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Formidable   /fˈɔrmədəbəl/  /fˌɔrmˈɪdəbəl/   Listen
Formidable

adjective
1.
Extremely impressive in strength or excellence.  "The challenge was formidable" , "Had a formidable array of compositions to his credit" , "The formidable army of brains at the Prime Minister's disposal"
2.
Inspiring fear.  Synonyms: redoubtable, unnerving.  "A tougher and more redoubtable adversary than the heel-clicking, jackbooted fanatic" , "Something unnerving and prisonlike about high grey wall"






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"Formidable" Quotes from Famous Books



... from her position by marrying beneath herself, seeing that Lady Amelia had spent so many more years in the world without having found it necessary to do so? Augusta's letter was written on two sheets of note-paper, crossed all over; and Lady Amelia's answer was almost equally formidable. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... Vincent, and Sir Horatio Nelson, that the latter should the next morning sail, with the Vanguard, Orion, and Alexander, of seventy-four guns each, the Emerald and Terpsichore frigates, and La Bonne Citoyenne sloop of war, to watch the motions of this formidable French armament. The Earl of St. Vincent was at no loss to know who was the senior officer under his command, and what was the customary etiquette; but he knew, at the same time, that he had, as ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... then the spirit of prophecy having moved her, she told AEneas of the dangers that yet lay before him, dangers far more formidable than ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... purpose, soon resigned, and Volney C. Howard was appointed in his place. In the meantime the Committee proceeded quietly in perfecting their arrangements. The people, to the number of several thousand, offered themselves and were added to the already formidable force. The demonstrations of citizens not professedly belonging to, however in favor of the organization, were, at this and subsequent periods, very impressive. An evening meeting was held in front of the Oriental Hotel, ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... caused some flutter among his associates. In the possible event of the Holy Alliance actually intermeddling in South American affairs, it was (p. 133) said, the principles enunciated by the Secretary of State would involve this country in war with a very formidable confederation. Mr. Adams acknowledged this, but courageously declared that in such a crisis he felt quite ready to take even this spirited stand. His audacious spirit went far in advance of the cautious temper of the Monroe administration; possibly it went too far in advance ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... ROADSIDE THISTLE (C. lanceolatus or Circium lanceolatum of Gray), a native of Europe and Asia, now a most thoroughly naturalized American from Newfoundland to Georgia, westward to Nebraska. Its violet flower-heads, about an inch and a half across, and as high as wide, are mostly solitary at the ends of formidable branches, up which few crawling creatures venture. But in the deep tube of each floret there is nectar secreted for the flying visitor who can properly transfer pollen from flower to flower. Such a one suffers no inconvenience from the prickles, but, on the contrary, finds a larger feast ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... treats: Wisely she priz'd 'em at the noblest Rate, | As necessary Ministers of State, | And Contributions rais'd to make 'em great. | They from the publick Bank she did maintain, And freed from want, they only writ for Fame; And were as useful in a City held, As formidable Armies in the Field. They but a Conquest over Men pursued, While these by gentle force the Soul subdu'd. Not Rome in all her happiest Pomp cou'd show | A greater Caesar than we boast of now; | Augustus reigns, but Poets still ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... bolts and of a key being turned, and I found myself face to face with a tall priest with a large stomach, the chest of a prize-fighter, formidable hands projecting from turned up sleeves, a red face and the looks of a kind man. I gave him a military salute and said: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... observation of the British—these were the objects of our noblest exertion. Well, we succeeded, and hoodwinked the British. Spies were permitted to obtain glimpses of our obsolete artillery, but until the war was on the point of breaking out they had no suspicion of the formidable extent of our stores of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... the innovation was responsible for no one realized until the aggregation of yearlings from the Knickerbocker Athletic Club defeated the formidable array of champions representing the New York Athletic Club. Reeder abandoned the game two years later, but his good work lived after him, and some of his team-mates held the championship for many years by ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton

... friend to what appeared to be the gun-room. Rows of the regular instruments for bringing down birds stood against the walls; but across a table in the window lay one or two weapons of a heavier and more formidable pattern. ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... reach tide-water. As in other places, when the necessity for overcoming them arose, the obstacles which Nature had interposed were found not to be so troublesome as was at first supposed. Now the once formidable range has been tunnelled and will no longer form a serious barrier between the interior portion of ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... commenced. The study of them does indeed still retain its ground in our public schools and universities. But it has received a rude shock from some writers of the present age; nor has any attack been more formidable, than that of the author of Emile. Let us endeavour to examine the question, neither with the cold prejudice of antiquity on the one hand; nor on the other, with the too eager thirst of novelty, and unbounded ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... her! With what a terrible contraction of the heart did she put to herself the formidable question: "Have I the right to lie? Shall I have ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... attached to their girdle; and with the girdle they were put off when at home. In fact, under the appearance of a literary instrument, the Romans carried about with them in that same stilus a very sharp and formidable weapon. It was with his stilus that Cassius stabbed Caesar in the senate-house. Taking, then, his girdle and his cloak, Arbaces left his house, supporting his steps, which were still somewhat feeble (though hope and vengeance had conspired greatly with his own medical science, which was ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... has in many cases been insidiously directed against notes and passing references, and a plentiful sprinkling of such words as "misstatements" and "misrepresentations" along the line may have given it a formidable appearance and malicious effect, which render it worth while once for all to meet it ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... Woodstock, do I say these things to you, who claim no portion in our David, no interest in England's son of Jesse?