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Mutilate   /mjˈutəlˌeɪt/   Listen
Mutilate

verb
(past & past part. mutilated; pres. part. mutilating)
1.
Destroy or injure severely.  Synonyms: cut up, mangle.
2.
Alter so as to make unrecognizable.  Synonyms: mangle, murder.
3.
Destroy or injure severely.  Synonym: mar.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mutilate" Quotes from Famous Books



... chapter and age which treats of the choice of a profession, I implore you to insert something to this effect: "If your vocation leads you to be a publisher or editor of any work, moral, political, or historical, it matters not which, do not consider yourself at liberty to mutilate an author without his previous knowledge, and above all, one who is tenacious of the inviolability of his text more from conscience than self-love. If you mutilate him on your own responsibility, which is tolerably bold, do not believe that you are permitted ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... his Soul with my Prayers; those scenical and accidental differences between us, cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both; there is under these Cantoes and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose Genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to Salvation as ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... food he arm him, lest impris'ning snows Yield him a victim to Novara's power, No easy conquest else." With foot uprais'd For stepping, spake Mohammed, on the ground Then fix'd it to depart. Another shade, Pierc'd in the throat, his nostrils mutilate E'en from beneath the eyebrows, and one ear Lopt off, who with the rest through wonder stood Gazing, before the rest advanc'd, and bar'd His wind-pipe, that without was all o'ersmear'd With crimson ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... how anything could daunt or cast down a man who had an aim in life. "They that have had a guid schoolin' and do nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye something ayont need never be weary." I have had to mutilate the dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words, something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for me: and that from a man cleaning a byre! You ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... third time, she did not seem able to realize that their public wouldn't stand unions libres when not served up with a moral purpose—that no artistic apology for them would do. In the end, therefore, Rattray was obliged to mutilate the article himself, and to neutralize it here and there. He was justified in taking the trouble, for it was matter they wanted, on account of some expensive drawings of the locality that had been in hand a long ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... conceived that, in so doing, some practical advantage would be gained. He hopes, therefore, to escape the censure so frequently and so justly awarded to those unfortunate innovators who have not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture the text of that able writer, merely to gratify an itching propensity to figure in the world as authors, and gain an ephemeral popularity by arrogating to themselves the ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... propriety of sending my quondam friend, Mr. Aiken, a copy. If he is now reconciled to my character as an honest man, I would do it with all my soul; but I would not be beholden to the noblest being ever God created, if he imagined me to be a rascal. Apropos, old Mr. Armour prevailed with him to mutilate that unlucky paper yesterday. Would you believe it? though I had not a hope, nor even a wish, to make her mine after her conduct; yet, when he told me the names were all out of the paper, my heart died within me, and he cut my veins with the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... my papers whole, and don't you dare to mutilate them." By way of letting her down easier I added: "Don't give yourself ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... cousin who has just returned from India. Now, I want you to give me a little assistance. You see, I have decided to join them together so as to make one large square cushion-cover. How should I do this so as to mutilate the material as little as possible? Of course I propose to make my cuts only along the lines ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... seems to have been the universal and perhaps instinctive treatment of the hand that struck a father. By Nur al-Din's flight the divorce-oath became technically null and void for Taj al-Din had sworn to mutilate ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... a furtive glance around, he fetched the poker from the fireplace. He felt horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but the stone hand was still intact. He struck again—this time with all his force—and ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... business as a distinct assembly. With so much wisdom are the kingdoms of the earth governed! How else could any one in his senses have devised the idea of creating one deliberative body on purpose to mutilate or destroy the work of another? to produce from time to time a periodical crisis or a periodical deadlock? There is not a country in the world with a Second Chamber that doesn't twice a year kick and plunge to get rid ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... all these faults, so as neither to transpose words in such a manner that every one must see that it is done on purpose, nor cramming in unnecessary words, as if to fill up leaks, nor aiming at petty rhythm, so as to mutilate and emasculate his sentences, and who does not always stick to one kind of rhythm without any variation, such a man avoids nearly every fault. For we have said a good deal on the subject of perfections, to which these manifest ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... house, not to be excused from the intrusion of heresy? Dost thou come," he said, "to enjoy the hopes which fete holds out to thy demented and accursed sect, to see the bosom of destruction sweep away the pride of old religion—to deface our shrines,—to mutilate and lay waste the bodies of our benefactors, as well as their sepulchres—to destroy the pinnacles and carved work of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... source is Greco-Lat. manganum, apparatus, whence Ital. mangano, with both meanings. The verb mangle, to mutilate, is unrelated. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... much superior to his brain. He worked like a sansculotte on a barricade. When we had torn down part of the old oak panelling, which it seemed such a pity to mutilate with axe and crowbar, we came upon a brick wall, that quickly gave way before the strength of the constable. Then we pulled out some substance like matting, and found a second brick wall, beyond which was a further shell of panelling. The hole we made revealed ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... old men and women! Dash the children's brains out against the stone wall! Violate young girls! Mutilate their fair bodies so that they will be unseemly when they are found by the husband or father. Burn, steal, kill—but remember that your Kaiser and the War Staff have promised to stand between you and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... that thinks at a'!' Then, again, he said that he could not conceive how anything could daunt or cast down a man who had an aim in life. 'They that have had a guid schoolin' and do nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye something ayont need never be weary.' I have had to mutilate the dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words, something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for me: and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the Republicans to hold out the olive branch, to mutilate their own principles, and to bar the door against any ultimate constitutional abolition of slavery. Even the slave States still in the Union were not to be satisfied by all this, and the Confederacy gave it no heed. And now, in the background, was visible a ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful; it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and despise it, we mutilate the divine in ourselves. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tough and the trunks are strong, and the sap wells surely up from those mysterious sources where, in darkness and silence, Nature works her wondrous transformations,—proving, through each waxing and waning year, by bud and leaf and branch, that, thwart and mutilate and deny her as you may, she is the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... "I fail to follow you, unless you are suggesting that it is customary for murderers who mutilate bodies to be punctilious in depositing the dismembered remains upon land belonging to their victims. In which case I am sceptical as to your facts. I am not aware of the existence of any such custom. Moreover, it appears that only a portion of the body was deposited on Mr. Bellingham's ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... Nick could not see the face of the body clearly enough to form a decision. If, however, this was only an ordinary subject for the dissecting-table, why did Dr. Jarvis mutilate it with such caution and at ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... savages, and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... glorious and learned memory. The eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked out for the good of the kingdom. Certain princes, too near to the throne, have been conveniently stifled between mattresses, the cause of death being given out as apoplexy. Now to stifle is worse than to mutilate. The King of Tunis tore out the eyes of his father, Muley Assem, and his ambassadors have not been the less favourably received by the emperor. Hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the suppression of a state, etc. It is legal. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... to "F.S. Martin"—Calamity (calamitas), not from calamus, as it is usually derived, but perhaps from obs. calamis, i.e. columis, from [Greek: kholo, kolhao, kolhazo] to maim, mutilate, and so for columitas. (See ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... the Ancient and Horrible Distillery Company, a few of the City Fathers in hacks, a picked bunch of Navy Yard sailors and occasionally a few samples from a Wild West Show. For 24 hours, pistols and firecrackers are allowed to mutilate Young ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz

... disregard of the rules of fence and his own safety. GUIDO drives the DUKE back. GUIDO is careless of defence, and desirous only to kill. The DUKE is wounded, and falls with a cry at the foot of the shrine. GUIDO utters a sort of strangled growl. He raises his dagger, intending to hack at and mutilate his antagonist, who is now unconscious. As GUIDO stoops, GRACIOSA, from behind him, catches ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell

... poilu inconnu in the depths of a cathedral in order to bring an unbelieving crowd into the house of God, but puts him in the public way under the Arc de Triomphe. He does not say that the soldier died for King and Country, and then mutilate a text—"Greater love hath no man than this," but he inscribes—"Ici repose un soldat francais mort pour la patrie," and leaves the living to make their own reflections. His Paris is a city of statues ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... be assured that, with such mighty enemies, we can do nothing by halves. We cannot afford to retract, mutilate, or moderate our original determination. He who swerves from the straight road at the beginning is lost; he who stumbles at the first step is apt to fall down the whole staircase. If, on account of imaginable necessity, we postpone that most vital point, the assurance of our freedom, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that, brethren, the Cross of Christ is a commandment. For we miserably mutilate it, and sinfully as well as foolishly limit its application and its power, if we recognise it only—I was going to say mainly—as being the ground of our hope and of what we call our salvation, and do not recognise it as being the obligatory example of our lives, which we are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... witnesses of her savage assault upon Maranee, though ignorant of its motive. Some of them who had lost kindred in the strife, already stirred by grief and fury, were proceeding to insult the lifeless and mutilated remains—to mutilate them still more! I turned away from the loathsome scene. Neither the dead nor the living, that composed this ghastly tableau, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... and unity