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More "Opprobrious" Quotes from Famous Books



... chooses to have a feast of disgrace, (if I may say so,) to have a riot of infamy, served up to him day by day for a course of years, in every species of reproach that could be given by his colleagues, and by the Court of Directors, "from whom," he says, "I received nothing but opprobrious and disgraceful epithets," and he says "that his predecessors possessed more of their confidence than he had." Yet for years he lay down in that sty of disgrace, fattening in it, feeding upon that offal of disgrace and excrement, upon everything ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of this incident they unanimously pronounced me a fool, accompanying that opprobrious stigmatization with an epithet which my religious convictions prohibit me ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... Christians. But the Gentile riffraff, attracted by the gracious promises of enjoying in the world to come the felicities denied them in this, eagerly attached themselves to the new sect, which rapidly increased in numbers, and its votaries, glorying in the opprobrious epithet of Ebionites, or needy ones, made themselves so obnoxious by their aggression and turbulent dispositions that, barely tolerated by the Government and condemned by the cultured adherents to the established ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... company of a terrible Hydra, who hitherto flattred with him, and made him a faire countenance and shew of loue. Then did he take vpon him to command all alone, setting nought both by captain Pinteado, and the rest of the marchants factors, sometimes with opprobrious words, and sometimes with threatnings most shamfully abusing them, taking from Pinteado the seruice of the boies and certain mariners that were assigned him by the order and direction of the worshipful merchants, and leauing him as a common mariner, which is the greatest despite ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... the elimination of the blacks from the farms, was not at all popular with landowners, who made huge profits out of the renting of their farms to Natives. Platform speakers and newspaper writers coined an opprobrious phrase which designated this letting of farms to Natives as "Kafir-farming", and attempted to prove that it was almost as immoral as "baby-farming". But landowners pocketed the annual rents, and showed no inclination to substitute the less industrious "poor whites" ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... could not have thought that frenzy itself would have dared to utter language so opprobrious against a bishop. It was treason against the cloth! The church tottered at the sounds! But the fury I felt held him in awe—'Lords!' continued I. 'Heaven preserve me from the society of a lord! I have done with them all. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... was said, obtained his large wealth through means not sanctioned by laws human or divine. Men and women of the past generation, and therefore contemporaries, did not hesitate to designate him an "old pirate," though always the opprobrious words were spoken in an undertone, for people were half afraid of the dark, reserved, evil-looking man, who had evidently passed a large portion of his life among scenes of peril and violence. There were more pleasing traditions of the beautiful wife he brought home to grace the luxurious ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... have been erected when they had first fixed their station there, but now it was too late, and Hudson had refused to have it done at first. The carpenter's refusal to perform the work excited the anger of the master to such a degree, that he drove him violently from the cabin, using the most opprobrious language, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... to fly from an opprobrious epithet; assume not the holy name of wife, to one who brings trueness of heart, wealth of affection, whilst you have nought to offer in return but cold respect. Your first love already lavished on another: believe ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... not a Christian. He has only once alluded to the Christians in his works, and there it is under the opprobrious title of "Galileans," who practised a kind of insensibility in painful circumstances and an indifference to worldly interests which Epictetus unjustly sets down to "mere habit." Unhappily it was not granted to these heathen philosophers ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... intense hatred of his enemies takes the form of a wish, to deprive them of a triumph. While his flesh is crisping and crackling in the flames, therefore, he sings of the scalps he has taken, and heaps opprobrious epithets upon the heads of his tormentors. But his song is as much a cry of agony, as of exultation—his pain only adopts this mode of expression. It is quite certain, also, that he does not suffer so deeply, as would a white man in the same ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... he had been guilty of an error in countenancing them. One of the most eminent of the refugees, John Claude, had published on the Continent a small volume in which he described with great force the sufferings of his brethren. Barillon demanded that some opprobrious mark should be put on his book. James complied, and in full council declared it to be his pleasure that Claude's libel should be burned by the hangman before the Royal Exchange. Even Jeffreys was startled, and ventured to represent that such a proceeding was without example, that the book was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... his violence, no moderation on his tongue. Traitor, and knave, and low-born beggar, were the mildest epithets which he applied to the high-bred and gallant soldier; while on his sweet and shrinking child he heaped terms the most opprobrious, the most unworthy of himself, whether as a father or as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... captives were made to pass before young Doria. When Dragut beheld him he cried out in a fury: "What! Am I a slave to that effeminate Caramite?" for Doria was but a beardless youth. These opprobrious epithets being interpreted to the young nobleman, "highly incensed he flew at Dragut, tore out his beard and moustaches, and buffeted him most outrageously: nay his passion was so great it is said that had he not been prevented, he certainly would ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his frank but not overtrustworthy eyes at de Spain. "I heard," he said in a good-natured, slightly nasal tone, "you ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... Arundel? The unpiteous, traitorous, hang-dog lither oaf!" Bertram would apparently have chosen more opprobrious words if they would kindly have occurred to him. "Why, he said—'Pray for yourself and your lord, Lady, and let this be; it were the better for you.' The great Devil, to whom he 'longeth, be his aid in the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... helps in learning lessons, he classed ... under the opprobrious name of "facilities," and never scrupled to seize them as contraband goods.—Memorial of John S. Popkin, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Temper too far, I neither can nor will bear your insolent contemptuous Way of conversing, or your opprobrious provoking Language. If you attack my favourite Foible with such Acrimony, you must expect I will not spare some of yours: As for your sneering at my Politicks, I own I never was a Politician, nor did I ever ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... its opprobrious sense, is almost always applied to women, because for many centuries the men have claimed their right to personal liberty in matters connected with the sex-relation, and until women of the self-respecting and educated class began to openly ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... the earth," (v. 10.) Beyond the usual reproach attached to their names and their work, there has been no general reviling and deriding of them throughout Christendom, to render their memory infamous, (v. 9.)—No opprobrious epithets such as, "These deceivers said, while they were yet alive," (Matt, xxvii. 63,) that so they might be conformed to their Lord in his death. Nor, lastly, have "they that dwell upon the earth" exulted as ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... finding the Gonfalonier leaving them, entreatingly and authoritatively detained him, and obliged him to return to the council room, which was now full of confusion. Many of the noble citizens were threatened in opprobrious language; and an artificer seized Carlo Strozzi by the throat, and would undoubtedly have murdered him, but was with difficulty prevented by those around. He who made the greatest disturbance, and incited the city to violence, was Benedetto degli Alberti, who, from a window of the palace, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... Brittany, the trade of cooper was looked upon with contempt, and the opprobrious name of caqueux was given to them because they were thought to belong to a race of Jews dispersed after the ruin of Jerusalem, and who were considered ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... the Himalayas is that very familiar fowl—the small white scavenger vulture (Neophron ginginianus), often called Pharaoh's chicken and other opprobrious names that I will not mention. This bird eats everything that is filthy and unclean. The natural consequence is that it looks untidy and disreputable. It is, without exception, the ugliest bird in the world. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye—Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies—the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... denounce those whom he considers in error; to apply opprobrious epithets and censure in the strongest ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... political predilections, condemn or applaud the course of Captain Brown. And, above all, it was needed for the men who have disgraced themselves by denying to Brown the possession of any virtues, and who have outstripped his Southern enemies in applying to him the most opprobrious and the falsest epithets. Now, none of these classes will Mr. Redpath's book reach with effect. Its tone is such, it is so violent, so extravagant, that it will offend all right-thinking men. Even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... do was to read what they liked in it, if anything, and leave out the rest and be grateful. Instead, it would be slated by reviewers, and compared to the Royal Academy, and to a literary signpost pointing the wrong way, and other opprobrious things; as if an anthology could point to anything but the taste of the compiler, which of course could not be expected to agree with any one else's; tastes never do. The thing was, thought Jane, to hit the public taste with the right thing at the right moment. Another thing ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... some further talk, but for so jovial a specimen he was surprisingly uncommunicative. Indeed, I think he soon decided that I somehow did not belong to the fraternity, that I was a "farmer"—in the most opprobrious sense—and he soon began to drowse, rousing himself once or twice to roll another cigarette, but finally dropping (apparently, at least) ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... weak-kneed executive yielding to popular clamour. Against the strategical and tactical genius of Hannibal, Quintus Fabius Maximus invoked the aid of time to afford him opportunities to strike. His "Fabian Tactics" have become proverbial, and earned for him at the time the opprobrious epithet "Cunctator," which the epigram[3] of Ennius has immortalised in his honour. Popular clamour led to a division of authority with Varro, and to the disaster of Cannae (B.C. 216). General G. B. McClellan was recalled from the Army of the Potomac on account ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... insubordination and indifference from which he had suffered.[141] 'I have borne immeasurable indignities from the continued insolence of these students, who interrupt me with cries, whistlings, hisses, insults, and such opprobrious remarks that I sometimes scarcely know whether I am standing on my head or heels.' 