"Opprobrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... according to the average term of human life, since the earlier grand display of mind, what had been effected toward such an advancement of intelligence in the community, that when this next tribe of highly endowed spirits should appear, they would stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the main body of the nation, and find a much larger portion of it qualified to receive their intellectual effusions. By this time, the class of persons who sought knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... this viewing of life as a sort of boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an official report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. At all events, this Chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it "worked," and served society for a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic melee wherein contended "courtesy and humanity, friendliness, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Christian faith. They are inspired by a commendable zeal for the honor of dogmatic theology. Every essay towards a profounder conviction, a broader faith in the unity of all truth, is branded with the opprobrious name of "rationalism." Let us not be terrified by a harmless word. Surely religion and right reason must be found in harmony. The author believes, with Bacon, that "the foundation of all religion is right reason." The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye—Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies—the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... respectable business. A short time after, her second sister-not dreaming that the law would be so stringent as to class her with the lowest nigger, or even lay its painful bearings at her door; for the family were very high-minded, and would have considered themselves grossly insulted to have the opprobrious name of nigger applied to them-paid her a visit. The public became acquainted with the fact, and to his surprise, Jones was informed by authority that upon no condition could she be allowed to return-that ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... side, while my blood was up. Pete of the shovel gang, a quiet, inoffensive man, sat limply on the veranda, with the blood trickling from his shoulder, and there was the insult to the girl to be avenged; while, if more were needed, somebody hurled opprobrious epithets at us from an upper window. I wrenched the axe from its owner—and he resisted stubbornly—whirled it round my shoulder, and there was another roar when after a shower of splinters the stout post yielded. It was torn loose from the rafters, swung ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... that at last, realising, I suppose, that she had lost her power over me and that I was no longer to be cajoled, she suddenly abandoned her efforts and flew into a furious passion, abusing me most abominably, and heaping upon my head every opprobrious epithet that she could think of—and she was able to think ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the nicknames of the "The Imperialist Banner" and "The Patriotic Pulpit," applied by various writers and others to this great newspaper, were scornful names, applied with opprobrious intent; and London was still full of people whose only comment upon this sufficiently badly-needed warning would be: ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Ammonite Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart 400 Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His Temple right against the Temple of God On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Heronaim, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... June 1750, that Captain Dow, commanding H.M. cruiser Sincerity[6] was, according to the orders received from the Board of Customs, on duty in Douglas Roads. A notorious Irish smuggling wherry came in from Ireland and ran under the Sincerity's stern, while the smugglers "with opprobrious, treasonable, and abusive language abused His Majesty King George and all that belonged to or served under him." This, of course, was too much for any naval officer to endure, and Captain Dow immediately caused the ship to come alongside, and, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... the trade of cooper was looked upon with contempt, and the opprobrious name of caqueux was given to them because they were thought to belong to a race of Jews dispersed after the ruin of Jerusalem, and who were considered ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and the fact ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of his raised him somewhat in the estimation of our jailers, and in spite of the opprobrious epithets he applied to them (which to be sure they did not understand) he was soon as popular with them as Vetch was the reverse. Joe was blessed with a great fund of good humor, which withstood all privation and restraint. He growled and groaned at being compelled ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... if any one spoke ill of Feemy's character, he should make it personal with himself; that he was ready, willing, and moreover determined to quarrel with any one who dared to apply the opprobrious name of murderer to Thady; and he had even been heard, on one or two occasions, to stand up for Larry himself, and to declare that although he might be a little light-headed or so, he was still a deal better than those muddy-minded blackguards at Carrick who had driven ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... you are come hither, I am minded to give you a view of the Angel Gabriel, who comes down from heaven to earth by night to solace the ladies of Venice." The vizard was no sooner withdrawn than all recognized Fra Alberto, and greeted him with hootings, rating him in language as offensive and opprobrious as ever rogue was abused withal, and pelting him in the face with every sort of filth that came to hand: in which plight they kept him an exceeding great while, until by chance the bruit thereof reached ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to fly from an opprobrious epithet; assume not the holy name of wife, to one who brings trueness of heart, wealth of affection, whilst you have nought to offer in return but cold respect. Your first love already lavished on another: believe me, respect, esteem, are but poor, weak talismans to ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... Antigua was "an abominable falsehood." Not contented with this, and with insinuating that I, as agent of the society in the distribution of their charity in Antigua, had fraudulently duped them out of their money by a fabricated tale of distress, Mr. M'Queen proceeded to libel me in the most opprobrious terms, as "a man of the most worthless and abandoned character."