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Insubordinate   /ɪnsəbˈɔrdənˌeɪt/  /ɪnsəbˈɔrdənət/   Listen
Insubordinate

adjective
1.
Not submissive to authority.  "Insubordinate boys"
2.
Disposed to or engaged in defiance of established authority.  Synonyms: resistant, resistive.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Insubordinate" Quotes from Famous Books



... the defiant and insubordinate chieftain for an instant, his expression one of haughty, fearless contempt and hate, and then without drawing a weapon and without uttering a word he hurled himself at the throat of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Chartres and Bourges and Paris, Adams knew barely one or two that were meant to hold their own against a color-scheme so strong as his. In conversation La Farge's mind was opaline with infinite shades and refractions of light, and with color toned down to the finest gradations. In glass it was insubordinate; it was renaissance; it asserted his personal force with depth and vehemence of tone never before seen. He seemed bent ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... Henry dispatched messenger after messenger in quest of the king to know his pleasure. None of them returned. A female emissary was equally unavailing. Week after week elapsed, until nearly three months had expired. Provisions began to fail. The city was in confusion. The troops grew insubordinate. Yet Sir Henry persisted in the defence. General Fairfax, with 1,500 horse and foot, was daily expected. There was not powder enough for an hour's contest should the city be stormed. Still Sir Henry ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... failure from the start. Scarcely had the shallops gone to sea, than one of them—the Raleigh—deserted its companions and put back. The rest reached Newfoundland, but the men were lawless and insubordinate. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... advanced in her ideas, my dear boy! That they were living, the widow and daughter, fairly comfortably, in a decent little house, obtained by the sale of the bad portraits and holy pictures; that Clara ... or Katia, if you like, from her childhood up impressed every one with her talent, but was of an insubordinate, capricious temper, and used to be for ever quarrelling with her father; that having an inborn passion for the theatre, at sixteen she had run away from her parent's ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... his hands. If she did this bold thing, what could he say to those she told her lie to? How could he bring proof or explain who he was—and what story dare he tell? His protestations and struggles would merely amuse the lookers-on, who would see in them only the impotent rage of an insubordinate youngster. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... talked over by the two old friends in deep thankfulness, yet humility over their own shortcomings and failures, and no less strange were the recollections of the wild noisy insubordinate schoolgirl whom the Bishop's sister had failed to tame, and who had to both seemed to live only on sensation, whether religious or secular, and who had been one continual care and perplexity to each. By turns they had thought that the full Church system acted ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... than his friend by several years. He was of an unruly and insubordinate temper, and did as little work as he pleased at home. He often remarked that he would like to see who could make him do what he had no mind ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... doubt it is the song of the war. To-day we got a bundle of papers. We read them right through to the advertisements. Cigarettes and matches are at a premium and food is running out on board. The strain of staying here is becoming too great. We're all disagreeable and insubordinate. The guard room is already full and ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... displeasure with her he forbade her to use the abbatial staff for seven years. The remaining years of her rule were not satisfactory. The sisters took advantage of the scandal she had caused to act in an insubordinate way towards her. The next abbess was Joyce Rowse, but she was utterly unable to reinstate the old discipline—we hear of her revelling with some of the sisters in the abbess's quarters. Bishop Fox in his injunctions in 1507 forbade sundry ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... idea of a scientific control of natural resources as a common property administered in the common interest, she and he were very greatly attracted by it; but so far as it served as a form of expression for the merely insubordinate discontent of the many with the few, under any conditions, so long as it was a formula for class jealousy and warfare, they were both repelled by it. If she had had any illusions about the working class possessing as a class any profounder political wisdom or more generous ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... Major Strahan," cried Marian, in mock dignity, "as your superior officer, I am capable of judging of the merits of you both, and neither of you can change my estimate. You are insubordinate, and I shall put you under arrest if you don't tell me how you escaped at once. You have kept a woman's curiosity in check almost as long as your brave regiment held the enemy, and that's your greatest achievement thus far. Proceed. Captain Blauvelt has enabled me to keep an ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... to me, than fiscal or military unification that we who desire its continuance must look to hold it together. There never was anything like it before. Essentially it is an adventure of the British spirit, sanguine, discursive, and beyond comparison insubordinate, adaptable, and originating. It has been made by odd and irregular means by trading companies, pioneers, explorers, unauthorised seamen, adventurers like Clive, eccentrics like Gordon, invalids like Rhodes. It has been made, in spite of authority ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... was insubordinate. He did not intend to be cheated out of his fun by any orders that "Straw-nose" should give him. Instead of obeying his commander, he sang out a contemptuous refusal, and dashed ahead, as if to supplant his general in the post of leader of ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... Gonzaga quickly, "you bring us back to the main issue. Such a leader you have shown us that you are not. You have done worse. You have been insubordinate when you should not only have been orderly, but have enforced orderliness in others. And for that, by my lights, you should be hanged. Waste no more time on him, Madonna," he concluded, turning to Valentina. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... fell on Mason, credulous and enthusiastic, who loved youth. No other master was anxious to take that "prep.," for the school lacked the steadying influence of tradition; and men accustomed to the ordered routine of ancient foundations found it occasionally insubordinate. The four long form-rooms, in which all below the rank of study-boys worked, received him with thunders of applause. Ere he had coughed twice they favored him with a metrical summary of the marriage laws of Great Britain, as recorded by the High Priest of the Israelites and commented ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... worst. His mother an ignorant, uncultured woman, his father a defaulter in middle life, in his age a sot, the boy was left to follow the promptings of his own will, naturally strong and turbulent. His youth was stormy and insubordinate, his young manhood not without the reproach of dishonorable mercantile dealings, and even the splendor of his military achievements in the service of his country could scarcely blind the judgment of his warmest admirers to the suspicious stains upon his moral character. That ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... does your uncle say that though Sam's success is very doubtful, your inaccuracy would make your failure certain; but if your knowledge were ever so well up to the mark, I could not put you into the navy. Left to yourself here, you have been insubordinate, vain, weak, shuffling: can I let you go into greater temptation, where disgrace would be public and ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "The whole camp turned out to save the lake, to stem the flood. But you were not here. Your companions in our troop worked till they were dog tired. But where were you? Helping? No, you were off on some vagabond journey—disobedient, insubordinate." ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... convict-management at that date was one of compulsory labor, or mostly so. This plan tended to produce tyranny, insubordination, deception, vice, and "the social evil." In the case of men, Captain Mackonochie testified that they were sullen, lazy, insubordinate and vicious; the women, if not engaged quickly in respectable domestic service, and desirous of being kept respectable, become curses to the colony. But by the means adopted by Mrs. Fry each woman was enabled to earn sufficient money to provide for board and lodging until some ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... was, shortly afterwards, held at Brighton. This court confined itself chiefly to the consideration of the second letter written by Capt. Reynolds, which they conceived to be couched in a spirit so insubordinate, ungentlemanly, and insolent, as to afford the writer no sort of excuse, or palliation for his conduct, on the alleged grounds of previous provocation on the part of his commanding officer, and they adjudged that Capt. Reynolds ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... commander-in-chief and left his post off Malta, which was being closely besieged and the garrison daily expected to capitulate! Supposing Nelson had been the commander-in-chief and his second in command had acted as he did towards Lord Keith, there would have been wigs on the green! The insubordinate officer would have been promptly court-martialled and hung at the yardarm like the Neapolitan Admiral, Francesco Caracciolo, or treated like the Hon. Admiral John Byng, who was tried for neglect of duty in an ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... and telling the story of her campaigns, she unexpectedly revealed herself one of those Nuns fond of drums and bugles, who seem to have been created to follow the armies in action, to pick soldiers during the vicissitudes of battles, and, better than a General, to tame with one word the rough and insubordinate troopers; a genuine martial and bellicose Nun, whose wrinkled and pitted face, looked like an image of the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... stake." Yet, of course, her guardian was bound to resist. The fight between her will and his was natural and necessary. It was the clash of two generations, two views of life. She was not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of bonds; and the same instinct towards violence. "The violent taketh by force." Was it the instinct that war leaves, and must ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the critical moment the Greeks always appear to have lost faith in their leaders, and to have behaved in a disorderly and insubordinate manner. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the mercy of his servants, who, insolent and insubordinate, robbed, laughed at, and neglected him. The waste and expense were enormous. Our hero, who found how matters stood, soon ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... Benden was pulled two ways, and not knowing which to go, he kept trying each in turn and retracing his steps. He wanted to make Alice behave herself; by which he meant, conform to the established religion as Queen Mary had Romanised it, and go silently to church without making insubordinate objections to idolatry, or unpleasant remarks afterwards. This was only to be attained, as it seemed to him, by sending her to prison. But, also, he wanted to keep her out of prison, and to ensure ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... them deceptive illusions of a mad self-intoxication; fallen away into the pains of separateness and death. Loss of direction and central control was the result; the Babel of many tongues so clumsily invented, by which all turned one against another. Insubordinate, artificial centers had assumed disastrous command. Each struggled for himself against his neighbors. Even religions fought to the blood. A single sect could damn the rest of humanity, yet in the same breath sing ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... October, 1851, the arrival of Kossuth in England brought on another crisis. Palmerston's desire to receive the Hungarian patriot at his house in London was vetoed by Lord John; once more there was a sharp struggle; once more Palmerston, after threatening resignation, yielded. But still the insubordinate man could not keep quiet. A few weeks later a deputation of Radicals from Finsbury and Islington waited on him at the Foreign Office and presented him with an address, in which the Emperors of Austria and Russia were stigmatised as "odious and detestable assassins" ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... Hall. If Miss Remson wins or has won her point against them, that's different. Last March, before we held the meeting in the living room, it seemed as if I could not endure being under the same roof with them. That feeling passed away. They were so utterly defeated. Miss Remson says she has enough insubordinate and really lawless acts on their part against them to warrant their being transferred to another campus house. She said it had been done occasionally in past years with ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... let the mare out a little. Corey understood something about horses, though in a passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk business when obliged to talk horse. But he deferred to his business superior with the sense of discipline which is innate in the apparently insubordinate American nature. If Corey could hardly have helped feeling the social difference between Lapham and himself, in his presence he silenced his traditions, and showed him all the respect that he could have exacted from any of his clerks. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... those days, when the schoolmaster had made but little progress, in the Navy especially, and not much on shore, it was difficult to obtain good and steady warrant officers, and I was especially troubled with a drunken boatswain, gunner, and carpenter. Drunk or sober, they were constantly insubordinate, setting a bad example to the crew, and quarrelling with each other. I determined, however, to master them, and compel them to do their duty, or get them dismissed from the service. As I was the only officer in the ship directly over them, my task ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... to me why it is that you—a Parisian artisan, the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited that exists on the face of earth—take without question, with so docile a submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not sympathise in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little, and whose views you candidly own you think are those of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to have been administered by himself. He expired in great agony. He it was who promoted the idea of destroying the Column in the Place Vendome. Raoul Rigault, Procureur de la Commune, has been shot. Napoleon Gaillard, Director of the Barricades, was insubordinate at Satory, and was shot by the side of the fosse there. It is reported that Cluseret, Amouroux, and Clement, all members of the Commune, have ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... children, oppressing the unprivileged many, living in idleness on what is wrung from their toil. The Malay sovereigns in most cases have come to be little more than the feudal heads of bodies of insubordinate chiefs, while even the headmen of the villages take upon themselves to levy taxes and administer a sort of justice. Nomadic cultivation, dislike of systematic labor, and general insecurity as to the boundaries ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... heir secured, he returned to that imperial track in which he had acquitted himself so well. All would seem to have been in order in the centre of the kingdom; the Borders were as quiet as it was possible for the Borders to be; and only the remote Highlands and islands remained still insubordinate, in