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Roughness   Listen
noun
Roughness  n.  The quality or state of being rough.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Roughness" Quotes from Famous Books



... again darted to another part of the deck. All felt excited, not without a misgiving that some accident might take place. In this manner the chase was continued," the story goes on to say, until the snake received its death-blow from a cutlass. He measured seventeen feet. "I repented of my roughness to the dog," thus his master concludes, "and he was henceforward a great favourite with the men, who appreciated ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... fulfilled all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the sailors in their arms.... The custom-house officers have detained the ship so long that we are left here by the tide.... The ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... thither. It was, indeed, only seen during its return, having, like the comet of 1668, been only discovered a day or two after perihelion passage. Astronomers soon began to notice a curious resemblance between the orbits of the two comets. Remembering the comparative roughness of the observations made in 1668, it may be said that the two comets moved in the same orbit, so far as could be judged from observation. The comet of 1843 came along a path inclined at apparently the same angle to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... last quarter of the eighteenth century. See vol. i., p. 185, for Gilpin's "Observations on Picturesque Beauty." See also Uvedale Price, "Essays on the Picturesque as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful," three vols., 1794-96. Price finds the character of the picturesque to consist in roughness, irregularity, intricacy, and sudden variation. Gothic buildings are more picturesque than Grecian, and a ruin than an entire building. Hovels, cottages, mills, interiors of old barns are picturesque. "In mills particularly, such is the extreme intricacy of the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... "was a highly gifted, true musician, but at the same time a good Russian; hence are found in his works thoughts of almost maidenly delicacy and sentiment and of the most refined construction; yet, side by side with them, others of semi-Asiatic roughness and brutality." ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... enjoyment and enduring of happiness and misery, pleasure in speaking ill of others, indulgence in quarrels and disputes of every kind, arrogance, discourtesy, anxiety, indulgence in hostilities, sorrow, appropriation of what belongs to others, shamelessness, crookedness, disunions, roughness, lust, wrath, pride, assertion of superiority, malice, and calumny. These are said to spring from the attributes of Rajas. I shall now tell thee of that assemblage of qualities which springs from Tamas. They are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... following day was very trying, because of the roughness of the ground and the extreme cold. In the evening we arrived in the vicinity of Petersburg, and took our place on the left of our lines, rather toward the rear. The loss of the Union forces during this raid was about one hundred, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... itself, and which might be greatly improved by cultivation, but would lose all its natural beauty if too much meddled with:—this is the case, he would continue, with stanzas, which come into the mind, we know not how, and which may be improved by the correction of a little original roughness, but are deprived of all their grace and freshness by too nice a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... that soft, sweet haze, which like the eider down of charity smooths all roughness, rounds all angles, the world of shore and lake presented a magical panorama of towns and villages, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, spires of churches, masts of vessels,—all flashing past the open window of the car, where Beryl sat, watching ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... forgery, which was a longer matter and required greater skill and patience. Nothing was omitted which could make the fraud complete. The parchment assumed the exact shade under his marvellous manipulation. The smallest roughness was copied with faultless precision, and then by many hours of handling and the use of a little dust collected among the books in the library, he imparted to the whole the appearance of age which was indispensable. When he had finished he showed his work to old ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... came and lay heavy between them. A minute and another minute went away. Habib's wrists were shaking. His breast began to heave. With a sudden roughness he took her back, to devour her lips and eyes and hair with the violence of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... iron, held her, yet it was flexible and yielded her to the motion of the horse. One instant she felt the brawn, the bone, heavy and powerful; the next the stretch and ripple, the elasticity of muscles. He held her as easily as if she were a child. The roughness of his flannel shirt rubbed her cheek, and beneath that she felt the dampness of the scarf he had used to bathe her arm, and deeper still the regular pound of his heart. Against her ear, filling it with strong, vibrant beat, his heart seemed ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... temptations to which she is exposed. In a physical point of view, a housekeeper should be healthy and strong, and be particularly clean in her person, and her hands, although they may show a degree of roughness, from the nature of some of her employments, yet should have a nice inviting appearance. In her dealings with the various tradesmen, and in her behaviour to the domestics under her, the demeanour and conduct of the housekeeper should be such as, in neither case, to diminish, by an ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the white petals have here and there become stained by the colouring matter proceeding from it, and which, in a diluted state, is of a purplish tint: as the flowers decay, this apparently black part, distinguished by the roughness of its surface, arising from prominent lucid points, and which essentially distinguish the species, is sometimes perforated ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... to mutiny when Banion ordered a third of his men to stay back with the ox teams and the families. Fifty were mounted and ready in five minutes. They were followed by two fast wagons. In one of these rolled Bill Jackson, unconscious of the roughness of the way. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... It is possible that the absence of excitement, of diffuse reading, of communication in those days may have tended to concentrate the affections and interests of agricultural people more on their immediate surroundings, but I rather doubt it; the problem is, considering the much greater roughness and coarseness of village life in the Middle Ages, how there could have existed a poetical and artistic instinct among villagers, which ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... roughness," she said with a laugh, as he, taking a seat near her, tried to draw her to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... had forced this farce upon him. He felt that she was laughing all over. The pretty pinkness of her open mouth nauseated him. He thought of all the men who had kissed her, and had been ruined by her as though by the touch of a deadly plague. He pressed her tongue down with a deliberate roughness. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... first, as sore fingers rebelled against the roughness of husks, he began work, touching the frosty ears gingerly; then as he warmed to the task, stopping at nothing. The frost, dense, all-covering, shook from the stalks as he moved, coloring the rusty blue of his overalls white, and melting ice-cold, wet him through to the skin on arms and shoulders ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... time, her delicate beauty, her quiet, distinctive, high-bred manner, had thrust it home to me that in certain respects I was ignorant and crude—as who would not have been, brought up as was I? I knew there was, somewhere between my roughness of the uncut individuality and the smoothness of the planed and sand-papered nonentity of her "set," a mean, better than either, better ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... one; and to show himself a fine gentleman, by a behavior which seemed to insinuate he had never seen one. He was, moreover, a man of gallantry; at the age of seventy he had the finicalness of Sir Courtly Nice, with the roughness of Surly; and, while he was deaf himself, had a voice capable of deafening ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... perhaps, at the oddity of the idea, considering the roughness of our country, the scarcity of palaces, fine equipages, liveried servants with white kid gloves and cocked hats, and the absence of a perfect railroad system in our remote quarter of the world; but I am perfectly in earnest ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... money!" he said, with brutal roughness. "And you'll grow no mushrooms! And let that be understood once for all! You've got to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... was in seeing Anna depart for dances in costumes of royal magnificence. The Russian toilettes were wonderful, and while the women ruined their husbands with their extravagance, the men ruined the toilettes of the ladies by their roughness. In a mazurka where the men contended for ladies' handkerchiefs, the young Countess had one worth about five hundred francs torn in pieces, but her mother repaired the loss by giving ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... this, early travelers came to take for granted a hospitality not to be found on more frequented thoroughfares. In this hospitality, roughness and good will, cleanliness and filth, attempts to ape the style of Eastern towns and habits of the most primitive kind, were singularly blended. In one instance, the traveler might be cordially assigned by the landlord ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... with conscious roughness, and began to walk up and down the room. She remained very still with an air of listening anxiously to her own heart-beats, then sank down on the chair slowly, and sighed, as if giving up a task ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... her wrist, feeling her pulse beat madly. She really had a very little hand, though to his sensitive vision the roughness of the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a boxing-glove. He bought her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful cardboard box. He could ill afford the gift, and made one of his whimsical grimaces when he got the bill. The young lady who served him looked infinitely more genteel ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... jostling to be foremost and French. Matthew Arnold's essay on criticism fostered this anxiety, and yet I find in this work of his a lack of easy French knowledge, such as his misunderstanding of the word brutalite, which means no more, or little more, than roughness. Matthew Arnold, by the way, knew so little of the French character as to be altogether ignorant of French provincialism, French practical sense, and French "convenience." "Convenience" is his dearest word ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... had sufficient color and movement. He found an exception to this judgment. La Belle Colette danced with artistic power, though in surroundings unsuited to her skill. He called it genius. In an open pavilion, whose roughness the white sand and the white-green surf helped to condone, on a tawdry stage, she appeared, a slight, pale, winsome beauty, clad in green and white gauze, looking like a sprite of the near-by sea. The ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... Centuries of Meditations consists of short reflections on religious and moral subjects, etc. The Poems constitute his main claim to remembrance and, as already stated, are of a high order. With occasional roughness of metre they display powerful imagination, a deep and rich vein of original thought, and true poetic force and fire. It has been pointed out that in some of them the author anticipates the essential doctrines of the Berkeleian philosophy, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... permitted himself this qualification of the unfortunate persons she so perversely cherished, he repented of his roughness—and partly because he expected a flash from her. But it was one of her finest sides that she sometimes flashed with a mere mild glow. "I don't see why you don't make out a little more that if we avoid stupidity we may do all. We may ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... the very tones of your voice, while strangers are present. Have you not sometimes in the middle of an irritable observation caught yourself changing and softening the harsh uncontrolled tones of your voice, or the roughness of your manner, when you have discovered the unexpected presence of a stranger in the family circle? You have still enough of self-respect to feel deep shame when such things have happened; and the very moment when you are suffering from these feelings of shame is that in which you ought to form, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... same quintessence; we cannot give it such a turn, such a propriety, and such a beauty. Something is deficient in the manner or the words, but more in the nobleness of our conception. Yet when you have finished all, and it appears in its full lustre; when the diamond is not only found, but the roughness smoothed; when it is cut into a form and set in gold, then we cannot but acknowledge that it is the perfect work of art and nature; and every one will be so vain to think he himself could have performed the like ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... the field with an army amounting, it is said, to thirty or forty thousand men, provided with a powerful artillery and accompanied by an immense baggage-train, wherein