—You, who were fighting as well as your might could (and it was not very formidable) for the late Man, under that old blood-thirsty papist Sir Jacob Aston—are you not now plotting, or ready to plot, for the restoring, as ye call it, of the young Man, the unclean son of the slaughtered tyrant—the fugitive ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... across, it tumbled in an icy flood, almost a waterfall, pitching over the lip of a crag above us. It had sliced a ravine five feet deep in the mountainside, and came roaring down with a rushing noise that made my head vibrate. It looked formidable; anyone stepping into it would be knocked off his feet in seconds, and swept a thousand feet down the mountainside by the ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... also began a march to the front. The Governor thought that he had but to come, see, and conquer; but he was mistaken. He had tough work before him. The Boers, about a thousand strong, had entrenched themselves in a formidable position. They were superior in point of numbers, horses, and guns to Sir Harry's forces; but he pursued his way, nothing daunted. He stormed the position, and, after a hard fight, scattered the enemy. They ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... apparition. It was not the fighting season, so they had no jealousy, and felt nothing but a cold indifference toward the stranger. But as he came striding down the field his attitude was so menacing, his stature so formidable, that they could not but realize there was trouble brewing. It was contrary to all traditions that they should take the trouble to fight in midwinter, when they had no antlers and their blood was sluggish. Nevertheless, they could not brook to be so affronted, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... disorder of a very serious nature which science is now laying at the doors of the liver—diabetes mellitus, or sugar in the urine. Till quite recently, this formidable affection has been regarded as having its seat in the kidneys; and it is so classified in medical writings. Later researches, however, show that the sugar has been formed in the economy before it reaches the kidneys, and that these organs act only as strainers with respect to it, removing it ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... but that the two good creatures, both powerful and formidable animals, must have saved him from the spoilers, and then been sagacious enough to let the hound go down to fetch assistance while the sheep-dog remained as his master's faithful guardian. How honoured and caressed they were can hardly be ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... England at least, Socialism is not a party, but a sect. That is sometimes brought against it as a taunt; but I am not dismayed by it; for I can conceive of a sect—nay, I have heard of one—becoming a very formidable power, and becoming so by dint of its long remaining a sect. So I think it is quite possible that Socialism will remain a sect till the very eve of the last stroke that completes the revolution, after which it will melt into the new Society. And is it not sects, bodies of definite, uncompromising ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... Charles, for the maintenance of this acquisition. Meanwhile his rupture with Sweden was extremely prejudicial to the commerce of England, and had well nigh entailed upon the kingdom another invasion, much more formidable than that which had so lately miscarried. The ministers of Sweden resident at London, Paris, and the Hague, maintained a correspondence with the disaffected subjects of Great Britain. A scheme was formed for the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... a little round man with little round eyes, a little round nose, a little round stomach, and little round legs. Though very small in person, his voice was formidable enough, and he appeared to be astonishingly ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... outward observer Friedrich stands well at present, and seems again in formidable posture. After two such Victories, and such almost miraculous recovery of himself, who shall say what resistance he will not yet make? In comparison with 1759 and its failures and disasters, what a Year has 1760 been! Liegnitz and Torgau, instead of Kunersdorf and Maxen, here are unexpected ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... attempt to seize the post of Detroit; and during a period of forty years, subsequent to that effort, they caused great trouble and embarrassment to the French colonial government, which was only terminated by a most formidable military expedition, sent by that enterprizing people into their remote regions west of Green Bay. During the last war with Great Britain, this confederacy entered zealously into the contest, and was among the most active and ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... of the war with England was the discovery by the Chinese of the impotency of their rulers. No sooner had the lawless among them seen the ease with which a few foreigners dictated terms to the hitherto formidable mandarins, than they took to the sea as pirates. In a short space of time the coast became so infested by these marauders, that Chinese junks dared not put to sea without being under the convoy of a foreign, square-rigged ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... have been formidable at any time; but it was doubly formidable when directed by statesmen who in knowledge and ability were without rivals in Europe. No diplomatist could compare with Lionne, no war minister with Louvois, no financier with Colbert. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... more rapidly, the very forefront of the center melted inward and forward and downward until it caught the fierce rush of the freshet and shot out from under the jam. Far up-stream, bristling and formidable, the tons of logs, grinding ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... Hulk. The infallible has done the business for all the party except the Scotchman's wife and the author of that formidable remedy. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... exposing a formidable array of black and green bottles. One of the black he pulled down, as well as two small glasses, which he filled to ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... whom old Bertaud sees making for the forest of Mauprevoir, where he intends to arrange the disorder of his clothes. For the moment he is safe. But he leaves behind him this letter, which is, believe me, a formidable witness, which will enlighten justice and will betray his guilt and the perfidy of his projects. For he has not found it, but we will find it; it is necessary for us to have it to defeat Monsieur Domini, and to ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... only when the testimony of the Bible and the experience of Christians are set aside that difficulties appear which seem very formidable. ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... Adams gravely, "that any more formidable or better organized and animated force was ever set in motion than that which Lee is now leading toward the North. It is essentially an army of fighters—men who individually, or in the mass, can be depended on for any feat of arms ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with "Claimants"—claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Oliphants of Gask were cadets of the formerly noble house of Oliphant; whose ancestor, Sir William Oliphant of Aberdalgie, a puissant knight, acquired distinction in the beginning of the fourteenth century by defending the Castle of Stirling against a formidable siege by the first Edward. The family of Gask were devoted Jacobites; the paternal grandfather of Carolina Oliphant had attended Prince Charles Edward as aid-de-camp during his disastrous campaign of 1745-6, and his spouse had indicated her sympathy in his cause by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... properly noble in England, there would be no such thing in strictness of law as nobility in that island, had not the kings created new barons from time to time, and preserved the body of peers, once a terror to them, to oppose them to the Commons, since become so formidable. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... seemed to have attained the great object of its policy, that of depriving the Emperor of the support of the League, and of his Protestant allies, and of dictating to him, sword in hand, the conditions of peace. Of all his once formidable power, an army, not exceeding 12,000, was all that remained to him; and this force he was driven to the necessity of entrusting to the command of a Calvinist, the Hessian deserter Melander, as the casualties of war had stripped him of his best generals. But as ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... mind to the walk, but she couldn't help finding it pleasant. The open air was very sweet and bracing; the exercise was inspiriting, and the threatened talk went well with both. There was nothing whatever formidable about it; the words and thoughts seemed to play, like the sunlight, on anything that came in their way. Dr. Harrison knew how to make a walk or a talk pleasant, even to Faith, it seemed. Whatever she had at any time seen in him that she did not like, was out of sight; ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... solemnly over the rims I felt that there had come to my help one poor little frightened friend. As for my first acquaintance, he, seeing me attacked not only by the redoubtable Fullbil, but also by the formidable Bobbs and the dangerous Fancher, had immediately begun to pretend that never in his life ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... DISCOURAGEMENT may be so exhibited as to convince their object that he is neither distasteful or indifferent to the person who wears this manner. You know, too, none better, that an affected neglect, when skilfully managed, is amongst the most formidable of the engines which artful beauty can employ. I tell you, madam, that having, without one word spoken in discouragement, permitted my son's most marked attentions for a twelvemonth or more, you have no right to dismiss him with no further explanation ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... new type, the Sivatherium, like a gigantic four-horned deer. There are also new forms of carnivora, both feline and canine, the Machairodus among the former, also hyaenas, and a subursine form called the Hyaenarctos, and a genus allied to the otter (Enhydriodon), of formidable size. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... contemplation of the complete attainment (at a period earlier than could have been expected) of the object for which we contended against so formidable a power, can not but inspire us with astonishment and gratitude. The disadvantageous circumstances on our part, under which the war was undertaken, can never be forgotten. The singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition, were such as could ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... seven-thirty Captain Clarke drove up with a wonderful team of blacks. His hunting jacket was belted in with a formidable looking cartridge belt, two shotguns were slid in on the floor of the spring wagon, and lunch baskets and a great earthenware jug of lemonade were wedged in under the seats. He gave a shrill hunting halloo as he drew up at ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... may as well shoulder that, and you may as well carry this, Gordon," he continued, taking a small revolver with holster, strap, and cartridge-box. "You are not to use it except in a case of the most extreme urgency. Strap it on, my lad. It looks formidable, and the possession of such a weapon will often keep ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... brought more and more plainly to view the retreating march of the Union forces—unmistakably a retreat and yet quite as unmistakably no panic. Interminable lines of wagons, whose length and number no one can estimate who has not seen a formidable army on the march, rolled on slowly over the white roads, raising clouds of impalpable dust that rose no higher than the wheels and then settled again without obscuring the view. Battery after battery of rifled Parrots, smooth-bores, howitzers and monster ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... earliest happenings of the day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so mysterious or so alarming an air that my aunt felt she could not wait until it was time for Francoise to come upstairs, and then a formidable and quadruple peal would resound through ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... eastern cape of Santo Domingo. A legend says that Toussaint looking down on the huge armada exclaimed, "We must perish. All France is coming to Santo Domingo. It has been deceived; it comes to take vengeance and enslave the blacks." The negro leader made a formidable resistance, nevertheless, annihilating one French army and seriously endangering the expedition. But he was betrayed by his generals, lured within the French lines, made prisoner, and finally sent to France. He was incarcerated ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... the culprit over her down-dropped spectacles in a truly formidable manner, but the result was only a settled stubbornness ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... true position and taken a firm footing there, the vast field of mythical constructions became intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected light of correspondences. But to gather in this great harvest of truth was no light or speedy work. His notes already made a formidable range of volumes, but the crowning task would be to condense these voluminous still-accumulating results and bring them, like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to fit a little shelf. In explaining this to Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... apprehension and dread had apparently paralyzed his vocal