[20] Now I know from good authority that it was upon Dr. Coull's information that Mr. M'Queen founded this impudent contradiction of notorious facts, and this audacious libel of my personal ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... only that this settlement be speedy but that it be final; for, if it be not final, the disputes on that subject will have the same baleful influence with those now subsisting. Disunion among the States must follow in the event. Disgust must take place in the moment. The same opprobrious indolence will continue, and in the meantime it is to little purpose, that our country abounds in men and subsistence, if they cannot be called ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination. The Tupis called the Portuguese by a derisive epithet descriptive of birds which have feathers around their feet, on account of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... groped with aimless imprecision, tried to force their way out against the current, pushed and elbowed, struck at random, fell and were trampled, rose and trampled in their turn. They seized one another by the garments, the hair, the beard—fought like animals, cursed, shouted, called one another opprobrious and obscene names. When, finally, Alvan Creede had seen the last person of the line pass into that awful tumult the light that had illuminated it was suddenly quenched and all was as black to him as to those within. He turned away and ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 'grandma' again, Felix," protested the worthy woman quite warmly; for the Milesian had twice applied the opprobrious appellation to her. "If you ever do it again, I will ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... in the foregoing letter and in all medical literature Mesmer is spoken of as a "charlatan" and "empiric." Charlatan is an opprobrious term, but "empiric" literally means one who follows experience instead of dogma, and should therefore be an honorable designation; but as the medical profession has always been dogmatic, and therefore hostile to empiricism, or fidelity to experience, it has made ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels. They are in Asia what the Jews are in Europe. The name of their pope ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... executive yielding to popular clamour. Against the strategical and tactical genius of Hannibal, Quintus Fabius Maximus invoked the aid of time to afford him opportunities to strike. His "Fabian Tactics" have become proverbial, and earned for him at the time the opprobrious epithet "Cunctator," which the epigram[3] of Ennius has immortalised in his honour. Popular clamour led to a division of authority with Varro, and to the disaster of Cannae (B.C. 216). General G. B. McClellan was recalled from the Army of the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to certain of its aspects ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... know how many of these useful birds are killed each year," would be to beg the question, since the argument turns on whether crows are useful or not. A gross and uncivil form of this fallacy is to use opprobrious epithets in describing persons who take the other view, as in the following sentence from an article in a magazine on the question of examinations for entrance ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... to the Lord Chancellor, to inquire whether the word "jackass" is not opprobrious and actionable. His lordship says, "No, decidedly, in this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Some, who but the moment before were skulking aft with a similar purpose, were now loud in their denunciations of the dastardly conduct of the officers; and, goaded by the two passions of disappointment and rage, shouted after them the most opprobrious epithets and ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... left!" singsonged Racey from the corner of the building, and set the thumb of one hand to his nose and twiddled opprobrious fingers at his comrade. "You wanna be a li'l bit quicker when you go to souse me, Swing. Yo're too slow, a lot too slow. Yep. Now I wouldn't go for to fling that pail at me, Swing. You might bust it, and yore carelessness with crockery ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... contradictory news from morning to night; a new rumour at every cafe, a scuffle, or the makings of one, at every street corner, and hour by hour a steady stream of manifestoes, placards, handbills, caricatures, and broadsheets of opprobrious verse—the din of it all went by me like the vain noises of a dream as I trod the pavements, intent upon my own hopes and perplexities. I cannot think that this was mere selfishness; rather, a deep disgust was weaning me from my country. If this Paris indeed were the reality, then was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature—the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us—still, the detestation ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of Agnes, and could clear herself from the suspicion beyond the power of doubt. The Rioters heeded nothing but the gratification of their barbarous vengeance. They refused to listen to her: They showed her every sort of insult, loaded her with mud and filth, and called her by the most opprobrious appellations. They tore her one from another, and each new Tormentor was more savage than the former. They stifled with howls and execrations her shrill cries for mercy; and dragged her through the Streets, spurning her, trampling her, and treating her with every species ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... assistance and seized the money and jewels lying at the Temple (29th June). The citizens were so exasperated at this high-handed proceeding on the part of the prince that they vented their spleen on the queen, and pelted her with mud and stones, calling her all kinds of opprobrious names, as she attempted to pass in her barge under London Bridge on her way from the Tower ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the natives Oranserrne, or Nazareen men (Oran, being Man in the language of the country,) to distinguish them from other Europeans; yet they are included in the general appellation of Caper, or Cafir, an opprobrious term, applied by Mahometans to all who do not profess their faith. These people, however, are Portuguese only in name; they have renounced the religion of Rome, and become Lutherans: Neither have they the least communication with the country of their forefathers, or even ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... pardon, Captain Shivernock, but it isn't agreeable to a gentleman to be called by such opprobrious names," said Laud, rising from his chair, and taking his round-top hat from the table. "I am willing to leave you, ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... hearts—whether they were stout, and true, as the British had believed, or false, as the Germans planned and hoped. That was a night of nights—one of very few such, for the mounted actions in this war have not been many. Hah! I have been envied! I have been called opprobrious names by a sergeant of British lancers, out of great jealousy! But that is the way of the British. It happened later, when the trench fighting had settled down in earnest and my regiment and his were waiting our turn behind the lines. He and I sat together on a bench in a ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... my Temper too far, I neither can nor will bear your insolent contemptuous Way of conversing, or your opprobrious provoking Language. If you attack my favourite Foible with such Acrimony, you must expect I will not spare some of yours: As for your sneering at my Politicks, I own I never was a Politician, nor did I ever set up for one. I had too rational an Head, I thank Heaven, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... that all these opprobrious terms applied to Lauder are copied from Foxe, or rather from the black-letter tract, printed by John Daye, of which Dr. M'Crie has given a description in his Life of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Imperialia, sect. 88., mentions a certain pond or mere lying near the confines of Wales, and named Haveringemere, of which the peculiarity is, that if a person passing over it in a boat utters, in a loud voice, certain opprobrious words, a commotion arises in the waters and sinks the boat. The words, as printed in the edition of Leibnitz (Leibnitii Scriptores Brunsvicenses, tom. i. p. 