Charles delighted to display his riches and magnificence in contrast with the simplicity and roughness of his personal habits. At the rumor of such an armament the Swiss attempted to keep off the war from their country. "I have heard tell," says Commynes, "by a knight of theirs, who had been sent by them to the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Zambales extend a distance of fifty leguas from Mount Batan to the plains of Pangasinan in the island of Luzon. They are peopled by an innumerable race, who defend themselves from the Spanish arms almost within sight of Manila, because of the roughness of the ground, and maintain along with their heathenism, their barbarous customs. Who these people are can be seen in volume i, to which we refer the reader, [27] We only warn him that the Indians of whom that volume talks, inasmuch as they live in the beaches and plains extending ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... parties will be detailed to deal with all dug-outs known to be occupied. Prisoners will not be taken, but undue roughness is to be discouraged as likely to bring discredit upon the service. Steps will be taken, however, to ensure the immediate, if temporary, silence of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various

... said this with a degree of roughness and decision that at any other time would have made the obstinate old grandfather refuse point blank; but as there was every probability of having to flee for his life ere the break of another day, and as his old heart ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... The roughness, indeed, which sometimes appeared in his manners, was more striking to me now, from my having been accustomed to the studied smooth complying habits of the Continent; and I clearly recognised in him, not without respect for his honest conscientious zeal, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... each is capable of alone; as when the eye says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat; they are, therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in painting, where appearance of projection, roughness, hair, velvet, etc., are given with a smooth surface, or in wax-work, where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually contradicted by their experience; but the moment we come to marble, our ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... to shew that we should not describe the Country in it's Fatigues, it's Roughness, or it's Meanest, take these Few Considerations. For, as no Writer whom I have read (but that excellent Frenchman FONTENEL,) has raised his Shepherds and Shepherdesses above the vulgar and common sort of Neat-herds and Ploughers, I am oblig'd ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney

... insensible to the torture, or any excrescence, induration, or fixed discoloration, it was looked upon as visible evidence and demonstration of guilt. A physician or "chirurgeon" was required to be present at these examinations. In conducting them, there was liability to great roughness and unfeeling recklessness of treatment; and the whole procedure was barbarous and shocking to every just and delicate sensibility. There is reason to believe, that, in the trials here, there was more considerateness, humanity, and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... was committed to them; while those who had hitherto had the care of the vessels, were reunited to the body that was travelling by land. Their march was very slow, both on account of the extreme weakness of these men, even after the very moderate refreshment they had just taken, as well as from the roughness and difficulties of the way; and during the fifth day the pirates had no other sustenance but the leaves of trees and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... victory, and the Oak Hall eleven were warmly praised by their friends and the public in general, while many condemned the military academy for the roughness shown. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... vilest craft and dissembling had succeeded. The tenderness of bowels, which is the quintessence of justice and compassion, the very mention of good nature, was laughed at and looked upon as the mark and character of a fool; and a roughness of manners, or hardheartedness and cruelty, was affected. In the place of generosity, a vile and sordid love of money was entertained as the truest wisdom, and anything lawful that would contribute towards being rich. There was a total decay, or rather a final ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... back and make me ridiculous. But one never outlives all one's contemporaries; one may assort with them. Few Englishmen, too, I have observed, can bear solitude without being hurt by it. Our climate makes us capricious, and we must rub off our roughness and humours against one another. We have, too, an always increasing resource, which is, that though we go not to the young, they must come to us: younger usurpers tread on their heels, as they did on ours, and revenge ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... out like a sea, and all the way running between beautiful green shores. There is a place in the river, near the mouth, which has somewhat the appearance of rapids, when the tide is coming in. This, the people say, is the site of a sunken city, whose towers and turrets make the roughness of the water. The whole city can be seen every seven years, but, as the sight is said to be unlucky, every body avoids it. The whole story is about as probable as the one I have told you of the damp and ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... endeavour to detain them, until they could be reinforced by the rest of the squadron, which were ordered to form into a line-of-battle ahead, as they chased, that no time might be lost in the pursuit. Considering the roughness of the weather, which was extremely tempestuous; the nature of the coast, which is in this place rendered very hazardous by a great number of sand-banks, shoals, rocks, and islands, as entirely unknown to the British sailors as they were familiar to the French navigators; the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... considered old enough and steady enough, was to stay at home, keep house, and take care of dear grandmamma. With Aunt Hetty at the helm, the good old servant, whose black face had beamed over my cradle fifteen years ago, and whose strong arms had come between mother and every roughness during her twenty years of housekeeping, it really looked as if I might be trusted, and as if mother need not give me so many anxious directions. Did mother think me a baby? I wondered resentfully. Father always reads my face like ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... chanting one of the airs she was generally heard singing, and then, once more gliding down the centre of the cave, she took her departure unquestioned by any of the rebels. Again in the open air she quickly descended the mountain, dark as it was, and in spite of the roughness of the way, she hastened forward at a rapid speed towards Kilfinnan Castle. All was silent as she