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Handicap   Listen
noun
handicap  n.  
1.
An allowance of a certain amount of time or distance in starting, granted in a race to the competitor possessing inferior advantages; or an additional weight or other hindrance imposed upon the one possessing superior advantages, in order to equalize, as much as possible, the chances of success; as, the handicap was five seconds, or ten pounds, and the like.
2.
A race, for horses or men, or any contest of agility, strength, or skill, in which there is an allowance of time, distance, weight, or other advantage, to equalize the chances of the competitors.
3.
An old game at cards. (Obs.)
4.
A physical or mental disability of the body which makes normal human activities more difficult or impossible; as, his deformed leg was a major handicap in walking.
5.
Any disadvantage that makes an activity more difficult or impossible; as, insufficient capital was a big handicap in competing against Microsoft.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Handicap" Quotes from Famous Books



... agent of the theatre, and he at once telephoned to the newspaper offices that Plunger Carter, the book-maker breaker, was at that theatre, and if that the newspapers wanted a chance to interview him on the probable out-come of the classic handicap to be run on the morrow, he, the press agent, would unselfishly assist them. In answer to these hurry calls, reporters of the Ten o'Clock Club assembled in the foyer. How far what later followed was due to their presence and to the efforts of the press agent only that gentleman ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis

... one of the best trailers in the world. They were under a terrible handicap, and both realized it. With the great white horse, strong as it was, carrying double, they could ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... southward, inspecting all likely hiding places on the way, with a strong chance that she herself would be detected and her purpose read before she discovered the fugitive. By taking the northern route this handicap would be avoided. They could make much better progress and not be seen until it was too late for the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... laughed at me. He was superior to us; he was stronger; he could do more with one stroke than we could do with three; he was by nature a more valuable aid than we. We were forced through physical inferiority to abandon the choicest task to this young male competitor. Nature had given us a handicap at the start. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... of the 100th meridian are loosely spoken of as arid, semiarid, or sub-humid states. For commercial purposes no state wants to be classed as arid and to suffer under the handicap of advertised aridity. The annual rainfall of these states ranges from about 3 to ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... the immediate future will be to encourage and guide the movement which is now getting under way. For mistakes made now will handicap both community and school for years to come. The attempt to secure better schools by "improving" conditions in local districts should be definitely abandoned except in localities where conditions make consolidation impracticable for the present. The new consolidated school building ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts

... other starts this season. That's been our big trouble. He shows such promise that the judges have placed him under a terrific weight handicap. To run in next week's Gold Stakes, for instance, he would have to carry 124 pounds. I was hesitant to enter him because of that. But with Pat's new invention—" She turned to Pat, eyes ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond

... of every one. Now, in these days of competitive examinations, when every young fellow on entering life has to struggle to get his foot on the first rung of the ladder, and all his future prospects depend on his doing better than others, how inexpressibly silly it is for him to handicap himself needlessly by taking a narcotic which confuses his brain and impairs his memory, and which affords him no pleasure whatever. I treat you as a rational being, and appeal to your common sense, and speak ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... ladies against men: the men to play on side-saddles by way of a mild handicap! Some of the older folk are a bit horrified at the notion. But I believe it'll come off; and they want ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... raise its own levies in its own way. To induce men to enlist Congress was twice handicapped. First, it had no power of taxation and could only ask the States to provide what it needed. The second handicap was even greater. When Congress offered bounties to those who enlisted in the Continental army, some of the States offered higher bounties for their own levies of militia, and one authority was bidding against the other. This encouraged short-term enlistments. If a man could re-enlist and ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... the ice and up and down. Skookum felt it was because escape was hopeless, and he redoubled his effort. But all in vain. He was only wearing himself out, panting noisily now. The snow was deep enough to be a great disadvantage, more to dog than to fox, since weight counted as such a handicap. Unconsciously Skookum slowed up. The fox increased his headway; then audaciously turned around and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch again. "By the way, didn't you say he ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... know, was that he considered that girls were a nuisance on the links and in the tennis-court. I suppose a plus two golfer and a Wildingesque tennis-player, such as Wilton was, does feel like that. Personally, I think that girls add to the fun of the thing. But then, my handicap is twelve, and, though I have been playing tennis for many years, I doubt if I have got my first serve—the fast one—over the net more than half a ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... welcome and was gratified by our acceptance of her invitation. He would now proceed to read the names of those who were to play against each other, stating handicaps and the like. He read accordingly, and I learned that my opponent was to be Mr. Heathcroft, each of us having a handicap of two. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... wrote of the one-legged rascal Silver, one associates with that handicap a tendency to try to outwit others; while the dependence of blind ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... displayed remarkable talent for scientific work on a large scale. Among his other known achievements was the development of a practicable scheme for a system of sewerage for the city of New Orleans, but he here met his handicap of color through the refusal of the authorities to accord to him such an honor as would be evidenced by the acceptance and adoption of his plan.[18] Who knows but that the city of New Orleans might have been able to write a different chapter ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... same thing might be said truthfully of the artillery also, though the union artillerists, notwithstanding the handicap, did such effective work as would have delighted ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... time for the purpose of prosecuting war. The masterful personality and self-confidence to which the phenomenal success that attended his creation of the wonderful New Armies was so largely due, was in some respects a handicap to him in the early days ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... an agonized heart behind a smiling face, was only too delighted at any excuse which would enable him to approach Miss Spencer, and press aside those cavaliers who were monopolizing her attention. The handicap of not being able to dance he felt to be heavy, and he greeted the lieutenant with ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... would advise you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. The only reason I haven't dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that I don't want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in the prosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consider ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... person whom numerous men of his acquaintance had begun affectionately to handicap with the perilous nickname of "the ladies' man," he was thinking of no less than five ladies; two of one name and three of another. Flora Valcour and her French grandmother (as well as her brother of nineteen, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... is that a married woman who is anxious to continue her former profession of science teaching will not as a rule have to suffer the usual unfavourable handicap. That a married woman should teach the domestic subjects is quite a reasonable proposition to many who would exclude her from most professions: if she be also a mother it may even count as an asset instead ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... civilization could not have been accomplished without the work of women. No restriction should be placed upon energies and abilities so potent for good. The extension of the right of suffrage would remove a handicap from the efforts of women and give them an opportunity to work for the welfare of the State. We do not claim that woman's voice in the government would at once sound the death knell to all social and political evils but we do believe that a government representing the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Marriage," in manuscript, and never published, was accepted by Marshall, manager of the Walnut, and is noted by Boker, in a letter to Stoddard, October 12, 1852, the chief handicap confronting him being the inability to find someone suited to take the leading role. Stoddard's ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... Kermode looked sympathetic. She was evidently alluding to her lameness, which must prove a heavy handicap to a girl of the active, sanguine temperament he thought ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... put on more steam, and the third player went out on an infield fly. But the damage had been done, and those three runs at the very start loomed up as a serious handicap. ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... attention on it, impatient for her as a schoolboy for his first love.... Always when she entered a room came beauty.... Well, she would come.... The type took form beneath his eyes.... The races at Sheepshead Bay: Tom Martin had captured the Twin City Handicap.... In Ireland they would go to the Curragh and Baldoyle to see the horses, and the Dublin horse-show, and the hunts on a frosty morning.... What was this? Heavy bets laid that Cleveland would be next President. The Irish ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... opinion that the only thing that prevented his swimming was his curls. To overcome this handicap his hair was braided, tied and cross-tied and his top-heaviness reduced to a dozen scattered knobs and knots—knots pulled so tight they glaringly exposed the white scalp between, and the tying of which brought ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... numbers all over the province except in a few of the western and south-western districts. As farmers they are much hampered by caste rules which forbid the employment of their women in the fields, and the prohibition of widow remarriage is a severe handicap. They are generally classed as poor cultivators, and this is usually, but by no means universally, a true description. The Dogra Rajputs of the low hills are good soldiers. They are numerous in Kangra and in ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... Towse praised my soldierly bearing under misfortune, and praise from this blind double V.C. meant much. He had been sorely smitten at a time when there was no St. Dunstan's, no Sir Arthur Pearson, to make his blindness into just a handicap, instead of what it nearly always was before the days of St. Dunstan's, an unparalleled affliction. But Captain Towse beat blindness, and did it, for the most ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson

... Virginia can give us a big handicap and play us to a standstill at our own game. She told me to buy all the Burlington and Sugar her account would stand, and did not even ask for my opinion. In both cases I thought the operations were more the result of ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... for each of its inhabitants. The applications of endocrine control will not necessarily interfere with the life of the individual. There will be breeding of the best mixtures of glands of internal secretion possible. And there will be treatment for those born with a handicap, or who have become handicapped in the life struggle. There will be a stimulation of capacity to the limit. But beyond that, compulsory equalization ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... what he'd qualify for, nor suspect he'd have to shovel eighty million tons of coal and ashes before his handicap would be lowered enough to earn him a set of golf clubs or that the free lunch and drinks were chunks of brimstone, the sulphurous air and Styx River water which is always just below ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt

... as best he could. But, medically speaking, I was two days senior to him, so that when the Sister heard the uproar and bustled up it was he who was forbidden to speak. She then proceeded to clinch the matter by inserting a thermometer in his mouth. I defy any man to argue under such a handicap. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... he is not as anxious to snatch at the first maiden who appears in his station as his predecessor who lived in India in the days when a voyage to England took six months. And men in the East are as a rule not anxious to marry. A wife out there is a handicap at every turn. She adds enormously to his expenses, and her society too often lends more brightness to the existence of his fellows than his own. Children are ruinous luxuries. Bachelor life in Mess or club is too pleasant, sport that a single man can enjoy more readily than a married one ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... be much in the way of bridging and embanking. And it would soon pay for itself, for the millions of taels' worth of trade done between North Mongolia and China would easily be doubled if once freed from the handicap of the costly and uncertain journey of to-day. But more important than all else is the political side of the question. The Chinese Government must have known for years that its hold on North Mongolia was insecure; it has pushed forward colonization by the ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... considerable tribute to both author and adapter (the late JOHN RAPHAEL) that their work should, at the height of the barking season, hold an audience silent and apparently enthralled, in spite of the handicap that, in order to make the story in any degree intelligible, much time had to be given to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various

... her eyes and her arms ached to take the great boy and hold him tightly against her breast. With all her mother's soul she wanted to protect Hugh from a world she was sure would treat him always as a beast of burden and would take no account of what she thought of as the handicap of his birth. Her morning's work was done and without saying anything to Hugh, who continued to go up and down the platform laboriously sweeping, she went out at the front door of the house and to one of the town stores. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to smash Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and the Fund gave eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the course for all horses." Shackles' owner said, "You can ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... most serviceable there by his firmness and wisdom; eminent by character, experience, and mental equipment; so indifferent to office that he almost openly scorned the proffered honor,—he seemed to the reformers a nearly ideal candidate, however much his reserved and distant manners might handicap him before ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... without in. In other words, his own conscience, and not the arbitrary ruling of an arbitrary government, is his dictator. To reconcile liberty and democracy, then, has been France's problem, as it has been that of America. She has faced the same problems against a handicap that America has not had—the handicap of a discontented nobility. And by sheer force ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... same age limit as that assigned to recruits, or whether the cage was too severe a handicap, I don't know, but halfway up I somehow found myself marooned on an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... the modern world in attempting to do this. Systems of rural credit have been studied and developed on the other side of the water while we left our farmers to shift for themselves in the ordinary money market. You have but to look about you in any rural district to see the result, the handicap and embarrassment which have been put upon those ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... can do other things; there are infinite ways in which you can be of use, doing the things you want to do. The school work is only a handicap,—drudgery that leads ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... into villages and towns; for the women and children there are the women and children of the enemy. But those in the German lines belong to the ally of England. Besides, they are women and children. So British gunners avoid towns—which is, in one sense, a professional handicap. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... increases, and the deficiency in organic matter becomes more marked. The sale of hay and straw, and especially the loss of liquid manures in stables, have robbed many farms. These are adverse influences upon clover seedings, but the most important handicap to clover is soil acidity. There is sad waste when high-priced clover seed is put into land so sour that clover bacteria cannot thrive, and there is ten-fold more waste in letting land fail to obtain ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... of Jane was not so easy a matter as my vanity had prompted me to think. I started with a handicap, since Jane had heard my declaration to Mary, and I had to undo all that before I could do anything else. Try the same thing yourself with a spirited girl, naturally laughter-loving and coy, if you think it a simple, easy undertaking. I began to fear I should need another antidote long before ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... to-day, so hungry for an education that he would walk nine miles a day to attend a rude frontier school in a log cabin! What would the city boys of to-day, who do not want to walk even a few blocks to school, think of a youth who would do what Lincoln did to overcome his handicap? ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... it's over; forget it all. It wasn't meant to handicap you always. We'll have another deal now, please God, and start afresh ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... to choose between being dangerous and being dull. Society loves to feel itself upon the edge of a precipice, I assure you. To be harmless is the most deadly enemy to social salvation. Strict respectability would even handicap a rich American nowadays, and rich Americans are terribly respectable by nature. That is why they are always so anxious to get into the Prince of ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Another handicap was that at that time conditions were seldom sufficiently favorable to enable the employer to derive profit enough from students' work to compensate for the maintenance of the youth at a manual labor school. Besides, such a school could not be far-reaching in its results because ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... to think much of these matters. I suppose my own failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me a bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of her people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are hopelessly conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in public would make it pretty tough ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... loneliness is a handicap. Having no one who needs you, no one to welcome you home. So sad! Especially in the evenings! Solitary people are apt to grow morose. You will miss Kathie's bright happy ways. (Quick change!) Well! Well! No one need be lonely in this world. There are thousands ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... continent;" and he was confident that it was "practicable with very little danger." This was not altogether in accord with his humane theory for the conduct of war; but so long as that theory was not adopted by one side, it could not of course be allowed to handicap the other. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... he will be passionate or phlegmatic or imaginative or six-fingered or with a snub or aquiline nose. And not only that, but even before his birth the qualities that are not strictly and inevitably inherited are also beginning to be made. The artificial, the avoidable handicap also, may have commenced in the worrying, the overworking or the starving of his mother. In the first few months of his life very slight differences in treatment may have life-long consequences. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... classed as unable to tell right from wrong unless they are rich enough to hire a psychiatrist. Yet a variable but always-present percentage of the human race ignores rules of conduct at all times. They are the handicap, the burden, the main hindrance to the maintenance or the progress of civilization. They are not consciously evil. They simply do not bother to act otherwise than as rational animals. The rest of humanity has to defend itself with police, with laws, and sometimes with revolts, though those ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... you the race of your life for it," said Peter, entering into the same light spirited boasting. "I hear Mair and Todd and Semple are also entered, but with a decent handicap I won't mind these, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... Roosevelt (1858-1919), twenty-sixth President of the United States, was born in New York City. As a boy he was frail of body, but overcame this handicap by regular exercise and outdoor life. He was always interested in animals and birds and particularly in hunting game in the western plains and mountains. In 1884 Roosevelt bought two cattle ranches in North Dakota, where ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... economical but is the only possible arrangement. In populous districts, with diversified activities, it becomes imperative to have year-round usable roads in order to transact with reasonable dispatch the regular business of the industries. Anything less will handicap normal ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... one thing particularly well is, in its way, as serious a handicap in the selection of a vocation as great versatility. One who can do nothing well finds it just as hard to decide upon a vocation as one who can do everything well. Perhaps the large majority of those who come to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... meets the eye. I am not addicted to remembering much about the "previous performances" of horses, as some men are, who will tell you that Cynic was third in the Kelso Hunt Cup for last year, and that you ought to keep an eye on him for the Ayrshire Handicap. But I have remarked that horses are not like men; they do not always run almost equally well, though the conditions of the race seem similar. No doubt this is owing to the nervousness of the animal, who may be ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various