990.), are "Prout haveringemere aut allethophe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... next morning all the city papers teemed with accounts of the late forgery, and blazoned Charles Wilton's name, with many opprobrious epithets before the public. Some went even so far as to allude to his wife, whom they said he had forsaken years before, and who was now, it was alleged, living in poverty, and, some hinted ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... sure that the Amahagger were gone, Thomaso and the other cowards emerged from their hiding-places and returned. Unfortunately for the former the first person he met was Umslopogaas, who began to revile the fat half-breed in no measured terms, calling him dog, coward, and other opprobrious names, such as deserter of women and children, and so forth—all of which ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of folk-tales dealing with the subject of the winds—which, indeed, play an extraordinary part in Breton folk-lore. The fishermen of the north coast frequently address the winds as if they were living beings, hurling opprobrious epithets at them if the direction in which they blow does not suit their purpose, shaking their fists at them in a most menacing manner the while. The following story, the only wind-tale it is possible to give here, well illustrates ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... boy's ears. What did it mean? What was the sneer in it? "Brat!" "cry-baby," "tell-tale," "story-teller," these were opprobrious words, to be resented in their degree; and all but the first covered accusations which not only must never be deserved, but obliged a gentleman, however young, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... memory or tradition throughout much of the territory formerly dominated by the great Siouan stock. One of the reasons for the abandonment of the name was undoubtedly its inappropriateness as a designation for the confederacy occupying the plains of the upper Missouri, since it was an alien and opprobrious designation for a people bearing a euphonious appellation of their own. Moreover, colloquial usage was gradually influenced by the usage of scholars, who accepted the native name for the Dakota (spelled ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... in learning lessons, he classed ... under the opprobrious name of "facilities," and never scrupled to seize them as contraband goods.—Memorial of John S. Popkin, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... metal, equally respected by Roman and barbarian, by rich and poor, by great and mean, by churchmen and laymen, which all mankind are fighting for, plotting for, planning for, intriguing for, and damning themselves for, both soul and body—by the opprobrious name of yellow dross? They are mad, Agelastes, utterly mad. Perils and dangers, penalties and scourges, are the arguments to which men who are above the universal influence which moves all others, can possibly ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to commit some act or make use of some expression that might seem to justify their murder. They fired muskets close to their ears, pointed others loaded and cocked close to their breasts and faces, flourished swords close to their noses, called them all kinds of opprobrious names, but all in vain. The Resident, in the midst of all this confusion, pointed out to the Begum the impossibility of her ultimately succeeding in her attempt to secure the throne for the pretender, since he was acting under the orders ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Supreme Council it never let offended dignity stand between itself and the triumph of any of the various causes which it successively took in hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious terms, and accused not merely of clothing political expediency in the garb of spurious idealism, but of giving the fore place in political life to sordid interests, over which a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown. One official missive from the Bolshevist government to President ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... coincidence!" said Walter scornfully, turning still whiter. He had only a very hazy idea what a coincidence was, but Dan had none at all and thought it must be something peculiarly opprobrious. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, to patch him up. The Doctor ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... so sure of that. Remember his fatal predilection for black sheep. What about his handing over Bala to Tika Singh, after he himself had exhausted all the resources of the English language in finding suitably opprobrious epithets for him? The Bala people hated him, too, whereas I gather that the Agpuris have no particular ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... erected when they had first fixed their station there, but now it was too late, and Hudson had refused to have it done at first. The carpenter's refusal to perform the work excited the anger of the master to such a degree, that he drove him violently from the cabin, using the most opprobrious language, and finally threatening ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... this was your doing, Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse," he said, looking his triumphant enemy boldly in the face, even whilst compelling silent attention from those who were heaping opprobrious epithets upon him. "You enticed me here.... You persuaded me to play, ... Then you tried to rob me of mine honor, of my good name, the only valuable assets which I possess.... Hell and all its devils alone know why you did this thing, but I swear before God that your hideous ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... himself as an Old Public Functionary he was a good deal laughed at by some of the newspapers, and the phrase has since been frequently used in an opprobrious or satirical sense. This is to be regretted, for there is no character more respectable, and there are few so useful, as an intelligent and patriotic man of long standing in the public service. What one such man can do is shown by the example of Sir Henry Cole, who died a few ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... body politic, of which we ourselves are a part, and are they not entitled to their opinion and modes of expressing it, providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding the crowning dome of our nationality, be taught, like vexed and querulous children, the impotence of personal abuse? Why seek to lay upon ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... description—and tried to come to terms with the representative of our least hated opponent. He even thought, and Peter was not guileless, that he had secured their neutrality, when they suddenly burst forth into opprobrious language, being a very vulgar school indeed, and exposed Peter's designs openly. His feelings were not much hurt by the talk, in which, indeed, he scored an easy victory after he had abandoned negotiation and had settled down to vituperation, but Seminary boys whose homeward ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... not received the last Orders, which were to move a contrary Way. The Prince, instead of taking the Admonition which was delivered in a manner that accounted for his Error with Safety to his Understanding, shaked a Cane at the Officer; and with the return of opprobrious Language, persisted in his own Orders. The whole Matter came necessarily before the King, who commanded his Son, on foot, to lay his right Hand on the Gentleman's Stirrup as he sat on Horseback in sight of the whole Army, and ask his Pardon. When the Prince touched his Stirrup, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... himself. I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well—if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word." ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... taunts Cornelio never stirred from his seat, but remained perfectly still, staring at me as if he was bewitched. The loud tones in which I spoke had brought round us all the people who were walking in the garden, and they arrived in time to hear me assail Cornelio with many other opprobrious terms. Plucking up heart, at last, from the presence of numbers, most of whom were his relations, servants, or friends, he made a show as if he would rise; but before he was on his feet my sword was out, and I attacked not him only but all who were before me. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hat, or to offer a tardy apology. A more wanton, unprovoked, and flagrant outrage than that of which this man was guilty I never witnessed. It is customary for "the old dogs", as the experienced convicts are called, to use the most opprobrious language to their officers, and to this a deaf ear is usually turned, but I never before saw a man wantonly strike a constable. I fancy that the act was done out of bravado. Troke informed me that the man's name is Rufus Dawes, and that he is the leader of the Ring, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... seemed to me of a very puerile and captious description, and some of an opprobrious personality, e.g., as when a certain oarman was taunted with being short—as though he were capable of adding the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Thou shalt be freed from base Priuli's tyranny, And thy sequester'd fortunes heal'd again: I shall be free from those opprobrious wrongs That press me now, and bend my spirit downward; All Venice free, and every growing merit Succeed to its just right: fools shall be pull'd From wisdom's seat; those baleful, unclean birds, Those lazy owls, who, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... he reached that bewildering part of the river termed "the Gut." So confusing were the intestine commotions of this gut, that, after passing a chequered existence as an aquatic shuttlecock, and being assailed with a slang-dictionary-full of opprobrious epithets, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... downward tendency. I have elsewhere suggested, and the suggestion has already found some acceptance, that when the variation is not definitely downward, deviation and deviate be substituted for the unnecessarily opprobrious and often inappropriate terms, degeneration ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... in the face of this work from the pen of the acknowledged inventor of state-craft, to describe Cesare's conquest of the Romagna by opprobrious epithets and sweeping statements of condemnation and censure—statements kept carefully general, and never permitted to enter into detail which must destroy their own ends and expose ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... primrose is an inveterate haunter of the roadside. Yet its blossoms have only to be looked at and smelled of to make their way, homely as is the stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, but it certainly is not "because their deeds are evil." One might as well cast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now and then some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment, investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariably transpires that some can do their best only by daylight, while the minds of others seem to be ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... certainly known. An instance or two will explain my idea. The most popular English writer relates how it happened in his presence that the title of Tory was conferred upon the Conservative party. For it was an opprobrious name at the time, applied to men for whom the Irish Government offered head-money; so that if I have made too sure of progress, I may at least complacently point to this instance of our mended manners. One day, Titus Oates lost his temper with the men ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Nevertheless, if the clause be thoroughly considered, we shall find no reason to commend the mercy of the legislature; for it only proves, that the Jamaica law-makers will not scruple to charge the slightest and most natural offences with the most opprobrious epithets; and that a poor slave, who perhaps has no otherwise incurred his master's displeasure than by endeavouring (upon the just and warrantable principles of self-preservation,) to escape from his master's ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... beast." Is it really otherwise anywhere? Instead of the reindeer eliminating the dog, there is far greater likelihood of the dog eliminating the reindeer; and the professed dog lover, indignant at the opprobrious term applied to a whole race of dogs, may be disposed to echo Lady Macbeth's wish: "May good ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... know how often the representatives of the Southern division of the country have amused themselves in Congress by applying the opprobrious name of "slave" to the free Northern laborer. And how familiar have the significant epithets of "white ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the lieges saw him, they feared him; but the Sultan of these days hath need of the most accomplished polity and the utmost majesty, because men are not as men of by-gone time and this our age is one of folk opprobrious, and is greatly calamitous, noted for folly and hardness of heart and inclined to hate and enmity. If, therefore, the Sultan (which Almighty Allah forfend!) be weak or wanting in polity and majesty, this will be the assured ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and ridiculous little pictures. Having come to the coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he always wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered immediately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as not to give the least sign of mistrust; nay, she gave him some very opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching the papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a good ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... politics, over head and ears; and, moreover, he could never hear the names of either of the Wringhims mentioned without getting into a quandary of disgust and anger; and all that he would deign to say of them was, to call them by all the opprobrious names he ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... parentage of the object of their resentment. This is decidedly an orientalism; and I have observed in another place that sailors resemble the Orientals in their fondness for tropes and figures. The most opprobrious epithet that a Persian can make use of, when in a passion, is to call his antagonist "a dog's uncle." No other degree of canine ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... possessions and the ocean highway must be protected at enormous expense. The Commons refused to authorize a new loan, and the nation was exhausted to such a degree that Pitt and the King, shrinking from the opprobrious attacks of the London populace, and noting with anguish the renewal of bloody disorder in Ireland, made a feint of peace negotiations through the agent they employed in Switzerland to foment royalist demonstrations against France wherever possible. Wickham asked on March ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... this letter, she swooned. When she came to her senses, she awoke as from a trance. But when she beheld the letter again, she read again the opprobrious word "faithlessness" in her husband's handwriting. She did not know what act of disloyalty she had committed. She moved about in her room by fits and starts. At last a thought came to her mind: she sent for the best goldsmith in ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... with a lurid sinister light, as if filled with fire, ready to blaze out. In the American newspapers he had often seen his name coupled with such opprobrious phrases, but never without feeling savagely wrathful. And not the less that his own innate consciousness told him ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of these is the action of Werner Horn, a retired German officer, which gained us for the first time the opprobrious epithet of "dynamiters." Horn, of whose presence in America I was not aware until the story of his crime appeared in the papers, contrived in February, 1915, to blow up a railway bridge near Vaneboro, in the territory of Canada, on the line running through the State of Maine to Halifax. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... had ever actually applied that term to Garth in her hearing. They had skirted delicately round it, or wrapped up its meaning in some less harsh-sounding tangle of phrases, and although she had bitterly used the word herself, now that the opprobrious expression publicly confronted her, writ large by some unfriendly hand, she was swept by a sheer fury of indignant denial. It roused in her the immediate instinct to defend, to range herself unmistakably on Garth's side against a world ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Dr. Palfrey and Mr. Bancroft more than refutes and condemns the opprobrious epithets they apply to the Browns. On pages 29 and 30 I have given, in the words of Mr. Hutchinson, the account of the formation of the new Church, and the expulsion of the Browns for their refusal to conform to it. Dr. Palfrey states the transaction ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... traditionally related, that though accused as an accomplice in the designs of the other noble delinquents, the real offence for which he died, was the having retorted, with more spirit than prudence, some opprobrious language with which his royal master had insulted him as they were playing at bowls together[6]. The family of Carew was however allied in blood to that of Courtney, of which the marquis ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... traditional Christian, conceited of himself, and strong in his own will and righteousness, overcome with blind zeal and passion, either despised as a low and common thing, or opposed as a novelty, under many hard names and opprobrious terms; denying, in his ignorant and angry mind, any fresh manifestations of God's power and spirit in man, in these days, though never more needed to make true Christians. Not unlike those Jews of old, that ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... the Ammonite Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moab's sons, From Aroar to Nebo and the wild Of southmost ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... at the same time, they drove the others out of the house. My friend, in French, requested the Dutchman to follow his men; but he refused, and challenged him to single combat, for the insult he said he had received at his hands—adding some opprobrious epithets, which roused the choler of the brave Englishman. In an instant, they were engaged hand to hand; but short was the strife—the Dutchman fell dead on the scene of his violence, and his men returned to the camp, and made a complaint ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... names bestowed upon those poor creatures is long and curious;—and, as is, alas! too natural, most of the opprobrious appellations are drawn from circumstances into which they were forced by their persecutors, who even consolidated their miseries into one reproachful term, calling them Patarenians, or Paturins, from pati, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... at the command of the representatives of the nation. London was in arms all night. The next day the shops were closed; the streets were filled with immense crowds; the multitude pressed round the King's coach, and insulted him with opprobrious cries. The House of Commons, in the meantime, appointed a committee to sit in the city, for the purpose of inquiring into the circumstances ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hate and his loathing were made eternal; for he loved another with the ardor of a first fresh love, and his wife seemed to him a demon full of malignity, who stood between him and the angel of his heart and the heaven of his desires. His words of despair rang within her ears. The opprobrious epithets which he applied to her stung her to the quick. Passionate and hot-hearted, all her woman's nature rose up in arms at this horrible, this unlooked-for assault. All her pride surged up within her in deep and bitter resentment. Whatever she might once have been, she felt that ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... with reference to the chief god of his nation in its heathendom, may possibly have arisen after their conversion to Christianity; but from the coincidence that the Algonkin tribes constantly applied such seemingly opprobrious terms to their principal deity, it may have arisen from a similar cycle ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... must be stated, upon the same incontestable authority, that not a Catholic in the city was injured or insulted. The priests who had remained there were not allowed to say mass, but they never met with an opprobrious word or look ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their recall designates them as nostre benemerite meretrici: a fund and some houses, called Case rampane, were assigned to them; hence the opprobrious appellation of Carampane. [The writer of the Preface to Leggi e memorie Venete sulla Prostituzione, which was issued from Lord Orford's private press in 1870, maintains that the designation is mythical. "Tale asserzione che non ha verum fondamento, salvo che nella imaginazione ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... evidence, he was brought before a court of three subalterns, and, after what was called "a very patient trial" of four or five hours, sentenced to be hanged. Not one insult was spared. When he was marched up from the wharf, the sailors were permitted to heap upon him every opprobrious epithet. Before his execution "his black coat and vest were taken from him as a prize by one soldier, his spectacles by another; so," as an officer boasts, "he was treated not differently from the common ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... not know it as mug-bread, for that was a local name, confined largely to our own Maine homestead and vicinity. It has been called milk-yeast bread, patent bread, milk-emptyings bread and salt-rising bread; and it has also been stigmatized by several opprobrious and offensive epithets, bestowed, I am told, by irate housewives who lacked the skill ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... [Footnote 13: The opprobrious name which the Turks bestow on the infidels, is expressed Kabour by Ducas, and Giaour by Leunclavius and the moderns. The former term is derived by Ducange (Gloss. Graec tom. i. p. 530) from Kabouron, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... even gave up many of his just rights to avoid quarrelling, which conduct, instead of gaining (as it justly deserved) the approbation