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Connive   /kənˈaɪv/   Listen
Connive

verb
(past & past part. connived; pres. part. conniving)
1.
Encourage or assent to illegally or criminally.
2.
Form intrigues (for) in an underhand manner.  Synonyms: intrigue, scheme.



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"Connive" Quotes from Famous Books



... complied, but, on reaching the peninsula, opened communication with his father, and it was agreed that while Tasa should hold Imna, breaking off all relations with Japan, Oto should adopt a similar course with regard to Paikche. This plot was frustrated by Oto's wife, Kusu, a woman too patriotic to connive at treason in any circumstances. She killed her husband, and the Court of Yamato was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... it is necessary to humour those he has, those possessed of great authority with the soldiers: a Braccio, a Sforza, a Wallenstein. He lacks money for the most pressing needs, it is necessary to turn to great financiers, who have an established credit, and he must at the same time connive at their malversations. It is true that this unfortunate necessity arises most often from previous errors. It is not the same with God: he has need of no man, he commits no error, he always does the best. One cannot even ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... guineas, and this very day and hour appointed for the trial, on which considerable sums of money are depending. As for Mr. Norton, it is not proper that he should be present, or seem to countenance such violent proceedings, which, however, it is necessary to connive at, as convenient vents for the evaporation of those humours, which, being confined, might accumulate and break out with greater ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... people, as well as to decide the fortune of that critical day, by slaying one whom she regarded as the enemy of GOD Himself, may have seized her while she stood in the door of the tent,—weighing Sisera's petition against Deborah's prophecy. Be this as it may,—would you have had the woman connive at Sisera's escape,—the enemy of GOD'S people, when GOD Himself had unexpectedly ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... hadna been her repute for the Evil E'e? Ye may lauch, but I could tell tales o' Annapla's capacity. The night afore ye cam' she yoked himsel' on his jyling the lassie, though she's the last that wad thraw him. 'Oh.' said he, 'ye're a' tarred wi' the ae stick: if ye connive at his comin' here without my kennin', I'll gie him death wi' his boots on!' It was in the Gaelic this, ye maun ken; Annapla gied me't efter. 'Boots here, boots there,' quo' she, 'love's the fine adventurer, and I see by the griosach' (that's the fire-embers, ye ken; between ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... falling quickly as a shooting star; already is your conscience warped to connive, for lucre's sake, at some one's secret crimes. You had better, for the moral of the matter, have burnt your right hand, as Scaevola did, than that shawl. Beware! your ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... first of your reappearance on the stage. Welbeck's conduct was dishonest. He ought doubtless to be pursued to his asylum and be compelled to refund his winnings. You confess yourself to know his place of refuge, but urge a promise of secrecy. Know you not that to assist or connive at the escape of this man was wrong? To have promised to favour his concealment and impunity by silence was only an aggravation of this wrong. That, however, is past. Your youth, and circumstances, hitherto unexplained, may apologize for that misconduct; but it is certainly your duty ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... incapable of understanding my scruples. Gahra, albeit willing to go with me, knew no more of the country than I did, and there was not a man in it who could have been induced even by a bribe either to act as my guide or otherwise connive at my escape; and I had no ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... you may encounter friends (Pray this prediction be not wrong), But wait until old age descends And thumbs have smeared your gentlest song; Then will the moths connive to eat you ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... other outlet. Now there was space to view it calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity; but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... person at Boston, to beat up recruits, as more than two hundred years after, another power attempted to raise a foreign legion, and, although the pilgrim fathers do not officially sanction the proceeding, yet they connive at it, and quote Scripture to warrant them. Close upon this follows a protest of D'Aulney, and with it the exhibition of a warrant from the French king for the arrest of La Tour. Upon this there is a meeting of the council and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... little incident. Trouble like this we're having to-day is constantly arising. No money-making graft is too petty or too immoral for the MacMorroghs to connive at. They rob and starve their laborers, and cheat the company with bad work. I've got to have a free hand in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... ignoramus, and Dogberry is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts might, indeed, be tragic enough, but they are actually comic. Such characters are not ruled by fate but by a sportive chance. The gods connive at them. They are ruled, like tragic characters, by necessity and blindness; but the blindness, instead of leading to tragic ruin, leads only to being caught as in some harmless game of blind-man's-buff. There is retribution, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... With me hath end; all the contest is now 'Twixt God and Dagon; Dagon hath presum'd, Me overthrown, to enter lists with God, His Deity comparing and preferring Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure, Will not connive, or linger, thus provok'd, But will arise and his great name assert: Dagon must stoop, and shall e're long receive Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him Of all these boasted Trophies won on me, 470 And with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... necessary food supplies reached those places only after an expensive transport which materially increased their price; the more as they were carried by land to the point of exportation, it not suiting the British policy to connive at coasting trade even for that purpose. A neutral or licensed vessel, sailing from the Chesapeake with flour for a port friendly to the United States, could be seized under cover of the commercial blockade, which she was violating, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... suppressed, for the mass was the worst kind of idolatry.[230] In 1530, when it was proposed to leave the matters in dispute to the decision of the future Council, Luther declared that the mass and monastic life could not be tolerated in the meantime, because it was unlawful to connive at error.[231] "It will lie heavy on your conscience," he writes to the Duke of Saxony, "if you tolerate the Catholic worship; for no secular prince can permit his subjects to be divided by the preaching of opposite doctrines. The Catholics have no right to complain, for they do not prove ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... knew all its ways, its silences, its reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn't be prepared for this—that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to his own advantage against ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair

... men of Wessagussett, and he was willing that they should he treated as they seemed disposed to treat such of his race as they could get into their power. He even made an attempt to persuade Bradford to leave them to the fate they so well deserved, and to connive at their destruction, which would remove an increasing evil ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... manufacturing and machine shops, but will spare libraries and asylums and private dwellings." That Sherman was entirely sincere when he gave this order, and that his general officers endeavored to carry it out cannot be questioned. A statement which he made under oath in 1872 indicates that he did not connive at the destruction of Columbia. "If I had made up my mind to burn Columbia," he declared, "I would have burnt it with no more feeling than I would a common prairie dog village; but ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... beast that went out and killed a man, the beast, said Jehovah, shall be slain, and his flesh shall not be eaten. The owner must lose the whole of him as a testimony to the sacredness of human life, and a warning to all not to do any thing, or connive at any thing that tended to destroy it. But the owner, if he did not know that the beast was dangerous, and liable to kill, was not otherwise to be punished. But if he did know, if it had been testified to the owner that the beast was dangerous, and liable to kill, and he did not keep him ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... it?—Must I not connive at your proceedings, if I do not? You are no fool, Polly, in other cases. Tell me, how it is possible for me, in ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... licensed debauch undoes the work of the Clergy on fifty-two Sundays. No wonder that in the past the State collectively has been our worst corrupter: but to open this whole question space does not here allow. A long struggle has gone on, to implore public men not to connive at drunkenness—a national pest which for more than a century was greeted with merriment though politically avowed to be criminal. None dare now to laugh at it, except the depraved men who laugh at ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... His depredations having exceeded their usual limits, and reached an extent, at which neither the timidity of the then commercial senate of Venice, nor their hope of his occasional assistance would permit them to connive, the same effort, it was resolved, should complete the suppression of his power and the correction of his outrages. While a corps of considerable strength was upon the point of receiving orders to march for Udolpho, a young officer, prompted partly by resentment, for some injury, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... [left alone and shrinking into an old and desolate figure] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched man. [He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over the abyss]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a blasphemous lie. I ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? The Duke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at your romantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion, that part of the story is not quite so well thought out as the rest, though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he saw you behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... themselves acquired, by force, the independence which they enjoyed; and they trusted that the British administration, through apprehensions of renewing an unpopular and disastrous war, would be induced to connive at, if not confirm, the privilege the Americans affected to claim under the very Navigation Act of Great Britain, the most beneficial effect of which they were thus ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... one or more of the crew; in which event they kept their places of concealment until the steamer had arrived at her port of destination, when they would profit by the first opportunity to leave the vessel undiscovered. A small bribe would tempt the average blockade-running sailor to connive at this means of escape. The "impecunious" deserter fared more hardly; and would, usually, be forced by hunger and thirst to emerge from his hiding place, while the steamer was on the outward voyage. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... of the Board again mounted his invisible rostrum. "Do you mean to intimate that we are to falsify the record?" he declaimed. "To try to make liars out of hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to distort the truth, to connive at ..." ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... that, not one of these pedants who growled at promiscuous botany has once objected to promiscuous dancing, not even with the gentleman's arm round the lady's waist, which the custom of centuries cannot render decent. Yet the professors of delicacy connive, and the Mother Geese sit smirking at the wall. Oh, world of hypocrites ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Connive" :   intrigue, plot, assent, connivance, acquiesce, accede



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