Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Misnomer   /mɪsnˈoʊmər/   Listen
Misnomer

noun
1.
An incorrect or unsuitable name.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Misnomer" Quotes from Famous Books



... Monsieur Lenormant's careful description of the chief pride of Poseidonia, we shall confine ourselves to as few remarks as possible concerning the two remaining temples. The Basilica, a misnomer of which the veriest amateur must at once perceive the absurdity, is inferior both in size and in beauty of proportion to its close neighbour of Neptune. Its chief peculiarity from an architectural point of view will be at once ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... rather than reason caused the artist to guard himself by throwing up his left arm. He caught the knife thrust in the fleshy part of it, and the pain was like the red-hot sting of a gigantic wasp. It flashed through his brain then that the term cold steel was a misnomer. The next moment his right hand had brought down the heavy knob of his stout stick on the curly head of the Italian, and Pietro fell like a log at his feet. Standish set his teeth, and as gently as possible drew the stiletto ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... of Paris, near the Hotel des Invalides, and much of our time was passed with them. "Old Mr. Browning" we have always called him, though the qualification of "old," by which we distinguished him from his son Robert, seemed a misnomer, for he had the perpetual juvenility of a blessed child. If to live in the world as if not of it indicates a saintly nature, then Robert Browning the elder was a saint: a serene, untroubled soul, conscious of no moral or theological problem to disturb his serenity, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Whistling-Thrush (rather a misnomer, by the way) breeds on the slopes of the Nilghiris, never ascending higher than 6000 feet. The nest is always placed on some rock in a mountain torrent; it is a coarse and, for the size of the bird, a very large structure, and though I have never measured the nest, I should say that the total height ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... Critic. Seldom is the amateur press favoured with such a well-sustained succession of brilliant epigrams. Miss Owen's "Ode to Trempealeau Mountain" is a noble specimen of heroic blank verse, containing some very striking antithetical lines. The title, however, is a misnomer, since a true ode is necessarily of irregular form. "Some Late Amateur Magazines," by W. B. Stoddard, is a series of brief, informal reviews. As a critic, Mr. Stoddard shows considerable discernment, though having a rather unpleasant air of conscious superiority in certain places. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... possible; for it seems to me a trick of the worst sort. I shall write a list of the subjects, and I only wish that I had duplicates, and I would send you the articles, for I am most uncomfortable at the notion of your being taken in to purchase a book that may, through this misnomer, lose its reputation in England; for of course it will be attacked as an unworthy attempt to make it pass for what ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... its lustre, and although it will never rank with the varnish of Cremona, yet it will hold its own among the varnishes of modern times. It is said that many instruments having the name of Pique in them are the work of Lupot, and this misnomer is accounted for by the story that Pique purchased them in an unvarnished state, and varnished them with his preparation. Be this as it may, it is certain that the varnish of Pique could not serve to benefit such instruments; on the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... disaffection of Mr. Weston, there were complaints of his delay in providing the necessary shipping; but at last the Speedwell, of sixty tons—miserable misnomer—was purchased in Holland for the use of the emigrants; and the Mayflower, of a hundred eighty tons—whose name is immortal—was chartered in England, and was fitting for their reception. The cost of the outfit, including a trading stock of seventeen hundred pounds, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... R. thus speaks is indifferently called egg and tongue, egg and dart, as well as egg and arrow. It seems to me that the egg is a complete misnomer, although common to all the designations; and I fancy that the idea of what is so called was originally derived from the full-length shield, and therefore that the ornament should be named the shield and dart, an association more reasonable than is suggested by any of the ordinary appellations. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various

... us by the worst mistake ascribed to them? Let us consider. It is supposed by some scholars that we have in the New Testament as it now stands a work written by Apollos, viz., the Epistle to the Romans. Yet, if so, the error amounts only to a misnomer. On the other hand, there are Epistles on which has been charged the same error in relation to the name of the author, and the more important error of thoughts unbecoming to a Christian in authority: ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Fortnightly. Of all the serial publications of the day, it probably is the most serious, the most earnest, the least devoted to amusement, the least flippant, the least jocose,—and yet it has the face to show itself month after month to the world, with so absurd a misnomer! It is, as all who know the laws of modern literature are aware, a very serious thing to change the name of a periodical. By doing so you begin an altogether new enterprise. Therefore should the name be well chosen;—whereas this was very ill chosen, a fault for which ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... days of hard work in getting the big white-lipped peccaries—white-lipped being rather a misnomer, as the entire under jaw and lower cheek are white. They were said to be found on the other side of, and some distance back from, the river. Colonel Rondon had sent out one of our attendants, an old follower of his, a full-blood Parecis Indian, to look ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... arrangement at the cardiac orifice of the esophagus, so that spasmodic stenosis at this level is not possible and the term cardiospasm is, therefore, a misnomer. It was first demonstrated by the author that in so-called cardiospasm the functional closure of the esophagus occurred at the diaphragmatic level, and that it was due to the "diaphragmatic pinchcock." Anatomical studies have corroborated this finding by demonstrating ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... eccentricities of pronunciation; for instance, he accents 'capitalist' on the second syllable, and repeats the words with grave challenge to all and sundry. Speaking of something which he wishes to stigmatise as a misnomer, he exclaims: 'It's what I call a misnomy!' And he follows the assertion with an awful suspense of utterance. He brings his speech to a close exactly with the end of the tenth minute, and, on sitting down, eyes his unknown neighbour with wrathful ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... artificer to raise His wordy monument—such lives as these Make death a dull misnomer and its pomp An empty vesture. Let resounding lives Re-echo splendidly through high-piled vaults And make the grave their spokesman—such as he Are as the hidden streams that, underground, Sweeten the pastures for the grazing kine, Or