... for a boy who came in every Thursday morning to work the hand-power of the press, who then washed up and delivered the papers about town. T. J. had built up the paper from a state of decay until it was one of the most prosperous country weeklies in Iowa, and he had done this against a handicap that would have discouraged most men—he was ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... Brace," broke in Dunn hoarsely. "D——d if I understand you or you me. That dog Low has got to answer to me, not to the law! I'll take my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square. I don't reckon to handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw him out with a lie. You hear me? That's me ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... descended the Ottawa in fleets of from one hundred to two hundred canoes. But the savages of the West well knew that when they embarked with their precious bales upon a route which was infested by the Iroquois, they gave hostages to fortune. In case of a battle the cargo was a handicap, since they must protect it as well as themselves. In case they were forced to flee for their lives, they lost the goods which it had cost so much effort to collect. In these circumstances the tribes of Michilimackinac ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... have attended the special schools provided for them, where industrial preparation with the opportunity to learn a trade is offered and largely availed of.[99] When they go out into the world, they may be supposed to have an industrial equipment, which, besides taking in view their handicap, is one in many respects fully equal to that of their hearing fellow-laborers; and though many of the deaf, apparently the greater number, do not follow the trade learned at school, yet there is no doubt ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... the contestants are fastened in sacks with the hands and feet confined and where they race for a goal by jumping or hopping along at the greatest possible speed under this handicap. A sack race should not be considered one of the scientific branches of sport, but is rather to ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... dare to complain again about the poorness of her racket, though it was a serious handicap in her games at school, where most of the girls came supplied with the very best. In spite of this impediment her play improved steadily, and she several times beat Louise Mawson, though she could not vanquish Hilda Brown or Charlotte ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... of the National Nut News leaves us without an official organ. This is a serious handicap to our work. The stimulation of interest provided by the regular arrival of a publication containing the latest news and newest developments in our field, is a valuable aid in nut culture and association ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... Clavering, whose foot pained him, was urging the Badger to his utmost pace. He rode without saddle or stirrups, which, however, was no great handicap to anyone who had spent the time he had in the cattle country, and, though it was numbingly cold and he had left his furs behind him, scarcely felt the frost, for his brain was busy. He knew Hetty Torrance, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... race, especially in the big polyglot empires and the smaller states of Europe, are groaning under the incubus of the language difficulty, and have to spend years on the study of mere words before they can fit themselves for an active career, then the abolition of this heavy handicap on due preparation for each man's proper business in life will liberate much time for more profitable studies. It is certain that the majority of mankind are non-linguistic by nature and inclination rather than linguistic—i.e. that the best chance of developing their natural capacities to ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... do not know what it is well to do, but because they do not choose to attempt it. And why do they not choose? So far as this question affects middle life, it is largely because so few of us have the grit to face its difficulties, and attack them, when we have to do it with the serious handicap of self-made disadvantages. It is while you are young that you must lay up these stores of living material for the after years; and this is the significance of it all—you can only do it, or you can do it most effectually, when you are young. As ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... a Herculean task to cope with the handicap of wealth. Mediocre men can endure failure; for, as Robert Louis the beloved has pointed out, failure is natural, but worldly success is an abnormal condition. In order to stand success you must be of very stern fiber, with all the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... personal initiative, judgment, and executive energy in affairs are as valuable as the ability to master a problem in her study or in the laboratory. If her studies have left her isolated from human nature, she will find this want of understanding and sympathy a heavy handicap in whatever occupation she may enter. Scholarship cannot be made fruitful in everyday life unless it is used in ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... into the field during the first weeks of the war some million and a quarter, which grew during the first period (that is, before the coming of winter had created a very serious handicap, to which allusion will presently be made) to perhaps two million and a half at the very most. I put that number as an ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... closed and sealed and the air, already stored in the ship's tanks, was released. The slight acceleration of the Comet's towing served to create artificial weight for easier work, but not enough to handicap the shifting of the heavier pieces of apparatus. An electric cable was run back from the little yacht and the Invincible took her first ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... matter of silent propaganda. A handsome comfortable city of impressive buildings will always predispose foreigners in favour of the country itself. On the other hand, an inadequate capital will be a hindrance to a state. In this respect, Belgrade, as it is to-day, is a handicap to Jugo-Slavia. But Budapest ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... years that I experimented with dry gardening I went overboard and attempted to grow food as though I had no running water at all. The greatest