of his companions, drew upon him the insult and abuse of the whole school; and they were perpetually teasing him with the opprobrious title of coward. For some time he bore it with great good-humour, and endeavoured to laugh it off; but, finding that had no effect, he one day thus addressed us:—"If you suppose that I like to ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... him with a bucket of water." It was said by Atterbury's enemies that he was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under his administration Christchurch was in confusion, scandalous altercations took place, opprobrious words were exchanged; and there was reason to fear that the great Tory college would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric of Rochester, which was then always united with the deanery of Westminster. Still higher dignities seemed to be before ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that his content was ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Lord Hopton (in its most opprobrious charge wholly undeserved) and the subsequent interview with his father, produced a marked change in the character of Eustace. He saw that his misfortunes had proceeded from rash impetuosity, extreme confidence in his own talents, and a precipitate ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Sir Gryphon, during this, had made return Homeward, with anger and with fury stung; Less thinking of his honours that the scorn Which on the vile Martano had been flung. Hence, from himself the opprobrious shame to turn, Martano now employs his lying tongue; And she, the false and cunning courtezan, Assists him in his scheme ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... should be sorry to apply to a minister of any religion the opprobrious epithet of a "Surpliced Ruffian." It would seem, however, that Archdeacon Laffan aspires to the "bad eminence" of the apologist of assassins. What would my readers say, were I to report the Ministers of Islamism in The ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Words[205] contain a genuinely poetic message, flawlessly expressed. As for the pianoforte music, when the Songs without Words are called "hackneyed" we must remember that only compositions of truly popular appeal ever have sufficient vogue to warrant the application of this opprobrious term. In the pianoforte Scherzos and in the Rondo Capriccioso in E major there is without doubt a vitality and a play of fancy easier to criticize than to create. The prevalent mood in Mendelssohn's music is one of sunny-hearted ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... lyrics of culture, since they regard the perfection of the individual,—the equipoise of heart and head, steadfast seriousness as opposed to showy sciolism, the preservation of hope and faith,—as a noble object of emotion. They are not intellectual in the opprobrious sense of the word as applied to poetry; they are suffused with warm feeling and their language is simple and natural. On the other hand they are argumentative: they state propositions and draw conclusions the value of which ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the others. I have said any Tamtonian, but that is an overstatement. A few usually persist in thinking as they did before; or in altering their convictions in obedience to reason instead of authority, as our own people do; but they are at once assailed with the most opprobrious names, accused of treason and all manner of crimes, pelted with mud and stones and in some instances deprived of their noses and ears by the public executioner. Yet in no country is independence of thought so vaunted as a virtue, and in none is freedom of speech considered so obvious ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Of its doctrines, he was proudly conscious, that the general shape and fashion of his life bore nothing of the stamp of fanaticism. But he begged leave, in his turn, to address a word of serious exhortation to their lordships. He exhorted them to beware how they were persuaded to bury, under the opprobrious name of fanaticism, the regard which they owed to the great duties of mercy and justice, for the neglect of which (if they should neglect them) they would be answerable at that tribunal, where no prevarication of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Nabu-bel-shumate had fled. It is not easy to say whether Ashurbanipal had appointed a lady, once the harimtu, or courtesan, of Menanu, as ruler of the Sealand before Nabu-bel-shumate, or whether he means to call Nabu-bel-shumate by this opprobrious epithet. Who is meant by Menanu is hard to see, unless it be the Elamite King, Umman-minana, the contemporary of Sennacherib, who had protected ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... The opprobrious proverb already mentioned is not the only permanent mark of unpopularity that the Tinkers have earned for themselves at Lisconnel. Their very name has become a term of reproach among us, so that "an ould tinker" is recognised as an appropriate epithet for ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... were there we could not meet a cadet anywhere without having the most opprobrious epithets applied to us; but after complaining two or three times, we concluded to pay no attention to such things, for, as we did not know these cadets, we could ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... to be a man of so fiery a temper, and so impatient of an injury, even from Sir John Falstaff his captain, and a knight, that he not only disobeyed his commands about carrying a letter to Mrs. Page, but returned him an answer as full of contumely, and in as opprobrious terms, as he ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... get to hell out of here! ** Voetsak (Cape Dutch), ditto. *** Enenda zako (Kiswahill), ditto. **** Kuma nina (Kiswahill). An opprobrious, and perhaps the commonest expletive In the language, amounting to a request for details of the objurgee's female ancestry. By no means for ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... being of a kind to receive opprobrious epithets meekly, Aristides slowly, and with an evident effort, lifted the shovel in a ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... cool, the distant spectator, placed in safety, may arraign me for ingratitude, may bring forth the principles of Solon or Montesquieu; he may look on me as wilfully guilty; he may call me by the most opprobrious names. Secure from personal danger, his warm imagination, undisturbed by the least agitation of the heart, will expatiate freely on this grand question; and will consider this extended field, but as exhibiting the double scene of attack and defence. To him the object becomes abstracted, the intermediate ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Major Moses did not get back till very late, much depressed at the ill-success of his mission. He had searched all day most indefatigably, and had endured much contumely from the Union ladies, who called him "a thievish little rebel scoundrel," and other opprobrious epithets. But this did not annoy him so much as the manner in which everything he wanted had been sent away or hidden in private houses, which he was not allowed by General Lee's order to search. He had only managed to secure a quantity of molasses, sugar, and whisky. Poor Moses ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... Of Pallas. She to heaven well-pleased return'd, And in the mansion of Jove AEgis[20]-armed Arriving, mingled with her kindred Gods. But though from violence, yet not from words 275 Abstained Achilles, but with bitter taunt Opprobrious, his antagonist reproached. Oh charged with wine, in steadfastness of face Dog unabashed, and yet at heart a deer! Thou never, when the troops have taken arms, 280 Hast dared to take thine also; never thou Associate with Achaia's Chiefs, to form The secret ambush.