approached the gates. In vain she walked round and round, she could find no means of making herself heard. The inmates, unsuspicious ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... cried off—I'm going sketching.' Her eyes plainly added, 'with Ingersoll Armour,' but she as obviously shrank from the roughness of pitching him in that unconsidered way before us. For some reason I refrained from taking the cue. I would ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... such as he knew would delight the company. Reformer as Mrs. Lee was, and a little alarmed at the roughness of Ratcliffe's treatment, she could not blame the Prairie Giant, as she ought, who, after knocking poor French down, rolled him over and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... might have been refused; but wherefore barb And venom the refusal with contempt? Why dash to earth and crush with heaviest scorn The gray-haired man, the faithful veteran? Why to the baseness of his parentage Refer him with such cruel roughness, only Because he had a weak hour and forgot himself? But nature gives a sting e'en to the worm Which wanton power treads ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and at the beginning it was very bad. Except on the very edge of the abyss there was scarcely a handhold. Possibly in floods the waters may have swept the wall in a curve, smoothing down the inner part and leaving the outer to its natural roughness. There was one place where I had to hang on by a very narrow crack while I scraped with the axe a hollow for my right foot. And then about twelve feet from the ground I struck the first of ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... self-control must never be lost; you must never allow yourself to sing in a slovenly, that is, in a heedless, way, or to exceed your powers, or even to reach their extreme limit. That would be synonymous with roughness, which should be excluded from every art, especially in the art of song. The listener must gain a pleasing impression from every tone, every expression of the singer; much more may be ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann

... a life, at first, of some roughness and privation. Arbuthnot had laid the financial side quite clearly before him. He could not expect to land on the Solomon Islands without capital (and even a borrowed capital) and expect an income of a thousand pounds a year to drop into his mouth. If Elodie, although refusing to accompany him, would ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... several minutes, until at length Nathan spoiled it by punching Rollo too hard with his whip-handle. A great many plays are spoiled by roughness on the part of some who are engaged. Rollo, being hurt a little, got out of patience. He ought to have asked Nathan, pleasantly, not to punch him so hard. Instead of that, however, he declared that he would not play any more, and got up and went away. Nathan followed him, lashing the ground and ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott

... heaven," painted blue and figured with the constellations. By a simple arrangement of cogs and rollers the globe revolved, the stars rose and set, and the position of any star at any hour of the year could be roughly fixed. But the inclement climate of Coniston, and the natural roughness of children, soon wrecked the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... utmost earnestness. It was not often that a storm returned so quickly, and accepting the belief that Manitou intervened in the affairs of earth, he felt that the second convulsion of nature was for their benefit. Owing to the great roughness of the water their speed now decreased, but not more than that of the long canoe, the rising wind compelling them to use their paddles mostly for steadiness. The spray was driven like sleet in their faces, and they were soon wet through and through, but they ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... would perhaps be a more correct term," said Mr Maltby, "at least so far as touchings of the hat and smooth speeches were concerned. But, in truth, with all the roughness of these people, there is that sterling courtesy and consideration in many of them which I rarely meet with ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... Castell, "we must push on, who have twenty miles to cover before we reach that inn where Israel has arranged that we should sleep to-night. We will talk as we go." And talk they did, as well as the roughness of the road and the speed at which they must ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... roughly indeed, in his arms, but his very roughness was a proof of the intensity of his love. For an instant she lay palpitating against him, and as long as he lives he will remember the first exquisite touch of her firm but supple figure and the marvellous communion of her lips. A current from the great store that was in her, pent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and whose cruel nature had choked every germ of pleasantness and transformed her into a priestess of misery, a fatal, pitiless Eumenide, was pleasant and obliging to that brute. She admired his bearish manners, his roughness, his greediness, and his insolent, careless way of treating everybody, including the pompous Senor de Quinones. Manin was a solemn-faced rogue with his shameful rudeness, his deportment of a brave hunter of wild beasts. Sly-faced rogue! for with all his shameless rudeness, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... some heart, some frankness and honesty, but he was a bluff, rough sailor, and when excited, oaths of the hottest sort flew from his lips, like sparks from an anvil. Because of his roughness and profanity, and because, perhaps, of the fact of his surrounding himself with a lot of natural children, the Duchess was determined to persevere in her retirement from the Court circle, and in keeping her innocent little daughter out of its unwholesome atmosphere, as much as possible. She ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... at the Academy for some time, and had earned many good-conduct badges, when complaint was made of the noise and roughness with which the cadets rushed down the narrow staircase from their dining-room. One of the senior cadets, a corporal, was stationed at the head of this staircase, his arms outstretched, to prevent the usual wild rush past. ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang

... tom-tom in the midst of tender music. But the word "harangue" is insufficient to reproduce the hatred, the desires of vengeance expressed by the haughty gesture of the hand, the brevity of the speech, and the look of sullen and cool-blooded energy on the countenance of the speaker. The coarseness and roughness of the man,—chopped out, as it seemed by an axe, with his rough bark still left on him,—and the stupid ignorance of his features, made him seem, for the moment, like some half-savage demigod. He stood stock-still in a prophetic attitude, as though he ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... sturdiness in the American temper at least, and sends the lighter men away with his roughness, as doubtless he sent the curious away from his cliffs with the acidity of truth he poured upon them. He had lived so much in the close association of the roughest elements in existence, rocks and the madly swinging sea that glides over and above them defiantly, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... given weight of goods or passengers over a specified distance; and consequently the application of the steam-engine to traffic conducted on the railway line was a success. Many inventors at once jumped to the conclusion that, by making some fixed allowance for the greater roughness of an ordinary road, they would be able to construct a steam-traction engine that would suit exactly for road traffic. In a rough and rudimentary way an attempt to provide for the special effort required ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... a shoe, bears among northern people a name indicating that it protects the feet from the cold; among southern people it protects the feet from the heat. Elsewhere the shoe protects the feet against the roughness of the soil; and in yet other places, it exists only as a ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... proper thing to do next. A minister was to be respected, and not to be made one of them. He must take the lead in the conversation. Mr. Price was at a loss how to begin. He had not recovered fully from the roughness of his welcome, so Slim ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... sensitiveness all the bad ones, of the French nation; and more especially of the French nation of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era. Alfieri's reality and Alfieri's ideal were austerity, inflexibility, pride and contemptuousness of character, coldness, roughness, decision of manner, curtness, reticence, and absolute truthfulness of speech; above all, no consideration for other folks' likings and dislikings, no mercy for their foibles. His ideal, even more so than the ideal of other idealising minds, was the mere outcome of himself; it contained ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... missing and Heurtaux wounded, the Storks were now commanded by Lieutenant Raymond. He belonged to the cavalry, a tall, thin man, with the sharp face and heroic bearing of Don Quixote, a kindly man with a roughness of manner and a quick, picturesque way of expressing himself. Deullin was there, too, one of Guynemer's oldest and most devoted friends. Last of all descended from the high regions sous-lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz, a rather heavy man with a serious ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... more vivid the hopes that yearn towards the true home, and to develop the 'wrestling thews that throw the world.' The discipline of life is too precious to be tampered with even by a Saviour's prayer, and He loves His people too wisely to seek to shelter them from its roughness, and to procure for them exemption ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... she grew critical of him, and began to study her idol—a process dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone roughness, murmured: "God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not shame the day." He gazed down on her with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... cried Ferrand, with severity. "I ought to tell you that, for a year past, M. d'Harville has given me charge of his affairs. I have lately bought for him a magnificent property. You know my roughness in business. It imports little to me that M. d'Harville is my client; that which I plead is the cause of justice. If your husband takes toward his daughter, Madame d'Harville, a determination which seems to me not proper, I tell you plainly he must not count ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... it is," said Kate. "Do you realize that the family is broken up, and the children are to be half strangers to each other? Did you not notice that they seemed very fond of each other when we saw them in the summer? There was not half the roughness and apparent carelessness of one another which one so often sees in the country. Theirs was such a little world; one can understand how, when the man's wife died, he was bewildered and discouraged, utterly at a loss. The ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... top of the tower they Were approached by an obliging attendant and furnished with spy glasses of great power with which they could see more distinctly the beauty and greatness of the world, and the roughness and inconvenience of traveling the King's Highway. To each one was also given an ingenious pocket mirror in which could be seen, at any time, the inconsistencies ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... painter as well as a dramatic poet. His tragedies were not mere translations, but adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are extant are full of new and original thoughts, and the very roughness of his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Despite the roughness of the verse, there is a thrilling power in these lines. People in gilded houses, on silken couches, at ease among books, and friends, and literary pastimes, may sneer at the Covenanters; it is much easier to sneer than to die for truth and right, as they died. Whether ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... Yefimitch was deceived or flattered, or accounts he knew to be cooked were brought him to sign, he would turn as red as a crab and feel guilty, but yet he would sign the accounts. When the patients complained to him of being hungry or of the roughness of the nurses, he would be confused and mutter guiltily: "Very well, very well, I will go into it later . . . . Most likely there is some misunderstanding. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... sense of touch, we mean the general sensibility of the skin. Sensations of heat and cold are familiar illustrations of this faculty. By the sense of touch, we obtain a knowledge of certain qualities of a body, such as form consistency, roughness, or smoothness of surface, etc. The tip of the tongue possesses the most acute sensibility of any portion of the body, and next in order are the tips of the fingers. The hands are the principal organs of tactile sensation. The nerves of general sensibility ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... was the abject human animal beseeching mercy from the stronger. That she could ask him whom she had repudiated to stand by her in her distress, hurt him like a personal degradation. But he was sorry for her, and he would fight. He answered roughly, at a venture, and he felt her start. Yet the roughness was ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... had never been. He saw that the sporting squires of his party were as much the representatives of ancestral force and quality as in older days were long lines of Claudii and Valerii. His conservative doctrine was a profound instinct, in part political, but in greater part moral. The accidental roughness of the symbol did not touch him, for the symbol was glorified by the sincerity of his faith and the compass of ...
