigrify, color, preparation, cookery, burn, singe, cooking, whiten, colour, swinge, scorch, discolor



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