'They come to the lecture-room armed with poignards, and when I reprove them for their indecencies, they threaten over and over again to cut my face ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... greatly about this wig, and used to tear it from his head; but he soon succeeded in appeasing the public indignation, by being always the first to throw the unhappy ornament in question up in the air, calling it by every opprobrious epithet. From that time he remained the least persecuted wig-wearer among the two or three who ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... knows too much: I have but one choice left: It will be best for me to 'scape by death, By self-inflicted death, this dangerous inquest. I save my honor thus; and free myself From an opprobrious end. I hither came To give thee my last warning: and to take My last farewell... Oh, live; and may thy fame Live with thee, unimpeached! All thoughts of pity For me now lay aside; if I'm allowed By my own hand, for thy sake, to expire, I am ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... should not be concealed that I myself had actually stated and published, in the winter of 1794-5, the neglectful and opprobrious fact of Miller's having no single grave-stone, much less a monument, nor even one funeral line, to designate the spot where rested in its 'narrow house' the mortal relics of so great a man; see my ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... vengeance along the deck. Some, who but the moment before were skulking aft with a similar purpose, were now loud in their denunciations of the dastardly conduct of the officers; and, goaded by the two passions of disappointment and rage, shouted after them the most opprobrious ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... should be sorry to apply to a minister of any religion the opprobrious epithet of a "Surpliced Ruffian." It would seem, however, that Archdeacon Laffan aspires to the "bad eminence" of the apologist of assassins. What would my readers say, were I to report the Ministers of Islamism in The Desert to be the abettors of assassination? Or what would they ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... getting exactly what he deserved. He had called him, Tom, an "old fool," a "dam' old fool," to be precise. The epithet in itself meant nothing—it was in fact a fatuous and feeble term of abuse as compared to the opprobrious titles which he and Jerry were in the habit of exchanging—it was that abominable adjective which hurt. Jerry and he had called each other many names at times, they had exchanged numerous gibes and insults, but nothing ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to certain of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... and mothers of families, who never could be induced to leave their cooking to attend morning service, and were deeply offended at being called "after-dinner Christians" in consequence, forgot the opprobrious term, and brought little offerings of new-laid eggs and rosy apples to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... were quite equal to the emergency. They would make up sham parcels of waste-paper, and send them out with an ostentatious show of secrecy. The officers—simple fellows enough, though they were called 'Government spies,' 'Somerset House myrmidons,' and other opprobrious names, in the unstamped papers—duly took possession of the parcels, after a decent show of resistance by their bearers, while the real newspapers intended for sale to the public were sent flying by thousands down a shoot in Fleur-de-Lys ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... his lips checked the opprobrious word, as Babie, true woman through it all, whispered with a broken sob, "Spare him, for I loved ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... help you to a more lively understanding of the gravity and untimeliness of the Princess' departure.... First, let me ask if you know our parties by name. Verily I came near calling them factions, and that I would not willingly, since it is an opprobrious term, resort to which would be denunciatory of myself—I being one ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... her wanderings, and Mercury, sent by Jove, comes to question Prometheus as to the nuptials which he has boasted will accomplish the overthrow of the ruler of the Gods. Him Prometheus reviles with opprobrious epithets, calling him a lackey of the Gods, and refuses to disclose anything concerning the matter on which he questions him. The winged God, replying, threatens him with dire calamities. A tempest will come upon him and overwhelm him with thunderbolts, and a bloodthirsting ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... Sultan of time past needed but little awfulness, for when the lieges saw him, they feared him; but the Sultan of these days hath need of the most accomplished polity and the utmost majesty, because men are not as men of by-gone time and this our age is one of folk opprobrious, and is greatly calamitous, noted for folly and hardness of heart and inclined to hate and enmity. If, therefore, the Sultan (which Almighty Allah forfend!) be weak or wanting in polity and majesty, this will be the assured cause of his country's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the intention of the lord-general that his victim should escape. The examination[b] of the judges and jurymen before the council, with a certified copy of certain opprobrious expressions, used by Lilburne in his defence, was submitted[c] to the house, and an order was obtained that, notwithstanding his acquittal, he should be confined[d] in the Tower, and that no obedience ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... impatient of an injury, even from his king and general, that when his mistress was to be forced from him by the command of Agamemnon, he not only disobeyed it, but returned him an answer full of contumely, and in the most opprobrious terms he could imagine; they are Homer's words which follow, and I have cited but ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... seat was put up to auction separately; for some were much more run after than others, and the men were instructed by their wives what to bid for. Often the women joined in, and as they bid excitedly against each other the church rang with opprobrious epithets. A man would come to the roup late, and learn that the seat he wanted had been knocked down. He maintained that he had been unfairly treated, or denounced the local laird to whom the seat-rents went. If he did not get the seat he would leave the kirk. Then ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... Again, in terms opprobrious they mouth Anent our noble elevating sport Where our illustrious citizens do meet And in the cockpit spend a ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... husband,—the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted Sigismonda of Hogarth from the last race ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... fined twelve thousand pounds for marrying his niece. One, who had sent a challenge to the Earl of Northumberland, was fined five thousand pounds; another for saying the Earl of Suffolk was a base lord, four thousand pounds to him, and a like sum to the King. Sir David Forbes, for opprobrious words against Lord Wentworth, incurred five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand pounds to the party. On some soap-boilers, who had not complied with the requisitions of the newly incorporated company, mulcts were imposed of one thousand five hundred pounds and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... countrymen had suffered irreparable mischief at the hands of the French nation. I therefore deemed it my duty to be avenged, so picked out a French youth apparently my senior by some years, reminded him of Trafalgar and Waterloo, and called him by the opprobrious name of Johnny Crapo, the meaning of which I did not understand. I was promptly made to run for my life before a sudden Napoleonic onslaught of about half-a-dozen small boys, who had congregated to see their friend demolish the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... Beasts, or slain, Or as the Snake with youthful Coate repaid; And thought not much to cloath his Enemies: Nor hee thir outward onely with the Skins 220 Of Beasts, but inward nakedness, much more Opprobrious, with his Robe of righteousness, Araying cover'd from his Fathers sight. To him with swift ascent he up returnd, Into his blissful bosom reassum'd In glory as of old, to him appeas'd All, though all-knowing, what had past with Man Recounted, mixing intercession sweet. Meanwhile ere thus was ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... time, especially since Caroline, the brown mare, would rather travel ten miles straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to "take it out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of opprobrious epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... comes from no fear, or weak dislike to that which is painful. On neither side will he tell lies for peace. He is ready to be lost for his fellow-men. In the name of God he rebukes the flames of hell. The fugitives pause on the top, look back, call him lying prophet, and shout evil opprobrious names at the man who counts not his own life dear to him, who has forgotten his own soul in his sacred devotion to men, who fills up what is left behind of the sufferings of Christ, for his body's sake — for the human race, of which he is the head. Be sure that, come ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... he had put his vengeance from him and behaved like a weak fool, throwing away the acid, cleaning the bottle and filling it with pure water. He had intended to give Ibrahim a fright (and also the opprobrious title of the Weeper), to teach him a lesson and to let him go—provided he swore on the Q'ran never to return to Mekran Kot when he left for England.... Such a man was my poor brother. But the hand of Allah intervened and Ibrahim the Weeper lived and died stone blind.... A ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... opposed to respect, is a sin that is never anything but mortal. It refuses honor, belittles dignity and considers parents beneath esteem. It is contempt to laugh at, to mock, to gibe and insult parents; it is contempt to call them vile, opprobrious names, to tell of their faults; it is contempt, and the height of contempt, to defy them, to curse them or to strike them. It is bad enough when this sort of thing is directed against an equal; but when parents are ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... lounge at him, which he parried; and his men entering at the same time, they drove the others out of the house. My friend, in French, requested the Dutchman to follow his men; but he refused, and challenged him to single combat, for the insult he said he had received at his hands—adding some opprobrious epithets, which roused the choler of the brave Englishman. In an instant, they were engaged hand to hand; but short was the strife—the Dutchman fell dead on the scene of his violence, and his men returned to the camp, and made a complaint ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... allegiance to afternoon tea—equally strong—called him back to the house, where there was cake, and also muffins. In the end the question was solved by the appearance of Drummond, of Seymour's, garbed in football things, and also anxious to practise drop-kicking. So M'Todd was dismissed to his tea with opprobrious epithets, and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... instantly greeted them with derisive shouts and jeers. They called them little Gringos and other opprobrious names, and one young Mexican threw the loop of his lasso over the smaller corporal's head and jerked him off his feet. His companions laughed loudly. The older corporal instantly pulled out his knife and cut the rope. Then the two brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the crowd, ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... displeasing, noisome, distasteful, insolent, abusive, aggressive, assailant, fetid, disagreeable, opprobrious, scurrilous, fulsome. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... great folly of his career by gratuitously placing himself in Charles the Bold's power,[98] was received by the Parisians with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of trumpet by the crossways of Paris: "Let none be bold or daring enough to say anything opprobrious against the Duke of Burgundy, either by word of mouth, by writing, by signs, paintings, roundelays, ballads, songs or gestures." On the same day a commission seized all the magpies and jackdaws in Paris, whether caged or otherwise, which were to be registered according to their ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... do. Then we have a curious proclivity to neglect, and by degrees to forget, what has been certainly known. An instance or two will explain my idea. The most popular English writer relates how it happened in his presence that the title of Tory was conferred upon the Conservative party. For it was an opprobrious name at the time, applied to men for whom the Irish Government offered head-money; so that if I have made too sure of progress, I may at least complacently point to this instance of our mended manners. One day, Titus Oates lost his temper with the men ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... in Chhattisgarh and Sambalpur who are the musicians and genealogists of the Ghasias. The term is considered opprobrious, as it means 'beggar,' and many Mangans probably return themselves as Ghasias. They are despised by the Ghasias, who will not take food or water from them. At the marriages of the former the Mangans play on a drum called ghunghru, which they consider as the badge of the caste, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... the example." The king laughed at his wit, and spared his life.