— Burke • John Morley

... German guns. It was a city of the dead. The military authorities of the Allies told the civilians they must leave. They had to go, there was no alternative. The liberation they had hoped for was in sight, but their road to it was of a roughness unspeakable. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... dishes; which, with some common vegetables, amply satisfied our hunger. The blunt hospitality of this rural baron was totally different from that which is to be met with in remote parts of the country of England. It was more the open-heartedness of a soldier than the roughness of a squire.' ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... the winter out of doors. I don't use it for growing anything, because I don't love things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and require coaxing and petting for the rest of it. Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women. No doubt there are many lovely flowers to be had by heat and constant ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood—though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... of the lesser monasteries was the signal for a new outburst of ribald insult to the old religion. The roughness, insolence, and extortion of the commissioners sent to effect it drove the whole monastic body to despair. Their servants rode along the road with copes for doublets or tunicles for saddle-cloths, and scattered panic among the larger houses which were left. Some sold their jewels and relics ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... upon them from a trough overhead. These rapidly cut away the surface of glass presented to them, leaving it rough and opaque. The article was next presented to a smooth grindstone, that removed the roughness, and left the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... inculcated in this treatise reminds us of Hopkins' bold appeal to conscience. He says, "There must be a holy roughness and violence, to break through all that stands in our way; neither caring for allurements, nor fearing opposition, but by a pious obstinacy and frowardness, we must thrust away the one and bear down the other. This is the Christian who will carry heaven by force, when the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... at the cabin door, and flung her aside very roughly indeed; if they had been playing, such roughness would have made Bobbie weep with tears of rage and pain. Now, though he flung her on to the edge of the hold, so that her knee and her elbow were grazed ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... be all right in a few days, and when we reach Fort Severn again you can talk all you wish, for then we'll have been married," Donald said. Braithwaite agreed without hesitation. He was a middle-aged man who, despite his roughness, had a great fondness for Jean; for a daughter of his, had she lived, would now have been the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... the art of music, nor the brilliancies of Attic conversation; but power and fortune, which ever soften nature, afterward rendered his habits intellectual and his tastes refined. He had not the smooth and artful affability of Themistocles, but to a certain roughness of manner was conjoined that hearty and ingenuous frankness which ever conciliates mankind, especially in free states, and which is yet more popular when united to rank. He had distinguished himself highly by his zeal in the invasion of the Medes, and the desertion of Athens for Salamis; and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... lest it be gone. I would not have the litter and debris removed, or the banks trimmed, or the ground painted. What I enjoy is commensurate with the earth and sky itself. It clings to the rocks and trees; it is kindred to the roughness and savagery; it rises from every tangle and chasm; it perches on the dry oak- stubs with the hawks and buzzards; the crows shed it from their wings and weave it into their nests of coarse sticks; the fox barks it, the cattle low it, and every mountain path leads to its haunts. I am ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... was a stranger and alone, jostled him with little ceremony. He had too much wit and perhaps too much self-respect, to rouse a street brawl on his own behalf, and when any one ran against him with unnecessary roughness he contented himself with stiffening his back and holding his own in passive resistance. He had reached his full strength and was a match for many little Greeks, yet the annoyance was distasteful to him, and he was glad to find himself pushed into a narrow lane between ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... Flume, the Stage Kempenny and the wimen and children passengers hez their rights." He paused a moment, and added, "And so I reckon hez Mrs. Byers, and I ain't goin' to send you home to her outer my house blind drunk. It's mighty rough on you and me, I know, but there's a lot o' roughness in this world ez hez to be got over, and life, ez far ez I kin see, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... Pale! Can ye blame me for it? I tell you true, An easy matter could not thus have moved me. Well, this resignment—and so forth—but, woman, This fortnight shall I not forget ye for it.— Ha, ha, I see that roughness can do somewhat! I did not think, good faith, I could have set So sour a face upon it, and to her, My bed-embracer, my right bosom friend. I would not that she should have seen the letter— As poor a man as I am—by my troth, For twenty pound: well, I am glad I have it. [Aside.] Ha, here's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... pluck for ever! What invigorates life invigorates death, And the dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man, And nothing endures ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... agreeable flavors, and has a right to the best we can give in the way of palatable foods and drinks. The sense of feeling, though less cultivated and not so sensitive as the others, has its rights too, and is offended by too great coarseness, roughness, and hardness. It has a claim on us ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... things, were English. His religion was the excellent English compromise or rather balance of dogma, practice and spirituality which laymen make for their own life. His bold sense of personal freedom was English. His constancy to his theories, whether of faith or art, was English; his roughness of form ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... ton militaire', which strikes a person accustomed to Courts at first with