of place like the bars of a cage, and pedantically to introduce therein, in the name of Aristotle, all the deeds, all the nations, all the figures which Providence sets before us in such vast numbers in real life,—to proceed thus is to mutilate men and things, to cause history to make wry faces. Let us say, rather, that everything will die in the operation, and so the dogmatic mutilators reach their ordinary result: what was alive in the chronicles is dead ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... latter prayer could be received under the "gag" rule. Connor, of North Carolina, (p. 261) moved to lay on the table so much of the petition as could be received. Mr. Adams tauntingly suggested that in order to do this it would be necessary to mutilate the document by cutting it into two pieces; whereat there was great wrath and confusion, "the House got into a snarl, the Speaker knew not what to do." The Southerners raved and fumed for a while, and finally resorted to their usual expedient, and ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... He carried his insolence so far, as to declare that he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (which was absolutely rejected by Attalus) to the baseness, and perhaps ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... camped beneath Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540. It was not common for the Indians of the West to burn or mutilate trees, and as it was common for the Spaniards to do so, and as these hackings in the tree seemed to have been made with some edged tool sharper than any possessed by the Indians, it at least seems probable that they were done by the Spaniards. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... was formerly done in the Holy Supper, we break off all intercourse with the Saints; and then, how could we dare to say that we remain in communion with the blessed? And if we break off in this way from the most noble part of the universal Church, may it not be said that we mutilate our belief and reject one of the articles of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... provisions for security, convenience, and concentration, that are necessary to the affairs of a great nation, it would seem to be very presumptuous to impute to any particular district the right to destroy or mutilate a system regulated with ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... to obtaining an influence and a command within the city, which should enable him afterward to deliver it up to the besiegers; and, in order to convince the Babylonians that his desertion was real, he resolved to mutilate himself in a manner so dreadful as would effectually prevent their imagining that the injuries which he suffered were inflicted by any contrivance of his own. He accordingly cut off his hair and his ears, and mutilated ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... whole story in fullest detail will understand that it was desirable to 'mutilate' the book, and that, indeed, truth did in some measure require it. But with these letters of Mary Taylor's before us, let us not hear again that the story of Charlotte Bronte's life was not, in its main features, accurately and adequately told ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... an age of the most enormous wealth existing side by side with the most abject poverty. Around the splendid palaces wandered hundreds of mendicants, who made of their mendicity a horrible trade, and even went so far as to steal or mutilate infants in order to move compassion by their hideous maladies. This class was increased by the exposure of children, and by that overgrown accumulation of landed property which drove the poor from their native fields. It was increased also by the ambitious attempt of people ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... of their too well-defined systems. We cannot hold to the old world view which would bend the modern mind to the support of an inherited interpretation of experience and therefore would not any longer really explain or confirm it. Neither can we hold new views which mutilate the experience and leave out some of the most precious elements in it, even if in so doing we should simplify the problem for the mind. It would be an unreal simplification; it would darken, not illumine, the understanding; we should ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... the unchangeability of human nature and of the ultimate hopelessness of idealist causes. In every reform accomplished the practical application is local, transitory, dependent on racial and geographical conditions. There is obviously a great change in our penal methods. We do not mutilate our criminals or scalp them for the preservation of their souls, and we have lost confidence in the rack and the thumb-screw. But we need only transport ourselves to other lands and study other people's views of judicial necessities, and we shall find that the punitive systems ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... worshippers of Satan, the God of Ugliness." Some of these men were suffering from the "visual derangement" of the insane, whilst "many of the pictures exhibited another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... recurring throughout the ages, with a different name for their Hero in each new recension, cannot pass unrecognised by the student, though they may naturally and rightly be ignored by the devotee; and when they are used as a weapon to mutilate or destroy the majestic figure of the Christ, they must be met, not by denying the facts, but by understanding the deeper meaning of the stories, the spiritual truths that the legends expressed ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... did make a hat of paper, to be placed on Charles's head when he was more than usually naughty, to be called the fool's-cap out of derision; but this same paper hat, which was of a fantastic shape, being conical and high, the boy with scissors did dexterously mutilate and nearly destroy, and, coming quietly behind me when I was meditating the future with my excellent wife, he placed it on my head; and, to all our eyes, there was no mistaking the shape into which, fortuitously, and with no view or knowledge of such emblems, he had cut the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... our fault if we have been brought so low that we must vie with your dogs and pick up the crumbs that drop from your table? Thou didst come up against us and crush us with thy powerful hand, thou didst mutilate us and chain us in these cages. No longer are we able to work or seek our sustenance. Why should these dogs have the right to bite and bark? O that the just—if still there are such men in our time—might rise up! O that one whose heart has been ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... the telegraph clerks did not mutilate out of recognition or reasonable guess the words I added to Dolby's last telegram to Boston. 