merely nominal subjection to the laws of the kingdom. James, we are told, had long intended to make one of the royal raids so familiar to Scottish history among his doubtful subjects of these parts, and accordingly ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... to feel impatient—to resent the very mildness of his tone. She felt, as though she were an insubordinate child, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... agent's decisions, they are "kickers" and "insubordinate." If they are Indians, he can easily deprive them of privileges, or even imprison them on trumped-up charges; if employees, he will force them to resign or apply for transfers; and even the missionaries may be compelled, directly or indirectly, to ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... seaman before the mast, no less than those of his officer, are benumbed by the monotony and isolation from mankind, which are the gravest drawbacks of a sailor's life. It is in these dull moments that men are tempted to drink and quarrel, that officers become tyrannical, and their crews insubordinate, or even mutinous. Lest it should be thought that my impressions of the average sailor are derived from an exceptional crew or picked men, I have only to add that the manning of the 'Sunbeam' was a family job. The sailing master ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... worker of the club wrote that they had failed to hold the boys in everything but manual training and baseball; that the boys were insubordinate and unresponsive, and that their school reports were very poor. I found the conditions even worse than I had anticipated. It was necessary to train eighty boys to listen, as well as to interest them, and so, I told very short stories at first. I chose the ones that were full of dramatic action, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... to Versailles one day by the Duke of Aiguillon, prime minister to Louis XV., his friend and cousin. "I have named you to the king," said the duke, "as the only man who would be able to bring the Dauphiny regiment into a state of discipline. The line officers, by their insubordinate behavior, have driven away several colonels in succession. If I were offering you a favor, you might refuse; but this is an act of duty, and I have assured the king that you would ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... captains, and, setting refreshments before them, besought their advice. He was still commanding officer de jure, but he had lost all stomach for its functions. He would have been glad to send for Blake and beg his pardon for submitting to his insubordinate and abusive language, if that course could have stopped inquiry; but he well knew that the whole thing would be noised abroad in less than no time. At first he thought to give orders against the telegraph-operator's sending any messages concerning the matter; but that would ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... one of the bits of business which the energetic Jones transacted before he sailed in the Ranger to harass England. He wrote, as usual, innumerable letters, proposing, condemning, recommending. He had trouble with an insubordinate first lieutenant. He began, too, his social career in France. It was then that he met the Duchesse de Chartres, great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. and mother of Louis Philippe, who at a later time called Jones the Bayard of the Sea, and whom Jones at that time ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... intention to draw a revenue from the colonies, Mr. Bancroft says: "The loud burst of rapture dismayed Conway, who sat in silent astonishment at the unauthorized but premeditated rashness of his presumptuous colleague. The next night the Cabinet questioned the insubordinate Minister 'how he had ventured to depart on so essential a point from the profession of the whole Ministry;' and he browbeat them all. 'I appeal to you,' said he, turning to Conway, 'whether the House is not bent on obtaining a revenue of some sort ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... inspected it, and some even lived within its lines; but the tone of the army went down gradually, but steadily. During the summer more than one of Beauregard's companies—though of the best material and with a brilliant record—had to be mustered out as "useless and insubordinate." Excellence in drill and attention to duty both decreased; and it was felt by competent judges that rust was gradually eating away the fabric of the army. This was certainly the fault to a great extent of the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... to be insubordinate, but, speaking on behalf of all present here, I desire to say that we feel it impossible to remain at the table in company ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... in outward punishment maltreatment or death. Among men, punishments for the immoral and outward honors for the virtuous antedate history. Decorations, tattoos, songs, for the conspicuously brave and efficient, death or some lesser penalty for the cowardly, the traitorous, the insubordinate, figure largely in primitive life. These honors are capricious, uncertain, and transitory; but they are undoubtedly more stimulating to the savage, who lives in the moment, than they are in the more complex existence of the modern man. And while in general the savage is ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... appeared on the Order-paper. Meanwhile the SERGEANT-AT-ARMS had advanced to the Table to remove the Mace. "Order, order!" exclaimed the SPEAKER, upon which Sir COLIN KEPPEL, much abashed to think that he, the guardian of order, should have been regarded as even potentially insubordinate, beat, for the first time in a gallant ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various

... Army life may be assured that, almost without exception, whenever that kind of thing occurs, petty tyrannies and intermeddlings on the part of the superior are answerable for it. I met this particular man on one occasion only. I suppose that I had been pointed out to him as the young insubordinate who had dared to trespass on tradition by wearing the clothes served out to him. He stopped me in the middle of the barrack square at Cahir, and offered me a solemn warning: "You go on as you've begun, young man, and we'll make life hell to you." I do not claim that I am in ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... "Insubordinate! See here," and she took out her more dainty provision from behind a seat and sat down opposite, in such a pretty, companionable way that he in his admiration and pleasure forgot ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... was strong, patient, healthy, and docile. The negro was in all these respects his inferior. His delicate lungs, slim legs, and loosely knit figure contrasted unfavourably with the massive frame and iron constitution of the peasant of the Delta. Always excitable and often insubordinate, he required the strictest discipline. At once slovenly and uxorious, he detested his drills and loved his wives with equal earnestness; and altogether 'Sambo'—for such is the Soudanese equivalent of 'Tommy'—was a lazy, fierce, disreputable ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... order this boy to be insubordinate, do you? I'll have you put in irons for your impudence," cried Redfox, ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman

... anchor of the little yacht, and pushed off from the shore. A basket of provisions had been placed in the boat, and before we had been very long out at sea, George insisted upon its being unpacked, threatening Aleck that he should be reported as insubordinate unless he consumed precisely the quantity of wine and the whole amount of cold ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... good that an infant should learn much which its parents do not know? Will not a child arrogate a superiority unfavourable to love and obedience?" He shuddered again at the likelihood that Mechanics' Institutes would "make discontented spirits and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen." He opposed the admission of Dissenters to Cambridge University, and he "desired that a medical education should be kept beyond the reach of a poor student," on the ground that "the better able the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... this was a fatal miscalculation. The other causes of their ruin are obvious and are decisive. They ought to have been supported by the Bretons, and the Bretons were not ready. They ought to have been united, and they were bitterly divided and insubordinate. They ought to have created an impregnable fastness on the high ground above the Loire; but they had no defensive tactics, and when they occupied a town, would not wait for the attack, but retired, to have the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... tone, masking her agitation under an unnatural vivacity. Roderick watched her keenly. Mr. and Mrs. Scobel went back to their business of getting the children together, and the pots, pans, and baskets packed for the return-journey. The children were inclined to be noisy and insubordinate. They would have liked to make a night of it in this woody hollow, or in the gorse-clothed heights up yonder by Stony Cross. To home after such a festival, and be herded in small stuffy cottages, was doubtless trying to free-born humanity, always ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too, of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So mischievous ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... his chair and took two or three turns across the frayed strips of carpet. His eyes were no longer the eyes of a father irritated by the insubordinate fret of a fledgling son begging permission to test his wings. His bearded face bore the seamed uncertainty of his deeply vexed spirit. Perhaps in that moment there came to him some sense of conversion to the prophet-like assurance of his son. Perhaps he felt the dread of transplanting and a vague ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... regent, ruling in their name. But when the princes grew up Birger, the oldest, was crowned king, the other two becoming dukes. But very early in Birger's reign there arose many complaints about the conduct of his brothers, who showed themselves haughty and insubordinate. The ill-blood in time grew to such an extent that the king dismissed his brothers from his presence, giving them ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... Saint-Cloud, Jean thought himself unhappy, and unhappy he became in fact. He was wilfully, deliberately insubordinate, proud of breaking ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... towns have a remarkable and happy characteristic, as contrasted with the cities of Catholic Europe. Abroad, even in Catholic countries, if there be in any part of their territory scepticism and insubordination in religion, cities are the seat of the mischief. Even Rome itself has its insubordinate population, and its concealed free-thinkers; even Belgium, that nobly Catholic country, cannot boast of the religious loyalty of its great towns. Such a calamity is unknown to the Catholicism of Dublin, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... we are 'insubordinate.' It's strange, isn't it; if you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are 'insubordinate'; and if you refuse food you are 'insubordinate.' Amusing. I am really all right. If this continues very long I perhaps ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... supremacy of the reason, or affects to supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the flesh ([Greek: phronaema sarkos]) or the wisdom of this world. The result is, that the reason is super-finite; and in this relation, its antagonist is the insubordinate understanding, or mind of ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... at Trafalgar. But unfortunately he so violently resented the appointment of Lord Cochrane, who was only a post-captain, to carry out the attack on the French fleet in Basque Roads, which he himself, who was an admiral, had also suggested, and used such violent and insubordinate language towards Lord Gambier, the Commander-in-chief (who, though a most incompetent officer, had had nothing to do with the appointment), that it was unavoidable that a court-martial should sentence him to be cashiered. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... tips. Peculiar eyes: Mrs Gildea, who knew them well, never could decide their exact colour. The nose was a delicate aquiline, the chin pointed. An untidy mass of wavy chestnut hair stuck out in uneven puffs and insubordinate curls, all round the small head. At this moment Mrs Gildea remembered a suggestive charm sent to Lady Bridget by her cousin, Chris Gaverick, one Christmas, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... ground that the new lights of the 12th century disdained to be students of history and affected contempt for the past. It was the old story; literary culture found itself in antagonism with scientific culture, and the vigorous childhood of scientific research was aggressive, insolent, and noisily insubordinate. The old seminaries, whose homes were in the Benedictine monasteries, refused to welcome the new learning. Its teachers settled themselves elsewhere; at Paris, on the other side of the water, they had a hard fight of it. Once in 1209 the Synod of Paris actually prohibited the reading of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... of Orleans, nephew of the king, had succeeded the Duke of Vendome. He found the army in great disorder, the generals divided and insubordinate, Turin besieged according to the plans of La Feuillade, against the advice of Vauban, who had offered "to put his marshal's baton behind the door, and confine himself to giving his counsels for the direction of the siege;" ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... nineteenth century, was born at Ipsley Court, in Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775— the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. He was educated at Rugby School and at Oxford; but his fierce and insubordinate temper— which remained with him, and injured him all his life— procured his expulsion from both of these places. As heir to a large estate, he resolved to give himself up entirely to literature; and he accordingly declined to adopt any profession. Living ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... disciplinarians, however determined their character may be, principally, I think, because the true student must usually be occupied with a train of thought which cannot be interrupted from moment to moment to detect the petty tricks of insubordinate pupils. So if you mean to be a teacher, think first whether you have quick observation; then, are you firm, and are you willing to give your whole heart to your work? If you can answer these questions favorably, you may ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... startling force, to the mind of Columbus, the fact that the news of his discovery of land was not yet known in Europe. As for the Pinta and her insubordinate commander, none could say whether they would ever be seen again or whether their speedy arrival in Spain might not portend more harm than good to Columbus. His armament was now reduced to the little undecked Nina ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... all the fame they brought with them. Singular too as it may appear, a love of quarrelling and a passion for calumny have been found to be as decidedly characteristic of the foreigners in Greece, as of the natives. The Philhellenes were notoriously a most insubordinate body; the English in Greece have never been able to live together in amity and concord; the three European powers who signed a treaty to aid and protect Greece, have rarely been able to agree on the means of carrying their good intentions into execution on a systematic plan. The Regency sent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... commission, sent him a year before, to command at Detroit.[45] His late chaplain, the very intelligent Father Bonnecamp, speaks of him as fearless, energetic, and full of resource; but the Governor calls him haughty and insubordinate. Great efforts were made, at the same time, to build up Detroit as a centre of French power in the West. The methods employed were of the debilitating, paternal character long familiar to Canada. All emigrants ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... most astoundingly impudent and insubordinate act which had ever been done to Mr Paton for years, and it was now his turn to be angry. But mastering his anger with admirable determination, he merely said, "Evson, you must be beside yourself this morning; it is very rarely, indeed, that a new boy ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... about half drunk was arrested for leaving camp without permission and brought to my quarters; he had two canteens of whisky on his person. I remonstrated with him mildly, but he grew saucy, insubordinate, and finally insolent and insulting; he said he did not care a damn for what I thought or did, and was ready to go to the guard-house; in fact wanted to go there. Finally, becoming exasperated, I took the canteens from him, poured ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... but of the whole course of Jackson democracy from 1829 to 1861. The clerks in the various departments did not hold their positions from the heads of those departments, but from outside politicians who had no connection with the Government business, and as a consequence they were saucy and insubordinate. They found it to their interest to delay and obstruct the procedure of business in order to give the impression that they were overworked, and in that way make their positions more secure and if ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... army, composed of three members of the council, invested with all the powers which the governor himself, if present, would possess. These commissioners arrived at Casco about the middle of July, where they found the army insubordinate, and indisposed to the service. The troops, however, were again embarked, and arrived at Passamaquodi, on the seventh of August. The spirits of the general were broken, and his health was impaired. While dispositions for landing the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... to attend the plan of allowing the pupils of the school to decide some of the cases which occur, is, that it may tend to make them insubordinate; so that they will, in many instances, submit, with less good humor, to such decisions as you may consider necessary. I do not mean that this will be the case with all, but that there will be a few, who will be ungenerous ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... his empire forthwith. Ostrog brought flattering reports of the development of affairs abroad. In Paris and Berlin, Graham perceived that he was saying, there had been trouble, not organised resistance indeed, but insubordinate proceedings. "After all these years," said Ostrog, when Graham pressed enquiries; "the Commune has lifted its head again. That is the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit." But order had been restored ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... were not of a kind to face this. "The perfect rawness of the troops," writes he, "with the exception of not a single platoon, has been a source of much solicitude to the best-informed among us."[7] They were ignorant, insubordinate, and forever "falling off."[8] ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall

... opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should consider the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward insubordination. It was also inevitable that the sergeant major should order a course of special fatigues calculated to subdue the spirit of the insubordinate private. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... arranged that one of his confidential dispatches should be published in the newspapers; naturally, it contained indiscretions; there was a universal outcry— the man was insubordinate, and mad. He departed under a storm ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... outbreak of Indians in Illinois, the popularity of Abraham Lincoln induced the young men of the Sangamon Valley, in forming a company of mounted riflemen, to vote him as their captain. The forces were very irregular irregulars, did no fighting as a body, and were insubordinate to the last. Once it was in an ironically amusing manner. The commander had saved a friendly Indian from a beating, that being General Cass' order, as well as what his humanity prompted, though at the same time there had been Indian tragedy in his own family, and he ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... which all this caused me, I was speedily aroused by an order more immediately interesting, being summoned on the poop-deck to attend the general muster. Up they came from holes and hatchways, a vast host, no longer brawling and insubordinate, but quiet, submissive, and civil. Such as were wounded had been placed under the doctor's care, and all those now present were orderly and service-like. With a very few exceptions, they were all sailors, a few having ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... tax. Their stout resistance was destined to cost them dear. In the course of a few months Alva, finding them still resolute in their refusal, quartered the regiment of Lombardy upon them, and employed other coercive measures to bring them to reason. The rude, insolent, unpaid and therefore insubordinate soldiery were billeted in every house in the city, so that the insults which the population were made to suffer by the intrusion of these ruffians at their firesides would soon, it was thought, compel the assent of the province to the tax. It was not so, however. The city and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... have made, Democracy broke out first in these States because they were leading the way in material progress, because they were the first States to develop industrialism, wholesale mechanisms, and great masses of insubordinate activity outside the recognized political scheme, and the nature and time and violence of the outbreak was determined by the nature of the superseded government, and the amount of stress between it ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... first arraigned, he tried to avoid pleading (ibid., 287), but he was tried first for the murder of William Moore, on which the passes had no bearing. William Moore was an insubordinate gunner; after an altercation, Kidd hit him on the head with a bucket, and he died. It was probably manslaughter, but the jury sustained the indictment for murder. After being condemned for murder, Kidd was tried (unfairly in several particulars) ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... ago, when I was a pupil in the Kansas City, Missouri, High School, the stepson of a United States Circuit judge made a brutally rude and insubordinate reply to a woman teacher who said to him, in reference to an excuse which he had given for tardiness, "That is not a good excuse." The young man turned an insolent eye upon the teacher—a gray-haired ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The superior officers, who had all belonged to the old Imperial Navy, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... since relieved from the pressure of war, the population became restless, jealous, and insubordinate. The man whose fortune was only made, as it were, yesterday, deemed himself as great a man as the highest and noblest born aristocrat; while the man who had squandered away his patrimony, sought to restore himself from his fallen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... back upon his idle irony. 'Heads, you illustrious young gentlemen!—heads, not legs and arms, move a conspiracy. Now, you—think what you will of it—are only legs and arms in this business. And if you are insubordinate, you present the shocking fabular spirit of the members of the body in revolt; which is not the revolt we desire to see. I go to my daughter immediately, and we shall all have a fat sleep for a week, while the Tedeschi hunt and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the imperial throne, was a young man of a weak character, controlled in a great measure by his mother, Julia Mamaea, and as yet quite undistinguished as a general. The Roman forces in the East were known to be licentious and insubordinate; corrupted by the softness of the climate and the seductions of Oriental manners, they disregarded the restraints of discipline, indulged in the vices which at once enervate the frame and lower the moral character, had scant respect for their leaders, and seemed a defence ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... to submission, though decidedly insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands. Nevertheless Sir Austin ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... weakness for blowing his own trumpet. Yes, he could blow it as loud and as long as any trumpeter you ever listened to—Pope excepted. He had declared of himself that he was just the man to lead our army to victory, and give the enemy a sound thrashing. It was true, this general had been very insubordinate. He had said a number of things, neither wise nor polite, of his superiors. And he had set an example to his soldiers not inclined to improve their discipline. As, however, he had declared himself ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams

... "Insubordinate children who play off from school in the morning must work in the afternoon," Karl said at luncheon, and they went to their work that afternoon with ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... hands; the natural dignity of her movements—these things produced an immediate, though, no doubt, conflicting impression upon the gentleman who had just been denouncing her. He bowed, with an involuntary deference which he had not at all meant to show to Lady Henry's insubordinate companion, and then ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is now a private residence, and the cells where insubordinate soldiers were confined are converted into the drying and mangling ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... relates various matters of interest. The conquest of Mindanao has been practically effected. The numbers and power of the Chinese in the islands have been greatly reduced. A rising of the Zambales has been quelled. Insubordinate Spaniards have been punished; "on New Year's day, I had the entire city council arrested for an act of disobedience to me." Tello is improving the city, and is striving to secure a good water-supply. He has ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... by the Warden, his Deputy, and his keepers. They looked upon me as an ugly, insubordinate, refractory, rebellious rascal, who was ready to kill any of them, and, worst of all, who would not work. I determined to confirm their minds in the latter supposition, and so one day I threw down my tools and refused to do ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... captain of the ship notified me that his stokers and engineers were insubordinate and drunken, due, he thought, to liquor which my men had given them. I at once started a search of the ship, explaining to the men that they could not keep the liquor; that if they surrendered whatever they had to me I should return it to them when we went ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... report Mr Robert Howlett's insubordinate language," said Mark's fellow-invalid, when all at once there came a cry of rage, followed by a loud shouting somewhere forward. Then more cries, and confusion, and directly after there was a desperate scuffle going on ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... the good cheer, and the tables having been removed, speaking by a number of distinguished gentlemen from various towns followed. This ended and prayer offered, the sports followed as various as the different tastes could devise. Nothing rude, boisterous, insubordinate, or unkind appeared from any. One standing outside the walls would not have supposed, from anything heard, that a real, live Fourth was being so greatly enjoyed within. And probably the pleasures of the day were never ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... these over-mighty subjects. He may perhaps be described as a "New" monarch born before his time. He had some of the notions which the Tudors subsequently developed with success; but he had none of their power and self-control, and he was faced from his accession by a band of insubordinate uncles. Moreover, it needed the Wars of the Roses finally to convince the country of the meaning of the independence of the peerage. Richard fell a victim to his own impatience and their turbulence. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... had said only a little boy and accustomed to do as he was told. He was also a fine, sturdy little Scot with a pride of his own. His breeding had been of the sort which did not include insubordinate scenes, so he got out of bed and began to dress. But his mother saw that ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and starvation and sunstroke up at a place called Ali Musjid, ten years later; and afterward he had been sent down thousands of miles south to haul and pile big balks of teak in the timberyards at Moulmein. There he had half killed an insubordinate young elephant who was shirking ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... preferred a life of idleness and vagrancy to that of honest and industrious labor; they either did not show any willingness to enter into contracts, or, if they did, showed a stronger disposition to break them than to keep them; they were becoming insubordinate and insolent to their former owners; they indulged in extravagant ideas about their rights and relied upon the government to support them without work; in one word, they had no conception of the rights freedom gave, and of the ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... exhibited, alike by St. Paul and by St. Paul's Master, as a manifestation of love—not vindictive, but remedial. The disciplining love of a human father is used to illustrate the Divine dealings with insubordinate mankind. About Nature we need scarcely argue. "In the physical world there is no forgiveness of sins," and rebellion against the laws of righteous living brings penal consequences which no one can mistake. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... as she was bid. At bottom she was rather pleased to be going near her husband and insubordinate daughter, and by the time she got into the motor ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... not spend a great deal of his time at Karakorom. He was occupied for some years in making excursions at the head of his troops to various parts of his dominions, for the purpose of putting down insurrections, overawing discontented and insubordinate khans, and settling disputes of various kinds arising between the different hordes. In these expeditions he was accustomed to move by easy marches across the plains at the head of his army, and sometimes would ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... The first attempt at mutiny being thus happily suppressed, it is to be hoped that Curtis will succeed as well in future. An insubordinate crew would ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. And if it be not altogether art, that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or less insubordinate and ineradicable. Do we ever, indeed, feel complete satisfaction before even the best of photographs? Would not an artist vary and touch up much or little, remove or add something to ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... vengeance. Suddenly, however, a change came over this cheering scene. The misconduct of a few white men disturbed the harmony of a wide region. The Indians were oppressed and insulted to the last point of forbearance, and a small but restless band, regarded as insubordinate and troublesome even by their own nation, seized upon the occasion to ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... should have been arrayed against him had wintered in various cities of the north, where their leaders found all they at present cared for, repose and plunder; their pay long in arrear, and hardly to be hoped for, the Greek soldiers grew insubordinate, lived as they would or could, and with the coming of spring deserted in numbers to the victorious enemy. Appeals to Byzantium for reinforcements had as yet resulted only in the sending of a small, ill-equipped fleet, which, after much delay in Sicilian ports, sailed for Neapolis, only to be surprised ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... tautology—which has been mentioned. Aliscans, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains, even without the family of dependent poems which cluster round it, a vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange, with touches of comedy or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... light-cavalry regiment. With the —th he served half a dozen years in India; a rough-rider, a splendid fellow in a charge or a pursuit, with an astonishing power over horses, and the clearest back-handed sweep of a saber that ever cut down a knot of natives; but—insubordinate. Do his duty whenever fighting was in question, he did most zealously; but to kick over the traces at other times was a temptation that at last became too strong for that lawless lover ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... professor disappeared, and soon word came that Madame le Claire would give him audience. Amidon's heart beat stiflingly as he came into her presence. For this man's conscience was a most insubordinate conscience, and held as wrong the things felt and thought, as well as things said and done; and his remorse was as that of an abandoned but repentant jilt. But when he saw how cheerfully she smiled, he grew easier in his mind. The women always have such a matter fully ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... thoughts or feelings of any sort. They were sent into the world to mop and cook and serve their betters. Of course, when the animated machines did take to thinking for themselves, and to showing that they had done so, the Cordelier regarded it as most awkward and inconvenient—a piece of insubordinate presumption that must be stamped out at once, and not ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt

... and with ample testimony at his command. It is strange that he could not reach the conclusion, then and now commonly held, that McClellan's treatment of President Lincoln throughout his entire career seems to have been highly insubordinate and apparently based upon the idea that he regarded himself as the nation's only hope, forgetting that to a free people no man has ever become indispensable, however powerful his intellect or exalted his virtues. Barring certain conclusions which are open to easy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... left Melbourne on the 21st of August 1860, furnishes perhaps the most painful episode in Australian annals. Ten Europeans and three Sepoys accompanied the expedition, which was soon torn by internal dissensions. Near Menindie on the Darling, Landells, Burke's second in command, became insubordinate and resigned, his example being followed by the doctor—a German. On the 11th of November Burke, with Wills and five assistants, fifteen horses and sixteen camels, reached Cooper's Creek in Queensland, where a depot was formed near good grass and abundance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... greatly afraid of Simon, and, terrified and abashed, they spake to the sons of Jacob with little courage: "Said ye not that ye cast this lad into the pit because he was of a rebellious spirit? What, now, will ye do with an insubordinate slave? Rather sell him to us, we are ready to pay any price you desire." This speech was part of the purpose of God. He had put it into the heart of the Midianites to insist upon possessing Joseph, that he might not remain with ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... grant the support of troops to such as could give adequate reason for seeking it.* Their tasks were always of a delicate and not infrequently of a perilous nature, and constantly exposed them to the danger of being robbed by highwaymen or maltreated by some insubordinate vassal, at times even running the risk of mutilation or assassination ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the thunderbolt. As he destroyed everything in his blind rage, the kings of Chaldaea were accustomed to invoke him against their enemies, and to implore him to "hurl the hurricane upon the rebel peoples and the insubordinate nations." When his wrath was appeased, and he had returned to more gentle ways, his kindness knew no limits. From having been the waterspout which overthrew the forests, he became the gentle breeze which caresses and refreshes ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... insulting One month's confinement at hard language or behaving in an labor and forfeiture of $10; for insubordinate manner to a noncommissioned officer, reduction noncommissioned officer while in addition thereto. in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... at home, as they were, to the restraints imposed by Protestant or quasi-Protestant governments, they feel, on coming here, that they are loosed from all restraints, and forgetting the obedience they owe to their pastors, to the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over them, they become insubordinate, and live more as non-Catholics than as Catholics. The children of these are, to a great extent, shamefully neglected, and suffered to grow up without the simplest moral and religious instruction, and ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... Then," continued Archer, "I asked Willett in so many words if it were true that he had struck 'Tonio with a gauntlet that night at Bennett's, and he said, reluctantly, it was—that 'Tonio had been insolent, insubordinate, that that was the way he had always dealt with such cases. Perhaps with men like 'Tonio it was all wrong, but he had never met Indians like 'Tonio before. I told him gravely that he had made a ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... in their enforced idleness, had any temptation to be insubordinate, they had a far greater inducement to keep the law in the bridled savagery of the German gendarmerie. These creatures, who from the color of their uniform and the brutality of their conduct were known as the "green devils," seemed to revel in sheer cruelty. They scour ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... his cabin with Captain Alden, the Master faced the insubordinate member of his crew with an expression of hard implacability. The captain stood there determinedly confronting him. His right hand held to the table for support. His left sleeve was sodden with blood; the left arm, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... familiar to all of them—amidst such a population, lived and walked the gentle Miss W—-'s eight or nine pupils. She herself was born and bred among this rough, strong, fierce set, and knew the depth of goodness and loyalty that lay beneath their wild manners and insubordinate ways. And the girls talked of the little world around them, as if it were the only world that was; and had their opinions and their parties, and their fierce discussions like their elders—possibly, their betters. And among them, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... by stopping their pay for a certain number of days and sometimes a man is revocated, which means he is sent home without being paid for the six months or year previously. In this way men who drink hard when they have the opportunity, who are habitually insubordinate, or who are undesirable, are weeded out rapidly. Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility. ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... Dread an insubordinate temper, and deal with it as one of the greatest evils. Let the child feel by your manner that he is not a safe companion for the rest of the family when he is in anger. Allow no one to speak to him at such times, not even to answer a question. Take from him books, and whatever he may have, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... Smithius, dux. Soandso, Mr., the great, defines his position. Soft-heartedness, misplaced, is soft-headedness. Sol, the fisherman, soundness of respiratory organs hypothetically attributed to. Soldiers, British, ghosts of, insubordinate. Solomon, Song of, portions of it done into Latin verse by Mr. Wilbur. Solon, a saying of. Soul, injurious properties of. South, its natural eloquence, facts have a mean spite against. South Carolina, futile attempt to anchor, her pedigrees. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... never known an insubordinate man who was a perfect moral character," said the Rector. "It is very discouraging altogether; and you thought he was engaged to Wodehouse's pretty daughter, didn't you? I hope not—I sincerely hope not. That would make things doubly bad; but, to be sure, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... Carthage a journey of four days for an unencumbered traveller, not far from the boundaries of Numidia, began to gather there all the Vandals and as many of the Moors as happened to be friendly to him. Few Moors, however, joined his alliance, and these were altogether insubordinate. For all those who ruled over the Moors in Mauretania and Numidia and Byzacium sent envoys to Belisarius saying that they were slaves of the emperor and promised to fight with him. There were some also who even furnished their children as hostages and requested that the symbols of office be ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... God and his brethren, he saw in spirit one of them who refused to perform the penance imposed on him in chapter by the vicar-general, and excusing himself as to the fault of which he had been accused. He called his companion, and said: "I saw on the shoulders of this insubordinate brother the devil, who was wringing his neck, and leading him as by a bridle. I prayed for him, and the devil, abashed, loosed his hold immediately. Go to him, and tell him to bend immediately to the yoke of obedience," In fact, the brother did submit as soon ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... break with this order, or at least with its many attachments thereto; and stretch to the wider span demanded by the new and larger world. And further, it is in possession of a complex psychic life, containing many insubordinate elements, many awkward bequests from a primitive past. That psychic life has just received the powerful and direct suggestion of the Spirit; and for the moment, it is subdued to that suggestion. But soon it begins to experience the inevitable conflict between old habits, and new demands—between ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... sanction the proceedings, and that the remainder were still in the mountains and were either hostile or undecided what course they would pursue. Kit Carson, their agent, was at the meeting, and earnestly opposed the policy of making a treaty so long as any portion of the two nations were insubordinate, as it offered a loop hole for those present to creep out whenever they were so inclined. He said, "that now was the time, if ever, when they might, at a small additional expense, and with the prospect ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... of the Icelandic commonwealth it may be added that their republic of insubordinate citizens presently fell into default, systematic misuse, under the disorders brought on by an accumulation of wealth, and that it died of legal fiction and constitutional formalities after some experience at the hands of able and ambitious statesmen in contact ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... by the nabob's soldiers and officers. At eight o'clock, they returned with the news that they could find no place vacant, and the officer in command at once ordered the prisoners into a small room, used as a guardroom for insubordinate soldiers, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... thought it wrong that his brother clergy should be subjected to petticoat government. He therefore made up his mind to infuse a little of his spirit into the bishop, sufficient to induce him to oppose his wife, though not enough to make him altogether insubordinate. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... England housewives must have longed for the good old times of the whipping-post and coarse diet and hard work for disorderly and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured with one of her maids. She had written many pathetic entreaties to her mother, Madam Winthrop, to send her a "good girle, a strong lusty servant," one "vsed ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... cause every association with him in the heart of the parent to be disturbing and painful, how can the result be otherwise than alienating and depressing? Let there be two children in a family, one of whom is invariably obedient, gentle, attentive, ingenuous; the other, irritable, insubordinate, careless, secretive, and untruthful. The former shall be idolized, while the latter is regarded with condemnatory repugnance. The fact that a boy is your son, or that a girl is your daughter, cannot wholly neutralize the repulsiveness of their odious traits. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... them to the devil! cut their throats; let them go; do what you like, since you are responsible, not I. And be sure, sir officer, I shall not fail to report your insubordinate ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... regimental as a yellow flap-eared mongrel wot's bin enticed away from its rightful owner," said the insubordinate Chippo. "There ain't nothink ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... "we are five Englishmen to four of them. If they should take it into their heads to be insubordinate I have no doubt we shall know how to deal with them. And now, I should like to have a look at the log-book. I suppose you know where ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... from you that I was unpopular, and on my return I met with unmistakable signs of hostility. My native workmen were insubordinate. In fact, it was the reports from my overseers which had led me to visit the island. I made a tour of the place, believing it to be necessary to my interests that I should get once more in touch with negro feeling, since I had returned to my home in Cuba after ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... mountains. It was a long drive—quite twenty miles there and back—and Jennings, who liked to have a good deal of his time to himself, had been rather cross about it. Not that he dared show any temper to Lady Anne, who was easy and kindly with her servants, as a rule, but could reduce an insubordinate one to humble submission as well as any old lady ever could. But Mary, who knew the household pretty well by this time, knew that Jennings was out of temper by the set of his shoulders, as she surveyed them from her seat in the barouche. It was a road, too, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... the ascendency of the countess, and endeavoured to unite these isolated effects, formed an infantry, an artillery, seized upon two fortresses, threatened in all directions the Russians, scattered in small bodies over the wide plains of Poland, prepared for war, disciplined the insubordinate patriotism of the insurgents, and contended successfully against Souwarow, the Russian general, subsequently destined to threaten the republic ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... inflicts no penalty. Whereupon Claude makes a harangue to the shop (which appears, in some astounding fashion, to have been left without any supervision between the director's visits), repeats once more, on the director's entrance, his insubordinate enquiry, again has it put by, and thereupon splits the unfortunate official's skull with a hatchet, digging also a pair of scissors, which once belonged to his (left-handed) wife, into his own throat. And the wretches actually cure this hardly fallen angel, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... which he had tested in Europe. The instruments he employed to put it in force were the Kurds, a turbulent shepherd race marching with and mixed up among the Armenians. By this means he had the excuse ready that these massacres were local disturbances among remote and insubordinate tribes, one of whom, however, the Kurds, he armed with modern rifles and caused to be instructed in some elementary military training. Their task was to murder Armenians, their pay was the privilege to rape their girls and their women, and to rob the houses of ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... citizens of Syracuse—who had been accustomed to the most scandalous lawlessness in their despots—and of the Sicilian Greeks in general. He rid himself—in a perfidious manner, it is true—of the insubordinate army of mercenaries, revived the citizen- militia, and endeavoured, at first with the title of general, afterwards with that of king, to re-establish the deeply sunken Hellenic power by means of his civic troops and of fresh and more manageable recruits. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen



Words linked to "Insubordinate" :   mutinous, disobedient, contumacious, unruly, subordinate, noncompliant, rebellious, defiant



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