surprise, and perhaps with indignation; though, after a time, those of our sex, at last, become reconciled, if not pleased with it, because there is a kind of military frankness interwoven with the military roughness. Our ladies, however (I mean those who have seen other Courts, or remember our other coteries), complain loudly of this alteration of address, and of this fashionable innovation; and pretend that our military, under the notion of being frank, are rude, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... Little personal discussions with horse thieves, some border frays, and even a chance encounter on a narrow trail with a giant grizzly, have tried his nerve. But he braces with a good stiff draught of cognac now. He fears the wily and fascinating Natalie. He is at heart a would-be lady's man. Roughness is foreign to his nature, but he will walk the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... self; but there is something worse in being tormented by others, especially where they resort to force, and show a pleasure in compelling you, and leave you no hope of escape, or opportunity to resist. I had seen the gags repeatedly in use, and sometimes applied with a roughness which seemed rather inhuman; but it is one thing to see and another thing to feel. There were some of the old nuns who seemed to take pleasure in oppressing those who fell under their displeasure. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... chance was there of his going to Boulogne instead of to Havre; Joan stood close to Dick, just touching him; there was something rather pathetic in the way she did not attempt to close her hand upon the roughness of his coat, but was content to feel it brushing against her. The regimental band had struck up "Tipperary"; the men were being marshalled to take their places in the train. Joan wondered if the band played so loud and so persistently ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... he said, 'you have shown yourself a brave girl these two days. It is not every maid can sacrifice herself for a Count of Poictou, the eldest son of a king. Come, come, let us have no more of this.' He hoped, no doubt, to brace her by a roughness which was far from his nature; and it is possible that he succeeded in heading off a mutiny of the nerves. She was not violent under her despair, but went on crying very miserably, saying, 'Oh, what shall I ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... discriminate between physical results and moral results. A person may be in such a condition that forcible feeding or enforced confinement is necessary for his own good. A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from a fire so that he shall not be burnt. But no improvement of disposition, no educative effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding tone may be effectual in keeping a child away from the fire, and the same desirable physical effect will ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... mischance as this may happen to any man of eminence—as has been my case, and the case of divers others I could recall—it shall not be written down in the list of his errors, unless in aftertimes he shall seek to justify the same. It is necessary to advance roughness in the place of refinement, and stubborn tenacity for steadfastness. No man can be pronounced guilty of offence on the score of some hasty word or other which may escape his lips; such a charge should rather be made when he defends himself ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... would account for the physical phenomena which accompany the hearing of music in some persons, such as the recession of blood from the face, or an equally sudden suffusion of the same veins, a contraction of the scalp accompanied by chilliness or a prickling sensation, or that roughness of the skin called goose-flesh, "flesh moved by an idea, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... rise to some degree of amusement. Nor was this without reason. The woman was so ungainly in appearance, and walked with so awkward a stride, that the skirts which clung round her heels seemed a decided incumbrance to her progress. Her face, too, presented a roughness that gave hint of possibilities of a beard. She kept unobtrusively behind her mistress, her peculiar gait set the goodwives of the village whispering and laughing as ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... and Captain Walsingham were earnest to confirm. No young people could have higher ideas than they had of the duty of children towards parents, and of the delight of family confidence and union. In former times, when Mr. Beaumont had been somewhat to blame in the roughness of his sincerity towards his mother, and when he had been disposed to break from her artful restraints, Captain Walsingham, by his conversation, and by his letters, had always used his power and influence to keep him within bounds; and whenever he could do so with truth, to raise Mrs. Beaumont ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... letters in the words of this marked passage he had noticed dents in the paper, as though by the pressure of a pencil point. Now that he stood by the light, he made sure of the dents, and he saw also by the roughness of the paper about them, that the pencil-marks had been carefully erased. He read these underlined letters together—they made a word, two words—a sentence, and the sentence was ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... Alcega. However, after the flagship had been gone more than an hour, the other ship saw it by accident, and went after it. At daybreak our flagship recognized that of the enemy, which, together with its admiral's ship, was between the islands of Anacebu and Fortun. On account of the roughness of the weather, they were unable to unite; so the enemy's flagship kept up into the wind to wait for ours, which gained the windward of it and closed with it under full sail, while the admiral's ship of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... married, before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire. I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel, you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in drink. That was the night he ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... give a hard, wiry line, then they grow sympathetic, and, finally, lose their temper, when they must be immediately thrown away. As a general rule, the more delicate points are better suited to the smooth surfaces, where they are not likely to get tripped up and "shaken" by the roughness ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... vigor and a couple of days later the Indians were overtaken. They did not attempt any stand against such a strong force, but took to flight at once. The Apaches used their utmost endeavors to get away and they were helped by the roughness of the country. They were pressed so hard, however, that they lost most of their horses and plunder besides a number ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... "Roughness," we found out at the other house, meant hay in this region. We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and for our own dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a few sonnets. On this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... autumn, and winter came, and I fared as I was wont, setting springes for fowl and small-deer. And for all the roughness of the season, at that time it pleased me better than the leafy days, because I had less memory then of the sharpness of my fear on that day of the altar. Now one day as I went under the snow-laden trees, I saw something bright and big lying on the ground, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... you get out and ride around, or do something beside stick right here in this coulee like a—a cactus?" he demanded, with a roughness that somehow was grateful to her. "I'll bet you haven't been a mile from the ranch since Man brought you here. Why don't you go to town with him when he goes? It'd be a whole lot better for you—for both of you. Have you got acquainted with ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... vice themselves by this public example of their sovereign. In the mean time, the king moved on to Portsmouth, escorted by a body of his Life Guards. He found that his intended bride was confined to her bed with a sort of slow fever. It was the result, they said, of the roughness and discomforts of the voyage, though we may certainly imagine another cause. Charles went immediately to the house where she was residing, and was admitted to visit her in her chamber, the many attendants who were present at the interview watching with great interest every word ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... cavaliere spoke in his blandest manner. The smoothness of the courtier seemed to unknit the wrinkles on his face. The look of displeasure melted out of his eyes, the roughness fled ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... he said, in the roughness of an emotion she saw plainly, "what is there I wouldn't do to save your life? To save you from being knocked about, touched"—he was about to add "violated," the purity of her seemed so virginal, but he stopped and she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... was but feebly carried on. The space was almost impracticably small; and the Irish wenches combined the extreme of bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence and roughness of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up its voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it and snapping fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of the brother to display all the acquirements of his idol, and such the sleepy ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... year, Thor had seen the seamy side of life, had lived, grown and developed among men. In his wanderings in the Klondike, the wild Northwest, in Panama, his experiences as cabin-boy, miner, cowboy, lumber-jack, and Canal Zone worker, he had existed where everything was roughness and violence, where brawn, not brain, usually held sway, where supremacy was won, kept, and lost by fists, spiked boots, or guns! In his adventurous career, young Thorwald had but seldom encountered the finer things of life, and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... led off into one of the gray notches between the tumbled streams of lava. These streams were about thirty feet high, a rotting mass of splintered lava, rougher than any other kind of roughness in the world. At the apex of the notch, where two streams met, a narrow gully wound and ascended. Gale caught sight of the dim, pale shadow of a one-time trail. Near at hand it was invisible; he had to look far ahead to catch the faint tracery. Yaqui led ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was satisfied that though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly took upon ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... however, these are made of argillite, and in many cases they have lost the fineness of edge and angle by weathering and by attrition against the gravel in which they were rolled under glacial floods. They bear about the same relation in their roughness and shapelessness to the carefully-worked relics of the red Indian found on the surface, or in the accumulation of soil resulting from the decay of countless generations of forest and herbage which everywhere covers the old gravels, as the matchlock of the Pilgrim Fathers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... their lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies, diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no more real existence than the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... be the consequence of a more indolent life. It is also amongst the last, that a soft clear skin is most frequently observed. Amongst the bulk of the people, the skin is more commonly of a dull hue, with some degree of roughness, especially the parts that are not covered, which perhaps may be occasioned by some cutaneous disease. We saw a man and boy at Hepaee, and a child at Annamooka, perfectly white. Such have been found amongst all black ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... together, and the edges closed with white lead. By the use of a thin sheet of vulcanized India-rubber, placed between the iron surfaces, not only is all this expense saved, but a joint is produced that is absolutely and permanently perfect. It is not even necessary to rub off the roughness of the casting, for the rougher the surface, the better the joint. Goodyear's invention supplies an article that Watt and Fulton sought in vain, and which would seem to put the finishing touch to the steam-engine,—if, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James



Words linked to "Roughness" :   tweediness, rough, unpleasantness, slub, thorniness, corrosion, spininess, rowdyism, intensification, gruffness, raggedness, harshness, storminess, nubbiness, indentation, smoothness, crudeness, coarseness, huskiness, erosion, corroding, scaliness, abrasiveness, graininess, choppiness, bumpiness



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