—Nor is this tale without a spice of humour: An astrologer entered his house and finding a stranger in company with his wife abused him, and called him such opprobrious names that a quarrel and strife ensued. A shrewd man, being informed of this, said to the astrologer: "What do you know of the heavenly bodies, when you cannot tell what goes on in your own house?"[10]—Last, and perhaps best of all, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... in Horrid Mysteries (1796). The heroine, Constantia Dudley, who was Shelley's ideal feminine character, is the embodiment of a theory, not a human being. She "walks always in the light of reason," and decides that "to marry in extreme youth would be a proof of pernicious and opprobrious temerity." The most memorable of Brown's novels is Edgar Huntly, which bears an obvious resemblance to Caleb Williams. Like Godwin, Brown is deeply interested in morbid psychology. He finds pleasure in tracing ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... them familiarly. The elder buck rejoiced in the sonorous title of "Minne-tronk-ske-wan," but divers convictions for insobriety under the Indian Liquor Act, and the facetious tongue of Yorke, had contorted this into the somewhat opprobrious nickname of "Many Drunks." His companion was ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... general spirit and temper of the religious press with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. Scientific men are called infidel pretenders, and are charged with a secret conspiracy to overthrow ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... world from the earliest ages; and his craft has been to mislead the thoughtless, by fixing upon the humble followers of the Lamb his own opprobrious proper name. The mass of professed Christians, whose creed and mode of worship have been provided by human laws, has ever been opposed to the sincere disciples of Christ. To imbibe every principle from investigation and conviction of the holy oracles—to refuse ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... from the verb [c]axto[c]oh, to lie, also frequently used by Xahila with reference to the chief god of his nation in its heathendom, may possibly have arisen after their conversion to Christianity; but from the coincidence that the Algonkin tribes constantly applied such seemingly opprobrious terms to their principal deity, it may have arisen from a similar cycle of ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... writing for bread. He says, however, that he is sure he is happier, even in this situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependence. I understand (remember, this is a secret between ourselves)—I understand that Secretary Cunningham Falconer has found him out, and makes good use of his pen, but pays him shabbily. Temple is too much of a man of honour ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... has had his opposers here, as you will find by a book which I have sent to you. The author (Peter Brown) is my acquaintance, but two things I shall never forgive in his book: the one is the foul language and opprobrious names he gives Mr. Toland; the other is upon several occasions, calling in the aid of the civil magistrate, and delivering up Mr. Toland to secular punishment. This, indeed, is a killing argument, but ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... One should abstain from injuring any creature, and conduct oneself observing the course of the Sun.[1333] Having come into this life, one should not behave with unfriendliness towards any creature. One should disregard opprobrious speeches, and never in arrogance deem oneself as superior to another. When sought to be angered by another, one should still utter agreeable speeches. Even when calumniated, one should not calumniate in return. One should not behave in a friendly or an unfriendly way in the midst of human ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... and modes of expressing it, providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding the crowning dome of our nationality, be taught, like vexed and querulous children, the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... dictated to them by some of their oldest Sagamees, or principal women, and more frequently by some celebrated Juggler of the village, that they may obtain the blessing of fruitfulness. For it is with them, as amongst the Jews, that barrenness is accounted opprobrious. A woman is not looked upon as a woman, till she has proved it, by her fulfilling what they consider as one of the great ends of her creation. Failing in that, she is divorced from her husband, and may then prostitute herself without any scandal. If she has ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... of Maqua (or Makwa), the Algonkin word for Bear. But as the Iroquois, and especially the Caniengas, became more and more a terror to the surrounding nations, the feelings of aversion and dread thus awakened found vent in an opprobrious epithet, which the southern and eastern Algonkins applied to their obnoxious neighbors. They were styled by these enemies Mowak, or Mowawak a word which has been corrupted to Mohawk. It is the third person plural, in the sixth "transition," ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... religious captain may do can hardly be calculated. In the first place, as I have said, a kinder state of feeling exists on board the ship. There is no profanity allowed; and the men are not called by any opprobrious names, which is a great thing with sailors. The Sabbath is observed. This gives the men a day of rest, even if they pass it in no other way. Such a captain, too, will not allow a sailor on board his ship to remain unable to read his Bible and the books given ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... must fain submit. The murderous facility wherewith Mr. Harley in the beginning invested the conversation with that pistol had not been lost upon Storri, and he shivered lest the interview conclude with his own murder. Mr. Harley, having exhausted expletive and opprobrious term, might empty the six chambers of his dreadful weapon into Storri. Thus spake Storri's fears, and he cowered while Mr. Harley raged. Indeed, the tables had been turned, and Mr. Harley was taking virulent advantage of the reversal. Among other matters, he taunted ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... claimed public attention for reasons that would not now be looked upon with favour were usually known by the opprobrious name of "Bully this" or "Bully that;" but "Jack the Devil" and "Hell Fire Jack" were perhaps as widely used names as any others. There were various causes for the acquisition of such distinction. It was generally ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... generally deserves. In the language of the prize ring, the pugilist who lies down while he can yet stand and see is called a "quitter." It would be harsh and unjust to apply to all suicides this opprobrious name; but there can be little doubt, I think, that the majority of them are weaklings who give up and lie down while they ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... Hopton (in its most opprobrious charge wholly undeserved) and the subsequent interview with his father, produced a marked change in the character of Eustace. He saw that his misfortunes had proceeded from rash impetuosity, extreme confidence ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... turn the majority round his finger. A crowd of libellers assailed him with much more than political hatred. Boundless rapacity and corruption were laid to his charge. He was represented as selling all the places in the revenue department for three years' purchase. The opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fastened on him. His luxury, it was said, was not less inordinate than his avarice. There was indeed an attempt made at this time to raise against the leading Whig politicians and their allies, the great moneyed men of the City, a cry much resembling the cry which, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... looked at him with longing, questioning eyes; they knew enough of him by now to know the bitterness such gold, so given, had for him. Any other, even a corporal, would have been challenged with a storm of raillery, a volley of congratulation, and would have had shouted or hissed after him opprobrious accusations of "faisant suisse" if he had not forthwith treated his comrades royally from such largesse. With Bel-a-faire-peur they held their peace; they kept the silence which they saw that he wished to keep, as, his hour of liberty being come, he went slowly out of the great ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... will call you—TAPETZON TINEMAXOCH!' What those words precisely mean," added my father, modestly, "I cannot say, since I never had the opportunity to acquire the ancient Aztec language,—but something very opprobrious and horrible, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... July 1673 Forbes of Tolquhon was fined by the Lords in 40 lib. Scots for opprobrious speaches to Mr. David Thoires, advocat, and calling ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... seems hard that of the men whom I worked with for thirty years only three or four are willing to speak to me now."] But Phillips endured the storm like a man. He argued his case with all the ardor and energy of his nature, but there escaped from him not one opprobrious or resentful sentence towards his former associates. Emerson said (to quote him again, and we hope for the last time): "How handsomely Mr. Phillips has behaved in his controversy with Mr. Garrison. In fact Phillips was the same we have always known him." But ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... if any one spoke ill of Feemy's character, he should make it personal with himself; that he was ready, willing, and moreover determined to quarrel with any one who dared to apply the opprobrious name of murderer to Thady; and he had even been heard, on one or two occasions, to stand up for Larry himself, and to declare that although he might be a little light-headed or so, he was still a deal better ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... injured by him at the time are perhaps excusable, if they carried their resentment to the length of indignities to his dead body; but they who write history afterwards, and were noway wronged by him in his lifetime, and have received assistance from his writings, in honor should not with opprobrious and scurrilous language upbraid him for those misfortunes, which may well enough befall even the best of men. On the other side, Ephorus is as much out of the way in his encomiums. For, however ingenious he is in supplying unjust acts and wicked conduct with ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... provided you meet with some determined constable, who will seize your worship as a vagrant, according to the statute." "Heaven and earth!" cried the stranger, starting up, and laying his hand on his sword, "do I live to hear myself insulted with such an opprobrious epithet, and refrain from trampling ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors, the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of life; and the opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the deserters who dropped in the night from the walls of Antioch. The emperor Alexius, [98] who seemed to advance to the succor of the Latins, was dismayed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... anxiety of mind which he now experienced, he had the mortification to find superadded the most poignant reproaches from all quarters. Those who were condemned to die, heaped upon him the most opprobrious language in his presence, or by hand-bills scattered in the senators' seats in the theatre. These produced different effects: sometimes he wished, out of shame, to have all smothered and concealed; at other times he would disregard what was said, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... Plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart 400 Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His Temple right against the Temple of God On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... cowards emerged from their hiding-places and returned. Unfortunately for the former the first person he met was Umslopogaas, who began to revile the fat half-breed in no measured terms, calling him dog, coward, and other opprobrious names, such as deserter of women and children, and so forth—all of which ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the natives Oranserrne, or Nazareen men (Oran, being Man in the language of the country,) to distinguish them from other Europeans; yet they are included in the general appellation of Caper, or Cafir, an opprobrious term, applied by Mahometans to all who do not profess their faith. These people, however, are Portuguese only in name; they have renounced the religion of Rome, and become Lutherans: Neither have they the least ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... with opprobrious words, in Oegir's hall. Bragi I soothe, by beer excited. I desire not that angry ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... the business of farming was, and thought that a certain salary, even though small, would always stand between his family and absolute want. 