as spring airs that bring through ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... siesta. This place is on the frontier; three miles farther down you pass out of Hungary into Roumanian territory. Had we stayed any time we should certainly have gone to see Trajan's bridge, about eighteen miles hence. The so-called "Iron Gates" are just below Orsova. The designation is a misnomer, for the river ceases to be pent up between a defile, the hills recede from the shore, and the "Gates" are merely ledges of rock peculiarly difficult for navigation. Orsova is celebrated as the place where the regalia of Hungary were concealed by Kossuth and his friends from 1849 ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... a passive state, it is an intensely active state—more active than physical resistance or violence. Passive resistance is a misnomer. Non-co-operation in the sense used by me must be non-violent and therefore neither punitive nor vindictive nor based on malice ill-will or hatred. It follows therefore that it would be sin for me to serve General Dyer and co-operate with him to shoot ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... apply to her also. In many cases, indeed, we find that one version of a story will allot to a Baba Yaga the part which in another version is played by a Witch. The name which she bears—that of Vyed'ma—is a misnomer; it properly belongs either to the "wise woman," or prophetess, of old times, or to her modern representative, the woman to whom Russian superstition attributes the faculties and functions ascribed in olden days by most of our jurisprudents, in more recent times by a few of our rustics, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... "our United States" as used by the great majority of the people is a misnomer. With the exception of a theoretically valuable but practically unimportant right called "freedom of contract," the majority of the wage earners in the United States have no more excuse for using the phrase "our United States" than the slaves in the South, before the war, ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... significantly remarked on the effect produced by the "deliberate exclusion" of any instruction in Irish history from National schools. It does seem curious that national history should be a forbidden subject in National schools, and this fact makes the appellation of "National" seem rather a misnomer. The result of this deliberate exclusion was graphically described by the honorable member. The youth comes forth educated, and at a most impressible age he reads for the first time the history of his country, and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... reenforcements and invoked the majesty of the law in the form of an officer. The affray, from first to last, was most depressing and gave to the unwilling witness a feeling that civilization is something of a misnomer and that men are ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... their number who could pay down the money that Simone could pay down; and as to argument, Griffo of the Dragon-flag was too busy a man to bother about other people's arguments. Yet Griffo left the Company of Death a misnomer, as far as he was concerned. Griffo had let the Reds ride onward to Arezzo and back to Florence, very much to Simone's annoyance and discomfiture. What, then, was the cause of Griffo's defalcation, and who had inspired him to this signal piece ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... applied to America's school children, is a misnomer. No evidence whatever has been given that the percentage of children suffering from physical defects in 1907 is greater than the percentage of children suffering from such defects in 1857. On the contrary, the small proportion of defects that are not easily ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... noblemen of the Netherlands was a German, William of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer, once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived, but as he was already at the point of accepting Protestantism he had prudently retired ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... who threw mists before your eyes—you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say "hand me the silver sugar tongs;" and, before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of "the urn" for a tea kettle; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... a misnomer. Every painter is an impressionist in so far as he records his impressions, and all art is impressionistic. What Manet (1833-1883), the leader of the original movement, meant to say was that nature should not be ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the kind of ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... I'll win you with my smile. Most audiences are good-natured, and enjoy to the full such small vanities; moreover, we all like to see winning smiles, beautiful gowns, and graceful gestures; but it is a pitiable misnomer to call such exhibitions reading. But the more subtle forms of insincerity in this art are even more prevalent. To exaggerate some form of emphasis, to exaggerate a gesture or facial expression, to wrest a passage from its meaning, ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... reasons, in fact, which I shall set forth later on, it may be confidently asserted that never before have the Mahomedans of India as a whole identified their interests and their aspirations so closely as at the present day with the consolidation and permanence of British rule. It is almost a misnomer to speak of Indian unrest. Hindu unrest would be a far more accurate term, connoting with far greater precision the forces underlying it, though to use it without reservation would be to do a grave injustice to the vast numbers of Hindus who are as yet untainted with disaffection. These include ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... illustration of the very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,—but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,—while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There are my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... is an unfortunate misnomer for what is, properly speaking, the "Astronomical Ephemeris." It is quite a large volume, from which the world draws all its knowledge of times and seasons, the motions of the heavenly bodies, the past and future positions of the stars and planets, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... the first ford on their return trip; a sad misnomer now, for it was an unfordable ford. The water of old Elkwater was rearing and plunging, and furiously wild. Every mountain (and there are myriads) was sending out its wet aid to swell the raging torrent; the regiment, at this time, only three miles ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... the bran and practically all of the germ have been removed from the wheat. Whole wheat flour, or entire wheat flour, is the name given to the flour that has had a great part of the outer covering of the wheat kernel removed. It is a misnomer. Graham flour, named after Dr. Graham, is the product of the whole wheat kernel, and it will be noted that it is richer in salts and protein than the white flour and the whole wheat flour. The whole wheat flour and Graham flour we find on the market ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... we have called the attempt to do what we are told to do. The word is a misnomer; with our Captain as our Leader no hope is ever "forlorn"! But our Leader calls for men, men like the brave of old who jeopardised their lives unto the death in the high places of the field, in the day that they came to the help ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... the term "prig" as applied to Leslie was a misnomer; he hated the thought of the other word, which reflectively ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... occurred to Bruin, as he had now some trifling capital, that he would invest a portion in such articles as made up the fixtures and stock-in-trade of an oyster-merchant: the former expression is, however, a misnomer, for the stall and tubs included under the term fixtures would be more properly described as moveables. This was soon effected; and Bruin having chosen a semi-respectable thoroughfare, where he would have a chance of a customer or two from the upper, and would not be too far removed from the lower ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... Wapping, by day and by night, I've many a year been a roamer, And find that no Lawyer can London indite, Each street, every Lane's a misnomer. I find Broad Street, St. Giles, a poor narrow nook, Battle Bridge is unconscious of slaughter, Duke's Place can not muster the ghost of a Duke, And Brook ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... but which, on a more minute inspection, he discovers to be, for the most part, the rock itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,—that is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,—for though the last occupant of that dwelling was doubtless a recluse, its original purpose, which for many ages it served, was that of a strong-hold, or castle. And perhaps nowhere, even in Germany, can a more perfect specimen ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... terms, because, if we speak of the mouth, we are at once reminded of the mouth in the higher animals, and in this sense the word, as applied to the aperture through which the Sea-Urchins receive their food, is a misnomer. Very naturally the habit has become prevalent of naming the different parts of animals from their function, and not from their structure; and in all animals the aperture through which food enters the body is called the mouth, though there is not the least structural relation between ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Uffington Castle. There, armed with missiles, they were ready to hurl them at the invading hosts, and protect their lives and cattle until all danger was past. Those who are skilled at the art can still make the Blowing Stone sound. The name, King Alfred's Bugle-horn, is a misnomer, and arose from the association of the White Horse Hill with the battle which Alfred fought against the Danes at Aescendune, which may, or may not, have taken place near the old British camp at Uffington. There are several White Horses cut out in the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... the medicinal virtues of these foods, or however appropriate the term "condimental" which has been applied to them, it is quite certain that their whilom designation "concentrated" was a misnomer. Their composition shows that they possess a degree of nutritive power considerably below that of linseed-cake, and but little, if at all, superior to that of ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... "era of good feelings" applied to the Administration of President Monroe is a misnomer. It is descriptive neither of politics nor of business and industry, for the historic Democratic party was all but rent by bitter personal animosities, and the country was prostrated by a ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... deliberations, allowed the night rapidly to advance, but the grand preliminaries being settled, we approached the "road" and strove to penetrate with our keenest vision into its dark recesses. A road! this it could not be. It was a gross misnomer! It appeared to our excited imaginations, a lane, in the tenth scale of consanguinity to a road; a mere chasm between lofty trees, where the young moon strove in vain to dart a ray! To go or not to go, that was the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... misnomer is corrected," was all Mrs. Treadwell rejoined. So Lansing had passed through preparatory school and was ready for college before Markham could be brought to definite terms. The letter from The Forge was the first proposition, ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... prevailing during the 16th and 17th centuries, to obtain complete families of instruments to play in concert. The invention of the basset horn in 1770 is attributed to a clarinet maker of Passau, named Horn, whose name was given to the instrument;[2] by a misnomer, the basset horn became known in Italy as corno di bassetto, and in France as cor de basset. In 1782, Theodore Lotz of Pressburg made some modifications in the instrument, which was further improved by two instrumentalists ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... passengers and lading of both ships upon the MAY-FLOWER, for the belated ocean passage. The wholly negative results of careful search render it altogether probable that the original journal or "Log" of the MAY-FLOWER (a misnomer lately applied by the British press, and unhappily continued in that of the United States, to the recovered original manuscript of Bradford's "History of Plimoth Plantation "), if such journal ever ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... the Five-cornered tower. The lower part dates, we have seen, from no earlier than the eleventh century. It is referred to as Alt-Nuernberg (old Nuremberg) in the Middle Ages. The title of "Five-cornered" is really somewhat a misnomer, for an examination of the interior of the lower portion of the tower reveals the fact that it is quadrangular. The pentagonal appearance of the exterior is due to the fragment of a smaller tower which once leaned against it, and probably formed the apex of a wing running out from the old ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... London and in other capitals so many of these have been established, and continue to flourish, that they obviously perform certain useful and welcome functions; but my own criticism would be that to call them clubs for "authors" or "writers" is a misnomer which fails to particularize the real basis of membership. In the modern world, no doubt, all writers, merely as writers, have certain interests in common. They have, in the first place, to get their works published, and ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... by one Joyce (a convict lately emancipated) against Thomas Daveny, a free man and superintendant of convicts at Toongabbie, for an assault; when the defendant, availing himself of a mistake in his christian name, pleaded the misnomer. His plea being admitted, the business was for that time got over, and before another court could be assembled he had entered into a compromise with the plaintiff, and nothing more ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... light of later science the word "stimulants" has become a misnomer as applied to alcoholics; the term, no doubt, came into use from the fact that under their use there is more endurance to both physical and mental ills, an endurance or ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... tenth of the gross produce of the soil; but, in virtue of this right to a tenth, government assumes the entire direction of all the agricultural operations relating to the crops, and the cultivator's