difficulty caused by this self-imposed handicap was sowing small-seeded species after ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... henceforth to be a free man. But could not some method of force be discovered and introduced to compel the negro to work? It goes without saying that persons of such a way of thinking labored under a heavy handicap in going at a difficult task with a settled conviction that it was really "useless to try." But even if they did try, and found that the negro might, after all, be induced to work without physical compulsion, they were apt to be seriously troubled by things which would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... have been the easier thing to fight," he said. "There's nothing inevitable about a man,—any man. I'd have stood a chance at least, of beating him, even though he had a twenty-year handicap or so. But the other thing,—well, that was like the first bar of the Fifth Symphony, you know; Fate knocking at the door. Clear terror that is until one can get the courage to open the ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... something where there's no handicap hanging over you?" suggested the dispatcher—and his hand reached out and touched the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... Paddock half an hour before the Rutlandshire Handicap was to be run numbers of racing-men were gathered in little knots of two and three, describing to each other with every precaution the points of strength in the horses they had laid against, the points of weakness in the horses they had backed, or vice versa, together ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that may be brought up. Yet to deny the value of special information is tantamount to an assertion of the desirability of general ignorance. It is only the politician who can afford to say: "Wide knowledge is a fatal handicap to forcible expression." ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... had been given any fair chance to live and grow as they wanted to. But here they were, mashed together in this stew-pot of domesticity, with all the most unlovely aspects of things forced continually upon their attention. Each was in some way a handicap and a torment to the other—a means which fate used to limit and crush and destroy the other; and as ever, they had in their hours of anguish no recourse save to sit down and reason it out together, and absolve each ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... other boys as a star to pebbles. When Knox, who had undertaken his education at once, assured her that he must distinguish himself if he lived, probably in letters, life felt almost fresh again, although she regretted his handicap the more bitterly. As for Knox, his patience was inexhaustible. Alexander would have everything resolved into its elements, and was merciless in his demand for information, no matter what the thermometer. He had no playmates until he was nine, and by that time he had much else to sober him. Of the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... several distinct advantages in their favor. They were up above the rescuers and could fire down on them, while the boy ranchers and their friends had not only to fight but to climb up, and the latter was a handicap. ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... things, finding their pleasures in all sorts of silly fads and foolishness, they've given themselves to service—loyal, noble service. The young fellows who filled up their time by being mere club-loungers, empty-headed society dudes, whose chief talk was women, the latest thing in neckties, or their handicap at golf, are now doing useful work, or fighting for the best in life. As for the rank and file, life has a new meaning to them, and they've ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... to these coursings (which are mostly in the colliery districts) you will find about 60 dogs entered. It is the Rat-catcher's business to measure and handicap the dogs, and a very unpleasant job it is. He has also to be the referee at these coursings, and if it is a "near thing" with two dogs running at one rat, and you decide to award the victory to a given one, then the owner of the ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews

... after the process of elimination has been made there lurks the danger of error, for when comparing the efforts of our playwrights with those of Paris one is making a comparison between men working under a heavy handicap and men unburdened by it. There is a whole world, or at least a whole half-world, open freely to the French writer into which the English dramatist is only permitted to crawl furtively. A large proportion of the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... tattered line of paper-covered novels. Over the sideboard was a framed photograph of the Edinburgh University Football Fifteen, and opposite it a smaller one of Dimsdale himself, clad in the scantiest of garb, as he appeared after winning the half-mile at the Inter-University Handicap. A large silver goblet, the trophy of that occasion, stood underneath upon a bracket. Such was the student's chamber upon the morning in question, save that in a roomy arm-chair in the corner the young gentleman himself ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Bella!' says Starlight. 'I vote we go, Dick. I never went to a hop with a price on my head before. A thousand pounds too! Quite a new sensation. It settles the question. And we'll enter Rainbow for the handicap. He ought to be good enough for ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... and put our names down for the tennis handicap," said Lindsay. "We mustn't on any account let Miss Russell think we'd a special motive in ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... us a little, then they vanish away from us and from the sound of our voices. Oh, God, from behind Thy high heaven—from out of Thy infinite wealth of years, hast Thou but the one same pittance of threescore and ten for every man? Some of us are born with the handicap of a thousand years woven in the nerves of our bodies, the swiftness of our minds, and the delights of our limbs. Others of us are born with the thousand years binding us down to blindness and hobbling, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... if you did; nobody likes him, except me, and I hate him." Linton sighed. "He's a handicap to a young man ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... the public the news to which it was entitled. Placed in such a position there was a very natural impatience here and there to have the Exchange reopened, while now and then a tendency became manifested to publish certain news of the day which, while interesting to the public, tended to handicap the efforts of those bent only on reassurance and calm counsel. At times it became somewhat difficult to prevent the publication of some of these matters, particularly of the prices made in the so called "gutter" market ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble

... however, in repeating a word for emphasis. The usage may easily be a handicap rather than a help. More often than not, repetition of the same word or phrase is the result of laziness or paucity of vocabulary, and destroys the force of the sentence. An instance of too frequent use of the same word—the adjective ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... the world to which he belonged, the future of happiness and ease to which he was entitled. She would have powers—dark and terrible powers, all the more appalling to Jessie because they were mysterious. Might they possibly be able to overcome even the handicap of a dirty calico dress, of big rough ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... said Lewis, "is a great handicap to a woman, but add proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty. Short and pretty; long and beautiful. D'you get that? A short woman may be beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down and, presto! she's ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... in itself was not calculated to gain friends for him. He was uncompromisingly and caustically severe upon some of the literary idols of his day, men who have survived that terrible handicap, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... often defended me and spoken well of my work. But I think the W. C. T. U. would be much more effective under her management, if she had understood that Stanley, the republican governor, wished to handicap her in her prohibition work when he appointed her husband as physician in the reformatory at Hutchinson, Kansas. Be it said to the credit of this christian physician he never used alcohol in his practice. And perhaps other ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... strongest swimmer, and, although the student had swum almost since he could walk, his muscles were not quite in such good form as those of the ex-athlete of Cambridge who, six months before, had won the Thames Swimming Club Half-mile Handicap ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... of wine was at hand; it had all been carried to another part of the forest. Hagen pointed out a spring near by and Siegfried proposed a race, offering to run in full armor while the others ran without armor or weapons. In spite of the handicap, Siegfried reached the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... Why, Mary wife, such names will handicap the babies from the start. Who can imagine an Ivanora making bread? or an Idelia scrubbing a floor? But, however, if it pleases you, all right, though I do think a sensible Susan or Hannah would be more useful to girls of our ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... national unity is what is wanted most of all things now in England. England must become conscious of itself, he says, and infuse into public affairs a spirit that will carry leaders far beyond their own personal interests. England has survived until now in spite of a strong handicap of discord. He speaks of the imperfect morale of England, shown in the war, which arose from the preceding social discord, and shows that the only perfect morale is that which is based upon social unity in the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... ten minutes they threaded a labyrinth of deep, constricted, reeking ditches, with so little to differentiate one from another that the prisoner wondered at the sure sense of direction which enabled the corporal to find his way without mis-step, with the added handicap of the abysmal darkness. Then, of a sudden, the sides of the trench shelved sharply downward, and the two debouched into a broad, open field. Here many men lay sleeping, with only waterproof sheets ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... score of miles he would have to cover to get to the men's huts. A dozen miles to the east, over a stretch of timbered table-land, the nucleus of a bush township was struggling to assert itself, and thrive, in spite of the weighty handicap of the name of Birralong, and the fact that, after five years' existence, it had not succeeded in passing the preliminary stage of bush township life—the stage when a "pub," a store, a constable's cottage, and a post-office ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... have been carried away, haven't you?" he said sharply. "Listen. I am not talking to you now as your father nor as Laura's daughter. Let us be clear about that I love you and am in a contest to win your love. I am McGregor's rival. I accept the handicap of fatherhood. I love you. You see I have let something within myself alight upon you. McGregor has not done that. He refused what you had to offer but I do not. I have centred my life upon you and have done it quite knowingly ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... and rose to a height of one hundred and fifty feet, where it swayed about with the pleasant face of Stephenson looking over the edge of the basket. He had to sit down, as there was not room to stand. The ascension seemed a failure with the handicap of two hundred and thirty pounds, and so the balloon was reeled down to the earth again. It was not a great ascension, but the amateur aeronaut had gained the distinction of making the first balloon ascension ever made in East Africa. He would have