'I know not,' he wrote to Ainslie, 'how the word exciseman, or, still more opprobrious, gauger, will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and children have a wonderful power in blunting these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life and a pension for widows and orphans, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... same year appeared a play called The Northern Lass, by Richard Brome. In this occurs an opprobrious sentence of Cornish, put into the mouth of a Cornishman bearing the absurd name of “Nonsence,” and addressed to a Spaniard who had no English, on the argument that Cornwall being the nearest point of Britain to Spain, ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... him assurance of this by calling the doctor a fool, and heaping upon him other opprobrious epithets. The delivery, therefore, from the fear of apprehended death, as well as from the other thought that was torturing him, had restored Vizcarra to a composure he had not enjoyed for the twenty-four hours preceding; and he now began to ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... opprobrious epithet—!" He didn't finish, though he meant he had applied it to himself. He had got up from his seat; he turned about and, taking in, as his eyes also roamed, several objects in the room, serene and sturdy, not a bit cheap-looking, little old New York objects of '68, he made, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels. They are in Asia what the Jews are in Europe. The name of their pope or high priest ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... their past history. From the beginning of this controversy they have stood firmly by the Constitution. No body of men in the world's history ever exhibited higher or nobler devotion to principle under such adverse circumstances.... Amid the opprobrious epithets, the gibes and jeers of the enemies of the Constitution; worse than this, amid words of distrust and reproach even from men of the South, these great-hearted patriots have marched steadily in the path of duty.... The union ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... to the Lord Chancellor, to inquire whether the word "jackass" is not opprobrious and actionable. His lordship says, "No, decidedly, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Songs without Words[205] contain a genuinely poetic message, flawlessly expressed. As for the pianoforte music, when the Songs without Words are called "hackneyed" we must remember that only compositions of truly popular appeal ever have sufficient vogue to warrant the application of this opprobrious term. In the pianoforte Scherzos and in the Rondo Capriccioso in E major there is without doubt a vitality and a play of fancy easier to criticize than to create. The prevalent mood in Mendelssohn's music is one of sunny-hearted lightness and emotional ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... knowledge, or anything equally harmless, conventional, and middle class. All calculations were in his favour; but, chance being incalculable, he fell upon an individuality whom it is much easier to define by opprobrious names than to classify in a calm and scientific spirit—but an individuality certainly, and a temperament as well. Rare? No. There is a certain amount of what I would politely call unscrupulousness in all of us. Think for ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... and newspapers by readers, especially in periodical rooms. Readers with strong feelings cannot resist annotating articles or chapters that express opinions in which they cannot concur. Pictures of generals or royalties are especially liable to defacement with opprobrious epithets. This feeling extends even to bulletins. Libraries receive strenuous protests against the display of portraits and other material relating to one of the contesting parties without similar material on the other side ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... blowing, from their dreaded enemy; nor did they stop to look for him until they were high and dry out of his reach. Then, when we all laughed, they called us "all the hangman tiefs," and every other opprobrious name which they could select from their vocabulary. I was very much amused with this scene, and as much afterwards with the negroes who crowded round us when we landed. They appeared such merry fellows, always ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... youth Demosthenes earned an opprobrious nickname by the effeminacy of his dress and manner." Does Mr Mitford know that Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname in a perfectly different manner? (See the speech of Aeschines against Timarchus.) And, if he knew it, should he not ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... smelled of to make their way, homely as is the stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, but it certainly is not "because their deeds are evil." One might as well cast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now and then some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment, investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariably transpires that ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... guide you, and you must let me be your Mentor in some things. I shall keep your letter and let you see it perhaps ten years hence. Be careful what newspapers you read. Those which abound with low, opprobrious language about the South and Southerners, avoid. There are some low Southerners about here who go around buying up refractory and vicious negroes; they are the dregs of society; but I have listened, with others, at the North, to men, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from nature. How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... one great folly of his career by gratuitously placing himself in Charles the Bold's power,[98] was received by the Parisians with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of trumpet by the crossways of Paris: "Let none be bold or daring enough to say anything opprobrious against the Duke of Burgundy, either by word of mouth, by writing, by signs, paintings, roundelays, ballads, songs or gestures." On the same day a commission seized all the magpies and jackdaws in Paris, whether caged or otherwise, which were to be registered ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... by the common proverb of "The Wise Men of Gotham." It is observable that a custom has prevailed among many nations of stigmatizing the inhabitants of some particular spot as remarkable for stupidity. This opprobrious district among the Asiatics was Phrygia. Among the Thracians, Abdera; among the Greeks, Boeotia; in England it is Gotham. Of the Gothamites ironically called The Wise Men of Gotham, many ridiculous stories are traditionally told, particularly, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various

... gone, Thomaso and the other cowards emerged from their hiding-places and returned. Unfortunately for the former the first person he met was Umslopogaas, who began to revile the fat half-breed in no measured terms, calling him dog, coward, and other opprobrious names, such as deserter of women and children, and so ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... father, you are right hartely welcome." Giacchetto hearing first what the Erle had saide, and after seinge what Perotto did, he was incontinently surprised with so great marueile and ioye that he knew not what to do: notwithstandinge, geuinge credite to his words, as being ashamed of the opprobrious talke, which he had vsed towards the Erle, as to a seruaunt, weeping, fell downe at his feete and humblie asked pardon for all his rashe behauiours towards him: which was curteously graunted vnto him by the Erle, who toke him vp. And after euerye of them had a while debated of their Fortune, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... excessively angry to be called a blooming Yank. I am a Yankee, and I have been known to bloom, but I can't stand having a low-class Britisher apply that term to me as if it were an opprobrious thing to be, so I tried once more to kick him with my knee. Again my knee passed through him, and this time took the policeman himself in the vicinity of his pistol-pocket. The irate officer turned ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... bewildering part of the river termed "the Gut." So confusing were the intestine commotions of this gut, that, after passing a chequered existence as an aquatic shuttlecock, and being assailed with a slang-dictionary-full of opprobrious epithets, Mr. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... Poictiers. We have, therefore, nothing but rough sketches, akin to popular prints, barbarous in design, and coarse in colouring, but of strong intent. Clerks, in their Latin, pursue France and Philip de Valois, with opprobrious epithets: ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... admitted Tutt. "But it sounds opprobrious. Still, that is a rather dangerous test. You remember that colored client of ours who wanted us to bring an action against somebody for ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... Sixth Ward, "the Bloody Sixth," as it was called, was the point of greatest danger, and thither the Mayor repaired in person, accompanied by the sheriff and a large posse, and remained the greater part of the day. Threats and opprobrious epithets were freely used, and occasionally a paving-stone would be hurled from some one on the outskirts of the crowd; but the passage to the polls was kept open, and by one o'clock the citizens could deposit their votes without fear of ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... To fellows going, as we thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, to patch him up. The Doctor rode ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... then pausing to kick his dog. Tom flew towards him, vowing he would make him kick me instead of Juno. Mr. Robson leant upon his gun, and laughed excessively at the violence of his nephew's passion, and the bitter maledictions and opprobrious epithets he heaped upon me. 'Well, you ARE a good 'un!' exclaimed he, at length, taking up his weapon and proceeding towards the house. 'Damme, but the lad has some spunk in him, too. Curse me, if ever I saw a nobler little scoundrel than that. He's beyond petticoat ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... resistance, by useless efforts? The cool, the distant spectator, placed in safety, may arraign me for ingratitude, may bring forth the principles of Solon or Montesquieu; he may look on me as wilfully guilty; he may call me by the most opprobrious names. Secure from personal danger, his warm imagination, undisturbed by the least agitation of the heart, will expatiate freely on this grand question; and will consider this extended field, but as exhibiting ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... injury, even from his king and general, that when his mistress was to be forced from him by the command of Agamemnon, he not only disobeyed it, but returned him an answer full of contumely, and in the most opprobrious terms he could imagine; they are Homer's words which follow, and I have cited but some ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... so sure of that. Remember his fatal predilection for black sheep. What about his handing over Bala to Tika Singh, after he himself had exhausted all the resources of the English language in finding suitably opprobrious epithets for him? The Bala people hated him, too, whereas I gather that the Agpuris have no particular dislike for ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... an anecdote of him which is quite credible. The regent (it is said) wanted him to use the Sikhs to catch a female runaway slave, and on his refusing, the Rajah made use of a very opprobrious epithet, on which he drew himself up, saying: "You are a man of high birth in your country, but I'm a man of high birth in mine, and, so long as I bear Queen Victoria's commission, I refuse to accept insult. I take no ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... their indignation without at the same time attacking the parentage of the object of their resentment. This is decidedly an orientalism; and I have observed in another place that sailors resemble the Orientals in their fondness for tropes and figures. The most opprobrious epithet that a Persian can make use of, when in a passion, is to call his antagonist "a dog's uncle." No other degree of canine consanguinity is ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... upon which, Bushel, Hammond, and some others, opposed themselves, and said, they allowed of no such Word, as an unlawful Assembly in their Verdict; at which the Recorder, Mayor, Robinson and Bloodworth took great occasion to villifie them with most opprobrious Language; and this Verdict not serving their Turns, the Recorder ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various