nine-tenths (for it is really a misnomer to call him proprietor) become a mere adjunct of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... and let them have a frisk? In the East there is no hypocrisy about the matter. The tiger's den is barred and locked, and the British Government keeps the key, but the ape has an appointed day in the year on which he shall have his outing. They call it the Holi, which is a misnomer, for of all Hindu festivals this is the most unholy; ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... misnomer for the original Congregation founded by Mary Ward (ob. 1645), and named by her 'The Institute of Mary'. It was not until 1703 that they were fully approved ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... fellow-citizens, you have heard the charge against my morals, sagely, and, I had almost said, soberly made by the gentleman, the Democratic nominee for the chief executive office of this State: had I said this, it would have been what the lawyers term a misnomer. It would be impossible for him to do or say anything soberly, for he has been drunk ten years; not yesterday, or last week, in a frolic, or, socially, with the good fellows, his friends, at the genial and generous board—but at home, and by himself ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... given by the Spaniards to the "Great Ocean," from the fine weather they experienced on the coast of Peru. Other parts, however, prove this a misnomer. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... discontent of the seething underside of the American system Socialism is a misnomer. Were there no Socialism there would be just as much of this discontent, just the same insurgent force and desire for violence, taking some other title and far more destructive methods. This discontent is a part of the same planless ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... it really belong? The answer to both these questions is contained in the reply that it is read from the akashic records; but that statement in return will require a certain amount of explanation for many readers. The word is in truth somewhat of a misnomer, for though the records are undoubtedly read from the akasha, or matter of the mental plane, yet it is not to it that they really belong. Still worse is the alternative title, "records of the astral light," which ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... A misnomer such as this may remind us of the immense importance of possessing such names for things as shall not involve or suggest an error. We have already seen this in the province of the moral life; but in other regions also ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... centuries as objects of respect and veneration. Some travelers have thought that 14,000 feet is above the tree line, but the presence of these trees at Santa Rosa would seem to show that the use of the words "tree line" is a misnomer in the Andes. Mr. Cook believes that the Peruvian plateau, with the exception of the coastal deserts, was once well covered with forests. When man first came into the Andes, everything except rocky ledges, snow fields, and glaciers was covered ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... "anti-Semitism" here in the sense in which it has come to be used—that is to say, anti-Jewry, but place it in inverted commas because it is in reality a misnomer coined by the Jews in order to create a false impression. The word anti-Semite literally signifies a person who adopts a hostile attitude towards all the descendants of Shem—the Arabs, and the entire twelve tribes of Israel. To ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... explain why such an extraordinary misnomer as overproduction, should be applied to a situation that would better be described as famine; why a condition should be said to result from glut when it was obviously the consequence of enforced abstinence? Surely, the mistake was equivalent to diagnosing ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... the farm, except Old Prancer, a superannuated old horse, who was never used except for Mrs. Wharton or the girls to drive; for, whatever claims "Prancer" may once have had to his name, it had been a misnomer for some years past, and no one suspected him of ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... some of the most degraded portions of London by her improved tenement houses for the poor. One place, called Nova Scotia gardens,—the term "gardens" was a misnomer,—she purchased, tore down the old rookeries where people slept and ate in filth and rags, and built tasteful homes for two hundred families, charging for them low and weekly rentals. Close by she built Columbia Market, costing over a million dollars, intended for ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... anything? Then for a De Vries to take them, save them, and out of them found the hardiest breed of chickens on the planet! And after this I shall always query that phrase, most ancient in our language—"chicken-hearted." Measured by the Elsinore's chickens, it is a misnomer. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... passing to the east of the Benevolent Asylum, we went over a little rise called Mount Pleasant, which, on a damp sort of a day, with the rain beating around one, seemed certainly a misnomer. After about two miles, we came to a branch-road leading to Pentridge, where the Government convict establishment is situated. This we left on our right, and through a line of country thickly wooded (consisting of red and white gum, stringy bark, cherry and other trees), we arrived at ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... islands you have visited are to be found here. Particularly plenteous here are the fibrous plants, and abaca forms in its prepared state one of the most important exports of the islands. This is a sort of plantain from which comes the Manila hemp, as it is sometimes called, though it is a misnomer; and with us it is called simply manila, the sailors tell me. It is extensively cultivated here, and grows something like ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... heat; and the Dutch clotted cream—a coagulated mass in which a spoon will stand upright—is manufactured from fresh-drawn milk, which is put into a pan, and stirred with a spoon two or three times a day, to prevent the cream from separating from the milk. The Scotch "sour cream" is a misnomer; for it is a material produced without cream. A small tub filled with skimmed milk is put into a larger one, containing hot water, and after remaining there all night, the thin milk (called wigg) is drawn off, and the remainder of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the judges, and was called upon to plead, he admitted that he was the person indicted, but pleaded a misnomer in abatement—or, in other words, that he was the Earl of Banbury. The pleas occupied, subsequently, more than a year, during which time the prisoner was admitted to bail. At last the House of Lords interfered, and called upon the Attorney-General to produce "an account in writing ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... caloric is mobile, and is capable of moving from one portion of matter to another; yet under certain conditions a portion of caloric is occluded in the matter by the force of attraction. That portion of caloric which is occluded (known by the misnomer, latent heat) I shall call static caloric, and that portion which is in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... half-past ten A.M., passed