gone ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... Watches of The Night The Other Man Consequences The Conversion of Aurellan McGoggin A Germ-destroyer Kidnapped The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly In The House of Suddhoo His Wedded Wife The Broken-link Handicap Beyond The Pale In Error A Bank Fraud Tods' Amendment In The Pride of His Youth Pig The Rout of The White Hussars The Bronckhorst Divorce-case Venus Annodomini The Bisara of Pooree A Friend's Friend The Gate of The Hundred Sorrows The Story of Muhammad Din On The Strength of a Likeness ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... particular domestic industries if wisely planned; but also, in view of the limited amounts of these particular ores in this country, their general low grade, and the high cost of mining, tariffs might very probably hasten exhaustion of our limited supplies and might handicap our metallurgical industries both in efficiency and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... had simply lain dormant in the hills and—a century counting for nothing in the matter of inheritance—that their possibilities were little changed, and that the children of that day would, if given the chance, wipe out the handicap of a century in one generation and take their place abreast with children of the outside world. The Tollivers were of good blood; they had come from Eastern Virginia, and the original Tolliver had been a slave-owner. The very name was, undoubtedly, a corruption of Tagliaferro. So, when the Widow ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... slept for two days and nights. The recollection did not reassure the young man, for his body was a weapon which must not fail in the slightest measure now that there was work to do. Even the unwelcome speculation upon his physical handicap offered relief, however, from the agony which fed upon him whenever he thought of Helen in the gambler's hands. Meanwhile, the horse, groaning at his master's violence, plunged onward towards the roofs of Nome, now growing ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... pursuing, Larry started on a run, but the lad, much more fleet of foot, rapidly overhauled him, despite the handicap that Phil had ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... community; neither does it release one until he is safe. It uses the best methods for his treatment that may make him fit to live with his fellows, and the best efforts to place him in a proper environment when discharged. Neither does any disgrace nor humiliation nor handicap attach to the unfortunate when discharged. In a sense, the attitude of mind held by the group toward the "criminal" is the whole question. From this everything follows, and without it change or humanity or hope is ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... which children have when they come to school may in some measure handicap the teacher. It is unfortunate, but true, that in some homes instinctive tendencies which should have been overcome have been magnified. The control of children is sometimes secured through the utilization of the instinct of fear. The fighting ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... slipping a soft little trustful hand in his. She trotted at his heels like one of the lambs or chickens that he fed. She brought him into perpetual disgrace with Becky, for wasting his time through her imperious demands. She was the burden, the delight, the handicap, the incentive, and the reward of his humble apprenticeship. And when he was promoted to be one of the regular hands she followed him still, and got her pleasure out of his day's work. No one had such patience to tell ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... been exactly idyllic from that point on. Grandmother Porter hadn't approved of her son's marriage, and she seemed to have felt that she must do everything in her power to help her grandson overcome the handicap of having nonaristocratic blood ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett

... ministers could not be found in any land; indeed Claverhouse was the only man of honor amongst them. His battle to hold his own and achieve his legitimate ambition was very hard, and certainly he needed no handicap. Jean Graham was haunted with the reflection that Claverhouse's wife, instead of being a help, was a hindrance to her husband, and that if it were not for the burden of her Covenanting name, he would ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Mozart—distinguished Jews who had found their religion a handicap. ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... of you to suggest that, but I can't offer any such excuse," answered Brendon thoughtfully. "Never did a man go into a case with less handicap. I even had peculiar incentives to make good. I came into it on the top of the tide with everything under my hands. No—what you've said throws rather too bright a light on the truth. Everything looked so straight-forward that I never ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... imagination. There is not much homogeneity about Hale's work. Almost any two stories of his read as if they might have been written by different authors. For the time being perhaps this is an advantage—his stories charm by their novelty and individuality. In the long run, however, this proves rather a handicap. True individuality, in literature as in the other arts, consists not in "being different" on different occasions—in different works—so much as in being samely different from other writers; in being consistently one's self, rather than diffusedly various selves. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various



Words linked to "Handicap" :   advantage, bandyleg, visual impairment, impairment, hinder, albatross, vantage, softness, bias, prolapse, hinderance, disablement, obstacle, hypesthesia, descensus, millstone, baulk, anorgasmia, dysphasia, genu valgum, diriment impediment, balk, disable, dysomia, disfavor, disadvantage, impediment, injure, penalty, drag, bandy leg, tibia valga, invalid, bowleg, disintegration, visual disorder



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