'Tribune London correspondent totally false.' Not only is there not a word of truth in the pretended conversation, but it is so absurdly unlike me that ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... for the bringing in of this older coin, I must ask you if this plan can escape that selfish impulse of the human mind which seeketh for personal gain? For, look you, short as would be the time proposed, it taketh but still shorter time to mutilate a coin; and it doth seem to me that, under the plan of my Lord Keeper, we should see the old currency of England mutilated in a night. Sir, I should opine in the contrary of this plan, and would base my decision upon certain principles which ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... reserved for monks and inquisitors, in the name of religion and the Gospel, to continue, through after centuries, those brutalities toward women of which gentlemen and knights had grown ashamed, save when (as in the case of the Albigense crusaders) monks and inquisitors bade them torture, mutilate, and burn, in the name of Him who died ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... startled when he read the particulars of their scheme, which was no other than an intention to sally upon him when he should be altogether unprovided against such an attack, cut off his ears, and otherwise mutilate him in such a manner that he should have no cause to be vain of his person for the future. Incensed as he was against the brutal disposition of his own father's son, he could not help being moved at the integrity and tenderness of his sister, of whose inclinations towards ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... are the standards of the maniples, cohorts, and legions. [538] Latrocinium, 'a predatory attack,' as opposed to a regular battle. [539] Obtruncare in opposition to caedere (cut down) signifies 'to mutilate by cutting off a limb or limbs.' The word multos is chosen here only for variety's sake, instead of alios. [540] The words veteres novique express a whole sentence: 'as old and new soldiers were united ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... accurately, He who made nature—is thinking of, and obey the "voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam." This science has done, while yet in her infancy. What she will do in her maturity, who dare predict? At least, in the face of such facts as these, those who bid us fear, or restrain, or mutilate science, bid us commit an act of folly, as well as of ingratitude, which can only harm ourselves. For science has as yet done nothing but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever done? When any one will show ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... frivolous optimism. The fruit of his labour presented, as he stared at it with his elbows on his desk, an aspect uncompromising and incorruptible. It seemed to look up at him reproachfully and to say, with its essential finish: "How could you promise anything so base; how could you pass your word to mutilate and dishonour me?" The alterations demanded by Mr. Locket were impossible; the concessions to the platitude of his conception of the public mind were degrading. The public mind!—as if the public HAD a mind, or any principle of perception more discoverable ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... international laws. It knows no indisciplined cruelty. But in the east the earth is saturated with the blood of women and children unmercifully butchered by the wild Russian troops, and in the west dumdum bullets mutilate the breasts of our soldiers. Those who have allied themselves with Russians and Servians, and present such a shameful scene to the world as that of inciting Mongolians and negroes against the white race, have no right whatever to call themselves upholders ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... from their tetherings, when a long and wearisome pursuit is the necessary result. It is very difficult to come across the best pur sang horses, as the Arabs are afraid of the Bey's taking a fancy to them, and taking them by force; and, consequently, they often purposely mutilate them, lest he should seize them to himself. There are also some very fine bazaars at Tunis, and the otto of roses there is especially excellent. Our Consul has a very fine, large house, and dispenses ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... Father,—We are still very anxious here. The Lords, though they have passed the Irish Church Bill through its first stage, will very probably mutilate it in Committee. It will then be for the Ministers to decide whether they can with honour keep their places. I believe that they will resign if any material alteration should be made; and then ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... been persecuted, but they number nearly six thousand, and regard themselves as the real Christians, the only true followers of Christ. They castrate themselves, and sometimes amputate the genitals entirely; the women even mutilate their breasts as a mark of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... nature, indeed, that would mutilate the dead. But I do not see how Emilia hoped that the substitution would pass undiscovered by Selina's friends, to say nothing ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... certain lines to be chanted by monks and nuns in a scene of a foreign cathedral. It was too profane. What about the singing of "God save the King" upon the stage? That had been sanctioned by custom, Colman maintained; but he could not regard it as a precedent. Was he prepared to mutilate Portia's great speech in the "Merchant of Venice?" Certainly he was; but then custom had sanctioned it, and playgoers were not prepared for any meddling with the text of Shakespeare. He admitted, however, that he did not trouble himself to ascertain whether his excisions were ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... do it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need? And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it, no good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledge, why do it? Without such ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... years earlier another dark crime at Ferrara brought the name of Borgia before the public. One of Lucrezia's ladies, Angela Borgia, was courted by both Giulio d' Este and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes of Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forthwith hired assassins to mutilate his brother's face. Giulio escaped from their hands with the loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Carlists plunder friend and foe, and to robbery join cruelty so atrociously horrible that indignation at the crime is frequently lost in wonder; for the Galician robbers are seldom satisfied with booty, and unlike their brethren in other parts generally mutilate or assassinate those who are so unfortunate as to fall in their hands; prostitution is carried on to an enormous extent, and although loathsome concustant [sic] diseases stare the stranger in the face in the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... my situation, and foreseeing my approaching dissolution, of which I myself had no manner of doubt, they wished to delay the appearance of the work until after that event, with an intention to curtail and mutilate it, and in favor of their own views, to attribute to me sentiments not my own. The number of facts and circumstances which occurred to my mind, in confirmation of this silly proposition, and gave it an appearance of truth supported by evidence and demonstration, is astonishing. I knew Guerin ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... elms cruelly cropped, pollarded, and switched. The demand for firewood occasions these mutilations. If I could waft by a wish the thinnings of Abbotsford here, it would make a little fortune of itself. But then to switch and mutilate my trees!—not for a thousand francs. Ay, but sour grapes, quoth ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the world and the New Era"; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a hundred—two hundred—a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... Hair as soft as fur of ermine, Peaceful waiting for the milk-pail!" On the milk-stool sits the hostess, Milks one moment, then a second, Then a third time milks and ceases; When the bloody wolves disguising, Quick attack the hostess milking, And the bears lend their assistance, Tear and mutilate her body With their teeth and sharpened fingers. Kullerwoinen, cruel wizard, Thus repaid the wicked hostess, Thus repaid her evil treatment. Quick the wife of Ilmarinen Cried aloud in bitter anguish, Thus addressed the youth, Kullervo: "Evil son, thou bloody herdsman, Thou hast brought ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... bird flies one hundred and ten miles. He bids me tell you to follow to Huejugilla el Alto, where he says arrangements will be made for my ransom. Remember Jack Burk. He spoke of the mountains to the west of Zacatecas. Pacheco threatens to mutilate me and forward fragments to you if you do not follow to the point specified. He is watching me as I write, and one of his men will carry this letter to Mendoza, and deliver it. The situation is desperate, and it strikes me that it is best to comply with Pacheco's ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Veneer's. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place. You'll see to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... ones will often, through jealousy, fight with her whom they consider more favored; on such occasions they may often resort to stone-throwing, or even use fire-sticks and stone-knives with which to mutilate the genitals." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... is that to which men are by their own feelings strongly drawn. Any breach of such unity, whether by forcible disruption or by compulsory inclusion in a larger society of alien sentiments and laws, tends to mutilate—or, at lowest, to cramp—the spontaneous development of social life. National and personal freedom are growths of the same root, and their historic connection rests on no accident, but on ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... physical is just that of the machine to the screw. To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozistic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philosophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilate it on the side of Thought. With Spinoza, with Leibniz, we suppose the unifying synthesis of the phenomena of matter achieved, and everything in matter explained mechanically. But, for the conscious facts, we no longer push the synthesis to the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... some of them being disloyal even to doctrines distinctive of Lutheranism. During the Platform controversy some of the most influential conservatives differed from Schmucker not so much in theology as in their policy of mutual toleration and the refusal to mutilate and abandon the venerable Augsburg Confession. The lack of bold aggressiveness on the part of the most Lutheran of these conservatives is illustrated by the letter of H.J. Schmidt, already referred to: ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... shake the hall, Hoarse sounding like a demon's voice, which the stoutest hearts appal! His doom is utter'd!—"Twelve hours hence thy traitorous head shall fall, And for a terror be exposed upon the city wall; Thy limbs shall quarter'd be, and hung, all mutilate and bare, At Jedburgh, and Lanark town, at Glasgow, and at Ayr; That all good subjects thence may learn obedience to the State, Their duty to our gracious king, and bloody treason's fate." A horror seizes every breast—a stifled cry ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... agree with the learned counsel that I was out of doors at one o'clock that morning. But if he will use me as HIS WITNESS in that matter, then he must not pick and choose and mutilate my testimony. Nay, let him take the whole truth, and not just so much as he can square with the indictment. Either believe me, that I was out of doors praying, or do not believe me that I was out of doors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... cruelty to animals, and they have done good service. Good service not only to the horses and cows, but to the nobler animal, man. I believe that in saying to a cruel man, 'You shall not overwork, torture, mutilate, nor kill your animal, or neglect to provide it with proper food and shelter,' we are making him a little nearer the kingdom of heaven than he was before. For 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... save that of satisfied vengeance; no emotion that resembles remorse. On the contrary, his cold animal eyes continue to sparkle with jealous hate; while his hand has moved mechanically to the hilt of his knife, as though he meant to mutilate the form he has laid lifeless. Its beauty, even in death, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... portions have been detached. And so far does this go, that some experimentalists have carefully examined the lower orders of animals,—among them the Abbe Spallanzani, who made a number of experiments upon snails and salamanders,—and have found that they might mutilate them to an incredible extent; that you might cut off the jaw or the greater part of the head, or the leg or the tail, and repeat the experiment several times, perhaps, cutting off the same member again and again; and yet each of those types would be ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... as your institutions are founded on reason and nature, judge," I continued, "that you would be more disposed ta cultivate this member than to mutilate it; and this the more especially, as I understand all monikins believe it to be the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... a short compass all the facts which my researches have furnished, not omitting those which are known, concerning the feelings and conduct of Rawleigh at these solemn moments of his life; to have preserved only the new would have been to mutilate the statue, and to injure the whole by an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... hand!(40) I ask, all ye who poets are, Is it not true? the objects fair, To whom ye for unnumbered crimes Had to compose in secret rhymes, To whom your hearts were consecrate,— Did they not all the Russian tongue With little knowledge and that wrong In charming fashion mutilate? Did not their lips with foreign speech ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... other hand, it must be admitted that they had some customs which indicate a tinge of barbarism. They used torture for the extraction of answers from reluctant persons, employed the scourge to punish trifling offences, and, in certain cases, condescended to mutilate the bodies of their dead enemies. Their addiction to intemperance is also a barbaric trait. They were, no doubt, on the whole, less civilized than either the Greeks or Romans; but the difference does not seem to have been so great as represented ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... was talking with us, his stretcher-bearers were moving up and down the road for his own casualties. At Alost the street fighting by Belgian troops behind fish-barrels, with sods of earth for barricade, was so stubborn that the Germans felt it to be necessary to mutilate civilian men, women, and children with the bayonet to express in terms at all adequate their resentment. I am of course speaking of what I know. Around Termonde, three times in September, the fighting of Belgians was vigorous enough to induce the Germans on entering the town to burn ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... depend almost on the same sophism; they change and mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he allows men to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend towards their destruction; and when he makes someone ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... is to "slight and scorn our sovereignty". By substituting the will of 1200 individuals for that of the people, "our representatives have failed to treat us with respect." This is not the first time, and it is not to be the last. Often do they exceed their mandate, they disarm, mutilate, and gag their legitimate sovereign and they pass decrees against the people in the people's name. Such is their martial law, specially devised for "suppressing the uprising of citizens", that is to say, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the actual progress of humanity has been, on the whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Procrustes treated his victims,—he must stretch some, and mutilate others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. "As the third or positive stage had accomplished its advent in his own person, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... and deliberately to his measure and capacity, of "Daddy Hardacre," "The Porter's Knot," and "The Chimney-Corner." When I say written, I mean, of course, translated. Our foremost dramatists have not yet ceased to borrow from the French; but, like the gypsies, they so skilfully mutilate the children they have stolen, that the theft becomes almost impossible to detect. Not one person in five hundred, for instance, would discover at first sight that a play so apparently English in conception and structure as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... The effect of these dances is marvellous. By a contagious shout they excite each other. They reach a frenzy which communicates itself with hypnotic effect to the whole dancing circle. At times men tear their hair, cut their flesh or even mutilate their limbs for life. The "tom-tom," or Indian drum, adds to the power of monotonous rhythm and to the spirit of ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... contemporaries, and goes a thousand years off to talk to us, which he does by aid of these tongue-gymnastics and extraordinary compounds— prides himself upon it, too, as if it were a great thing to disguise yourself, and mutilate the conversational currency. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... of its power. Savages work themselves into frenzied rage in order to fight their enemies. In many descriptions of its brutal aspects, which I have collected, children and older human brutes spit, hiss, yell, snarl, bite noses and ears, scratch, gouge out eyes, pull hair, mutilate sex organs, with a violence that sometimes takes on epileptic features and which in a number of recorded cases causes sudden death at its acme, from the strain it imposes upon the system. Its cause is ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... country." Knowing the gentleman to be a northern man, she answered freely, saying that the country of herself and son was the whole country, and for it she was willing he should shed his last drop of blood, but not to divide and mutilate it, would she consent that ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... speaker, addressing Captain Prescott, "he has been a true friend to our race for years, and we must do him what kindness we can. If we leave these bodies here, the Shawnees will return and mutilate them—" ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... and unsophisticated spirit, perfectly able to discern all the simple truths necessary for common conduct by its own unaided light. His motives are all pure and unselfish and his intelligence is unclouded, until priests and tyrants mutilate the one and corrupt the other. We who have the benefit of the historic method, and have to take into account the medium that surrounds a human creature the moment it comes into the world, to say nothing of all the inheritance from the past which it brings within it into the world ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... renewed aggression he saw the error of his natural enemy, which brought ever nearer the realization of the dream of independence he had inherited from the past; for the same fierce passion burned within him that had made Endicott mutilate his flag, and Leverett read his king's letter with his hat on; and the guns of Lexington ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... 1-1/2 broad. Only the middle portion is sharp, the projecting corners are blunt, and the sides rounded. This instrument is used for slitting up the skin of a limb and as a bone chisel when it is necessary to mutilate the fetus in order ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... and well understands her interest. Even the men of inferior life among us, whose occupations, one would think, tend to produce minds as callous as the mettle they work; lay a stronger claim to civilization, than in any other place with which I am acquainted. I am sorry to mutilate the compliment, when I mention the lower race of the other sex: no lady ought to be publicly insulted, let her appear in what dress she pleases. Both sexes, however, agree in exhibiting a mistaken pity, in cases of punishment, particularly by ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... the lakes and the wells, into all of which offerings were thrown with the idea either of venerating in them the thirst-quenching liquid or else the fecund nature of the earth; the worship of the trees that shaded the altars and that nobody dared to fell or mutilate; the worship of stones, especially of the rough stones called bethels that were regarded, as their name (beth-El) indicates, as the residence of the god, or rather, as the matter in which the god was embodied.[29] Aphrodite Astarte was worshiped ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... lover performed, but she dwells with self-torturing vividness of imagination upon the helpless and abandoned body which she can never again see or touch, but which the ravens and jackals can tear and mutilate at will. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... permit me first to go to my room, I will find something which sorts better with a soldier than this churchman's gown. My buckskin, I was obliged to mutilate to make ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... his person, his industry, and his labour. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sensible that there is no appeal from his master." Where the slave is placed by law entirely under the control of the man who claims him, body ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... is overpeopled, men emigrate, spread themselves over other countries, destroy one another, and establish laws and customs which sometimes only too surely prevent excess of population. In those climates where fecundity is greatest, as in China, Egypt, and Guinea, they banish, mutilate, sell, or drown infants. Here, we condemn them to a perpetual celibacy. Those who are in being find it easy to assert rights over the unborn. Regarding themselves as the necessary, they annihilate the contingent, and suppress future generations for their own pleasure ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... Irishmen and the Defenders on one side, and the Peepo'-Day Boys, or Orangemen, on the other—Catholic and Protestant, at each other's throats. Then there's a hand thrust in, and up goes the sword, and the rifles, pikes, and bayonets; and those that were ready to mutilate or kill each other fall into ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... coming forward. "Mr. Vaughan no doubt tore them out himself, when he took his violent dislike to Swain. The act would be characteristic of a certain form of mania. Nobody else would have any motive for destroying them; in fact, no one else would dare mutilate a book ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... word, contenting herself with keeping a watch on the man's movements, though to the very innermost part of her she longed to fling herself upon him to mutilate ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... good health. Though fevers rack my brain And rude disorders mutilate my strength, A perfect restoration after pain, I know shall be my recompense at length. And so through grievous day and sleepless night, "Health, health," I cry, "it ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... now, and I want to stay. But I don't make the mistake of ignoring them, and I rather like having a squint at them at close quarters. Kirkpatrick has taken us to several socialist meetings...we borrow the servants' coats and mutilate our oldest hats....Socialism seems to me rather more endurable than the socialists, and of these Kirkpatrick is about the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict themselves and one another, wander from the point and never get anywhere....That would give me ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... Accordingly they are scarcely possible in it, or at least they are only possible on the condition of traversing their age, like scared persons, at a running pace, and of being preserved by a happy star from the influence of their age, which would mutilate their genius. Never, for ay and forever, will society produce these poets; but out of society they still appear sometimes at intervals, rather, I admit, as strangers, who excite wonder, or as ill-trained children of nature, who give offence. These apparitions, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... campaign. In the first place, the Indian has no honour. Why should he have, when his only standard of right is conquest? In the second place, kindness is regarded as weakness by the Indian. Why should it not be, when his only god is victory? In the third place, the lust of blood, to kill, to butcher, to mutilate, still surged as hot in their veins as on the night when they had attempted to scale our walls. And again I ask why not, when the law of their life was to kill or to be killed? These questions I put to you because life put them to me. At the time my father died, the gentlemen of King Charles's ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... dead was different. Some he chopped with the spade, others he tore and ripped with his teeth and nails. Sometimes he tore the mouth open and rent the face back to the ears, he opened the stomachs, and pulled off the limbs. Although he dug up the bodies of several men he felt no inclination to mutilate them, whereas he delighted in rending female corpses. He was sentenced ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... -a mule. multitud f. multitude. mullir to beat up; to make soft. mundanal worldly. mundo world. murmurar to murmur, backbite. muro wall. musica music. musico musician. musulman, -a Mohammedan. mutilar to mutilate. mutismo muteness. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... human digestion, being replaced by other and simpler ones in lower animals, or even in certain plants. If "we argue the necessity of every adaptation solely from the fact that it exists," and that "we cannot mutilate it grossly without injury to the function," we do not "announce triumphantly that digestion is impossible in any way but this," etc., but see equal wisdom and no impugnment of design in any number of simpler adaptations ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... servants and works can be of no help. Therefore, the knaves have improperly applied to our trust in the divine promise the words of Christ which treat of trust in our own worthiness. This clearly reveals and defeats their sophistry. May the Lord Christ soon put to shame the sophists who thus mutilate His holy Word! Amen.] We leave, however, these thorny points to the schools. The sophistry is plainly puerile when they interpret "unprofitable servant " as meaning that the works are unprofitable to God, but are ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... repeated without error after a single reading. "Without error" is to be taken literally; there must be no omission, insertion, or transposition of words. Ignore indistinctness of articulation and defects of pronunciation as long as they do not mutilate ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... of which every friendly highlandman would say, Feiich an cabracli mor de Clanruadli! What a mockery of fate to be exposed for ever to the vulgar Cockney gaze, the trophy of a fool, whose boast was to kill! Such a noble beast! Such a mean man! To mutilate his remains for the pride of the wretch who killed ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... minutes trying to recall whether he dropped that stone on his foot before or after dinner. He, and not your own evil nature, should be responsible for your instinctive wish that he had happened to be toying with a bowlder instead of a small stone which could only mutilate. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... or the bark graft. We have had equally good results with each. If any difference it is in favor of the side or bark graft which we prefer because it does not split or mutilate the stock, there is not the chance for decay, and the wounds heal over much quicker. On limbs three to four inches in diameter put in three ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... philosopher. "Is it wisdom thus to mutilate these poor dwellers in your garden? Drop that merciless tool, your pruning hook. Leave the work to the scythe of time. He will send them, soon enough, to the shores of ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... have embraced, without restraint, every opportunity to weaken the confidence of the people, and, by having the whole game in their hands, they have scrupled not to publish things that do not, as well as those which do exist, and to mutilate the latter, so as to make them subserve the purposes ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... for attempting to mutilate the beautiful statues of London," shouted the enraged ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... abilities, and certainly, if wishing for anything, wishing for the success of the party he belongs to, should urge these desperate courses. He it was who proposed the fatal postponement of Schedule A, which led to such utter ruin and confusion, and now it is he who manages this Bill, and who ventures to mutilate the Ministerial measure in such a manner as will in all probability bring down all the wrath of the Commons on him and his Conservative majority. I am not at all sure but that the Government is content ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... that 'the brain of a phoenix is a pleasant bit, but that it causeth the headache.' Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have slain the phoenix, for it must of necessity be 'a vain design to destroy any species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days.' To which it is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel, he could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only woman in existence; for then there must have been ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... split wide open as with beef or mutton, drawing might not prove as satisfactory as the present method, but since this is not desirable, and since ordinary laborers will break the intestines and spill their contents over the flesh, and otherwise mutilate the fowl, all those who have had actual experience in the matter agree that drawing poultry is unpractical ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings



Words linked to "Mutilate" :   mutilator, distort, mutilation, garble, warp, force out, gouge, damage, cut up, maim, falsify



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