Piper's Islands, and steered for Young Island; could not make it out for some time, when we did see it, found it only a small reef above water, not worthy the name of an island; such a misnomer is likely to mislead; hauled up for the reef M. At noon, abreast of Haggerstone Island, steered to give Sir Everard Home's Isles a berth; saw natives on Cape Grenville; hauled in for Sunday Island; the wind light from the eastward; passed ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... writings is the Essay, "THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM," containing much valuable criticism on Wallace and Weismann. It is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace's book, "Darwinism," that he introduces the term "Wallaceism" {0d} for a theory of descent that excludes the transmission of acquired characters. This was, indeed, the chief factor that led Charles Darwin to invent his hypothesis of pangenesis, which, unacceptable ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... adventures with these latter, beautiful fur bearers. The fisher, it seemed, hunted every kind of living creature that he could master except fish. When the names of the animals were passed around, Bill said, the otter and the fisher got their slips mixed, and the misnomer had followed them through the centuries. He showed her the tracks of the ermine and, now that they were reaching the high altitudes, the trail of the ptarmigan in the snow. Mink, fox, and coyote had hunted each other gayly through the drifts, and all three ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... "natural selection" is a misnomer, as Darwin himself perceived. It means merely survival. "Selection" proper involves intention, and belongs to human reason. Selection by man we call artificial. Natural selection is the outcome of certain ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... the boats proceeded down a river so sluggish that the term "down" seemed a misnomer, and we actually had to row; had to work at the oars to make the boats go; these same boats which so recently had behaved like wild horses. This was not to our taste at all, the weather being extremely ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... House and two-thirds of the Lower were French Canadians. A French-Canadian member was nominated for the speakership and elected unanimously. Both races were for the most part represented by members whose official title of 'Honourable Gentlemen' was not at all a misnomer. The French members of the Assembly were half distrustful both of it and of themselves. But they knew how to add grace and dignity to a very notable occasion. The old Bishop's Palace served as the Houses of Parliament and so continued for many years ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... protection, Our Mother Earth has ta'en the infection— (That rogue Copernicus, 'tis said First put the whirring in her head,) A planet She, and can't endure 40 T'exist without her annual Tour: The name were else a mere misnomer, Since Planet is but Greek for Roamer. The atmosphere, too, can do no less Than ventilate her emptiness, 45 Bilks turn-pike gates, for no one cares, And gives herself a thousand airs— While streams and shopkeepers, we see, Will have their run toward the sea— And if, meantime, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... fancy ourselves in the happy valley of "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," and it seemed to me impossible that any one could ever desire, like that discontented youth, to leave so charming a spot. The term prairie is a misnomer in this case; instead we found a beautiful fruitful valley lying between two low ranges of hills, interspersed with groves of trees and picturesque lakes, and watered by a river winding gracefully through its whole length. It had been the seat of the Winnebago Agency, and there were, still ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... define those of aliquis and aliqui, on which see 61 n. In Paradoxa 12 the best MSS. have si qui and si quis almost in the same line with identically the same meaning Dav. quotes Solinus and Plin. N.H. VII. 21, to show that the man mentioned here was called Strabo—a misnomer surely. Octingenta: so the best MSS., not octoginta, which however agrees better with Pliny. Quod abesset: "whatever might be 1800 stadia distant," aberat would have implied that Cic. had some particular thing in mind, cf. ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... lymph," a hybrid product of diseased animal tissues. "Pure virus" translated into plain English is pure "animal poison." The phrase "pure calf lymph" is applied to an brand of vaccine virus now in use is a misnomer for two reasons. It is not "pure" and it is ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... whilst I display the hidden beauties of Canto First. You will notice that the author, who now sleeps with the unnumbered dead—a presumption on my part—has no dedication, no introduction, no preface. He scorned a dedication, that misnomer for gratuitous advertising. He wanted no patron, no Lord or Count somebody or other, who might, perhaps, insure the sale of one more copy. No. He determined to paddle his own canoe. And he did, you bet.—He wrote ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... to length of sarvice, said the major- domo; and if-so-be that they ship a hand for my berth, or place a new steward aft, I shall throw up my commission in less time than you can put a pilot-boat in stays. Thof Squire Dickon this was a common misnomer with Benjamin is a nice gentleman, and as good a man to sail with as heart could wish, yet I shall tel the squire, dye see, in plain English, and thats my native tongue, that if-so-be he is thinking of putting any Johnny Raw over my head, why, I shall resign. I began forrard, Mistress Prettybones, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... exception to the rule. The only method yet discovered of overcoming this tendency to the selfish use of power, whether consciously or unconsciously, by those possessing it, is the distribution of the power among all who are its subjects. Short of this the name free government is a misnomer. ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... substitute? What other sense is conceivable that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret—that does not convert it into its own negative? As if a geometrician should name a sugar- loaf an ellipse, adding—"By which term I here mean a cone;"—and then justify the misnomer on the pretext that the ellipse is among the conic sections! And yet—notwithstanding the repugnancy of the doctrine, in its unqualified sense, to Scripture, Reason, and Common Sense theoretically, while to all practical uses it is intractable, unmalleable, and altogether unprofitable—notwithstanding ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... haunts your imagination so fatally, was but a blaze of straw that quickly burned out. It was a fever common to boyhood. Few men, arrived at years of discretion, Bee, would like to marry their first follies—for it is a misnomer to call them first loves. Yes, very few men would like to do so, Bee, least of all would I. What I give you, Bee, is a constant, steadfast love, a love for time and for eternity. Oh, my dearest, hear me, and believe me," he said, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... has more than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... colliery-owners. Do not be misled by the confusing term "coal-owners." Very frequently the