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Ineffectual   Listen
adjective
Ineffectual  adj.  Not producing the proper effect; without effect; inefficient; weak; useless; futile; unavailing; as, an ineffectual attempt; an ineffectual expedient. "The peony root has been much commended,... and yet has been by many found ineffectual."
Synonyms: Inefficient; useless; inefficacious; vain; fruitless; unavailing; futile. See Useless, Inefficacious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ineffectual" Quotes from Famous Books



... between the parents was added. At the age of eleven, when his father died, he began a roving life. He ran away from a couple of ecclesiastics who had undertaken to teach him to read and write (after having acquired the rudiments of those arts), and made numerous ineffectual attempts to obtain instruction in painting from various wretched daubers of holy pictures, having been addicted, from his earliest childhood, to scrawling over the walls of the house and the fences with charcoal drawings. He was ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... ready to see an obvious evil in everything it cannot understand—filled her with bitter resentment against both the men who could offer to the spiritual and tragic strife of her feelings nothing but the coarseness of their abominable materialism. In her anger against her own ineffectual self-deception she found hate enough for them both. What did they want? What more did this one want? And as her husband faced her again, with his hand on the door-handle, she asked herself whether he was unpardonably stupid, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... must return to Naples, where one event followed another in rapid succession. When the Viceroy saw that the efforts of his messengers proved ineffectual, he resolved to invoke the aid of the Archbishop. He did it unwillingly, for the Spanish rulers never trusted the spiritual superior pastors of Naples, with whom they had perpetual disputes about jurisdiction. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... in the things which thou despairest of accomplishing. For even the left hand, which is ineffectual for all other things for want of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than the right hand; for it ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... pleasant day, great numbers of people assembled to see the launching of the large and beautiful ship from Mr. DERBY'S wharf. They were, however, disappointed in the pleasure they expected, by her stopping when she had run about half her length: and all the efforts which could be made were ineffectual in getting her off at that time: the next day, however, with the aid of proper apparatus, and the assistance of the people assembled, she was again put in motion, and gained the water.—The name of The Grand Turk is revived in this ship, heretofore borne by a ship ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... and completely dismantled. The hippopotami scratch their tick-infested flanks upon her rusted sides, crocodiles crawl across her decks, fish swim through the open ports. In Dar-es-Salaam you will see the Koenig stranded at the harbour mouth, the Tabora lying on her side behind the ineffectual shelter of the land; the side uppermost innocent of the Red Cross and green line that adorned her seaward side. For she was a mysterious craft. She flew the Red Cross and was tricked out as a hospital ship on one side, the other painted grey. True, she had patients ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... through the slats of the closed green shutters, and that sharp ears had caught the sound of the obnoxious words. He could detect the accents of a voice, which he knew so well, pleading the cause of silence with another that trembled with suppressed laughter as it made ineffectual promises to be quiet. The two clergymen also heard the friendly altercation at the window, so still was everything else, and chuckled as they filed past the legal sentry, now on the broad grin. The Captain and Mr. Terry were above taking notice of such ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... thinking any more of what he throws out. When I read Warburton first, and observed his force, and his contempt of mankind, I thought he had driven the world before him; but I soon found that was not the case; for Warburton, by extending his abuse, rendered it ineffectual.' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... idle in their doorways, looked spotted and dusty too. A cloud of flies fought and surged about the closely guarded door of the butcher shop; a delivery cart was at the curb, the discouraged horse switching an ineffectual tail. ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... hand ached in his unyielding grasp and after two ineffectual efforts to free them, a sigh of pain passed her lips ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... guns—thirty-six pieces—taken, as well as 1,800 prisoners, whilst we lost only five men. The whole affair lasted scarcely forty minutes. While our lines were forming, the Abyssinian artillery opened upon us a perfectly ineffectual fire at three miles and three-quarters. Our artillery kept silent until the enemy was within a mile and a-half, when a few volleys from us silenced the latter, dismounted two of their guns, and compelled the rest to withdraw. Our artillery next directed ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... from the Ribbon fund, and the Irish reader cannot forget the eloquent and pathetic, appeal made by his counsel to the jury, on his behalf, and the strength with which the fact of his being the whole support of a helpless father and mother was stated. The appeal, however, was ineffectual; worthy Phelim was convicted, and sentenced to transportation for life. When his old acquaintances heard the nature of his destiny, they remembered the two prophecies that had been so often uttered concerning ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... evil. The ancient Satan does indeed exist in some few formularies, but in such a washed-out and flimsy condition as to be the reverse of conspicuous. All that remains of him and of his subordinate legions is the ineffectual ghost of a departed creed, for the resuscitation of which no man will move ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... had deprived themselves of a most valuable acquisition and him of great glory; for he could have insured them the possession of the whole territory in a short time, from the want of courage in the people and the ineffectual provision they had made for their defense. He then withdrew to his engagement under the Venetians; but the Siennese, although delivered from such imminent peril by the Florentines, were still very indignant against ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... afflictions. If I retired to rest, it was worse; I could lie in no position; I became convulsed, and was constrained to rise. In case I slept, the same visions reappeared, and made me suffer much more than I did by keeping awake. My prayers, too, were feeble and ineffectual; and, at length, I could simply invoke the name of the Deity; of the Being who had assumed a human form, and was acquainted with grief. I was afraid to sleep; my prayers seemed to bring me no relief; my imagination became excited, and, even when awake, I heard strange noises close to me, sometimes ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... Her words were poor, ineffectual; but her look, her breathless voice made up for their lack of originality. Once she said: "I never saw it so lovely before; it is an enchanted land!" with no suspicion that the larger part of her ecstasy arose from the presence of her young ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... said the Frank, "doth paltry intrigues and quarrels of slaves involve a single thought of suspicion of the noble Countess of Paris? The oaths of thy whole generation were ineffectual to prove but that one of her hairs had changed ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... at last! I had waked this calm silent giant into life. After many an ineffectual struggle I had got at a little real love or passion, or call it by any name—something wild and warm and splendidly alive that one could feel, the most thrilling, electric, and exquisite ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... Clair, returning to form, ripped his way past tackle on the left and fought over two white lines before he was halted. Gordon and Martin made it first down in three tries and Carmine worked the left end for four more. Thacher stiffened then, however, and after two ineffectual plunges St. Clair punted and Brimfield caught on her goal line and ran back a dozen yards, Lee, right end, missing his tackle badly and Steve Edwards being neatly blocked off. But Thacher found the going even harder than her ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... are expended for spirituous liquors in this one poor Province—more than a million of our old currency in a year." Dr. Tenney lamented that the taverns of Exeter, N. H., were thronged with people who seldom retired sober. Strenuous but ineffectual efforts were made to "prevent tippling in the forenoon," and between meals; but with little avail. The temperance-reform of our own century came ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... eyes half blinded by sweat and smoke and trickling blood, he saw a man partially reclining against a post to which a tangled and broken mass of barbed wire was still clinging. The man was evidently making weak and ineffectual attempts to care for his own wounds. Pen stopped to assist him if he could. Looking down into his face he saw that it was Aleck. He was not shocked, nor did he manifest any surprise. He had seen too much of the ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... above the water; and, from the way in which the animals were wading across, it was evident they were going upon a soft bottom. Not until several of them had reached the opposite shore and made an ineffectual attempt to get out of the channel, did our hunters have any hope of capturing one of the young giraffes. Hitherto they had not thought of being able to take them alive. They had entered upon the chase solely for its excitement, and for the destroying of animal life; but on seeing the camelopards ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... have been dimpled and soft like hers. It did not seem possible that this frail old woman with the snowy-white hair and sunken cheeks could ever have been a rosy child like herself. As if in answer to her thought, Aunt Elspeth spoke, groping again with weak, ineffectual passes ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... attack was about to be commenced, Captain Burr, and other officers near General Montgomery, endeavoured to dissuade him from leading in the advance; remarking that, as commander-in-chief, it was not his place. But all argument was ineffectual and unavailing. The attack was made on the morning of the 31st of December, 1775, before daylight, in the midst of a violent snow-storm. The New-York troops were commanded by General Montgomery, who advanced along the St. Lawrence, by the way of Aunce de Mere, under Cape Diamond. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he might see those lying at the bottom, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... outbursts, moving her to such futile expedients. She began to do as she liked and to feel as she liked. She completely abandoned her Tuesdays at home, and did not return the visits of those who had called upon her. She made no ineffectual efforts to conduct her household en bonne menagere, going and coming as it suited her fancy, and, so far as she was able, lending herself to any ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... deluge, while it unfolds and pursues some other thoughts within; so they find neither hearers to attend to them, nor credit them. They say those that are prone to Venus are commonly barren: so the prating of talkative people is ineffectual ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... made so many evasions, on his father's still continuing to press his being more explicit, that he easily perceived there would be no coming at the truth by gentle means; and therefore, throwing off at once a tenderness so ineffectual, he assumed all the authority of an offended parent, and told the trembling Natura, that since he knew not how to behave as a son, he should cease to be a father, in every thing but in his authority:—'be ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... of flesh, darts down upon the cow-hide, and then the Indian, who is concealed under it, seizes the bird by the legs, and binds them fast in the skin, as if in a bag. The captured condor flaps his wings, and makes ineffectual attempts to fly; but he is speedily secured, and carried in ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... far enough from disbelieving what he said, yet Youth, Passion, and Inadvertency render'd his Cautions ineffectual. It was in his Hand-Writing I first beheld the dear fatal Name, which has since been the utter Destruction of my Peace: It was from him I knew I should be undone by Love and the Perfidy of Mankind, before I had the least Notion of the one, or had seen any of the other charming enough ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... called for help just in case. But we'll probably be able to take care of this situation by ourselves. In fact, unless there are unusual features, we'd better, if we don't want to be regarded as somewhat ineffectual." He paused, glanced toward the detector set, and tapped on the map again, then slowly ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... down with the ebb tide to Middle Island, and then steered across the basin for the Middle Arm, which was yet totally unexplored; but after many ineffectual attempts to find a passage over the shoals, we came to, in 5 fathoms, near the Shag Rocks, and I went to examine the arm with the boat. From Inspection Head I discovered a narrow channel leading into it, where there was more ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... all the debate about realism and romanticism that the poetic tales of George Crabbe were never once alleged in witness of the charm which truth to condition and character has, in whatever form. But once, long before that ineffectual clamor arose, he was valued as he should be still. Edmund Burke was the first to understand his purpose and appreciate his work. He helped the poet not only with praises but with pounds till he could get upon his feet. He introduced Crabbe's verse to his great friends, to Doctor Johnson, who ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... too quaint!" his mother exclaimed, putting out to caress him a practised but ineffectual hand. He slipped out of it, but looked with intelligent innocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had time to notice that from one moment to the other his small satiric face seemed to change its time of life. At this moment it was infantine, yet it appeared also to be under the influence of curious ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... After an ineffectual effort to explain to the company where Bolinas was, we rose and went out for a view of the town. It was beautifully situated on a gentle rise which swelled up from the water's edge and fell rapidly off in ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... me, while at the same instant I was conscious of receiving a sharp blow on the chest, when, on looking down into my lap, I saw a fine flying-fish wriggling and flapping there, making a gallant but ineffectual effort to hoist himself out of the hollow formed by my crossed legs, and return to the water. For a second or two I stared stupidly down at the struggling creature, and then it seemed to dawn upon my dazed faculties that here at last was food, something that would at least mitigate ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... tea-merchant for a little longer, but had soon tired of pekoe and souchong. Then he had tried selling dry sherry. That did not answer; the sherry was a little too dry. Ultimately he became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... lips during this conversation; for it instantly occurred to her, that, through her influence over Lord Evandale, she might find some means of releasing Morton from his present state of danger, in case her uncle's intercession with Claverhouse should prove ineffectual. At any other time she would have been much averse to exert this influence; for, however inexperienced in the world, her native delicacy taught her the advantage which a beautiful young woman gives to a young man when she permits ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the Chaco were unfortunate. In dealing with the wild equestrian tribes of the Gran Chaco, the system of the Jesuits was not so likely to achieve success as amongst the peaceful Guaranis. That of the Spanish settlers was entirely ineffectual, and has remained so down to the present day, when still the shattered remnants of the Lules, Lenguas, Mocobios, and the rest, roam on their horses or in their canoes about the Chaco and its rivers, having received no other benefits ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... himself, even in outward form a youth, almost an infant, yet surprising all the world. The beauty of the Greek statues was a sexless beauty; the statues of the gods had the least traces of sex. Here there is a moral sexlessness, a kind of impotence, an ineffectual wholeness of nature, yet with a divine beauty and significance ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... refitted for service, and the command given to Captain John Barker, and in May, 1757, she was sent to the Mediterranean, where, under the orders of Admiral Henry Osbourne, she continued upwards of two years, having been present, on the 28th of February, 1758, when M. du Quesne made his ineffectual attempt to reinforce M. De la Clue, who was then closely confined, with the fleet under his command, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... Before the close of the decade, by intimidation, the theft, suppression or exchange of the ballot boxes, the removal of the polls to unknown places, false certifications, and illegal arrests on the day before an election, the Negro vote had been rendered ineffectual in every state ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... the summer-day is past, when all Nature slumbers, and when the ancients feared to sing, lest the great god Pan should be awakened. Soft changes, the gradual shifting of every shadow on every leaf, begin to show the waning hours. Ineffectual thunder-storms have gathered and gone by, hopelessly defeated. The floating-bridge is trembling and resounding beneath the pressure of one heavy wagon, and the quiet fishermen change their places to avoid the tiny ripple ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... passport. "Alors, monsieur, vous etes le fils d'un baron?" And when the Cigarette (his one mistake throughout the interview) denied the soft impeachment, "Alors," from the Commissary, "ce n'est pas voire passeport!" But these were ineffectual thunders; he never dreamed of laying hands upon the Cigarette; presently he fell into a mood of unrestrained admiration, gloating over the contents of the knapsack, commending our friend's tailor. Ah! what an honoured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... critters!" commented Mrs. Applegate from the porch. But Charley-Joe, with an almost hypnotic fixity in his yellow eyes, and who during the last few minutes had several times opened his mouth wide in an ineffectual attempt to mew, suddenly found his voice with a prolonged and ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... it so, and after a few ineffectual attempts to force it open by pushing with his shoulder against it, he faced about and disappeared in the barn. While the boys were trying to make up their minds whether or not they ought to run up and corner him there, ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon

... personified in the conflict of will between the three characters. Thorolf, Harald the king, and Skallagrim play the drama of the Norwegian monarchy, and the founding of the Icelandic Commonwealth. After this compact and splendid piece of work the adventures of Egil Skallagrimsson appear rather ineffectual and erratic, in spite of some ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... Lake Bibiquasin in an ineffectual hunt for the trail. I scouted alone all day and in my wanderings came upon the first ptarmigans of the trip and shot one of them with my rifle. The others flew away. They wore their mottled summer coat, as it was still too early for them ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... having made several ineffectual applications for leave to quit Berlin, at length sent a letter to the king imploring permission to travel for the benefit of his health, to which ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... Mr. Jawleyford, who had been brought up by a gate, which he was making sundry ineffectual Briggs-like passes and efforts to open; the gate and his horse seeming to have combined to prevent his getting through. Though an expert swordsman, he had never been able to accomplish, the art of opening a gate, especially one of those gingerly balanced spring-snecked ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... accomplished except that permission was granted Philip to send envoys to Rome. Nor was anything done there. For, when the Greeks insisted that he depart from Corinth and Chalcis and from Demetrias in Thessaly, the envoys of Philip said they had received no instructions on this point and closed an ineffectual mission. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... insult a gentleman again," exclaimed Mosely tauntingly as he stood by and witnessed the ineffectual struggles of Tom's victim, who had been taken at disadvantage.—"Here's the cord, Tom, tie ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... and Calhoun sprang out over his prostrate body, only to meet and overturn another soldier who was just ascending the steps. The force of the collision threw him headlong, but he was up again in a twinkling, and disappeared in the darkness, followed by a few ineffectual shots by ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... wished to go, they replied with snarls, and refused to obey. Their open defiance of his authority sent Marks into a rage. He tried to lash them, but in his blinded condition his aim was poor and his efforts ineffectual. ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... the heathen Mythology in our privileged scorn: but, at least, we are bound to examine strictly by what faults of our own it has come to pass, that the ministry of real angels among ourselves is occasionally so ineffectual, as to end in the production of Cornelias who entrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors for the better keeping of them; and of sons like that one who, the other day, in France, beat his mother to death with a stick; and was brought in ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... garner the fruits of experience,—become wise by the wisdom of others, and strong by their strength. Without this man everywhere remains, age after age, immovably a savage; and, if he were to lose it when he has once gained it, would, after a little ineffectual flutter by the aid of tradition, sink into barbarism again. Till this cardinal want is supplied, all considerable "progress" is impossible. It may look odd to say that the whole world is dependent ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... formally abrogated by the Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection of the People and State" (document 11-I, post p. 215), issued February 28, ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... Although guilty of unpatriotic acts, he had never been exactly unpatriotic in feeling. But his sojourn in England gave, for the time at least, some consistency to what had been a very weak and ineffectual prejudice. He must have been under the influence of more than usually solemn considerations, when he proceeded to turn Henry's puritanical homily after Agincourt into a ballade, and reproach France, and himself by implication, with pride, gluttony, idleness, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... should force her back into the school-room she was scarce out of, there to champion the sums and maps and conjugations she had never tried to master. Hating her work, she had failed signally to pick up any learning from her little pupils, and had been driven from house to house, a sullen and most ineffectual maiden. The sequence of her situations was the swifter by reason of her pretty face. Was there a grown-up son, always he fell in love with her, and she would let his eyes trifle boldly with hers across the dinner-table. When he offered her his hand, she would refuse it—not because ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... abuses consequent on the objectionable system of folio-payment were noticed in a parliamentary report (bearing date November 8, 1740), which was the most important result of an ineffectual attempt to reform the superior courts of law and to lessen the expenses ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... It is the way they have always enforced their notions of justice. A curious example has been recently offered by the students of the Pekin University. For various reasons—good or bad—they have objected to the conduct of their Chancellor. After ineffectual protests, they called upon him in large numbers with his resignation written out, and requested him to sign it. He refused; whereupon they remarked that they would call again the next day with revolvers; ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... I can," I said. "I'm extraordinarily feeble and ineffectual in every way. In business matters ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... Government the object of the Royalist committee was to seduce rather than to conspire. It was round Madame Bonaparte in particular that their batteries were raised, and they did not prove ineffectual. The female friends of Josephine filled her mind with ideas of the splendour and distinction she would enjoy if the powerful hand which had chained the Revolution should raise up the subverted throne. I must confess that I was myself, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... being gradually undermined. He suffered from constant headache, heart-burn, pains in the back and limbs, weakness, and lassitude. Yet he attributed none of these ailments to the true cause. After the lapse of three or four years thus spent, and after repeated ineffectual attempts, by a powerful effort of the will, by the aid of prayer, and by adopting a more wholesome diet, he succeeded in getting the mastery of his vice. But the local difficulties still continued in a great degree, and under particularly aggravating circumstances occasioned ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... distempers to which it is subject; as for instance, overmuch heat and overmuch cold; for women whose wombs are too thick and cold, cannot conceive, because coldness extinguishes the heat of the human seed. Immoderate moisture of the womb also destroys the seed of man, and makes it ineffectual, as corn sown in ponds and marshes; and so does overmuch dryness of the womb, so that the seed perisheth for want of nutriment. Immoderate heat of the womb is also a cause of barrenness for it scorcheth up ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... position at her side, his gaze following her direction. There, after a moment, he distinguished the sheepshead, barred in black and white, wavering about the piling. His companion was fishing with a short, heavy rod from which time had dissolved the varnish, an ineffectual brass reel that complained shrilly whenever the lead was raised or lowered, and a ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... difficulties to the translator, and I have been obliged to pursue the task without assistance of any kind. Not a line of them has ever before been rendered into an European tongue, and my endeavors to obtain aid from some of the Nahuatl scholars of Mexico have, for various reasons, proved ineffectual. I am therefore alone responsible ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... seated in power, and the island, settled under a regular form of government, growing in strength, the Genoese found themselves unequal to cope with a brave and united people. After some further ineffectual attempts, they once more applied to France for succour, and engaged her to occupy the strong places in the island, as she had already done from 1737 to 1741. French troops accordingly, landing in Corsica, established a footing which has never been ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... her enemy, praised her to her husband, who loved his wife to distraction; and how she, even in her devoted gratitude, recommended her murderer as her successor to the bed she lay on, and to those arms where she so often had enjoyed the pressure of his love. Nor was the recommendation ineffectual, for the said wicked Jane did become the wife of her victim's husband. The old horrid savagery of our criminal literature!—not yet abated—never to be abated—only glossed with tropes and figures more hideous than the plain narrative ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... ploughboy poets from the Middle West and by jitney geniuses in Greenwich Village—assaults gradually tapering off to a mere sophomoric brashness and deviltry. And all of them like snow-ballings of Verdun. All of them petered out and ineffectual. The normal, the typical American book of today is as fully a remouthing of old husks as the normal book of Griswold's day. The whole atmosphere of our literature, in William James' phrase, is "mawkish ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... did cry. 'Nem min',' he said, 'I comin' right down in de summer to buy you back an' bring you home.' He's comin', too—nuver tol' me a lie in he life—comin' dis evenin.' Make 'aste." This in tremulous eagerness to the woman, who had involuntarily caught the feeling, and was now with eager and ineffectual haste ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... party was in office. Even Cicero, however humbly he always bowed before the regents, issued an equally envenomed and insipid pamphlet against Caesar's father-in-law. But both these feeble signs of opposition by the majority of the senate and the ineffectual resistance of the minority show only the more clearly, that the government had now passed from the senate to the regents as it formerly passed from the burgesses to the senate; and that the senate was already not much more than a monarchical ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... about freely, following the movements of those around her not unnaturally. When questioned, she looked at the questioner rather intently, and was apt to breathe a little more rapidly, and made some ineffectual lip motions but no reply. To simple commands she made slow and inadequate responses. She flinched when pricked with a pin, but made no attempt at protecting herself. She had to be spoon-fed. The catalepsy persisted ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... spoken after this. The hearts were full to the brink—to speak was to interfere with their consummate joy. The doctor was the only one who made the attempt, and he, after a very ineffectual endeavour to be jocose, held his peace. The Bible was produced. The servants of the house appeared. A chapter was read from it by the incumbent—a prayer was offered up, then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... cannot be called in question; but what avails that, when other agents of the governments so represented apply themselves with assiduity to stultify the very measures which their colleagues are endeavouring to effect. As might have been anticipated, their sittings at Ragusa proved as ineffectual as those at Mostar, and in three weeks' time they once more adjourned, and have not since reassembled. Whatever difference of opinion may have existed amongst the members on this point, at any rate they professedly agreed that it is for the interest of these provinces that the Turkish ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... fair, was carried on by the jockey and myself, the foreigner, who appeared to understand the greater part of what we said, occasionally putting in a few observations in broken English. At length the jockey, after the other had made some ineffectual attempts to express something intelligibly which he wished to say, observed: 'Isn't it a pity that so fine a fellow as meinheer, and so clever a fellow too, as I believe him to be, is not a little ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Florida, and Account of several ineffectual Attempts to Conquer and Settle that Country by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... distresses, new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before them 'like a thing reproved,' not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path; they counsel a meticulous footing; but their serene, marred faces are more eloquent and tell another story. 'Where they have ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... had a triumph decreed him at Rome, much more splendid than his first; they looked upon him now as a champion who had learned to cope with his antagonist, and could now easily foil his arts and prove his best skill ineffectual. And, indeed, the army of Hannibal was at this time partly worn away with continual action, and partly weakened and become dissolute with overabundance and luxury. Marcus Livius, who was governor of Tarentum when it was betrayed to Hannibal, and then retired ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... peoples, the Greeks and Romans sought to obtain rain by magic, when prayers and processions had proved ineffectual. For example, in Arcadia, when the corn and trees were parched with drought, the priest of Zeus dipped an oak branch into a certain spring on Mount Lycaeus. Thus troubled, the water sent up a misty cloud, from which rain soon fell upon the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... low hill, which was the signal for more trouble. The team started bravely up the incline, but soon stopped and then balked and all urging with whip and voice failed to make any impression. After several ineffectual attempts to proceed it was decided not to waste any more time in futile efforts. The horses were unhitched and the wagon partly unloaded, when all hands by a united pull and push succeeded in getting the wagon up the hill. After reloading no difficulty was experienced in making a fresh start ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... complete it. Books, it is true, point out the operations of the mind, the sentiments of the heart, the influence of the passions; and so far they are of previous use: but without subsequent practice, experience, and observation, they are as ineffectual, and would even lead you into as many errors in fact, as a map would do, if you were to take your notions of the towns and provinces from their delineations in it. A man would reap very little benefit by his travels, if he made them only in ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... and again, I thought he might be afraid, for I felt a little creepy myself, for no assignable reason, except that Absence, which he must have been incomparably more sensible of than I. From certain ineffectual movements that he made, and from certain preliminary noises in his throat, which ended in nothing, I decided that he wished to say something to me, tell me something, and could not. But I was selfishly sleepy, and it seemed to me that anything ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... to the title—and to very little else; the family had long been in decline; a Lord Dymchurch who died in the early part of the nineteenth century practically completed the ruin of his house by an attempt to form a Utopia in Canada, and since then a rapid succession of ineffectual peers, fruges consumere nati, had steadily reduced the dignity of the name. The present lord—Walter Erwin de Gournay Fallowfield—found himself inheritor of one small farm in the county of Kent, and of funded capital which produced less than a thousand a year; his ancestral ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... ineffectual efforts to get up. Once he gained his feet, but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted and sank back into the snow. His eyes were half closed, and the surface of them was glassy. His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue protruded, ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... King's success with his arms it is not necessary to give any further account than that they proved as ineffectual as his nobility; but without a nobility or an army (as has been shown) there can be no monarchy. Wherefore what is there in nature that can arise out of these ashes but a popular government, or a new monarchy to be erected by ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... effort to ameliorate the conditions through charity, and the effort to assimilate and yet keep the essentials apart, are ineffectual has been shown. There remains the third possibility—Zionism. To a consideration of its theoretic background this section will be devoted. Although a natural commingling is unavoidable, Zionism presents three distinguishable aspects—as (1) a creative vision, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... chafed her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in the breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual. Unworthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she glowed upon him in a way that would have sent her higher adorers into an egoistic paradise. The candy man's hard eyes looked upon her with a half-concealed derision that ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... satisfaction of seeing the rascally Spaniards go flying out at the other, whence they made short miles of it to a boat which lay awaiting them on the beach at the opposite side of the island, some two or three hundred yards away. We sent a few ineffectual flying shots after them, but attempted no pursuit, as we now found ourselves to some extent masters of the situation; in so far, that is to say, that we found the battery admirably adapted as a place wherein to make a stand until such time as we could see our way clear to once ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... speak to you any more so long as I live, rude boy—common street brat!" she said, biting her under-lip in ineffectual, petulant anger. "Listen, never as long as I live! So do not think it! Upstart, so to treat a lady and ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... bell rings with the petulant persistence that marks a trunk call, and I go in from some ineffectual gymnastics on the lawn to deal with the irruption. There is the usual trouble in connecting up, minute voices in Folkestone and Dover and London call to one another and are submerged by buzzings and throbbings. Then in elfin tones the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... the mysterious curtain was raised, revealing a prettily furnished room and, conspicuous in a reclining chair, there lay a young lady apparently asleep, while two others, wearing black dominoes and lace masks, attempted to arouse her, Their efforts proved ineffectual, however, although she was pinched, shaken, commanded to awake, and even made to stand upon her feet. But nothing availed; she ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... Emperor, who had been present at the fete for two or three hours, was about to retire, one of the curtains, blown by the breeze, took fire from the lights, which had been placed too near the windows, and was instantly in flames. Some persons made ineffectual efforts to extinguish the fire by tearing down the drapery and smothering the flames with their hands; but in the twinkling of an eye the curtains, papers, and garlands caught, and the wood-work began ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... cause— and to return to Plymouth, where a safe and a happy home might yet be afforded to them, and where no persecution for conscience' sake, need be feared. But all her arguments and her persuasions were alike ineffectual. On this one point she found her Roger firm and inflexible—for on this point he felt that his honor and his conscience were both concerned; and, even for Edith's sake; he could not act contrary to their dictates. He knew that danger hung over his head; and, though he would ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... the cry comes, 'Prepare ye in the desert an highway for our God.' The toil is sore and long, but 'the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.' The Alpine summits lie white and ghastly in the spring sunshine, and it seems to pour ineffectual beams on their piled cold; but by slow degrees it is silently loosening the bands of the snow, and after a while a goat's step, as it passes along a rocky ledge, or a breath of wind will move a tiny particle, and in an instant its motion spreads over a mile of mountain side, and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... seems worth remembering that this day I did hear my Lord Anglesy at the table, speaking touching this new Act for Accounts, say that the House of Lords did pass it because it was a senseless, impracticable, ineffectual, and foolish Act; and that my Lord Ashly having shown that it was so to the House of Lords, the Duke of Buckingham did stand up and told the Lords that they were beholden to my Lord Ashly, that having first commended them for a most grave and honourable assembly, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... then state of science could suggest, we never could eradicate the germs of it. The men were sent on board of a hulk, the vessel thoroughly cleansed and fumigated, and finally, we were ordered as far north as New Providence; but all these means were ineffectual, for, at intervals, nearly regular, the fever would again appear, and men and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... to yield Were death to manhood; better in the field 650 To leave our carcases, and die with fame, Than fly, and purchase life on terms of shame. Sackvilles[289] alone anticipate defeat, And ere they dare the battle, sound retreat. But if persuasions ineffectual prove, If arguments are vain, nor prayers can move, Yet in thy bitterness of frantic woe Why talk of Burton? why to Scotland go? Is there not Oxford? she, with open arms, Shall meet thy wish, and yield up all her charms: 660 Shall for thy ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... great relief the search was ineffectual. There was no doubt that the carcass of the suicide had been thrown overboard, and the rage of the disappointed ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... effected an ascent at Edinburgh on the 27th of August 1784, just nineteen days previous to Lunardi. Tytler's ascent, however, was almost a failure, by his employing the dangerous and unmanageable Montgolfier principle. After several ineffectual attempts, Tytler, finding that he could not carry up his fire-stove with him, determined, in the maddening desperation of disappointment, to go without this his sole sustaining power. Jumping into ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne

... besides, perhaps, a little struck with remorse for having left his old friend Crabshaw, suddenly halted, and stood stock still, notwithstanding all the stripes and tortures he underwent; or if he moved at all, it was in a retrograde direction. The thief, seeing all his endeavours ineffectual, and himself in danger of being overtaken, wisely quitted his acquisition, and fled into the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... control immigration and lessen the hardships of the debarred: (1) To enlighten aliens as to the provisions of our laws, so that they may not in ignorance sever their home ties and sacrifice their small possessions in an ineffectual attempt to enter the United States. To this end the laws and regulations should be translated into the various tongues and distributed widely. This might not prevail as against the influence and promises of transportation agents, but it would relieve this country of ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... him narrowly for a moment, peering at him over his spectacles which he had drawn down on to his tip-tilted nose. Then the fierceness died out of his mien and manner as suddenly as it had sprung up. He became once more the weak-looking, ineffectual man that had first greeted La Boulaye: urbane and quiet, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... were very neat and small, and she knew that they must obtrude themselves on the eye while she lay prone. Elsie, whose shoes were patched as well as thick-soled, made an ineffectual attempt to cover them with ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... daughter (now eighteen years of age) proved to be also a source of parental inquietude, in another way. She was the passive cause of the revolt which set her father's authority at defiance. For some little time past she had been out of health. After many ineffectual trials of the mild influence of persuasion, her mother's patience at last gave way. Mrs. Ronald insisted—yes, actually insisted—on taking Miss Emma to ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... prevent here the exercise of a nugatory jurisdiction; but that if the preamble of that Bill was, as had been stated by Fitzpatrick and Lord Beauchamp, as a case to be approved of, to declare the intention, he did not conceive how it would alter the question at all, for if the repeal was ineffectual, it would not ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... Vain provisions! Ineffectual restrictions! Vile profanation of oaths! Miserable mockery of legislation! If a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... your arm," he warned his captive as the latter made an ineffectual effort against him. "Call the others," he ordered, and Tignol blew a shrill summons. "Rip off this glove. I want to see his hand. Come, come, none of that. Open it up. No? I'll make you open it. There, I thought ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... enemies of Garces' peaceful neophytes, the Papago and the Pima. To the warlike, marauding Apache Garces gave much thought, drawing up a plan for holding them in subjection by the establishment of a cordon of presidios. To read his simple plan and compare the ineffectual efforts of the Americans, who had the Apache country virtually surrounded by military posts for many years, will convince one that while Garces held the Apache in justifiable fear, he little knew the true character of those with ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... enjoyment of any activity is proportional to the height and glory of the purpose for which it is employed. As long as we are content to use only our lower mental faculties and to gain low ends, our use of even these will be feeble and ineffectual, and our lives will be ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... receive the approbation of the Senate, it will terminate a difference respecting boundary which has long subsisted between the two Governments, has been the subject of several ineffectual attempts at settlement, and has sometimes led to great irritation, not without danger of disturbing the existing peace. Both the United States and the States more immediately concerned have entertained ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... be paid to those towns that should contribute for the support of their own schools; but, such was the public indifference, that after many years the money was still in the treasury. Hence it was inferred that all these measures were ineffectual, and that mere taxation was, upon the whole, to be preferred to any imperfect system. But the example of New York was approved, where the distribution of a small sum, equal to about twenty cents ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... found to prove the most favourable spots for raising the productions of other parts of the world. But these are partial and insufficient proofs of fertility. Every person who has attempted to make a garden of any kind nor Fort Marlborough must well know how ineffectual a labour it would prove to turn up with the spade a piece of ground adopted at random. It becomes necessary for this purpose to form an artificial soil of dung, ashes, rubbish, and such other materials ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... this work, I was naturally induced to continue my search to the collateral relations, which it might be supposed to have contracted, in its progress to maturity: and having, at least, persuaded my own judgment that the search has not been entirely ineffectual, I now lay the result of my labours before the publick; with full conviction that, in questions of this kind, the world cannot be mistaken, at least, cannot long ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... be very considerable, save as his assassins. They would not have been heard of in after times, if they had not "struck the foremost man of all this world"; in other words, the great sun of Rome had to be shorn of his beams, else so ineffectual a fire as Brutus could nowise ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... going on in the brain. Under this view we are all what he terms conscious automata, or machines which happen, as it were by chance, to be conscious of some of their own movements. But the consciousness is altogether adventitious, and bears the same ineffectual relation to the activity of the brain as a steam whistle bears to the activity of a locomotive, or the striking of a clock to the time-keeping adjustments of the clockwork. Here, again, we meet with an echo of Hobbes, who opens his work on ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... the schemes and machinations of the Russian Government respecting the Jews proved ineffectual. Nicholas I, with the possible exception of Ivan the Terrible, the greatest autocrat in Russian history, at whose wish seemingly insuperable obstacles were instantly removed, the wink of whose eye was sufficient ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... come back? Why hadn't he killed all ten huskies outright, and so prevented Strangeways from pursuing farther until the break-up of the ice? He would have gained a month by that. His deed bore about it signs of the ineffectual cunning of the maniac; it had been only worth the doing if carried out bitterly to the end. Yet Spurling had not gone mad; he was too careful of his life and future happiness to permit himself to do that. Then he ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... account of the influential name they bore. Anyway, some of them did appear in various offices and capacities, but without meaning any disrespect to them or any reflection upon their abilities, it may perhaps be said that they found their fires so pale and ineffectual compared with the brilliant light of their eldest brother—or it may be that they found public work comparatively uncongenial to them—that, most of them soon preferred to efface themselves and leave one of their family and his son to take all the honours and ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... women, and children, were in the crowd. I passed along till I found myself inside the grove, where I met Charles Ewing and John Hunter, and we stood looking at the troops on the road, heading toward the city. A band of music was playing at the head, and the column made one or two ineffectual starts, but for some reason was halted. The battalion of regulars was abreast of me, of which Major Rufus Saxton was in command, and I gave him an evening paper, which I had bought of the newsboy on my way out. He was reading from it some piece of news, sitting on his horse, when ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... was left in command of this new fortress, with a garrison of 250 men; and Manuel de Sousa had orders to secure its safety by sea, with a squadron of twenty-two vessels. The zamorin soon repented of having allowed this fort to be built in his dominions, and used ineffectual endeavours to induce the rajah of Chale, Caramanlii, and Tanore to break with the Portuguese, even going to war against them, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... and pulled at the laces with ineffectual fingers, and Patty jerked them open and dumped the shoes in a squashy heap ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... us, Alec," admitted Jack, his heart sinking as he remembered how ineffectual McGuffey had been in the box even while Chester was scoring against the Harmony man; and with Hendrix sending his puzzling shoots over, defeat was positive for Chester unless they had Donohue to depend on. "Tell me how it ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... leaned on the wall of the terrace, from which, in a few moments, he returned to his seat, then rose again, and appeared to be greatly agitated; while Emily found her spirits so much depressed, that several of her attempts to renew the conversation were ineffectual. Valancourt again sat down, but was still silent, and trembled. At length he said, with a hesitating voice, 'This lovely scene!