[21] No. The sound ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, he would cut the matter short and wave me to the door without the grace of a word—I saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I saw that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... trees there that cast a tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass plots? I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass plots, or rather the spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient promenade, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... some one else, in order that I may benefit by the example." The king laughed at his wit, and spared his life.—Nor is this tale without a spice of humour: An astrologer entered his house and finding a stranger in company with his wife abused him, and called him such opprobrious names that a quarrel and strife ensued. A shrewd man, being informed of this, said to the astrologer: "What do you know of the heavenly bodies, when you cannot tell what goes on in your own house?"[10]—Last, and perhaps best of all, is this one: I was hesitating ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Spanish called the boatman thief. If there be any term of reproach which stings a Spaniard (and such was the boatman) more than another, it is that one; and the fellow no sooner heard it applied to himself, than with eyes sparkling with fury, he put his fist to the hadji's nose, and repaid the one opprobrious name by at least ten others equally bad or worse. He would perhaps have proceeded to acts of violence had he not been pulled away by the other Moors, who led him aside, and I suppose either said or gave him something which pacified him, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Miss Browne with all her old severity, rejuvenated apparently by this opportunity to put me in my place, "would do well to consult her dictionary, before applying opprobrious terms to persons of respectability. A pirate is one who commits robbery upon the high seas. If such a crime lies at the door of any member of this expedition I am unaware ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... to the officers, she started up, and stood erect, face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace and joy and light and life"—for he was standing against the window a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame from hell, since he was in it—and she cried to him to stand away, she chose ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... instrument or weapon whatever, or shall, post or publish, or cause to be posted or published, any writing charging any such person so declining or refusing to accept any such challenge to be a coward, or using any other opprobrious or injurious language therein, tending to deride and disgrace such person, for so offending, on conviction thereof in any court competent to trial thereof in said district, shall be punished by confinement to hard ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of course, it is only by the rarest conjunction of circumstances, that the movements and plans which such a state of things gives rise to, can get any other than the most opprobrious name and place in history. Success is their only certificate of legitimacy. To attempt to overthrow a government still so strongly planted in the endurance and passivity of the people, might seem, perhaps, to some minds in these circumstances, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the prevalent craving for a certain author's blood could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah dinner. Besides, nobody knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production, Mordecai Josephs, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Greeks were certainly sensitive to the expression of animal eyes—witness "cow-eyed" Hera, or the opprobrious epithet "dog-eyed"; altogether, the more we study what is left of their zoological researches, the more we realize what close observers they were in natural history. Aristotle, for instance, points out sexual differences ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... given to mark some assumed characteristic, good or bad; an epithet is always an adjective, or a word or phrase used as an adjective, and is properly used to emphasize a characteristic but not to add information, as in the phrase "the sounding sea;" the idea that an epithet is always opprobrious, and that any word used opprobriously is an epithet is a popular error. Designation may be used much in the sense of appellation, but is more distinctive or specific in meaning; a designation properly so ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Peter Porcupine. The latter was publishing a daily paper (1799) and in it frequently brought forward Priestley's name in the most opprobrious manner, although Priestley in his ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... or succor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe there is hardly a man or woman to-day who would have the courage to march up to a half-grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his mouth, or tackle the omnipresent, from everlasting ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... convenient subsidy of "making up" whenever they did not think well to work. So strong did the feeling become that there were disturbances in several parishes, especially in the two Mordens, where the opprobrious Relieving Officer met with anything but a friendly reception on his first visits, and certain individuals from that parish, on applying for relief, found that the supply was cut off until it was safe for the Relieving Officer ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... exactly what he deserved. He had called him, Tom, an "old fool," a "dam' old fool," to be precise. The epithet in itself meant nothing—it was in fact a fatuous and feeble term of abuse as compared to the opprobrious titles which he and Jerry were in the habit of exchanging—it was that abominable adjective which hurt. Jerry and he had called each other many names at times, they had exchanged numerous gibes and insults, but nothing like that hateful word "old" had ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... have been perverted to such a contrary meaning. But considering her to be the faithful-lest and most loving creature upon earth, and that true love cannot bear anything that touches upon or can be applied (though with ever so forced a construction) to an opprobrious or contemptuous meaning, I attributed her groundless resentment to her excess of fondness only for me; and falling upon the bed by her, and bathing her face in my tears, I assured her the interpretation she had put on my words ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... books, periodicals and newspapers by readers, especially in periodical rooms. Readers with strong feelings cannot resist annotating articles or chapters that express opinions in which they cannot concur. Pictures of generals or royalties are especially liable to defacement with opprobrious epithets. This feeling extends even to bulletins. Libraries receive strenuous protests against the display of portraits and other material relating to one of the contesting parties without similar material on the ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... with ocular demonstration of it, by introducing him to one of my most splendid connexions; that when he hears me called 'that fellow Cowper,' which has happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestionable evidence, to assert my gentlemanhood, and relieve me from the weight of that opprobrious appellation. Oh pride! pride! it deceives with the subtlety of a serpent, and seems to walk erect, though it crawls upon the earth. How will it twist and twine itself about to get from under the Cross, which it is the glory of our Christian calling to be able to bear with patience and goodwill. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... admitted Tutt. "But it sounds opprobrious. Still, that is a rather dangerous test. You remember that colored client of ours who wanted us to bring an action against somebody for calling ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... nor any shame in shunning it. Their last encounter with the scoundrels would absolve them from all stigma or reproach for refusing to fight them—even were there time and opportunity. So, they need have no fear that their honour will suffer, or that any one will apply to them the opprobrious epithet—lache. Indeed, they have not, and their only regret is at not being able to spend another hour in San Francisco in order that they might look up the foiled assassins, and give them into the custody of the police. But then that would lead to a difficulty ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... that he is sure he is happier, even in this situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependence. I understand (remember, this is a secret between ourselves)—I understand that Secretary Cunningham Falconer has found him out, and makes good use of his pen, but pays him shabbily. Temple is too much of a man of honour to peach. So Lord Oldborough knows nothing of the matter; and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... irresistible and headlong impulse, which withdrew the usual guard which he maintained over his language. "Charles of Burgundy is unworthy of your attachment. He who can insult and strike his councillors—he who can distinguish the wisest and most faithful among them by the opprobrious ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... places, he fixed his residence on an islet in the White Nile near Kawa. Mahomed Ahmed was a native of the lower province of Dongola, and as such was looked upon with a certain amount of contempt by the other races of the Soudan. When he quarrelled with his religious leader he was given the opprobrious name of "a wretched Dongolawi," but the courage with which he defied and exposed an arch-priest for not rigidly abiding by the tenets of the Koran, redounded so much to his credit that the people began to talk of this wonderful dervish quite as much as of the Khedive's Governor-General. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... opprobrious epithet, "I hain't got a day to spend, but, to begin with, there's two churches ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Lake Champlain, where Abercromby now went by the opprobrious nickname of 'Mrs Nabbycrumby,' 'The General put out orders that the breastwork should be lined with troops, and to fire three rounds for joy, and give thanks to God in a Religious Way.' But the joy was more whole-hearted among the little, half-forgotten ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... and very severe, and much too wantonly so. I hope, however, it is just. Some of the opprobrious language I shall soften, for the eternal repetitions of ignorance, absurdity, surprising, etc., are not wanted. I am sorry to observe so much Nationality in it. Let this be a secret between us, for I will not have my private opinions go beyond yourself. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... required of the young whose sole aim was the development of courage and daring. The worst name you could give to a samurai was "koshinuke" (coward). Many a feud leading to a fatal end has resulted from the mere use of this most hated of all opprobrious epithets. The history of Japan is full of heroic deeds. I well remember a conversation with a son of the old samurai type, who told me, with the blood tingling in his veins, of bloody deeds of old and the courage they demanded. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... attention for reasons that would not now be looked upon with favour were usually known by the opprobrious name of "Bully this" or "Bully that;" but "Jack the Devil" and "Hell Fire Jack" were perhaps as widely used names as any others. There were various causes for the acquisition of such distinction. It was generally the fearless ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... said, obtained his large wealth through means not sanctioned by laws human or divine. Men and women of the past generation, and therefore contemporaries, did not hesitate to designate him an "old pirate," though always the opprobrious words were spoken in an undertone, for people were half afraid of the dark, reserved, evil-looking man, who had evidently passed a large portion of his life among scenes of peril and violence. There were more pleasing traditions of the beautiful wife he brought home to grace ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... universities, on account of insufficiency. The three first books of Euclid, and as far as Quadratic Equations in Algebra, will save a man from being plucked. These unfortunate fellows are designated by many opprobrious appellations, such as the twelve apostles, the legion of honor, wise men of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Full-orbed, in his whole round of rays complete. They set at odds Heaven's jarring attributes, And, with one excellence, another wound; Maim Heaven's perfection, break its equal beams, Bid mercy triumph over—God himself, Undeified by their opprobrious praise; A God all mercy, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... farms, too, they met with more kicks than ha'pence. Again and again the people refused to sell anything to those whom they considered their enemies, and some even denied them the common courtesy of a drink of water. The chief amusement of the children along the route was to shout opprobrious or derisive epithets as they passed, not infrequently accompanied with stones, rotten apples, and now and then the still more objectionable egg. The squire's opinion of Whiggism went to an even lower pitch, but his womenkind bore it unflinchingly and uncomplainingly, happy merely ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... had at that time of serving my country, without the least suspicion that my only reward would be contempt and opprobrious names! To refuse the offer of the Spanish nation was the act of a blockhead of which I should not be ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... constable, who will seize your worship as a vagrant, according to the statute." "Heaven and earth!" cried the stranger, starting up, and laying his hand on his sword, "do I live to hear myself insulted with such an opprobrious epithet, and refrain from trampling into dust ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... mayntenour of those enormities, to procure the abrogation of the sayd lawes, whereby arose moch trouble in this said realme, and that his dethe, which they untruely called martyrdome, happened upon a reskewe by him made, and that, as it is written, he gave opprobrious wordes to the gentyllmen, whiche than counsayled hym to leave his stubbernesse, and to avoyde the commocion of the people, rysen up for that rescue. And he not only callyd the one of them bawde, but also toke Tracy by the bosome, and violently shoke and plucked hym ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler |
