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Rigid   /rˈɪdʒəd/  /rˈɪdʒɪd/   Listen
Rigid

adjective
1.
Incapable of or resistant to bending.  Synonym: stiff.  "A table made of rigid plastic" , "A palace guardsman stiff as a poker" , "Stiff hair" , "A stiff neck"
2.
Incapable of compromise or flexibility.  Synonym: strict.
3.
Incapable of adapting or changing to meet circumstances.  Synonyms: inflexible, unbending.  "An inflexible law" , "An unbending will to dominate"
4.
Designating an airship or dirigible having a form maintained by a stiff unyielding frame or structure.
5.
Fixed and unmoving.  Synonyms: fixed, set.  "His bearded face already has a set hollow look" , "A face rigid with pain"



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"Rigid" Quotes from Famous Books



... acute or chronic disease of the skin characterized by a localized or general, more or less diffuse, usually pigmented, rigid, stiffened, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... "In this connection is cited this old history. There were two brothers, viz., Sankha and Likhita, of rigid vows. The two brothers had two separate dwellings both of which were beautiful. Situate by the bank of the stream called Vahuda, both of those residences were adorned with trees that were always burthened with flowers and fruits. Once on a time Likhita came ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... a soldier, rigid, but the fingers of his right hand twitched, twitched, twitched; the hand itself stole higher. Very calmly, Vic hunted ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,— This water says, there is some secret in you Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive To all that circles you. This bare tree says,— Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost, Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches Flung out against the sky,—this tall tree says, There is some cold austerity in you, A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks, Fertile and deep; you bide your time, are patient, Serene in silence, bare to outward seeming, Concealing what reserves of power and ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken

... differences urged in section 1 necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs to be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means. The rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has contributed perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of the educational machinery. The importance of this change from compulsion and rigidity toward greater flexibility ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... his own way to the various spiritual movements that swept over the country. This was the period of wild revivals, when religion, entering into the converted soul with inconceivable violence, found expression in gasping shrieks, rigid faintings, and strong convulsions; and the leader of this movement, strange as it may seem, was a warm friend of Franklin's. George Whitefield first visited Philadelphia in 1739, and immediately filled the city with enthusiasm by his powerful oratory. Franklin was astonished ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More

... circle of selected associates; we were new to each other, and mutually attractive. He was a man, not of the old system, but of the old times, whose character had been developed, though not controlled, by the Revolution, the principles, transactions, and leading promoters of which he judged with rigid independence, without losing sight of the primary and national cause. His mind, eminently liberal, highly cultivated, and supported by solid good sense, was more original than inventive, profound rather than expanded, more ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... anxious to become an eye-witness of what had so long been one of the most powerful objects of my imagination. The gloomy and almost inaccessible situation chosen by this strange fraternity for their convent—their rigid separation from human intercourse—the infringible taciturnity imposed upon themselves—and the terrible severity of their penances, are certainly circumstances more resembling the visionary indulgence of fantasy and fiction, than actual realities to be met with ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes

... keeping things in place. Absurd as these details may seem, they were all parts, and very important parts, in the life and training of that mighty host that carried the destiny of the country in its discipline during four years. There was rigid inspection of quarters every Sunday morning, and during the week the non-commissioned officers were expected to see that cleanliness was not intermitted. The company "street" was "policed" every morning after breakfast, swept and garnished, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... vulgar poisoner: he was a great artist in poisons, comparable with the Medici or the Borgias. For him murder was a fine art, and he had reduced it to fixed and rigid rules: he had arrived at a point when he was guided not by his personal interest but by a taste for experiment. God has reserved the act of creation for Himself, but has suffered destruction to be within the scope of man: man therefore supposes that in destroying life he is God's ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... protest against a union of Church and State; they practiced a weekly breaking of the loaf; held to a plurality of elders in every church, and were exceptionally helpful to the poor; and surely, even Dr. Whitsitt will not call these damnable heresies. But they were also rigid separatists. They were Calvinists of the straitest sect, and made all their opinions a bond of union. In this they were like the Baptists, but essentially dissimilar to the Disciples. They exalted feet washing and the holy kiss into church ordinances, and excluded all who did not agree with them ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate the immediate task of putting our public household in order. We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... attractive coast like that in the vicinity of Cape Adare; the nearest well-explored region. It had proved otherwise, only too well endorsing the scanty information supplied by D'Urville and Wilkes of the coastline seen by them. A glance at the austere plateau and the ice-fettered coast was evidence of a rigid, inhospitable climate. It was apparent, too, that only a short summer could be expected in these latitudes, thus ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... city, and the night a warm one in August.' This was all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see. The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly changed. The long line of the naked dead, flanked by the rigid silver statue, was not pleasant to look upon. It was made up of men alone. Were the womenkind, then, forced to sleep in the shelter of the stifling mud- huts as best they might? The fretful wail of a child from a low mud-roof answered ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... beads. Each man was a skilled artist, you see, and did some one special thing. The phiolari made vases, cups, and glass for windows; the cristallai optical glass; and the specchiai mirrors. No strangers were allowed to visit the glass works, and all apprentices must pass a rigid examination not only as to their skill, but as to their previous personal history. In 1495 the glass houses at Murano extended for a mile along a single street and the great furnaces roared ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett

... of free markets on public health and welfare. The current government has lowered income taxes and introduced measures to boost employment, but has done little to reform an overly expensive pension system, rigid labor market, and restrictive bureaucracy that discourage hiring and make the tax burden one of the highest in Europe. In addition to the tax burden, the reduction of the workweek to 35 hours, which is to be extended to small firms in 2002, has drawn criticism for lowering the ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... the Court. He remembered that it was not by strict obedience to general principles that Prussia had grown great. Frederick the Second had not allowed himself to be stopped by these narrow searchings of heart; his successor had not scrupled to ally himself with revolutionary France. This rigid insistence on a rule of right, this nice determining of questions of conscience, seemed better suited to the confessor's chair than to the advisers of a great monarch. And the principle to which he was asked to sacrifice the future of his country,—was it after all a true principle? Why should Prussia ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... that class of rigid moralists who can tolerate in others no wanderings from the right way. His children were forced into the straight jacket of external consistency from their earliest infancy; and if they deviated from the right line in which they were required to walk, punishment ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur

... a moment. His tall, thin form became rigid in the intensity of his service. In the silence, that deepened, the ticking of the clock in the front of the gallery, could be heard plainly in ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... often so pathetic that she brought tears to every eye. Every word came from her heart, and it went right to the hearts of all. Kentucky and Maryland now listened as eagerly as Georgia and Alabama; Brownlow's iron features and Botts' rigid face soon relaxed, and tears stood in the old Virginian's eyes; while the noble Tennesseean moved his place, and gazed at the inspired girl with an interest and wonderment which no other orator had moved before. She had the audience in hand, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... working out their conclusions upon the events and personages of past times. For Lord Acton was an indefatigable researcher after truth; his standard of public morality was austere, lofty, and uncompromising. I myself venture to think that he was too rigid; he admitted no excuse for breaches of the moral law on the pretext, however urgent, of political necessity; he refused to allow extenuation of violence or bloodshed even in times of great emergency. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... of temperament. Louis was a man whose first thought was duty. Hortense loved only gayety and pleasure. He particularly objected to her dancing; she was one of the most graceful dancers ever seen, and would not give it up to please him. In short, she was all graceful, captivating frivolity; he, rigid and exacting. Both had burning memories in their hearts of what "might have been," and above all, after Louis became king of Holland, each took opposite political views. Louis wanted to govern Holland as the good king of the Dutch; Napoleon expected him ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... minute after the enemy ship's disappearance, Bors sat rigid, his hands clenched, facing the disaster the escape of the Mekinese constituted. Sweat appeared on ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... themselves at the opening of a small rocky ravine, near the foot of "Boots Hill." Peering down into its still shadowed depths, they discerned what appeared like a body lying there motionless. Keith sprang down beside it, and turned the rigid form over until the dead face was revealed in the wan light—it was that of the red moustached Scott. He staggered back at the recognition, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... is an ugly looking, dirty brown-coloured substance, very hard and rigid until softened by water and a very lengthened process of cookery, after which ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... between Michelangelo's dome and Brunelleschi's is complete—Brunelleschi's so suave and gentle in its rise, with its grey lines to help the eye, and this soaring so boldly to its lantern, with its rigid device of dwindling squares. The odd thing is that with these two domes to teach him better the designer of the Chapel of the Princes should ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... interrogative, but his voice failed before he could add another syllable. Eve drew herself up, rigid in ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... standing rigid as a statue. To have fallen back a step would have been to precipitate an immediate charge; to have rushed forward to meet the other might have had the same result, or it might have put the bellicose one to flight—it all depended upon the young ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... symmetrical figures covering the whole face puzzle and mislead an unaccustomed eye: it is moreover probable that the deep incisions, by destroying the play of the superficial muscles, give an air of rigid inflexibility. But, besides this, there is a twinkling in the eye which cannot indicate anything but cunning and ferocity. Their figures are tall and bulky; but not comparable in elegance with those of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... and rested on Archelaus. He, rigid at attention, caught and held there spellbound, merely rolled ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... views on such matters are so rigid—and it's all to their credit—that the marriage would have fallen through at once if the least hint of Hubert's mess had got out—and then we should have had him on our ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... was probably the most painful experience in their lives. Barbara had come to it softened and ready to meet him half way. The right kind of humility in Monty would have found her plastic. But she had very definite and rigid ideas of his duty in the premises. And Monty was too simple minded to seem to suffer, and much too flippant to understand. It was plain to each that the other did not expect to talk, but they both realized that they owed a duty to appearances ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... conformed to his master Charles 1st's measures, and was by him sent down commissioner to the assembly 1630, which he commanded to dissolve (though they did not obey) and left it. He published the king's declaration against the covenants and covenanters. And though none of the most rigid, yet he may be justly accounted the head of the malignant faction in Scotland, from 1638 to 1648, since he, contrary to the solemn league and covenant, raised a large army in Scotland and went to England in behalf of the king. But he was shamefully ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... put out his hand to grope his way back to the door. It touched Ramoni, sitting rigid. He did not stir. The hand reached over him, caught the lintel of the door and guided the blind man to the hall. Then Ramoni stood up. Without a word he followed the other. When he had overtaken him he laid his hand gently on the blind ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... These sons of the Huguenots and of the Dutch refugees who fled from the persecuting zeal of Alva have all sprung from an exceptionally religious stock, and with dogged conservatism still cling to the rigid traditions and narrow beliefs of a bygone age. The country-bred Boer resembles not remotely our own Puritans and Covenanters. He and his are God's Elect, and the Elect of the Lord have ever seemed prone to ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... a flare. Black forms stand rigid there, Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts Stride hither and thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare Of snags and tangles. Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts Gleams desolate along the ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... involves of opportunity and fate—are insignificant, if the soul's life is thus secured. I do not mean that such a thought clears the mystery of the different lots of mankind; but it suggests another view of the apparent injustice of the world in its most rigid forms. This, however, is a wandering thought. The great reversal of the law of nature in the soul lies in the fact that whereas she proceeds by the selfish will of the strongest trampling out the weak, spiritual law requires the best to sacrifice itself for the least. Scientific ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... followed by the next steamer, and, leaving my wife with my parents, I went on to Washington and to Greene's headquarters. I was too late for Greene, and I could not pass the medical examination, which was then very rigid, for all the North was volunteering. "Go home," said Greene; "we have already buried all the men like you. We have not seen the enemy yet, and we have buried six per cent. of the regiment. It is no place for you." But I had no choice; there were 800,000 men enlisted, and further enlistments were ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... mouth. He looked at his mother and seemed about to speak, but no sound came from his lips. Then his eye fell on his stepfather, who, rather alarmed at the boy's appearance, was standing near the door. The expression of Ned's face changed, his mouth became set and rigid, his eyes dilated, and Mr. Mulready, believing that he was about to spring upon him, drew back hastily half a step and threw up his hands to defend himself. Mrs. Mulready threw herself in Ned's way; the boy made no ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... very pretty sight presented to the horse experts lining the rail and to persons in boxes and tier seats. They saw a blockily built strawberry roan, his chiselled neck arched in a perfect crest, his rigid thigh muscles rippling under a shiny coat as he swung his hocks, his slim forelegs sweeping up and out, and every curve of his rounded body, from the tip of his absurd whisk-broom tail to the white snip on the end of his tossing nose, expressing that exuberance of spirits, that jaunty ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... factors—the evidence, and the mind that judges of the evidence; and it may be purely a mental set or bias on my part that causes me throughout this long discussion, to see, on the one side, dubious facts and defective logic, and on the other side firm reasoning and a knowledge of what rigid experimental enquiry demands. But, judged of practically, what, again, has the question of Spontaneous Generation to do with us? Let us see. There are numerous diseases of men and animals that ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... nicely adjusted by mere accident? Is it not more just to conclude that they were the result of due deliberation and design? Had it been intended that Congress should be restricted in the appropriation of the public money to such expenditures as were authorized by a rigid construction of the other specific grants, how easy would it have been to have provided for it by a declaration to that effect. The omission of such declaration is therefore an additional proof that it was not intended that the grant should be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... each time that he had spoken above a whisper. And his Aunt Elena had stationed herself at the door with a dramatic air, like a stage heroine resolved to plunge a dagger into the tyrant who should dare to cross the threshold. The entire family was accustomed to submit to the rigid authority of Don Marcelo Desnoyers. "Oh, that old man!" exclaimed Julio, referring to his father. "He may live many years yet, but how he weighs ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Meredith's face grew rigid in his endeavor to maintain a serious expression. He had taken out a notebook at the beginning of the interview to jot down the addresses, but he copied Amarilly's comments as well, for the future entertainment ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant. No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of counting words had never yet occurred ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... conduct only increased proof of his guilt, and finally insisted upon laying his hand upon the suspicious part, when with a poorly-concealed smile, but a polite "beg your pardon," he let the man pass on his way. It is probable the gate-keeper was more rigid in his examinations, from the fact that not long before a curious case of deception had occurred at one of the other gates, or rather a case of long-continued deception was exposed. A man who lived in a little ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smile about the table. ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... divine, by that virtuous pride which shewed him some part of her more charming mind. What he extremely liked before, he now almost adored; and having, by the loose manner in which the count had mentioned these two English ladies, imagined them women of not over-rigid principles, now finding his mistake, at least as concerning one of them, was so much ashamed and angry with himself for having been the cause of that disorder he was witness of, that he for some moments was equally at a loss ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... annoyance, or, what is equally as bad, if not worse, the continual fear and imagination of the approach of venomous insects, creeping things, and reptiles, the residents should adapt them to the place and circumstances, without that rigid imitation of European and American order of building. Every house should be well ventilated with windows on opposite sides of the rooms, when and wherever this is practicable, and the same may be said of doors. And where the room will not admit of opposite windows, or windows at least ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... her colour more set than it had been when she witnessed that marriage eight years ago, was as emotional as ever, her facile feelings only restrained at all by her husband's rigid taciturnity, even as her high bosom was kept up by the stiffest of "temberan busks"—a piece of wood which, like all self-respecting Cornishwomen, she wore thrust inside the front of her stays. Philip ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... countenance had grown quite rigid. Then suddenly he said, in a gentle tone of voice which was not by any means in keeping with the ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... The rigid ideas of female propriety which General Harrington enforced in his family, had been greatly outraged that day. This well-regulated home was thrown into disorder by the unaccountable absence of his wife and Lina from the tea-table. He had followed his wife to the bank of the river, and with a feeling ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... door, Mazie stood tense, motionless, her arms outstretched in terror. Fingers rigid, lips half-parted in a scream, she stared at the door. In the doorway stood the Russian, a knife gleaming in his hand. For a second his eyes searched the room. Then they fell on the body of the Jap huddled on the floor. Rage darkened his face as the ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell

... July 11, as I was breakfasting in the hotel with Admiral Allyn, there was great excitement outside, and, going to the piazza, we saw a large airship approaching rapidly from the northwest at the height of about a mile. It was one of the non-rigid Parseval ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... in the hands of those best fitted to govern, a ruling class which aims directly at efficiency, a select class but necessarily self-selected, thus supplanting an economic regime by a military regime—successful truly in certain forms of economic efficiency through a more rigid and compact organization, but destructive of the initiative, the evolutionary growth, the fundamental development, the liberties of the people. Contrast this with the freedom, happiness, and progress of a nation of shop-keepers. Now this economic regime, with its individual instances of cruelty, ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman

... the boy's arms only grew tighter and tighter with snake-like force, while a dreadful smile came into the young face and became stamped there, engraved in rigid lines. His lower lip was caught between his teeth, and a thin stream of blood ran from it over the smooth, clean-cut chin. It was the only sign he gave that he was putting forth the whole of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... neckerchiefs, and sometimes even their pantaloons on the spot, and offering to pawn them for a song. Of course such applications were never refused. But though on shore, at Liverpool, poor Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he himself is by no means exempt from practices, that do not savor of a rigid morality; at least according to law. In tobacco smuggling he is an adept: and when cool and collected, often manages to evade the Customs completely, and land goodly packages of the weed, which owing to the immense duties upon it in England, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... over, there is no uncunt-ing, no stopping; but with rigid prick still up to its roots in her cunt, on again we go fucking in earnest. Now is the higher pleasure. The first was a maddening desire for each other, a fuck finished before it was begun. Now we are fucking with soft pleasure, and the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... there are no products of human thought and feeling capable of being expressed by form which do not find their common denominator in a linear drawing. The simplicity of a sketch, the comparative rapidity with which it is produced, the concentration of meaning demanded by its rigid economy of means, render it more symbolical, more like the hieroglyph of its maker's mind, than any finished work can be. We may discover a greater mass of interesting objects in a painted picture or a carved statue; but we shall never find exactly ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... Contestants sit on the ground, facing each other, legs straight and the soles of the feet in contact. The cane is grasped as in 2 but close to the feet. Object: To pull the opponent to his feet. The legs throughout the contest must be kept rigid. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... father and her brothers started and stared at her as if she had cried out. Two red spots had come on her brown cheeks; her eyes were glittering with dark light; her lips were a firm red; her fingers stiffened with nervous clutches. She looked as if every muscle in her were strained and rigid for a leap. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... denudation, this chasm is an example of downward erosion by sand-bearing water. The principle on which the cutting depends is almost identical with that of the marble saw, but the sand grains, instead of being embedded in rigid iron, are carried by a flexible stream of water. By gravity they have been held against the bottom of the cut, so that they should make it vertical, but the current has carried them, in places, against one side ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... in mechanics or any line of Horace. And I have seen my lady sitting a splendid mount, with the reins caught properly in her fingers and her back as straight as a whip-staff, and I would have wagered my life that every muscle in her little body was as rigid as a rock, and her knee as numb as the conscience ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... Face to face with her enemy, she recalled the potency of her witch-gaze. She narrowed her eyelids and directed her steely glance into the bloodshot eyes of her tormentor. During a few seconds they were thus: the girl half-standing, half-kneeling, rigid, tense, holding the man from her with all her strength. The man sprawling on his side in the chair—a huge, ridiculous being, panting, gasping, helpless, for he could not regain his balance unless he let go the woman's wrists. To Wilhelmine, in spite of her dauntless nature, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... made the executioner. Uraso's address to the culprits. Their terror. Mysticism. Hypnotic influences. Mesmerism. Constant repetitions. Mystic numbers. The spell on all the natives. The effect of the mesmeric influence on the Chief. The rigid subjects. John the peerless Korino. The threats against the witch doctors. Bringing the victims to life. Amazement of the people. The Chief's address to his people. The return to the village. The feast. The mystic third. The dance at the end of the festival. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... rigid religious simplicity of these performances was broken in upon, and the devil and a circle of infernal associates were introduced to relieve the performance, and to excite laughter by all sorts of strange noises and antics. By and by, abstract personifications, such as Truth, Justice, Mercy, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... impossible to get what one wants, but it is impossible to get any part of it, because nobody can mark it out plainly like a map. That clear and even hard quality that there was in the old bargaining has wholly vanished. We forget that the word "compromise" contains, among other things, the rigid and ringing word "promise." Moderation is not vague; it is as definite as perfection. The middle point is as fixed as ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... Eugenie, already beautiful, whose intelligent smile gives promise that she has inherited from you the most precious gifts of womanhood, and who will certainly enjoy during her childhood and youth all those happinesses which a rigid mother denied to the Eugenie of these pages. Though Frenchmen are taxed with inconstancy, you will find me Italian in faithfulness and memory. While writing the name of "Eugenie," my thoughts have often ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... liked faction-fighting and emperors who had to court their favour, and with the prospect of rioting and plunder were ready enough for civil war. He realized, also, that one who wins a throne by violence cannot keep it by suddenly trying to enforce the rigid discipline of earlier days. However, the danger of the crisis both for the city and the senate seriously alarmed him, so he finally delivered himself ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... more than six months I have vainly endeavoured to discover where he has concealed himself, but I have now some reason to think he is at the Hague. The Count earnestly conjured the Marquis to make the most rigid search, in order to discover his son's retreat, and to endeavour to prevail upon him to return to his home. 'It is an act of justice,' continued he, 'to provide for the, girl, if she consents to give up the written promise of marriage which she has received, and I leave it to your discretion ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Deformed*—We are accustomed to look upon the skeleton as a rigid framework which can get out of its natural form only through severe strain or by violence. This view is far from being correct. On account of their necessary freedom of motion, the bones, especially those of the spinal column, are ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. "Now, tell me," he said, slowly. "Just what ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... the mask of his face? She watched him, spellbound by his complete surrender to the mood that had dominated him from the moment he had touched the deep forests of the Black Mountain range. A grim elation ruled even his silences. The man standing there rigid, his face a smiling, twitching mask, was a stranger. This man she had never known, or loved. And yet they were bound for life in the tenderest and strongest ties that can hold ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon

... away from, much more for slaves. The rule forbade any colored person leaving there by rail road or steamboat, without such applicant had been weighed, measured, and then given a bond signed by unquestionable signatures, well known. Baltimore was rigid in the extreme, and was a never-failing source of annoyance, trouble and expense to colored people generally, and not unfrequently to slave-holders too, when they were traveling North with "colored servants." Just as ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... disagreeable; it participates in all its pleasures; it shares in all its pains; in consequence it conjointly approves or disapproves its state; like it, it is either sound or diseased; active or languishing; awake or asleep. In old age man extinguishes entirely, his fibres become rigid, his nerves loose their elasticity, his senses are obtunded, his sight grows dim, his ears lose their quickness, his ideas become unconnected, his memory fails, his imagination cools: what then becomes of his soul? Alas! ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... of books and papers to the toilet to read. It should be an imperative rule that no other place be used. A little carelessness will cause disagreeable as well as dangerous results. By way of reiteration: First, rigid prohibition of the pollution of the surface of the ground by the strictest rules, diligently enforced. Second, the provision of toilets or latrines of adequate size with proper precaution to prevent the dispersal of excreta by wind, flies, or other agencies. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... came and went with every word she spoke. And, however shabby might be her dress, she was a little lady always. No one could mistake it, who listened to her sweet voice and prettily chosen words. The pitiful sadness of her Grandmother, the rigid melancholy of her Aunt, passed over her as a cloud drifts over a blue sky on a summer's day, leaving the blue undimmed. She loved them, and was sorry when they were sorry; but God had given her such a happy nature, that happy she must be ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... strict our judges are, in enjoining the punctual observance of the severe laws that confine women; and they are yet more strict in the observation of them in their own families; the cauzee you saw is more rigid in that point than any of the other magistrates. They are always preaching to their daughters what a heinous crime it is to shew themselves to men; and the girls themselves are so prepossessed with the notion, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... the cylindrical column rigid, we bound each of the vertebrae to the one in direct juxtaposition on either side firmly with strips of hide, several hundred feet of ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... restrictions on its legislative powers; it is not, as is the Congress of the United States, restrained within a very limited sphere of action; it is not, as are both the Congress and the State Legislatures of the Union, bound hand and foot by the articles of a rigid Constitution; it is not compelled to respect any immutable maxims of legislation. Hence the Victorian Parliament—in this resembling its creator, the British Parliament—exercises an amount of legislative freedom unknown to most foreign representative ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... as though he had been shot, and, turning round, regarded the two young ladies for some minutes in silence, while Mrs. Russell sat rigid with horror at this shocking irreverence. But in the royal eye, as it rested on Katie, there was a merry twinkle, until at length the contagion seized upon "His Majesty" himself, and he too burst forth into peals of laughter. After this even Mrs. Russell joined in, and so it happened ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... the third floor. It was lit brightly by a gas-jet, but no one was in sight, and the three doors opening upon it were shut. At the rear of the hall was a window; the blind was raised, and through the panes, dripping in the rain, Ford caught a glimpse of the rigid iron rods of a fire-escape. His spirits leaped exultantly. If necessary, by means of this scaling ladder, he could work entirely from the outside. Greatly elated, he tiptoed past the closed doors and mounted to the fourth floor. This also was lit by a gas-jet ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis

... health, of the commencement of the shooting season, and indeed as a farewell visit, for it was my intention to take dawk the very next morning and return to my regiment. The three amateur missionaries whom I have mentioned, and some ladies in the cantonment of very rigid religious principles, refused to appear at my little party. They had better never have been born than have done as they did: as ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... people's own doings to their faces, as capital jokes against somebody else! I got into terrible trouble in that way with a caller only the other day, and if I had had any sense I should have stopped in time, for I had plenty of warning. Her face grew all stiff and rigid, and I wondered what in the world had given Elsie such a cough all of a sudden. Is there any cure, do you think, for a habit like this—anything I could do ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... a rigid Roman Catholic, her son a free-thinker, in the broadest significance of the term, if one might judge from the selections that adorned his library shelves. But deep in his soul was the germination of a mystical creed, which gradually ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... this attitude, while it lasted, was his own communication. "If you won't then—good: I spare you and I give up. You affect me as by the appeal positively for pity: you convince me that for reasons rigid and sublime—what do I know?—we both of us should have suffered. I respect them then, and, though moved and privileged as, I believe, it has never been given to man, I retire, I renounce—never, on my honour, to try again. So rest for ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James

... to lasso them. And Dad and Von timed us in the saddling and made a most rigid examination of the result. It was the same way with our revolvers and rifles. The house-boys always cleaned them and greased them; but we had to learn how in order to see that they did it properly. More than once, at first, one or the other of us had our rifles taken away for a week ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... inflation rates. The current government has enacted numerous short-term reforms aimed at improving competitiveness and long-term growth. Italy has moved slowly, however, on implementing needed structural reforms, such as lightening the high tax burden and overhauling Italy's rigid labor market and over-generous pension system, because of the current economic slowdown and opposition from labor unions. But the leadership faces a severe economic constraint: the budget deficit has breached the 3% EU ceiling. The economy ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... problem in building a home. The house as a home is merely outer clothing, which should fit as an overcoat should, without wrinkles and creases that show their ready-made character. The woman, born housekeeper as she considers herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result. She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she cannot understand the inflexibility of ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... numerical odds, alone prevented the repetition, on a smaller scale, of the Affghan tragedy. The proximate cause of the rupture was the refusal of the Ameers to permit the clearing away of their shikargahs, or hunting-grounds, which were guarded with a rigid jealousy, paralleled only by the forest laws of William the Conqueror, and extended for many miles along the banks of the Indus, in a broad belt of impenetrable jungle, at once impeding the navigation by preventing the tracking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... Robin. He was sitting gripping the arms of his chair, with every muscle in his body rigid; and I knew that he, like myself, was praying God to strike down the cowardly devil that ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... strict and SPECULATIVE SENSE. Nay, this is unavoidable, since, propriety being regulated by CUSTOM, language is suited to the RECEIVED opinions, which are not always the truest. Hence it is impossible, even in the most rigid, philosophic reasonings, so far to alter the bent and genius of the tongue we speak, as never to give a handle for cavillers to pretend difficulties and inconsistencies. But, a fair and ingenuous reader will collect the sense from the scope and tenor ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid state, with her hands clenched—and her feet too, one might suppose—muttering, "Oh, you Bucket, you are ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... admirably suited for all purposes. To prevent the stretcher from any lateral or upward movement, two buttons with tightening screws are attached to the top of the carrier on each side. When the stretcher is laid on the carrier the screws are tightened and the stretcher is held rigid. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... processes, partly material and partly metaphysical, but ever more and more subject to the inspiration and the purpose of the Brahman, alone versed in the knowledge of the gods, and alone competent to propitiate them by sacrificial rites of increasing intricacy, and by prayers of a rigid formalism that gradually assume the shape of ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... and held its legs rigid; so that Tip, after several efforts, was able to roll him over and ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... stealthily follow the kangaroo's track for miles (the tracks were absolutely invisible to the uninitiated). Should at length the kangaroo sniff a tainted wind, or be startled by an incautious movement, his pursuer would suddenly become as rigid as a bronze figure, and he could remain in this position for hours. Finally, when within thirty or forty yards of the animal, he launched his spear, and in all the years I was among these people I never knew a man to miss his aim. Two distinct kinds of spears were used by the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... silver, brass, etc., as the apostle or prophet needs it to reveal the Word of God with pen and ink on parchment. There is much reasoning in these days about inspiration that appears at first sight very learned, but that will not bear much rigid scrutiny or candid comparison with the exact statements of the Word of God. There is nothing in the Bible more inspired than the tabernacle, and if the Destructive Critics would study it more, they would give up their ingenious but untenable theories as to ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey

... aunt had some new boarders on which to expend time and thought, and Alexina was living a life of rigid usefulness, studying shorthand in secret and helping with the house work, for the Russell mansion was large and servants not numerous. She also made dainty things for that radiant butterfly Madelaine. Alex was a born milliner, but ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... does appear to me that there could not be a happier or more appropriate designation, for a philosophy made up in this way of "meanes" and adjustments, so as to steer between the plus and minus, than a system of checks—not fixed, or rigid rules, as they are sometimes interpreted to be, but nice allowances of excess or defect, to be discovered, weighed, and determined by individual reason, in the audit of each man's conscience, according to the strength or weakness of the passions he ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various

... close his eyes, but his nerves and muscles were rigid as the bow twanged, and he noted that the arrow passed like a flash, high up above his head, as he saw the savage spring up standing on the ledge, clap his hand to his breast, and curving himself backward as his knees bent, fall outward and come down ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... Sin confronts the rigid law Of perfect Truth and Virtue,[9] awe Seizes and saddens thee to see how far Beyond thy reach, Perfection;—if we test By the Ideal of the Good, the best, How mean our efforts and our actions are! This space between the Ideal of man's soul And man's achievement, who hath ever past? An ocean spreads ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... were passing up the aisle it was observed that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe as some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full in sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid stare, and a young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the laughter on her lips. When the spectral procession approached the altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in the centre appeared a form that had been worthily ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the rigour of Mr. Henry Warden, himself," said the page, when he was left alone; "for, to do him justice, however strict in requiring the most rigid attention during the time of his homilies, he left us to the freedom of our own wills afterwards—ay, and would take a share in our pastimes, too, if he thought them entirely innocent. But these old women are utterly wrapt up in gloom, mystery and self-denial.—Well, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... story in silence. Then with a last long look at the rigid features below him, he replaced the covering. Passing on to the other table, he raised the sheet from the face of a splendid young Englishman, whom he had last seen the week before at Regina; an English public-school boy of the manliest type, full of hope for ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... read the signs of the times with the prophetic eye of a poet. In his rambles about the environs of Paris he was struck with the immense quantities of game running about almost in a tame state; and saw in those costly and rigid preserves for the amusement and luxury of the privileged few a sure "badge of the slavery of the people." This slavery he predicted was drawing toward a close. "When I consider that these parliaments, the members of which are all created by the court, and the presidents ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... cravings of desires that cannot be satisfied, and the lacerations inflicted by ruined self-respect. And therefore there is a truth in Crabbe's delineations which is quite independent of his more or less rigid administration of poetical justice. His critics used to accuse him of having a low opinion of human nature. It is quite true that he assigns to selfishness and brutal passion a very large part in carrying on the machinery of the world. Some readers may ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... faculties and bated breath; every time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start to say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden "Hark!" and instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one might call such a condition by so strong ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... from his lips, through which the discoloured blood began to ooze slowly—he was dead. And Fontenelle, whose wound bled inwardly, turned himself wearily round to gaze on the rigid face upturned to the moon. His brother's face! So like his own! He was not conscious himself of any great pain—he felt a dizzy languor and a drowsiness as of dreams—but he knew what the dreaming meant,- -he knew that he would soon sleep to wake again—but where? He ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... moved a muscle beneath his scrutiny. The doctor was wholly self-possessed. Maddy had no terrors for him now. She needed his services, and he rendered them willingly, applying restoratives which soon brought back signs of life in the rigid form. With a shiver and a moan Madeline whispered: "Oh, grandma, I'm so tired," and nestled closer to the bosom where she had never dreamed ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... Adoration is so rigid in its nature that it alarms, vocations recoil before it, the order receives no recruits. In 1845, it still obtained lay-sisters here and there. But of professed nuns, none at all. Forty years ago, the nuns numbered nearly a hundred; fifteen ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... heart sounded loud and insistent in my own ears,— I lay still, trying to gain control over my trembling spirit,—and it was almost with an awful sense of relief that I saw the figure move at last from its rigid attitude and beckon me—beckon slowly and commandingly with one outstretched arm from which the black, dank draperies hung like drifting cloud. Mechanically obeying the signal, I strove to rise from my bed—and found that I could do so,- -I ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... construction of these enormous balloons, M. Petin proposes to substitute, in place of the silken bag hitherto used to contain the gas, a rigid envelope of a cylindro-conical form, composed of a series of metallic tubes, laid one above the other, and supplied with gas—obtainable to any amount and almost instantaneously—from the decomposition of water by a powerful electric battery; and with these resources at command, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... a coloured fluid, and naturally blue, its colour acquires intensity only, or, in other words, becomes visible only, from the depth of the transparent mass. According to rigid Newtonians, air is transparent, or, rather, invisible; and the azure colour of the atmosphere arises from the greater refrangibility of the blue rays of light. Other philosophers imagine that the blue tint is inherent in air; that is, that the particles of air have the property of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... offer their devotions. Once there, the ceremony began. I was not expected to participate and stood aside. It was not without anxiety that I heard the grandfather give a stern command to Zura to approach and kneel with him before the great bronze image, and her equally rigid ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... silence endured—endured even after the huge man had half-risen, purple features gone white, and then dropped heavily back into his chair before that rigid figure in its sodden garments which had turned from him toward the rest of the circle ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... the Toelatings Kaart. This relic of a past age, which did not add much to the revenue, and impressed one unfavourably with a rigid officialism at the port of entry that did not obtrude itself upon one's notice in the interior, may now be avoided by the traveller registering at the Tourist Bureau. In our own case, we were never called ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... she did undoubtedly envy them their great unknown future that lay before them. Slipping from one such thought to another, she was at the dining-room with fruit in her hands. Sometimes she stopped to straighten a candle stooping with the heat, or disturbed some too rigid arrangement of the chairs. She had reason to suspect that Chailey had been balancing herself on the top of a ladder with a wet duster during their absence, and the room had never been quite like itself since. Returning from the dining-room for the third time, she ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... agonising beseechings pouring forth, he is put up like other single bales of merchandise, and sold to Mr. M'Fadden, of A—district. The minister brought eleven hundred dollars, ready money down! The purchaser is a well-known planter; he has worked his way up in the world, is a rigid disciplinarian, measuring the square inches of labour in his property, and adapting the best process of bringing ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. (He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world) A son ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... to go far in her antagonism to her parents' wishes, even to consent to an open engagement, but to fly with her fiance in the fearless, old fashion did not commend itself to her somewhat rigid ideas of right and wrong. She frankly, therefore, told her father everything, and he, prompt to nip this affair in the bud, removed his daughter out of the way of Major Fitzgerald's influence; and, calling upon the Major himself, subjected the latter to an unpleasant quarter-of-an-hour. ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... now drifted wide, but by and by floated back once more to that admired detail, the rigid and beautiful impartiality with which the possession of power had been distributed, between the twins. Aunt Betsy saw in it a far finer justice than human law exhibits in related cases. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a great religious conception, as in the case of the Hindus and Egyptians, nor by a vast social organization, as in the case of the Assyrians and Persians, nor by a purely industrial and commercial regime, as in the case of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Instead of a theocracy or a rigid system of castes, instead of a monarchy with a hierarchy of civil officials, the men of this race invented a peculiar institution, the City, each city giving rise to others like itself, and from colony to colony reproducing itself indefinitely. A single Greek city, for instance, Miletos, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... natural expression of even slight annoyance. All day long grisly oaths rose to his lips. Now and then an excruciating twinge would cause a half-uttered expletive to burst forth like a projectile. A deep groan would follow, as the man became rigid in ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... little town was at its height. The religious imagination, rather starved on the bald alternatives of Calvinism, found rich food in these glowing tales of danger, devotion, sometimes martyrdom; while the spirit of rigid economy, used to daylong saving from the cradle to the grave, took passionate delight in the success of these noble evangelists who went so far ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... here strange mysteries doth unlock In desart sole, his knees worn by the rock. There Angel harps are sounding, while below Palm-bearing Virgins in white order go. Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, While all are different, each seems genuine, And hers the only Jesus: hard outline, And rigid form, by DURER'S hand subdued To matchless grace, and sacro-sanctitude; DURER, who makes thy slighted Germany Vie with the praise of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... silent with his hands hidden inside his great sleeves, and his head rising erect and rigid from his cowl. The eyes of the men were turned upon him curiously, and he glanced from one to the other, ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... inaction; "Lives of the Saints" were the only books allowed; intercourse with the outward world was entirely cut off; surveillance was incessant; on Sunday they were guarded to the chapel, but kept apart; every quarter appeared a priest, who strove, by rigid examination, to elicit political secrets; the agents and officials maintained an unmitigated reserve; what transpired in the world, how it fared with their country and their loved ones, was unknown; existence so near to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... worship, at least for each Hindu community, while there is no orthodoxy in doctrine. The broad distinctive marks of Hindu practice, we may repeat, are the social usage of caste, and the employment of brahmans in religious ritual. With ideas, then, thus fluid and practice thus rigid, it will be easily understood that Christian and modern ideas have made much greater headway in India than Christian customs and modes of worship. The mind of educated India has been Christianised to a much greater extent than the religious or domestic practices have been. Perhaps it might ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... conduct yourselves properly," he would have acted in a legal manner; but instead of doing this, he said, "I shall send you to Bermuda; and if you leave that island, I declare you guilty of high-treason."' Lord Melbourne deprecated such rigid criticism. He owned that the clause in the ordinance which related to Bermuda was an error on the part of Lord Durham, but he declared his belief that the whole of the remainder was perfectly legal, and warranted by the powers which parliament had committed to the noble governor ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... became transformed into pure glistening pearls. Wafted by the soft and balmy breezes, she floated on to Cythera, and was thence transported to the island of Cyprus. Lightly she stepped on shore, and under the gentle pressure of her delicate foot the dry and rigid sand became transformed into a verdant meadow, where every varied shade of colour and every sweet odour charmed the senses. The whole island of Cyprus became clothed with verdure, and greeted this fairest of all created ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... formed of a dense cellular tissue of membranous matter, made stiff and rigid by insoluble earthy salts; of which, phosphate of lime is the most abundant. In a large bone, the insoluble matter is generally deposited in such a manner as to leave a cavity, into which a fatty substance, distinguished by the name of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the dry bread of half-starved widows and orphans. Sailors on the mighty deep go down with uplifted hands, or slowly gaze their life away on the merciless heavens. The mother bends over her dying child, the first flower of her wedded love, the sweetest hope of her life. She is rigid with despair, and in her hot tearless eyes there dwells a dumb misery that would touch a heart of stone. But God does not help, the death-curtain falls, and darkness reigns ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... the nation, which spirit of obedience and devotion creates armies and saves nations from defeat, disaster, or domestic convulsion. These highest tokens of a nation's honor had for many years been given with the greatest care, after most rigid scrutiny of the official records and all other evidence presented, laboriously reviewed by the general-in-chief in person, recommended by him under the universal rule of civilized nations, and approved by the Secretary of War, whose approval is considered equivalent ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... of his gains which he may appropriate to his own use, must be decided by himself, under accountability to opinion; and opinion ought not to look very narrowly into the matter, nor hold him to a rigid reckoning for any moderate indulgence of luxury or ostentation; since under the great responsibilities that will be imposed on him, the position of an employer of labour will be so much less desirable, to any one in whom the instincts of pride and vanity are not strong, than the "heureuse insouciance" ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... wonderful hall of an austere, rigid, metallic and sepulchral magnificence, giving the impression of a Greek temple with columns, architraves, flagstones and ornaments of black marble, gold and ebony. The hall is trapezium-shaped. Basalt steps, occupying almost the entire width, divide ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... in stern, rigid resolution—only allowing himself one long, deep, heavy sigh at the end—he stood still at the gates of the court, which were opened as the rest of the party came up; and, as they crossed and entered the hall, they beheld, through the open door of the drawing-room, two figures ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Rigid" :   astronautics, unadaptable, nonmoving, intolerant, unmoving, aeronautics, nonrigid, inflexible, unbending



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