colliery-owners are called the "coal-owners," and their associations "coal-owners' associations." That is quite a misnomer. The real coal-owner is the landowner, the royalty-owner, though it may well happen that the two functions of owning the minerals and mining them may be combined in the same person. Below the colliery-owners ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... in the whole book. In the second place, the genetic point of view is almost completely overlooked, one of cardinal importance in such a field. Thirdly, the whole subject of the unconscious is treated as non-existent. It is a complete misnomer to entitle a book on descriptive psychology "The Foundations of Character" when no notice whatever is taken of that region of the mind where the very springs of character take their source, and where the most fundamental features of character are ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... tendency of male offspring to die early is seen even before birth, for more male children are still-born than female,—namely, as three to two. For this reason, the term 'the stronger sex,' applied to men, has been regarded by some authors as a misnomer. They are physically weaker in early life, and succumb more readily ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... twenty years—corresponds to the difference between the temper of the generation which repelled the Armada and the temper of the generation which fretted under the rule of the first Stuarts. The misnomer of Elizabethan as applied to the whole school indicates an implicit perception that its greater achievements were due to the same impulse which took for its outward and visible symbol the name of the great Queen. But it has led also to writers being too summarily ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... maturity, either the mouth gapes from dryness, or the appendage drops off altogether, from the same cause, to release the seeds. Old herb doctors, who professed to cure hydrophobia with this species, are responsible for its English misnomer. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... the changes, by a great misnomer called Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the Constitution of this kingdom. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... is a misnomer as a range finder is an instrument. The school uses the term "Range Estimator" when applied to an individual. The attention of the War Department has been ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... is fantastic in the extreme, builded, to quote Miss Alice Brown, who has written delightfully of Agnes and her life, "as if by a generation of autocratic landowners, each with a wilful bee in his bonnet."[1] For Marblehead is no misnomer, and the early settlers had to plant their houses and make their streets as best they could. As a matter of stern fact, every house in Marblehead had to be like the wise man's in the Bible: "built upon a rock." The dwellings themselves were founded ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... "the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, because he is great John, and his name is a misnomer. I sprinkle, not thy forehead with water, but thy lips with wine, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... power of the Supreme Court in our scheme of government, Jefferson said "It is a misnomer to call a government republican, in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation." Works, Vol. X, ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... Europe by the misnomer, American blight—is very destructive across the water, but does not exist extensively on this side. It is supposed to exist, in this country, only where it has been introduced with imported trees. It appears as a white downy substance in the small forks ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... Begriff of Providence, our Agnostic takes refuge in the sentiment of an unknown and an unknowable. He objects to the countless variety of forms assumed by the perception of a Causa Causans (a misnomer), and to that intellectual adoption of general propositions, capable of distinct statement but incapable of proofs, which ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... two pecan organizations, one of which we call the National Nut Growers' Association. You will notice the word National Nut Growers' Association. The association is composed wholly of pecan growers. Many of us recognize that the name is a misnomer. We have been hoping that the time would come when we could have the name of that organization changed to the Southern Pecan Growers' Association, but we have one old member who has one English walnut tree in his orchard, who says we are a national nut growers' association and he objects. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... four who habitually sat with us was Giojoso, the seneschal, a lantern-jawed fellow with black, beetling brows, about whom the only joyous thing was his misnomer of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... my definition and solution of stereoscopic angles (a misnomer, for it should be space) in "N. & Q.," with subsequent illustrations, have not satisfied MR. SHADBOLT, as I am thus obliged to once more request room in your pages, and this time for a rather long letter. When I asserted ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... it cost nothing to look. He called it widow-shopping, which was not a misnomer in Crystal City. There were plenty of widows, some lonely, some lively. Some free and uninhibited. And he did have the price of ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen

... He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought of Maddalena perhaps ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... that bend over it like loving guardians protecting it from evil. My ears are prepared to hear a musical Indian name - "Laughing-Waters " at least; but, like a week's washing ruthlessly intruding upon love's young dream, falls on my waiting ears the unpoetic misnomer, "Nine-Mile Creek." Over good roads to Syracuse, and from thence my route leads down the Erie Canal, alternately riding down the canal tow-path, the wagon-roads, and between the tracks of the New York Central Railway. On the former, the greatest drawback to peaceful cycling is the towing-mule ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... right—it was not safe for any man to look upon such beauty. I was a hardened vessel in such matters, having, with the exception of one painful experience of my green and tender youth, put the softer sex (I sometimes think that this is a misnomer) almost entirely out of my thoughts. But now, to my intense horror, I knew that I could never put away the vision of those glorious eyes; and alas! the very diablerie of the woman, whilst it horrified and repelled, attracted ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... moment so exquisitely enchanted with a little penny trumpet, and finding he can produce such harmony his own self, that he is blowing and laughing till he can hardly stand. If you could see his little swelling cheeks you would not accuse yourself of a misnomer in calling him cherub. I try to impress him with an idea of pleasure in going to see grandpapa, but the short visit to Bookham is forgotten, and the permanent engraving remains, and all his concurrence consists in pointing ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... the offensive freshness of new-made honour. The preacher offered her his hand, but she did not see it, being fully occupied in arranging the long train of cashmere, silk, and lace which, in those days, made morning dresses a misnomer. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the fine moonlight at night was like old times—old times that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks so crowded with incident, adventure and excitement, that they seemed almost like years. There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker City. For once, her title was a misnomer. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... also made from milk and eggs and is usually served instead of cream with stewed or preserved fruit. "Boiled" custard is rather a misnomer as on no account must the boiling point be reached in cooking, for if the custard bubbles it curdles. As soon as the custard begins to thicken the saucepan must be taken from the fire and the stirring continued for a second or two ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various