organs. He hadn't fully realized until that moment how desperate the venture to which he had committed himself and Tess. Between Andy Bishop and this formidable giant from Auburn was but the brave little daughter inside the hut. Would she be able to carry through the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... human activity in which one is not liable, in France, to find a woman engaged. Women, indeed, are not priests; but priests are, more or less; women. They are not in the army, it may be said; but then they are the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count with the women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold; we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of the way close to the Loire, and there was some- thing in our jog-trot ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... were brave, persevering, bold, hardy, and virtuous, for barbarians. They cast their eyes on the Roman provinces in the time of Marius, and were defeated by him under the name of Teutons. They had recovered strength when Caesar conquered the Gauls. They were very formidable in the time of Marcus Aurelius, and had formed a general union for the invasion of the Roman world. But a barrier had been made against their incursions by those good and warlike emperors who preceded Commodus, so that the Romans had peace for one hundred years. These barbarians went under different ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... found many ways of making myself useful to her; and every afternoon she devoted two or three hours to my lessons and needlework. Thus passed away the first year after our great sorrow, when, as I have already said, my mother decided upon sending me to school. It seemed to me, at the time, quite a formidable undertaking—this going to school. I had never been separated from my mother, and the five hours to be spent daily in the school-room seemed to my childish mind a very long time. I had ever been shy ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... evil. Nevertheless, practically, in consequence of the greater richness and fulness of Christianity, this tendency to dualism has been neutralized by its monotheism, and evil kept subordinate; while, in the Zend religion, the evil principle assumed such proportions as to make it the formidable rival of good in the mind of the worshipper. Here, as before, we may say that Christianity is able to do justice to all the truth involved in the doctrine of evil, avoiding any superficial optimism, and recognizing ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... reported large foreign exchange inflows from the sale of a mobile telephone license and partial privatization of the state-owned telecommunications company. Favorable rainfall in 2001 led to a growth of 5%. Formidable long-term challenges include: servicing the external debt; preparing the economy for freer trade with the EU; and improving education and attracting foreign investment to boost living standards and job prospects ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... amount of subsidence, both horizontally or in area, and vertically or in depth, necessary to have submerged every mountain, even the highest, throughout the immense spaces of ocean interspersed with atolls, will probably strike most people as a formidable objection to my theory. But as continents, as large as the spaces supposed to have subsided, have been raised above the level of the sea,—as whole regions are now rising, for instance, in Scandinavia and South America,—and as no reason can be assigned, why subsidences ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... "It is not formidable, sir, when you are accustomed to it; but, unfortunately, General Braddock forced his men to fight in regular fashion, that is, to stand up and be shot at, and that mode of fighting, in the woods, is fatal. A hundred ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... occurring all the time. One does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslip occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing. A mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, burying four villages and five hundred people, as in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... upon Billings, nor at present upon Forsythe, so he searched the armroom. As Forsythe and Daniels had found, there was nothing there more formidable than cutlasses, rifles, and torpedo heads; the pistols had been removed to some other place. So Denman went back and searched the wardroom, delving into closets and receptacles looking for arms; but he found none, and sat down on a chair to think. Presently he arose and tapped on the glazed glass ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... course I like to make a little; this Federal Tariff has rose the price of living considerable," she said, softening somewhat as we now sat down on the formidable and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... hostile feeling between the Turks and Greeks had culminated earlier in the year in a formidable insurrection among the Sultan's Greek subjects. It was terminated on the 18th of June by an engagement at Kalampaka, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... the modern acceptation of the term, embraces the country of the ancient Philistines, the most formidable enemies of the Hebrew tribes prior to the reign of David. Besides Gaza, the chief town, we recognise the celebrated port of Jaffa or Yaffa, corresponding to the Joppa mentioned in the Sacred Writings. Repeatedly fortified and dismantled, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... view, her lights creating faint mists under the water, but the boys did not consider her a formidable opponent now, so they lifted to the ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... and of men which mere power of reasoning will not give was not one of his special endowments. The study of facts, often in their complicated and perplexing reality, was not to his taste. He was apt to accept them on what he considered adequate authority, and his argumentation, formidable as it always was, recalled, even when most unanswerable at the moment, the application of pure mathematics without allowance for the actual forces, often difficult to ascertain except by experiment, which would have to be ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... attended to the subject, may I not ask whether it does not appear probable that the general introduction of the smallpox into Europe has not been among the most conductive means in exciting that formidable foe to health? Having attentively watched the effects of the cow-pox in this respect, I am happy in being able to declare that the disease does not appear to have the least tendency to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... nor Johann left other than daughters: so that the united Heritage, Brandenburg and Culmbach both, came now to the third Brother, Albert; who has been in Culmbath these many years already. A tall, fiery, tough old gentleman, of formidable talent for fighting, who was called the "ACHILLES OF GERMANY" in his day; being then a very blazing far-seen character, dim as he has now grown. [Born 1414; Kurfurst, 1471-1486.] This Albert Achilles was the Third Elector; Ancestor he of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... whose wife had at once been admitted without having asked into the sanctuary of the Parvulo. The object was to disunite the two brothers and excite jealousy between then. In this they did not succeed even in the slightest degree. But they found a formidable ally in the Duchesse de Berry, who proved as full of wickedness and ambition as any among them. The Duc d'Orleans often called his Duchess Madame Lucifer, at which she used to smile with complacency. He was right, for she would have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... this question with befitting gravity, when a great thump against the door brought a host of fears upon me. But before I could stir the insecure handle gave way, and no one more formidable appeared than the landlady of the house, carrying before her a tray on which was set out a sumptuous tea, consisting of buttered crumpets and shrimps. She put it down on my dressing-table, and stood surveying it and us with an expression ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... too experienced to have any mistaken notions about the hazard of his endeavor. He knew what he was up against. In the first place, any bombing plane was a formidable foe, and he could not know how many were coming on this mission. All bombers were heavily armed, and had the advantage of having at least one man free to repel attack with twin machine guns. Many of the heavier German bombing planes carried crews of four or five men, though these were used in ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... reported the occurrence to Commodore Riveros, who, after debating for a minute or two as to whether or not he should follow the corvette, finally decided in favour of pursuing the Huascar, as she was the more formidable craft of the two; and the Chilian ironclad accordingly was kept on her previous course. Jim then returned to his post, and kept his glass fixed upon the flying steamers in front of him; and hardly had he ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... obtaining water during the dry season is to dig with his tusks into the bed of the river, till he finds the water, which he draws up with his trunk. Moreover, he has to defend himself against the rhinoceros, which is a formidable antagonist, and often victorious. He requires tusks also for his food in this country, for the elephant digs up the mimosa here with his tusks, that he may feed upon the succulent roots of the tree. Indeed, an elephant in Africa without his ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... fool. In the discussion of graver matters—politics, law, and history—that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable assertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable—in short, sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law, of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... there builds up a formidable dyke Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,—so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale virginities Have proved but dropsies, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... thousand men to march with me through Kidi to Gani. Surprised at the extent of my requisition, he wished to know if my purpose was fighting. I made him a present of the great principle that power commands respect, and it was to prevent any chance of fighting that we required so formidable an escort. His reply was that he would tell the king; and he immediately rose and walked ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... unusual ability and good sense. He had been opposed to the war, but, finding it inevitable, succeeded in raising a formidable army of the various tribes, and commanded them with such skill and bravery that, in the battle, which lasted all day, the Indians fought doggedly and all but achieved a victory, which would have made a very different affair of what is known as ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... Will is the centre of the practical man, of all force, not moral, but brute or natural, and is identified in the common thought with myself, as I am a natural cause. Will is the sum of physical forces necessary for self-preservation, is reagency against the formidable rivalry of every other organization. In this animal centre the laws are carried up, as reins are gathered to be put into the hands of a driver, and being tied in a knot just where the physical touches the celestial sphere, they seem to be moral, and Will much more than the body is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... fury she dashed upon the scene. She was gritting her teeth, making frightful grimaces, snarling, uttering sharp and continuous cries that sounded like "kh-ah! kh-ah!" So sudden and formidable was her appearance that the boar involuntarily bunched himself together on the defensive and bristled as she swerved toward him. Then she swerved toward me. She had quite taken the breath out of him. I knew just what to do in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... situation, in the wildness of the adjacent country, and in the plenty and elegance of the domestic entertainment, to a castle in Gothic romances. The sea with a little island is before us; cascades play within view. Close to the house is the formidable skeleton of an old castle probably Danish, and the whole mass of building stands upon a protuberance of rock, inaccessible till of late but by a pair of stairs on the sea side, and secure in ancient times against ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... treasure which he had left to Bill Halliwell's silent guardianship. Somehow he had lost his own vessel, and there would be rumors about, no doubt, which would make it difficult for him to get another. If he had, indeed, sailed with Bonito, he had kept his secret from his formidable commander. Even as he had dealt with Bill Halliwell, so might Bonito deal by him—or at least the lion's share must be yielded to the pirate captain. And the passion of Captain Sampson's life had come to be his gold—his hidden hoard on far-off ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... restless, though not numerous tribe, which filled the minds of the Assistants with apprehension. If the influence of Sir Christopher (whom not one doubted to be a Catholic) extended as far as they suspected, he might make himself a formidable enemy. He had been able to induce the chief of the Pequots to intrust to him his own sister, to be taught the Catholic faith, doubtless intending to make her conversion the means of extending among the tribes ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... hoped to escape the dangers of their return, by requesting the French monarch to transport them by sea to their native country. A closer examination detected their origin: they were the brethren of the Swedes and Normans, whose name was already odious and formidable in France; and it might justly be apprehended, that these Russian strangers were not the messengers of peace, but the emissaries of war. They were detained, while the Greeks were dismissed; and Lewis expected a more satisfactory account, that he might obey the laws of hospitality or prudence, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... appeared, the party headed by Caliban stepped forward, muttering angrily, and every man kept hand on knife or cutlass. Caliban himself, nervous and yet determined, glared at the formidable giant and suddenly sprang out alone, shaking his first at Milo, and working himself into greater fury. A frown darkened the face of Dolores; she had commanded Pascherette to bring about a condition of unrest, but nothing like this; for in all four parties was an attitude of suspicion ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... Mivart, has recently collected all the objections which have ever been advanced by myself and others against the theory of natural selection, as propounded by Mr. Wallace and myself, and has illustrated them with admirable art and force. When thus marshalled, they make a formidable array; and as it forms no part of Mr. Mivart's plan to give the various facts and considerations opposed to his conclusions, no slight effort of reason and memory is left to the reader, who may wish to weigh ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... the unsleeping vigilance, the prudent foresight, the intrepid and self-sacrificing zeal of our august ministry—that period is the present. The alarming spectacle which the Christian world exhibits at the present day, the novel but formidable forms in which error presents itself, and the manifold evils and perils by which the Church is encompassed, must be evident to the most superficial observer. It is no longer a single heresy or an eccentric fanaticism, the denial of some revealed truth, or the excesses of some extravagant error, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... cautiously and see an animal about the size of a large cat, with bright black and white markings, lying harmlessly on a pile of harness. It has no sting, no formidable claws or beak, and yet it is able to keep any number of men from disturbing it while it chooses to lie on their possessions. No god could receive more respect from his believers. It is after tea-time when you, creeping to ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... religious liberty, and almost alone in condemning the punishment of death for heresy. Indeed, the whole future of the Roman church is said to have been changed by his death at the Castle of Gotlieb in 1417, and the supremacy of the Italian party assured by the decease of its most formidable opponent. The brass that marks his burial place in Constance cathedral is supposed to have been executed in England, and sent thence some time after his death. It is engraved in Kites' "Monumental Brasses ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... had been roundly censured. Germany's policy of "whittling down" the British fleet, so that the Germans could give battle on even terms, while by no means successful thus far, had nevertheless considerably reduced the size of the English navy. Some of her first-class cruisers, and one formidable dreadnought ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes

... not love me I will not love him!" said Grace, proudly. And though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might be possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which made his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated himself, meant, unknown to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... halt it will be to leave the boat and continue the journey on foot. It was the possible difficulties, not the distance, which rendered the undertaking formidable." ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis

... that it would be more difficult for Miss Helstone than for himself to climb a wall or penetrate a hedge, he piloted her by a short cut which led to no gate. The consequence was he had to help her over some formidable obstacles, and while he railed at her for helplessness, he perfectly liked ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... before the public, I shall perhaps be soon able to offer a few remarks: meanwhile, I shall here give the abstract of a case, the details of which have not as yet, I believe, appeared, and which must greatly strengthen people in their opinion, that these cholera cases, however formidable the symptoms, and though they sometimes end rapidly in death, still do not possess the property of communicating the disease to others. I do not mean to state that I have myself seen the case, the details of which I am about to give, but aware of the accuracy of the gentleman who has ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... Sultan Saladin, the most formidable enemy the Christians ever encountered, died; an event which caused Pope Celestine to prevail on the emperor, Henry VI., of Germany, to make a new expedition against the Turks, who were in consequence defeated; but the emperor's general, the Duke of Saxony, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... in the most evident manner, ridiculed in John Marston's 'Malcontent.' Although this satire (so the play is called in the preface 'To the Reader') appeared before 'Volpone,' we yet thought it more useful first to speak of Jonson's comedy being the work of Shakspere's most formidable adversary. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... With a fire in my front and rear, having to contend with the jealousies of the military commanders, and not receiving that cordial co-operation and support from Congress that could reasonably be expected, with an active and formidable enemy in the field threatening the very life-blood of the Government, my position is anything ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... "and hasten to admit the captain of banditti. I have heard much of Stephano Verrina, and would fain behold this formidable chieftain." ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... will open such a fire as will silence the forts and speedily make breaches in the walls; but the real fighting won't begin till they enter. The barricades were at first little more than breastworks, but they have grown and grown until they have become formidable fortifications, and, if stoutly defended, and with every house occupied by desperate men, it will be terrible work carrying them by assault. However, there are few places where the main defences cannot be turned, for it is impossible to fortify every street. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... tell his Grace, that an union of such characters, monstrous as it seems, is not made for producing despicable enemies. But if they are formidable as foes, as friends they are dreadful indeed. The men of property in France, confiding in a force which seemed to be irresistible because it had never been tried, neglected to prepare for a conflict with their enemies at their own weapons. They were found in such a situation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... frightened by it. Now it was essential that she should succeed and succeed at the first attempt. His fortune and hers, his future, the success of the Astrarium depended on it. And Jimmy, obsessed by his labors, had hardly time to think of Trampy, in the formidable effort of the eleventh hour. And yet, sometimes, he felt a pain at his heart. That adorable Lily! Would he succeed in making her love him? And now there was that impersonator! Oh, to work, to work! And he went at it, hammer and tongs, to make sure of the aerobike's success. To make ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... arbitrio (On the Will not free). For here he really did what Erasmus had just reproached him with—trying to heal a dislocated member by tugging at it in the opposite direction. More fiercely than ever before, his formidable boorish mind drew the startling inferences of his burning faith. Without any reserve he now accepted all the extremes of absolute determinism. In order to confute indeterminism in explicit terms, he was now forced to have recourse ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... of the country in this vicinity, was level and swampy, so that a large force well handled would make a formidable resistance. ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... man, sincere in whatever he did or said, who has lived at Zanzibar several years, subject to the infructuosities of the business he has been engaged in, as well as to the calor and ennui of the climate, who yet presents as formidable a front as ever to the apathetic native of Zanzibar. No man can charge Capt. H. C. Fraser, formerly of the Indian Navy, with ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... preparing the disposition to be just; and this will be goaded from time to time by the insurrectionary spirit of the slaves. This is easily quelled in its first efforts; but from being local it will become general, and whenever it does, it will rise more formidable after every defeat, until we shall be forced, after dreadful scenes and sufferings, to release them in their own way, which, without such sufferings we might now ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... with us, who, springing to the front, knelt down to receive the horses. Those with pistols formed the second rank, while those with arquebuses and musketoons drew up behind them. We thus presented a formidable front, while a deep ditch on either side prevented our being taken in flank. The Spaniards, nothing daunted, however, galloped forward. We received them firmly. Several saddles were emptied of their riders, and five or six of the leading ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... were the two men on the big grey horses straight in front of him. While Hull's envoys were crossing the river and returning, the Indians were beginning to raise their war-whoops in the woods and Brock was reconnoitring within a mile of the fort. This looked formidable enough, if properly defended, as the ditch was six feet deep and twelve feet wide, the parapet rose twenty feet, the palisades were of twenty-inch cedar, and thirty-three guns were pointed through the embrasures. But Brock correctly estimated the human element inside, ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... back her strength and the morning air gave her confidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhood of the Karntnerstrasse and the Graben. The shops were smaller. The windows exhibited cheaper goods. There was a sort of family atmosphere about many of them; the head of the establishment in the doorway, the wife at the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... in American vessels. These great foreign steamships maintained by our traffic are many of them under contracts with their respective Governments by which in time of war they will become a part of their armed naval establishments. Profiting by our commerce in peace, they will become the most formidable destroyers of our commerce in time of war. I have felt, and have before expressed the feeling, that this condition of things was both intolerable and disgraceful. A wholesome change of policy, and one having in it ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... penetration of sight, he traced his way unerringly to the entrance of the vault, knelt down before it, and placing his hands on the first of the steps by which it was descended, listened, breathless and attentive, to the sounds that rose from the abyss—listened, rapt and unmoving, a formidable and unearthly figure—like a magician waiting for a voice from the oracles of Hell—like a spirit of Night looking down into the mid-caverns of the earth, and watching the mysteries of subterranean creation, the giant pulses of Action and Heat, which are the life-springs ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... objections, the most formidable obstacle to the reception of evolutionary ideas had always been the prejudice against the admission of vast duration of past geological time. It was unfortunate that, even when rational historical criticism had to a great extent neutralised the effect of Archbishop Usher's chronology, ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd

... sense, but I do feel called upon to compliment you upon the way in which you have, single-handed, conducted this case—in some ways one of the strangest and most important that has ever come before me—having for your opponents so formidable an array of learned gentlemen. The performance would have been creditable to anybody of greater experience and longer years; as it is, I believe ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... express a punishment fitting for Col. Witham, the child shook a not very formidable fist in the direction of the tavern, then added, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... suspected, rightly or not, of preparing resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of Catholic and the disarming of Protestant Ireland, and, at the same time, raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army. But the mere inaction of the Executive might in many spheres produce greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... forty. This is the only case of the kind within my knowledge. I have practiced on her plan for a few weeks at a time, and, so far as my experience goes, it precisely comports with hers. But I love the "good things" of this world too well to abstain from their use, until some formidable ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... salary as librarian. Diderot fought hard to obtain a hearing for his philosophical opinions; his first book was burnt by order of the parlement of Paris, while for his second he was clapped in jail; and all along he had to front the most formidable opposition, so formidable that all his fellow-workers were ready to yield, and were only held to their task by his indomitable resolution and unquenchable ardour. "A deist in his earlier writings," says SCHWEGLER, "the drift ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... and the complexion very dark in Raymond, Frank, and the absent Miles. Frank's eyes were soft, brown, rather pensive, and absent in expression; but Raymond's were much deeper and darker, and had a steadfast gravity, that made him be viewed as formidable, especially as he had lost all the youthful glow of colouring that mantled in his brother's olive cheek; and he had a short, thick, curly brown beard, while Frank had only attained to a black moustache, that might almost have been drawn on his lip ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... unsuspicious manner of coming on board, and of receiving us at first on shore, I am of opinion, they are seldom disturbed by either foreign or domestic troubles. They are, however, not unprovided with very formidable weapons; such as clubs and spears, made of hard wood, also bows and arrows. The clubs are from three to five feet in length, and of various shapes. Their bows and arrows are but indifferent; the former being very slight, and the latter only made of a slender reed, pointed ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... of "calmness," exclaims vehemently. Death is the great unfairness! Once a man dead, the survivors croak, "Respect him." And so one must—it is the formidable claim, "immunity of faultiness from fault's punishment." That is why he, Aristophanes, has always attacked the living; he knew how they would hide their heads, once dead! Euripides had chosen the other way; "men ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... an interesting field for the aspiring investigator," Steve went on. "I wonder that some fine-spun, scientific theory has not already been advanced,—but it only remains another formidable matrimonial hazard," he ended with his ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... herself, this was the thing to give it. The sun was not yet up; the morning air crisp and fresh and delicious; the water rolling gently in from the Narrows again, in a mighty tide, but with no wind, so sending up only little waves to the beach; however, they looked somewhat formidable to Diana. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... had any fixed rules, the pleasure of dogmatic arguing without any fear of being reprimanded or restrained by any authority, either ecclesiastical or secular, was the spell that charmed their minds, he so well managed to conciliate them thereby that out of this monstrous medley he created a formidable unit. When a man has once found a way of seducing the multitude with the bait of freedom, they afterwards blindly follow, provided they still hear the beloved word. These, occupied with the object that had first ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... say that the day after the fair; but wait a few years as I have done; and like all your sisters in the ranks of the disappointed, you will ultimately crawl back to the attic and kiss the thick lips, and try to persuade yourself the nose is not so formidable, though certainly a trifle less classic than Antinous's! We set out with our eyes fixed on Vega, blazing above, and flaunt our banner—'tout ou rien!'—but when the campaign ends, Vega laughs at us from the horizon, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... for the expedition, was, of course, added to the force employed. This fortunate accession of strength, assisted by all the Malay war boats which Mr. Brooke could muster, enabled them to give an effectual check to a band of pirates, so numerous and so warlike as to have become most formidable. To proceed:— ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... of in this verse is: the Ruler among men [Pg 158] in His relation to His enemies. To those He is as formidable as His appearance is blessed to those who surrender themselves to Him. In Ps. xviii. also, there is a celebration of the indomitable power which the Lord grants to David, His anointed, and to his seed against all their enemies; compare ver. 38: "I pursue mine enemies and overtake them, and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... the friend of Jesus, even by the few words he spoke in the council when it required firm courage to speak at all. "He who at the first could come to Jesus only by night, now stands by him in open day, and in the face of the most formidable opposition, before which the courage of the strongest might ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this old-fashioned, neat and trim little frame. It bent down over the Persian ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... Buonaparte is a political bugbear, most convenient to any administration: "if you do not adopt our measures and reject those of our opponents, Buonaparte will be sure to prevail over you; if you do not submit to the Government, at least under our administration, this formidable enemy will take advantage of your insubordination, to conquer and enslave you: pay your taxes cheerfully, or the tremendous Buonaparte will take all from you." Buonaparte, in short, was the burden of every song; his redoubted name was the charm which always ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... day, when the Argonauts were about setting sail, down came these terrible giants, stepping a hundred yards at a stride, brandishing their six arms apiece and looking very formidable so far aloft in the air. Each of these monsters was able to carry on a whole war by himself, for with one of his arms he could fling immense stones and wield a club with another and a sword with a third, while a fourth was poking a long spear at the enemy and the ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... not doubt that France was rushing on its ruin, and that in the alliance of the Dutch commonwealth, Britain, and the German Protestants, was its only safety. But they trembled before the Pope, grown bold and formidable since the death of the dreaded Henry. To offend his Holiness, the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the great Catholics of France, was to make a crusade against the Church. Garnier, the Jesuit, preached from his pulpit that "to strike a blow in the Cleve enterprise was no less a sin than to inflict ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... know, live on plants, but it came upon botanists as a surprise when our countryman Ellis first discovered that some plants catch and devour insects. This he observed in a North American plant, Dionsea, the leaves of which are formed something like a rat-trap, with a hinge in the middle, and a formidable row of spines round the edge. On the surface are a few very sensitive hairs, and the moment any small insect alights on the leaf and touches one of these hairs the two halves of the leaf close up quickly and catch it. The surface then throws out a glutinous secretion, by ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... assassinated him. On the king of Sweden being taken by the Danes, permission was given to such of his subjects as chose, to arm themselves against the enemy, pillage his possessions, and sell their prizes at Ribnitz and Golnitz. This proved a fertile nursery of pirates, who became so formidable under the name of "Victalien Broders," that several princes were obliged to arm against them, and hang some ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms



Words linked to "Formidable" :   formidability, impressive, alarming, redoubtable



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