—I am going to leave—to leave you—perhaps for ever! These moments may never return; I cannot resolve to neglect, though ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... recovered. He used the severest remedies, and, in October, 1832, he sailed for Smyrna; after spending some months there in a home where friendship and kindness did all that nature and skill could accomplish, and finding all means ineffectual, he started for home to die; but a few days before reaching his native land he breathed his last. His remains were committed to the deep in May, 1833. A cenotaph at Mt. Auburn commemorates his birth and death. It bears the inscription ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... in the previous cases, I need only give one or two examples. Those which I choose are chosen on account of the colours concerned not being highly varied or brilliant, and therefore lending themselves to less ineffectual treatment by wood-engraving than is the case where attempts are made to render by this means even more remarkable instances. (Figs. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... discovered (with many others) eight years later! Even then the whereabouts of the letters forming Fenn's first and second volumes, which he had presented in 1787 to King George III., was still unknown. 'The late Prince Consort . . . caused a careful search to be made for them, but it proved quite ineffectual.' No wonder, for in 1889 they came to light in a ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... what, Colonel! if that nigger gal a' yourn don't stand close with her blazer we'll get into an all-fired snarl," says one, endeavouring to extricate himself and regain his upright. After sundry ineffectual attempts, surging round the room in search of his hat, which is being very unceremoniously transformed into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, "There's something very strange ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... towards the main part of the wood. The left hand party under 2nd Lieut. Argyle had plenty of cover for the first half-mile and pushed on rapidly, until, coming over a small crest into the open, they too met with heavy machine-gun fire. After several ineffectual efforts to advance, they dug themselves in and remained there for the rest of the day, replying to the Boche fire with their Lewis Guns, but with no visible effect. (It was afterwards discovered that this party were less than 100 yards behind 2nd Lieut. Griffiths' platoon, unable to see each ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... answer on the affair of the Lord Howe, mentioned in my last. I visit the Ministers, and pass offices on this subject and that of the duties, and shall omit nothing that depends on me to obtain satisfaction, and I hope the pains I take will not prove wholly ineffectual. Besides the affairs above mentioned, I am obliged to visit and write to the Judges of the Council of the Indies, on account of law-suits in which some of our countrymen are interested, and which are before them by appeal from the inferior jurisdictions. Even justice here is obtained by favor and ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... made an ineffectual search for those who had played the trick. They soon discovered that the bags had been thrown through the ventilator, but, by the time a committee of investigation had gone to the loft, the four chums were ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... A central Congress and forty state legislatures, turning out some twenty thousand laws a year, could not make new props fast enough to take the place of those which were constantly breaking down or becoming ineffectual through some shifting of the strain. Now society rests on its base, and is in as little need of artificial ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... dwelling and its contents from the devastation that threatened it. They knew that they had no power to stop its onward course, as they possessed no implement better than a rough wood shovel, which would be found very ineffectual in opening a trench or turning the ground up, so as to cut off the communication with the dry grass, leaves, and branches, which are the fuel for supplying the fires on the Plains. The little clearing on one side the house they thought would be its ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... that Achilles, if he went to the siege of Troy, would never return, clothed him in female apparel, and concealed him among the maidens at the court of Lycom{e}des, king of the island of Scyros. But this stratagem proved ineffectual; for Calchas having informed the Greeks where Achilles lay in disguise, they sent Ulysses to the court of Lycom{e}des, where, under the appearance of a merchant, he was introduced to the king's daughters, and while they were studiously intent on viewing ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... Cupping-Glasses and Blisters frequently removed the Disorder. In some Cases, where the first Blister did not relieve, the Application of a second, and afterwards keeping up a Discharge from the Part by Means of the Epispastic Ointment, carried off the Pain. In others, where the mild Diaphoretics were ineffectual, Sweating, with the G. Guaiac, or Dover's Powder, and such other Medicines, after the Fever ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... in increased degrees over man's by each womanly inlet to the spiritual nature—I see such a being irradiating the future years and paths of my race, and my soul grows strong and glad at the sight. In her the self-love of man is replaced by love; ambition pales its ineffectual fires in the light of that pure, undying flame of aspiration which her soul feeds; patriotism, ashamed of its narrowness, unfolds shining pinions over humanity, and becomes philanthropy; pleasure retreats in her wornout, patched-up harlequin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... her low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle, surprised by the light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with ineffectual effort into the distant gloom of the land. She left a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place where she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating on the swell—an unclean ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... miles and a half, when it became necessary to return on account of the shoalness of the stream, the boat* having grounded repeatedly. A party of about twenty natives made their appearance as soon as we entered the river, and after making ineffectual and repeated attempts to induce us to land, two or three of their number followed us along the bank, while the others made a straight course so as to cut off the windings and meet us at our turning place. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray



Words linked to "Ineffectual" :   ineffectualness, inefficacious, futile, otiose, toothless, effective, effectivity, uneffective, effectiveness, effectualness, ineffectuality, unavailing



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