... Virginia, and stopped because words failed her. Had Jenny been born in any family except her own, she would probably have described her as "dangerous," but it was impossible to brand her daughter with so opprobrious an epithet. The word, owing to the metaphorical yet specific definition of it which she had derived from the rector's sermons in her childhood, invariably suggested fire and brimstone ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... in the tropics—appeared to make its devotees merely gay and boisterous. The adults were friendly, even to an American, and the children shouted greetings to me as "Senor Gringo," which here is merely a term of nationality and no such opprobrious title as it has grown to be on ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... realising, I suppose, that she had lost her power over me and that I was no longer to be cajoled, she suddenly abandoned her efforts and flew into a furious passion, abusing me most abominably, and heaping upon my head every opprobrious epithet that she could think of—and she was able to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... heretofore labored to maintain. The repeal, if we can effect it, will produce much stir and commotion in the free States of the Union for a season. I shall be assailed by demagogues and fanatics there without stint or moderation. Every opprobrious epithet will be applied to me. I shall be probably hung in effigy in many places. It is more than probable that I may become permanently odious among those whose friendship and esteem I have heretofore possessed. This ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... one speak evil of any person either in or out of his hearing. One should abstain from injuring any creature, and conduct oneself observing the course of the Sun.[1333] Having come into this life, one should not behave with unfriendliness towards any creature. One should disregard opprobrious speeches, and never in arrogance deem oneself as superior to another. When sought to be angered by another, one should still utter agreeable speeches. Even when calumniated, one should not calumniate in return. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... uncontrollably. She accused her niece of the vilest ingratitude in having seduced her son from the obedience he owed his mother; of having plotted to ally her base Scotch blood to the noble blood of the Audleys; and, having exhausted every opprobrious epithet, she was forced to stop from want of breath to proceed. As Alicia listened to the cruel, unfounded reproaches of her aunt, her spirit rose under the unmerited ill-usage, but her conscience absolved her from all intention of injuring or deceiving a human being; and she ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... at being called such an opprobrious term, I opened the door, twisted him round, and applying my foot to a nameless part, he flew out and fell down the stairs, at the turning of which he lay, groaning in pain. "Mine Got, mine Got, I am murdered!" cried he. "Fader Abraham, receive me." My rage was appeased, and ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... move a contrary Way. The Prince, instead of taking the Admonition which was delivered in a manner that accounted for his Error with Safety to his Understanding, shaked a Cane at the Officer; and with the return of opprobrious Language, persisted in his own Orders. The whole Matter came necessarily before the King, who commanded his Son, on foot, to lay his right Hand on the Gentleman's Stirrup as he sat on Horseback in sight of the whole Army, and ask his Pardon. When the Prince touched his Stirrup, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... arose, drowning these protestations, and the most opprobrious epithets could be heard ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... they stand aloof, even from the respectable, because they are poor, and instead of visiting those, who indulge in dissipation and vice, and trying to lead them to the paths of virtue and peace, are heaping upon them the most opprobrious epithets. By esteeming the rich and associating with them, they practice a course of conduct, which has rooted the impression deep in every mind, that to be esteemed, and to rank with them in the social circle, they must be rich. This has driven ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... against the current, pushed and elbowed, struck at random, fell and were trampled, rose and trampled in their turn. They seized one another by the garments, the hair, the beard—fought like animals, cursed, shouted, called one another opprobrious and obscene names. When, finally, Alvan Creede had seen the last person of the line pass into that awful tumult the light that had illuminated it was suddenly quenched and all was as black to him as to those within. He turned away and ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... seeing him. He was glad when John Hammond called upon him to go out in the boat, when the weather was fine, but at other times his only recourse was to steal away to the moors with his books. Presently the elder boys took to throwing sods at him as he passed, and calling spy and other opprobrious epithets after him. This brought on several severe fights, and as Will made up for want of weight by pluck and activity his opponents more than once found themselves badly beaten. One day he learned from a subdued excitement in the village that it was time for one of the smuggling ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... yielding to popular clamour. Against the strategical and tactical genius of Hannibal, Quintus Fabius Maximus invoked the aid of time to afford him opportunities to strike. His "Fabian Tactics" have become proverbial, and earned for him at the time the opprobrious epithet "Cunctator," which the epigram[3] of Ennius has immortalised in his honour. Popular clamour led to a division of authority with Varro, and to the disaster of Cannae (B.C. 216). General G. B. McClellan was recalled from the Army of the Potomac on account of his failure to convert the drawn ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... every one of us, to treat our slaves with proper kindness. It is necessary to our deriving the greatest amount of profit from them. Of this we are all satisfied. And you snatch from us the only consolation we Americans could derive from the opprobrious imputation of being wholly devoted to making money, which your disinterested and gold-despising countrymen delight to cast upon us, when you nevertheless declare that we are ready to sacrifice it for the pleasure of being inhuman. You remember that Mr. Pitt could not get over the idea that self-interest ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... deserve the wrong, Should I not punish that opprobrious tongue. Irreverent to the great, and uncontroll'd, Art thou from wine, or innate folly, bold? Perhaps these outrages from Irus flow, A worthless triumph o'er a ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... splenitick and very severe, and much too wantonly so. I hope, however, it is just. Some of the opprobrious language I shall soften, for the eternal repetitions of ignorance, absurdity, surprising, etc., are not wanted. I am sorry to observe so much Nationality in it. Let this be a secret between us, for I will not have my private opinions go beyond yourself. As for Kidd, he is a modest, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... given the name of Kafraria, naming the inhabitants Kafrs or unbelievers; an appellation bestowed by the Mahometans on all who are not of their religion, but chiefly those who worship images, whence they call most of the Christians by the opprobrious name of Kafrs. To the north of this line on the east coast of Africa is the maritime country of Zanguebar, or more properly Zenjibar, so named from a Negro nation called the Zenji, who had formerly conquered all that coast before the settlement of the Arabs. From Zanguebar all the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... my friend. Thou shalt be freed from base Priuli's tyranny, And thy sequester'd fortunes heal'd again: I shall be free from those opprobrious wrongs That press me now, and bend my spirit downward; All Venice free, and every growing merit Succeed to its just right: fools shall be pull'd From wisdom's seat; those baleful, unclean birds, Those lazy owls, who, perch'd ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... swaying down the last mesa to the place called Red Lake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious epithets by men who had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs stirred clouds of red dust that followed and ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... teach thee ordinance. But no! the Emperor felt no touch of conscience, 205 What served him pleased him, and without a murmur He stamped his broad seal on these lawless deeds. What at that time was right, because thou didst it For him, to-day is all at once become Opprobrious, foul, because it is directed 210 Against him.—O most ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... downe, which he bade them doe, and so they were taken one by one, and bound, yea killed with their owne Curtleaxes; which when the rest perceived, they called us English dogs, and reviled us with many opprobrious termes, some leaping over-boord, crying, it was the chance of war; some were manacled, and so throwne over-boord, and some were slaine and mangled with the Curtleaxes, till the ship was well cleared, and our selves assured ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... locust trees there that cast a tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass plots? I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass plots, or rather the spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... respectable business. A short time after, her second sister-not dreaming that the law would be so stringent as to class her with the lowest nigger, or even lay its painful bearings at her door; for the family were very high-minded, and would have considered themselves grossly insulted to have the opprobrious name of nigger applied to them-paid her a visit. The public became acquainted with the fact, and to his surprise, Jones was informed by authority that upon no condition could she be allowed to return-that the law was imperative, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... expression by which to denote the dominion of the Turks. A conquest in the civilized world is generally no more than an acquisition of a new dominion to the conquering country. It does not imply a never-ending bondage imposed upon the conquered, a perpetual mark,—an opprobrious distinction between them and their masters; a bitter and unending persecution of their religion; an habitual violation of their rights of person and property, and the unrestrained indulgence towards them of every passion which belongs to the character of a barbarous soldiery. Yet such is ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... lips checked the opprobrious word, as Babie, true woman through it all, whispered with a broken sob, "Spare him, for ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... the time are perhaps excusable, if they carried their resentment to the length of indignities to his dead body; but they who write history afterwards, and were noway wronged by him in his lifetime, and have received assistance from his writings, in honor should not with opprobrious and scurrilous language upbraid him for those misfortunes, which may well enough befall even the best of men. On the other side, Ephorus is as much out of the way in his encomiums. For, however ingenious he is in supplying unjust acts and wicked conduct with fair and worthy ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... manhood, and opprobrious more To France than all her losses and defeats, Old or of later date, by sea or land, Her house of bondage worse than that of old Which God avenged on Pharaoh—the Bastille! Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts, Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... days before the death of Jesus a witness was summoned by public proclamation to attest His innocence, but none appeared. He is said to have been first stoned, and then hanged on the eve of the Passover. His disciples are called heretics, and opprobrious names. They are accused of immoral practices; and the New Testament is called a sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the ...
— Hebrew Literature

... this incident they unanimously pronounced me a fool, accompanying that opprobrious stigmatization with an epithet which my religious convictions prohibit ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... in the opprobrious sense of the word," said Sir George. "It is only when we are extremely young that we indulge in such ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... June). The citizens were so exasperated at this high-handed proceeding on the part of the prince that they vented their spleen on the queen, and pelted her with mud and stones, calling her all kinds of opprobrious names, as she attempted to pass in her barge under London Bridge on her way from the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... the subsequent proceedings against the Venizelists were depicted as a wanton hunt of harmless and law-abiding citizens. Day by day the stream of calumny, assiduously fed from the fountain-head at Salonica, grew in volume and virulence; and King Constantine was branded with every opprobrious epithet of liar, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... for the beach, puffing and blowing, from their dreaded enemy; nor did they stop to look for him until they were high and dry out of his reach. Then, when we all laughed, they called us "all the hangman tiefs," and every other opprobrious name which they could select from their vocabulary. I was very much amused with this scene, and as much afterwards with the negroes who crowded round us when we landed. They appeared such merry fellows, always laughing, chattering, singing, and showing their white teeth. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... to the people that the American name had become opprobrious among all the nations of Europe; that the flag of the United States was everywhere exposed to insults and annoyance; the husbandman, no longer able to export his produce freely, would soon be reduced to want; it ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... vulture of the Himalayas is that very familiar fowl—the small white scavenger vulture (Neophron ginginianus), often called Pharaoh's chicken and other opprobrious names that I will not mention. This bird eats everything that is filthy and unclean. The natural consequence is that it looks untidy and disreputable. It is, without exception, the ugliest bird in the world. It is about the size of a kite. The plumage is a dirty white, except ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... are supposed to be the cause of the wretch's animosity. It is added that this declaration was loudly cheered by a crowd of persons who had assembled on the spot; and that one man had the boldness to designate Mr. Slug aloud by the opprobrious epithet of "Stick-in-the-mud!" It is earnestly to be hoped that now, when the moment has arrived for their interference, the magistrates will not shrink from the exercise of that power which is vested in them by the constitution of our ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... assured that then to have passed away, would have been but the closing of the eyes on earth to awaken immediately in the lap of a blissful immortality. Since then the world's foot has been upon my breast, and I have writhed under the opprobrious weight; and, with sinful pride and self-trust, have, though grovelling in the dust, returned scorn for scorn, and injury for injury—even ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... consummate hypocrite!" said Old Hurricane, passing on to the examination of his favorite horses, one of which, the swiftest in the stud, he found galled on the shoulders. Whereupon he flew into a towering passion, abusing his unfortunate groom by every opprobrious epithet blind fury could suggest, ordering him, as he valued whole bones, to vacate the stable instantly, and never dare to set foot on his premises again as he valued his life, an order which the man meekly accepted and immediately disobeyed, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... Musilongo or Sonhese. The word appears to me opprobrious, as if each tribe termed itself Mushi-Congo (Congo people), and its neighbours Musulungus: Barbot writes as a Frenchman Moutsie, the Portuguese Muxi (Mushi). Mushi-Longo would perhaps mean Loango-people; but my ear could not detect any approach to "Loango" in "Musulungu." The first ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... the first article, sir, it may behove me (that I may not deserve, in your opinion, the opprobrious terms of forward and artful, and such like) to declare solemnly, that Mr. Williams never had the least encouragement from me, as to what you hint; and I believe his principal motive was the apprehended ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... desk, he put on his spectacles, which then were worn astride of the nose. In a minute he set on below them a second pair, and this we knew to be a signal of coming violence. Then he stood up, and asked who had written the opprobrious epithet on the wall. As no one replied, he asked several in turn, but luckily chose the girls, thinking, perhaps, that they would weakly betray the sinner. Soon he lost patience, and cried out he would give a king's ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... had elapsed when this shameful intrigue became the subject of common talk, and public indignation took the side of the injured woman, when Lord Forrester, after getting tired of her, "was so cruel and base as to speak of her openly in the most opprobrious manner," even alluding to her criminal connection with him. In so doing, however, he had not taken into consideration the violent character of the woman he had wronged, nor thought he of her jealousy, wounded pride, and despair. In his haste, also, to rid himself of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... that all these opprobrious terms applied to Lauder are copied from Foxe, or rather from the black-letter tract, printed by John Daye, of which Dr. M'Crie has given a description in his Life of Knox, vol. i. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... is sure he is happier, even in this situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependence. I understand (remember, this is a secret between ourselves)—I understand that Secretary Cunningham Falconer has found him out, and makes good use of his pen, but pays him shabbily. Temple is too much of a man of honour to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... unable to stop, fell headlong over the figure of the self-made parson. She had not seen Doug's part in the transaction, and being much disturbed in mind and dress, turned upon poor Wetmore and flung at the worthy shepherd the opprobrious words, "You fool." ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... too far, I neither can nor will bear your insolent contemptuous Way of conversing, or your opprobrious provoking Language. If you attack my favourite Foible with such Acrimony, you must expect I will not spare some of yours: As for your sneering at my Politicks, I own I never was a Politician, nor did I ever set up for one. I had too rational an Head, I thank ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... the course of Captain Brown. And, above all, it was needed for the men who have disgraced themselves by denying to Brown the possession of any virtues, and who have outstripped his Southern enemies in applying to him the most opprobrious and the falsest epithets. Now, none of these classes will Mr. Redpath's book reach with effect. Its tone is such, it is so violent, so extravagant, that it will offend all right-thinking men. Even those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... metal, equally respected by Roman and barbarian, by rich and poor, by great and mean, by churchmen and laymen, which all mankind are fighting for, plotting for, planning for, intriguing for, and damning themselves for, both soul and body—by the opprobrious name of yellow dross? They are mad, Agelastes, utterly mad. Perils and dangers, penalties and scourges, are the arguments to which men who are above the universal influence which moves all others, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... that day were, for the most part, so governed as to reconcile men with the less opprobrious vices of monarchy. Poland was a State made up of centrifugal forces. What the nobles called liberty was the right of each of them to veto the acts of the Diet, and to persecute the peasants on his estates—rights which they ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... most learned of his attendants could do, for, although they were more sober than their master, they also had had a pull at the bottles. Fortunately the king did not appeal to us, but again and again asked them what we had said. At length starting up he called them all by the most opprobrious names, insisting that they should interpret, then seizing a cane, which he probably thought was a sword, he ordered them to go about their business, bestowing a kick on the rear of first one, and then on another, sending them all flying ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... drew his attention with a touch, and began making hideous grimaces at the creature, while the others began to shout and were apparently calling it every opprobrious name that ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... wherever she went, with miracles and remarkable predictions. God permitted her to meet with some severe trials; for at a certain time all persons indiscriminately seemed to be in a combination against her, and persecuted her under the opprobrious names of visionary, hypocrite, and the like imputations, all tending to asperse her innocency. The arrival of St. Germanus at Paris, probably on his second journey to Britain, for some time silenced her calumniators; but it was not ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... life, "It seems hard that of the men whom I worked with for thirty years only three or four are willing to speak to me now."] But Phillips endured the storm like a man. He argued his case with all the ardor and energy of his nature, but there escaped from him not one opprobrious or resentful sentence towards his former associates. Emerson said (to quote him again, and we hope for the last time): "How handsomely Mr. Phillips has behaved in his controversy with Mr. Garrison. In fact Phillips was the same we ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... Another opprobrious epithet is "paternalism." This is the most familiar of the titles of reproach. It suggests an idea of government made pestiferous by old abuse. The most atrocious despotisms both of king and church have planted themselves in loco parentis. The welfare ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... sister she saw two likenesses; one, of the woman who had once shrieked after her the name of "Rothesay,"—the other, that of her own father in his rare moments of passion, as she had seen him the night he had called her by that opprobrious word which had planted the sense of personal humiliation ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... one had ever actually applied that term to Garth in her hearing. They had skirted delicately round it, or wrapped up its meaning in some less harsh-sounding tangle of phrases, and although she had bitterly used the word herself, now that the opprobrious expression publicly confronted her, writ large by some unfriendly hand, she was swept by a sheer fury of indignant denial. It roused in her the immediate instinct to defend, to range herself unmistakably on Garth's side against a world ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... presence of mind of No. 7 in the boat rescued us from the very jaws of defeat. The scene is one which never can fade from my remembrance and will be connected always with the gentlemanly conduct of the crew in neither using opprobrious language nor gesture towards your unfortunate son but treating him with the most graceful forbearance; for in most cases when an accident happens which in itself is but slight, but is visited with serious consequences, most ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... This opprobrious illustration raised a considerable clamor of abuse from the ruder women; but the Judge's and Burgomaster's ladies silenced them, and repeated their resolution never to give up their faith against ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... black piece of taffeta, which he always wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered immediately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as not to give the least sign of mistrust; nay, she gave him some very opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching the papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a good ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... defended by the Tower, was terrified by the neighborhood of such dangerous commotions, resolved to go by water to the Castle of Windsor; but as she approached the bridge, the populace assembled against her: the cry ran, "Drown the witch;" and besides abusing her with the most opprobrious language, and pelting her with rotten eggs and dirt, they had prepared large stones to sink her barge, when she should attempt to shoot the bridge; and she was so frightened, that she returned to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... talk, but for so jovial a specimen he was surprisingly uncommunicative. Indeed, I think he soon decided that I somehow did not belong to the fraternity, that I was a "farmer"—in the most opprobrious sense—and he soon began to drowse, rousing himself once or twice to roll another cigarette, but finally dropping (apparently, at ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... hotel, but did not stay there long himself. I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well—if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word." ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... vein; Wide is the range of language; and such words As one may speak, another may return. What need that we should insults interchange? Like women, who some paltry quarrel wage, Scolding and brawling in the public street, And in opprobrious terms their anger vent, Some true, some false; for so their rage suggests. With words thou shalt not turn me from the field, Till we have met in arms; then try we now Each other's prowess ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... and pardons" were used as freely as ever, and attacked the archbishop before his face with "such a stomach as I think the three- mouthed Cerberus of hell could not have uttered it more viperously." He glossed every sentence (of the archbishops sermons) after such opprobrious fashion that every honest ear glowed to hear it, and "he exhorted them all, yea, and so much as in him lay he adjured them, to give no credence to (their spiritual guide) whatsoever he might say, for before God he would not."[14] The Bishop of Meath replied that the archbishop had given himself ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... disparaging eyes. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" while the latter, glorying in their own nether rotundity, and observing the slack galligaskins of their rivals, flapping like an empty sail against the mast, retorted upon them with the opprobrious appellation of "Platter-breeches." ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... too much: I have but one choice left: It will be best for me to 'scape by death, By self-inflicted death, this dangerous inquest. I save my honor thus; and free myself From an opprobrious end. I hither came To give thee my last warning: and to take My last farewell... Oh, live; and may thy fame Live with thee, unimpeached! All thoughts of pity For me now lay aside; if I'm allowed By my own hand, for thy sake, to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the founder of this institution or his motives for this. I will not inquire into his opinions upon religion. But I feel bound to say, the occasion demands that I should say that this is the most opprobrious, the most insulting and unmerited stigma, that ever was cast, or attempted to be cast, upon the preachers of Christianity, from north to south, from east to west, through the length and breadth of the land, in the history of the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... me" sort of air. Now, there is nothing haughty about a dog. They are "Hail, fellow, well met" with every Tom, Dick, or Harry that they come across. When I meet a dog of my acquaintance I slap his head, call him opprobrious epithets, and roll him over on his back; and there he lies, gaping at me, and ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... by Peter Porcupine. The latter was publishing a daily paper (1799) and in it frequently brought forward Priestley's name in the most opprobrious manner, although Priestley in ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... Antigua was "an abominable falsehood." Not contented with this, and with insinuating that I, as agent of the society in the distribution of their charity in Antigua, had fraudulently duped them out of their money by a fabricated tale of distress, Mr. M'Queen proceeded to libel me in the most opprobrious terms, as "a man of the most worthless and abandoned character."[20] Now I know from good authority that it was upon Dr. Coull's information that Mr. M'Queen founded this impudent contradiction of notorious facts, and this audacious ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... when I was brought to the ground by a blow from a musket. At the same moment the enemy discovered my rank, exulted in their having taken the rebel general, as they termed me, and bid me ask for quarters. I felt that I deserved not so opprobrious an epithet, and determined to die, as I had lived, an honored soldier in a just and righteous cause; and without begging my life or making reply, I lunged with my sword at the nearest man. They then bayoneted and ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... marriage with Mary. His miracles are attributed to sorcery, the secret of which He brought in a slit in His flesh out of Egypt. He is said to have been first stoned and then hanged on the eve of the Passover. His disciples are called heretics and opprobrious names. They are accused of immoral practices, and the New Testament is called a sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the most bitter ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... as I overheard, seemed to me of a very puerile and captious description, and some of an opprobrious personality, e.g., as when a certain oarman was taunted with being short—as though he were capable of adding the cubic ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... of my painting before Naumann," said Will. "He will tell you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!" ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... 'Good luck to you and your lady, Mr McKeith.' The drunken reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye—Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies—the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... across the street, for the treachery of the other side was beyond description—and tried to come to terms with the representative of our least hated opponent. He even thought, and Peter was not guileless, that he had secured their neutrality, when they suddenly burst forth into opprobrious language, being a very vulgar school indeed, and exposed Peter's designs openly. His feelings were not much hurt by the talk, in which, indeed, he scored an easy victory after he had abandoned negotiation and had settled down to vituperation, but Seminary boys whose homeward route ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... entering at the same time, they drove the others out of the house. My friend, in French, requested the Dutchman to follow his men; but he refused, and challenged him to single combat, for the insult he said he had received at his hands—adding some opprobrious epithets, which roused the choler of the brave Englishman. In an instant, they were engaged hand to hand; but short was the strife—the Dutchman fell dead on the scene of his violence, and his men returned ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... stoical nor Christian, though he so far coquetted with Christianity as to build temples dedicated to no Pagan deity, which passed in after times for unfinished churches. He was a Graeculus. In that contemptuous epithet, stripping it of its opprobrious significance, we find the real key to his character. In a failing age he lived a restless-minded, many-sided soldier-prince, whose inner hopes and highest aspirations were for Hellas. Hellas, her art, her history, her myths, her literature, her lovers, her young heroes filled him with enthusiasm. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... he was finally ejected, much to his relief, on a street corner. Although, as he informs us, he felt perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, he was impelled under the circumstances to hurl after the conductor an opprobrious appellation which he had ascertained from Patsey was the correct thing in such emergencies, and possessed peculiarly ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... ladies to take this next-door room," said his garrulous attendant that afternoon, and Stuyvesant thought opprobrious things. "They'll be giggling and talking all night, I suppose," said he disgustedly when the "medico" came in late that afternoon. "I wish you'd move me, if you ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... were likewise too many who purchased an ignominious life, by discovering and betraying the holy Scripture into the hands of infidels. A great number even of bishops and presbyters acquired, by this criminal compliance, the opprobrious epithet of Traditors; and their offence was productive of much present scandal and of much future discord ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... fashion of his life bore nothing of the stamp of fanaticism. But he begged leave, in his turn, to address a word of serious exhortation to their lordships. He exhorted them to beware how they were persuaded to bury, under the opprobrious name of fanaticism, the regard which they owed to the great duties of mercy and justice, for the neglect of which (if they should neglect them) they would be answerable at that tribunal, where no prevarication of witnesses could misinform the judge; and where no ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... prince's accession to the throne throw a dark cloud over his fame, which would otherwise seem, at least as far as his public life is concerned, to be unstained by any opprobrious act. He possessed such energy, talent, and military science, as, had he been fortunate enough to unite the Moorish nation under him by an undisputed title, might have postponed the fall of Granada for many years. As it was, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... instrument or weapon whatever, or shall, post or publish, or cause to be posted or published, any writing charging any such person so declining or refusing to accept any such challenge to be a coward, or using any other opprobrious or injurious language therein, tending to deride and disgrace such person, for so offending, on conviction thereof in any court competent to trial thereof in said district, shall be punished by confinement to hard labour in the penitentiary for a term not exceeding seven years, nor less than ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Lady Staveley, who could not but feel that the term, as applied to such a young man as Peregrine Orme, was very opprobrious. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... living under the same roof with a man whom she loathed and feared. The memory of the blacksmith's aversion of this stranger intensified her own; and as she pondered in shame and indignation the scornful and opprobrious epithets which he had bestowed on herself, she muttered through ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... on the part of the priesthood to morality and to public works of mercy.(228) His bitter contempt for Christianity manifested itself in a public edict, which commanded that Christians should be denominated by the opprobrious epithet "Galilaeans;" and in some of his extant letters(229) he evinces a bitterness against it which finds its parallel ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... rooms. Readers with strong feelings cannot resist annotating articles or chapters that express opinions in which they cannot concur. Pictures of generals or royalties are especially liable to defacement with opprobrious epithets. This feeling extends even to bulletins. Libraries receive strenuous protests against the display of portraits and other material relating to one of the contesting parties without similar material on the ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... more kicks than ha'pence. Again and again the people refused to sell anything to those whom they considered their enemies, and some even denied them the common courtesy of a drink of water. The chief amusement of the children along the route was to shout opprobrious or derisive epithets as they passed, not infrequently accompanied with stones, rotten apples, and now and then the still more objectionable egg. The squire's opinion of Whiggism went to an even lower pitch, but his womenkind bore it unflinchingly and uncomplainingly, happy merely in the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... Notwithstanding the opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature—the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us; still the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... of the people themselves, it is impossible for a passing traveller to ascertain. I am apt to believe that a better system of law and management would have good effects. They are much worse treated than the poor in England, are talked to in more opprobrious terms, ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... Nagpur and are recognised as the oldest inhabitants of the country. From this centre they have spread north through Lohardaga and Hazaribagh and into southern Bihar, where large numbers of Bhuiyas are encountered on whom the opprobrious designation of Musahar or 'rat-eater' has been conferred by their Hindu neighbours. Others of the tribe who travelled south from Chota Nagpur experienced more favourable conditions, and here the tendency has been for the Bhuiyas to rise ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Reactionaries, who had hitherto remained silent, an opportunity of preaching their doctrines with telling effect. The celebrated novelist, Turgeneif, long the idol of the young generation, had inadvertently in "Fathers and Children" invented the term Nihilist, and it at once came to be applied as an opprobrious epithet, notwithstanding the efforts of Pissaref, a popular writer of remarkable talent, to prove to the public that it ought to be regarded ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... toning down the sensitiveness of the feelings. Being mere data, neither good nor evil in themselves, he may pervert them or lull them to sleep by any means at his command. Truckling, compromise, time-serving, capitulations of conscience, are conventionally opprobrious names for what, if successfully carried out, {105} would be on his principles by far the easiest and most praiseworthy mode of bringing about that harmony between inner and outer relations which ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... offices at work like hives under their new editors, and buzzing contradictory news from morning to night; a new rumour at every cafe, a scuffle, or the makings of one, at every street corner, and hour by hour a steady stream of manifestoes, placards, handbills, caricatures, and broadsheets of opprobrious verse—the din of it all went by me like the vain noises of a dream as I trod the pavements, intent upon my own hopes and perplexities. I cannot think that this was mere selfishness; rather, a deep disgust ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... upbraided him with opprobrious words: "Cursed Paris,[146] most excellent in form, thou woman-raving seducer, would that thou hadst either not been born, or that thou hadst perished unmarried. This, indeed, I would wish, and indeed it would be much better, than that thou shouldst thus be a disgrace and scandal ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... the perfection of the individual,—the equipoise of heart and head, steadfast seriousness as opposed to showy sciolism, the preservation of hope and faith,—as a noble object of emotion. They are not intellectual in the opprobrious sense of the word as applied to poetry; they are suffused with warm feeling and their language is simple and natural. On the other hand they are argumentative: they state propositions and draw conclusions the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable, and harrowing things in his life. He says: "Do you remember those chances you had for heaven, and missed them? Do you remember all those lapses in conduct? Do you remember all those opprobrious words and thoughts and actions? Don't remember them, eh? I'll make you remember them." And then he takes all the past and empties it on that death-bed, as the mail-bags are emptied on the post-office floor. The man is sick. He can not ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... artisans." At the same time, to the honor of Valenciennes, it must be stated, upon the same incontestable authority, that not a Catholic in the city was injured or insulted. The priests who had remained there were not allowed to say mass, but they never met with an opprobrious word ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the Earl of Northumberland, was fined five thousand pounds; another for saying the Earl of Suffolk was a base lord, four thousand pounds to him, and a like sum to the King. Sir David Forbes, for opprobrious words against Lord Wentworth, incurred five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand pounds to the party. On some soap-boilers, who had not complied with the requisitions of the newly incorporated company, mulcts were imposed of one thousand five hundred pounds and one thousand pounds. One ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... there is nothing perfect in mankind." In the same Essay he gives his own receipt for satire: "How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms!... This is the mystery of that noble trade.... Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive: a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not.... There is a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... call me 'grandma' again, Felix," protested the worthy woman quite warmly; for the Milesian had twice applied the opprobrious appellation to her. "If you ever do it again, I will never hug you ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... the Christians. But the Gentile riffraff, attracted by the gracious promises of enjoying in the world to come the felicities denied them in this, eagerly attached themselves to the new sect, which rapidly increased in numbers, and its votaries, glorying in the opprobrious epithet of Ebionites, or needy ones, made themselves so obnoxious by their aggression and turbulent dispositions that, barely tolerated by the Government and condemned by the cultured adherents to the established religion, many ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... born in Dundee; became King's Advocate for Scotland; wrote on law and on other subjects in a style which commended itself to such a critic as Dryden, though by his severe treatment of the Covenanters he earned in Scotland the opprobrious title of the "bluidy ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... human life, since the earlier grand display of mind, what had been effected toward such an advancement of intelligence in the community, that when this next tribe of highly endowed spirits should appear, they would stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the main body of the nation, and find a much larger portion of it qualified to receive their intellectual effusions. By this time, the class of persons who sought knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of life, who took an interest ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... twelfth day after its birth, the name being chosen by the Mohturia or caste headman. The ordinary Hindu names of deities for men and sacred rivers or pious and faithful wives for women are employed; instances of the latter being Ganga, Godavari, Jamuna, Sita, Laxmi and Radha. Opprobrious names are sometimes given to avert ill-luck, as Damdya (purchased for eight cowries), Kauria (a cowrie), Bhikaria (a beggar), Ghusia (from ghus, a mallet for stamping earth), Harchatt (refuse), Akali (born in famine-time), Langra (lame), Lula (having an arm useless); or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... answered George, in nowise ruffled by the Don's reiteration of the term "pirate," which in those days carried nothing like the opprobrious signification that it bears to-day. "It matters not; for I shall cause your ship to be thoroughly searched from stem to stern before I destroy her. But as you seem to be imbued with so very strong an ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... did comfort her, and strengthen her too late on that Wednesday afternoon, they thrust another 'witch' into her cell, bidding the two, with opprobrious words, keep company together. The new comer fell prostrate with the push given her from without; and Lois, not recognizing anything but an old ragged woman lying helpless on her face on the ground, lifted her up; and lo! it ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... to procure disdain and resistance. Such persons, knowing the benefit of a good name, being wont to possess a good repute, prizing their own credit as a considerable good, will never be prone to bereave others of the like by opprobrious speech. A noble enemy will never speak of ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... stronger confirmatory power than the others. I have said any Tamtonian, but that is an overstatement. A few usually persist in thinking as they did before; or in altering their convictions in obedience to reason instead of authority, as our own people do; but they are at once assailed with the most opprobrious names, accused of treason and all manner of crimes, pelted with mud and stones and in some instances deprived of their noses and ears by the public executioner. Yet in no country is independence of thought so vaunted as a virtue, and in none is freedom of speech considered so obvious ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... dislike to that which is painful. On neither side will he tell lies for peace. He is ready to be lost for his fellow-men. In the name of God he rebukes the flames of hell. The fugitives pause on the top, look back, call him lying prophet, and shout evil opprobrious names at the man who counts not his own life dear to him, who has forgotten his own soul in his sacred devotion to men, who fills up what is left behind of the sufferings of Christ, for his body's sake — for the human race, of which he is the head. Be sure that, come ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... earned an opprobrious nickname by the effeminacy of his dress and manner." Does Mr Mitford know that Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname in a perfectly different manner? (See the speech of Aeschines against Timarchus.) And, if he knew it, should he not ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of service, or fearing the evil eye, which may punish a refusal. Begging is quite an honourable profession in Spain; mendicants are charitably termed the poor, and not besmirched, as in England, with an opprobrious name. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... If the intercourse has been with a woman who belongs to the class from which his wife comes, then he is called atna nylkna (which, literally translated, is vulva thief); if with one with whom it is unlawful for him to have intercourse, then he is called iturka, the most opprobrious term in the Arunta language. In the one case he has merely stolen property, in the other he ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... a long pole, and paraded through all the wards of the city, shouting, "Heads out! behold the cap of the accursed Haritun." He was afterwards sent back to prison, the soldiers leading him by a circuitous route to prolong his sufferings, and the mob continually following him with opprobrious language. "I entered the prison," he wrote to a native brother, "with a joyful heart, committing myself to God, and giving glory to Him, that He had enabled me to pass through fire and sword, and brought me to ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... boy, without the tearing spirits that would have made him eager to join the village lads in their games. Indeed they laughed at him for his poverty and scholarship, and called him Jack Presbyter, Puritan, bookworm, and all the opprobrious names they could think of, though no one ever less merited sectarian nicknames than he, as far as doctrine went. For, bred up on Dr. Eales' books, and obliged to look out on the unsettled state of religious matters, he was as staunch a churchman as his ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and when we re-opened them we found all the tails carefully preserved in oil and sawdust. He made disgraceful caricatures of our physiognomies by falsely representing that he wished us to sit for our portraits. He perpetrated drawings upon the backs of our college exercises, mixing them with opprobrious remarks concerning our preceptors, which we did not observe till our attention was called to them upon their return by the preceptors themselves. We bore these things meekly on the whole, for that ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... avoid quarrelling, which conduct, instead of gaining (as it justly deserved) the approbation of his companions, drew upon him the insult and abuse of the whole school; and they were perpetually teasing him with the opprobrious title of coward. For some time he bore it with great good-humour, and endeavoured to laugh it off; but, finding that had no effect, he one day thus addressed us:—"If you suppose that I like to be called a coward, you are all very much mistaken; or if you think ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner

... greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to certain of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... Allen, who had also followed the sea, and, it was said, obtained his large wealth through means not sanctioned by laws human or divine. Men and women of the past generation, and therefore contemporaries, did not hesitate to designate him an "old pirate," though always the opprobrious words were spoken in an undertone, for people were half afraid of the dark, reserved, evil-looking man, who had evidently passed a large portion of his life among scenes of peril and violence. There were more pleasing ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... over head and ears; and, moreover, he could never hear the names of either of the Wringhims mentioned without getting into a quandary of disgust and anger; and all that he would deign to say of them was, to call them by all the opprobrious names he ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... mob show to one another. To steal from one another is indeed highly criminal and indecent; for this may be strictly stiled defrauding the poor (sometimes perhaps those who are poorer than ourselves), or, to set it under the most opprobrious ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... left!" singsonged Racey from the corner of the building, and set the thumb of one hand to his nose and twiddled opprobrious fingers at his comrade. "You wanna be a li'l bit quicker when you go to souse me, Swing. Yo're too slow, a lot too slow. Yep. Now I wouldn't go for to fling that pail at me, Swing. You might bust it, and yore carelessness with crockery thataway ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... perverted to such a contrary meaning. But considering her to be the faithful-lest and most loving creature upon earth, and that true love cannot bear anything that touches upon or can be applied (though with ever so forced a construction) to an opprobrious or contemptuous meaning, I attributed her groundless resentment to her excess of fondness only for me; and falling upon the bed by her, and bathing her face in my tears, I assured her the interpretation she had put on my words was altogether foreign ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... Havin' onearthed this amazin' an' stupenjus fraud committed by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'Tis a king's chair or a quane's. There's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av trapesemints. Bhoys, 'tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin'—me bein' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... characters used to transcribe the name mean 'dull, stupid,' and 'old, ancient,' but they are used purely phonetically.... The Mongols of the present day are commonly called by the Chinese Ta-tzu, but this name is resented by the Mongols as opprobrious, though it is but an abbreviated form of the name Ta-ta-tzu, in which, according to Rubruck, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa









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