... class we need not speak in detail to any who have ever seen its delicate moss-covered buds, and inhaled their delightful odor. They are perfectly hardy, and can be wintered without any protection. They are called perpetual, but this is a misnomer, for we know but one variety of Moss Rose that approaches it, that is the Salet Moss. The rest are no more so than ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... short shrift in a book on public speaking, for, delude yourself as you may, public reading is not public speaking. Yet there are so many who grasp this broken reed for support that we must here discuss the "read speech"—apologetic misnomer ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Karn[a]vati, Gujerat was a stronghold of Indian culture long before the Mahomedan invasions. Architecture especially had reached a very high standard of development in the hands of what is usually known as the Jaina school. This is a misnomer, for the school was in reality the product of a period rather than a sect, though Jainism probably never enjoyed anywhere, or at any time, such political ascendancy as in Gujerat under its Rashtrakuta and Solanki rulers from the ninth to the thirteenth century, and seldom ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... left him enthroned fast, The blind old man of Scio, hoary Homer, So that of all the harpers first and last, To call him king, is not a base misnomer. ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... captain, Horris Sasstroff, called himself "Honest Horris," a misnomer which he had also bestowed on his ship. He was a trader of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, and not even a Gilgamesher would have taken a wretched craft like the Honest Horris ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... where no light from the Golden City and "the Land very far off" reaches them. Last winter I became very much interested in such a case. I was going to write "Poor Mary Neil!" but that would have been the strangest misnomer. Happy Mary Neil! rises impetuously from my heart ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... "perplexing cynicism," nor has the poem enclosed between them, when it is seen aright. Browning's idea in the poem he declared in reply to a question of Dr Furnivall, "was to show merely how a Don Juan might justify himself, partly by truth, somewhat by sophistry." No more unhappy misnomer than this "Don Juan" could have been devised for the curious, ingenious, learned experimenter in life, no man of pleasure, in the vulgar sense of the word, but a deliberate explorer of thoughts and things, who argues out his case with so much fine casuistry and often with ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... is as follows: The form is locked up very tightly, and is then coated with a surface of graphite, commonly known as blacklead, but it is a misnomer. This is put on with a brush, and may be done very evenly and speedily by a machine in which the brush is reciprocated over the type by hand-wheel, crank, and pitman. A soft brush and very finely powdered graphite are used; the superfluous powder being removed, and the face ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... New Jersey village, or rather city (for it had won municipal government some years before, in spite of the protest of far-seeing citizens who descried in the distance bonded debts out of proportion to the tiny shoulders of the place), was a misnomer. Often a person, being in Fairbridge for the first time, and being driven by way of entertainment about the rural streets, would inquire, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... a strong misnomer; he always plods in the beaten road of his predecessors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, perhaps, be of service to the public, which is saying a great deal in their ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... the existence of that Christian school; and the word Philosophy, on the authority of Gibbon, who, however excellent an authority for facts, knew nothing about Philosophy, and cared less, has been used exclusively to express heathen thought; a misnomer which in Alexandria would have astonished Plotinus or Hypatia as much as it would Clement or Origen. I do not say that there is, or ought to be, a Christian Metaphysic. I am speaking, as you know, merely as a historian, dealing with facts; and I say that there was one; as profound, as scientific, ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... and with a square yard of flower-bed in front. Many of the Nicois villas are veritable palaces, and what adds to their sumptuousness is the indoor greenery, dwarf palms, india-rubber trees, and other handsome evergreens decorating corridor and landing-places. The English misnomer has, nevertheless, compensations in snug little kitchen and decent servant's bedroom. I looked over a handsome villa here, type, I imagine, of the rest. The servants' bedrooms were mere closets with openings on to a dark corridor, no windows, fireplace, cupboard, or ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a row of fishermen lean against the rails of the cliff, some with their backs to the sea, some facing it. "The cliff" is rather a misnomer, it is more like a sea-wall in height. This row of stout men in blue jerseys, or copper-hued tan frocks, seems to be always there, always waiting for the tide—or nothing. Each has his particular position; one, shorter than the rest, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... enormous tree spread its branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof. Ordinarily, of course, its foliage was as green as the leaves on the maples of the avenue or on the neighbouring elms, and the name of the Inn might have seemed to the summer or winter traveller an odd misnomer; but in autumn when the frost came early and the great mass of green flushed to a deep crimson it could not have been known more appropriately than as the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... Misapprehending all, he was yet unconsciously the first experimenter in what we, for convenience, designate dynamic electricity. He knew only of animal electricity, and called it by that name; a misnomer and a mistake of fact, and the cause of an early scientific quarrel the promoting of which was the actual reason of the advance that was made in the science following his ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... that Shakespeare shows much judgment in the naming of his plays. From this observation several critics have excepted Julius Caesar, pronouncing the title a misnomer, on the ground that Brutus, and not Caesar, is the hero of it. It is indeed true that Brutus is the hero, but the play is rightly named, for Caesar is not only the subject but also the governing power of it throughout. He is the center and springhead of the entire action, giving law and shape to ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... name "liberal" is a misnomer—is, as I have often heard the vicar say, one of the most intolerant, illiberal persons under the sun. His idea of freedom, is, that everybody should be free to do as he pleases:—if they object to ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the men discovered that the term Divisional rest was a misnomer. Reveille was before six, and in the dim light of the early morning, the men had to wash and shave in icy cold water in the teeth of a bitter east wind. There followed a meagre breakfast cooked on an unsheltered field kitchen in the dark, and often in the rain. The men paraded at seven, and ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts

... democratic. Socialism without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without light. The word "Socialism" applied to schemes of paternalism, and to government ownership when the vital principle of democracy is lacking, is a misnomer. As with ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... title means, "possessed of the divine fire" (atsilung kelawhi); in Iroquois, "keepers of the faith" (honundeunt); in Quichua, "the learned" (amauta); in Maya, "the listeners" (cocome). The popular term in French and English of "medicine men" is not such a misnomer as might be supposed. The noble science of medicine is connected with divinity not only by the rudest savage but the profoundest philosopher, as has been already adverted to. When sickness is looked upon as the effect of the anger of a god, or as the malicious infliction of a sorcerer, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... highly of the position, that I should have been tempted to try and get it for Anna, if she had been at all likely to meet Mrs. Mompert's wants. It is really a home, with a continuance of education in the highest sense: 'governess' is a misnomer. The bishop's views are of a more decidedly Low Church color than my own—he is a close friend of Lord Grampian's; but, though privately strict, he is not by any means narrow in public matters. Indeed, he has created ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Scott's version, I had considered the former word as an accidental error of the engraver, instead of FEARE; which would present a moral motto, suiting the SOBRII ESTOTE round the lid.—As Mr. Nichols, in his recent interesting work on Pilgrimages to Walsingham and Canterbury, noticing the misnomer of the cup (p. 229, n.), indicates its date to be of "the early part of the sixteenth century," perhaps some one of your well-informed readers could state if any artist-goldsmith of that era, and of that ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... title of the Archbishop's volume, but this is a misnomer, for the title belongs only to the first sermon. It misled us in this general application, as it will probably mislead others. We took it to be a setting forth of so much theology as the Archbishop thought living, in contradistinction to what he allowed to be dead. But we ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... side of the world, alas and alack, the very name is a misnomer. Coffee-house: a place where people drink coffee. Not at all. You cannot obtain coffee in such a place for love or money. True, you may call for coffee, and you will have brought you something in a cup purporting to be ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... merely physical. The expression "physical training" is a misnomer. All training is the action of mind. It may manifest itself in a physical direction, but training itself,—the putting forth,—is mental. It is the emotion we feel more than the ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... eminent personages, one-half of whom a stranger never heard of—but that is national vanity; and lastly, I do not recollect to have seen a museum that had not a considerable portion of its space occupied by most execrable wax-work, in which the sleeping beauty (a sad misnomer) generally figures very conspicuously. In some, they have models of celebrated criminals in the act of committing a murder, with the very hatchet or the very knife: or such trophies as the bonnet worn by Mrs — when she was killed by her husband; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... attractive menus that can be suggested for teas, but the following seems to demand as little home labor for satisfactory results as any other. The word tea, by the way, is something of a misnomer, as at these entertainments the beverages are almost invariably coffee or chocolate, or both, tea being left ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... phrase, which Milly used with a malicious pompousness when she wished to "put something hard up" to her lord, was of course an ironical misnomer in this modern household. In the first place there was no house, which demanded the service and the protection of a strong male,—merely a partitioned-off corner in a ten-story brick box, where no man was necessary even to shake the furnace or lock the front door. It was "house" only symbolically, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... absolutely negative the idea of any effect being produced on the constant of aberration by the amount of refracting medium traversed by the light.—The great Aurora of 1872 Feb. 4 was well observed. On this occasion the term Borealis would have been a misnomer, for the phenomenon began in the South and was most conspicuous in the South. Three times in the evening it exhibited that umbrella-like appearance which has been called (perhaps inaccurately) a corona. I have very carefully compared its momentary phenomena with the corresponding ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... action! Great would have been the glory of Seattle, and corresponding the discomfiture of its rival Tacoma, which undeniably had no lake, and, moreover, lay under the stigma of having tried, in such default, to appropriate by misnomer another grand natural feature; giving its own name Tacoma to Mount Rainier, so called by Vancouver for an ancient British admiral. A sharp Seattleite said that a tombstone had thus been secured, to preserve the remembrance of Tacoma when the city itself should be no more. The local nomenclature ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... call this little bird roth Stert (red tail), but, like so many popular names, this is a misnomer, as, strictly speaking, the redstart is never red, though its salmon-orange markings often ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... many different names, some of them merely local in their application) belong to a peculiar group of the genus Cucurbita, the distinguishing characters of which have not been fully described by botanists. The word 'squash,' as applied to these fruits, is a misnomer, as may be shown hereafter. It would be well to drop it entirely, and to call the fruits of this group 'pompions,' 'pumpkins,' or 'potirons.' It is my belief, that they were originally indigenous to the tropical and sub-tropical parts ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr



Words linked to "Misnomer" :   name



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com