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Militate   /mˈɪlɪtˌeɪt/   Listen
Militate

verb
(past & past part. militated; pres. part. militating)
1.
Have force or influence; bring about an effect or change.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Militate" Quotes from Famous Books



... this expression. Does it militate against the physical laws of time and space, or of matter and motion, that a man so ingenious and so expert as this Armenian must undoubtedly be, assisted by agents whose dexterity and acuteness are probably not inferior to his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... authority in Paris, 'that the redness was caused by the blow, since no blow can ever recall any thing like color to the cheeks of a corpse; beside, this blow was given on one cheek, and the other equally reddened.' Singular facts. Do they not militate against certain theories of 'nervous sensation' recently promulgated in our philosophical circles? . . . DOESN'T it sicken you, reader, to hear a young lady use that common but horrid commercial metaphor, 'first-rate?' 'How did you like CASTELLAN, last evening, Miss HUGGINS?' ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... It was true that these "flowers" could protrude and retract themselves, but their motions were hardly more extensive, or more varied, than those of the leaves of the sensitive plant; and therefore they could not be held to militate against the conclusion so strongly suggested by their form and their grouping upon the branches of ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... uncertain? Do you take it for granted that these things will "get by" or that they never will be noticed? Again you are shifting the burden, expecting that someone will do the work you should have done. That carelessness will militate against you to prevent your elevation to an executive position. The boss cannot be careless and hold the respect of ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various

... most people believe that the King is bound to come back. By popular vote he probably would—just as Constantine did in the Greek elections. But external opposition is too great. If Czechs and Serbs quarrelled it would be different. International animosity and the general ill-will militate most against the peaceful ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... taken in the Bergsonian sense alone, but as fully fledged persons, possessed of the very qualities for which we undertake to search, yet without the possession of which the search could not begin. This does not, of course, militate against the value of these genetic researches in one sense. The study of evolutional sequences is still, and forever will be, of enormous value. But it does not teach us nearly as much of the nature of real creativeness as we can learn through the introspection ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... function both of an evaporating surface for the lachrymal secretion, and of a ramifying surface for a nerve ancillary to that of smell, it does not disappear entirely: the integration remains incomplete. These and other like instances do not however militate against the hypothesis. They merely show that the tendency is sometimes antagonized by other tendencies. Bearing in mind which qualification, we may say, that as differentiation of parts is connected with difference of function, so there ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... militate against the first rules of a sound policy, as well as the duties incumbent on us for the preservation of tranquillity in our State, if in such a state of things in a neighbouring great kingdom, we remained inactive spectators, and should wait for the period when ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... incongruities in their own appearance, any more than in their own conduct, the Delaware studied this change in a common glass, by which Hutter was in the habit of shaving, with grave interest. At that moment he thought of Hist, and we owe it to truth, to say, though it may militate a little against the stern character of a warrior to avow it, that he wished he could be seen by her ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... to all those thinking of trying Argentina as a field for agricultural work is to remember that to be successful one must begin at the bottom, the harder the school the better will be the result: you cannot detect and correct the faults which militate against success unless you have been through the mill. Not long ago I sent a boy out to Argentina and painted the first two years of learning in the new country in rather lurid colours. I explained and dwelt ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... on shelving sand. I don't. The spot is about half a mile from the hotels, and to this the bathers are carried in omnibuses. Till one o'clock ladies bathe, which operation, however, does not at all militate against the bathing of men, but rather necessitates it as regards those men who have ladies with them. For here ladies and gentlemen bathe in decorous dresses, and are very polite to each other. I must say that I think the ladies have the best of it. My idea of sea bathing, for my own gratification, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... that it will cause you some pain to hear what I am to tell you. You must know that for years I have felt a strong leaning toward missionary work, and though my proceedings at Alfington and even the fact of going thither might seem to militate against such a notion, yet the feeling has been continually present to me, and constantly exercising an increasing influence over me. I trust I have not taken an enthusiastic or romantic view of things; my own ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... path by every obstacle, direct and indirect, which they could put in his way. For they seemed to hope for some turn in affairs, some event, or some too rapid advance of the popular party in America, which should arouse the royal resentment against the colonists and so militate on their side. Delay was easily brought about by them. They had money, connections, influence, and that familiarity with men and ways which came from their residence in England; while Franklin, a stranger ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... sense has already but little chance of development, where the child of eight or ten already knows far more than is good for the health of either body or mind, and, though we may succeed in reducing the size of the family, yet the means we employ will militate against the raising of the moral tone of the household, and the children will not be any less ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... a whole chapter, and a very remarkable one, which appears at first sight to militate against my belief—a chapter "showing that France was the country in which men had ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley

... goodness, renunciation, contemplation, dignity, fortitude, compassion, and abstention from injury. These, O great monarch, are the thirteen forms of Truth. Truth is immutable, eternal, and unchangeable. It may be acquired through practices which do not militate against any of the other virtues. It may also be acquired through Yoga. When desire and aversion, as also lust and wrath, are destroyed, that attribute in consequence of which one is able to look upon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Alexander the Great, but this was a short-lived success; in the case of the Roman Empire she succeeded better and for longer together. Where Nature has once or twice hit her mark as near as this she will commonly hit it outright eventually; the disruption of the Roman Empire, therefore, does not militate against the supposition that the normal condition of right-minded people is one which tends towards aggregation, or, in other words, towards compromise and the merging of much of one's own individuality for the sake of ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... materially to stop any increase of householders, the uncertain tenure of office making the employes prefer clustering in hotels and boarding-houses to entering on a short career of housekeeping, which will, of course, militate against any steady increase of the city, and thus diminish the tax-payers. There are several hotels, but they will not stand the least comparison with those in any of the leading towns of the Union. Like the hotels in London, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... never did. He visited there, and his shepherds undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant. But Valdes and his family never actually resided on the estate. Other points that militate against the claim of his descendants may be noted. First, that minor grants of land, taken from within the original Valdes grant, were made by the governor without any protest on the part of the Don. Second, that Don Bartolome ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... difficult to conceive how a multitude of witnesses can militate against a fact; but more so, how three hundred passengers could tamely submit to such cruelties, from a bashaw of ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... we shift it backwards and forwards there is a good deal to be done in that way, he is quite content to walk by the side, or in front of the barrow, whilst SARK wheels it, and I walk behind, picking up any bits that have shaken out of the vehicle. (Earth trodden into the gravel-walk would militate against its efficiency.) But of course ARPACHSHAD is, in the terms of his contract, "a working gardener," and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various

... sceptre had not departed from Judah. We must not allow ourselves to be perplexed by any events and arguments adduced to prove that the sceptre has departed from Judah; for the very same events and arguments would militate against the eternal dominion of his house which had been promised to David, and would therefore make us doubtful of that also. All these events and arguments lose their significancy, when we remark, that this ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... He was rather perplexed as to what he should next do; his orders were to destroy everything—houses, property, and life; to spare neither age, sex, nor imbecility; and Santerre, undertaking the commission, had thought, in his republican zeal, that he would find no weakness in himself to militate against the execution of such orders. He was mistaken in himself, however. He had led the fierce mobs of Paris to acts of bloodshed and violence, but in doing so he had only assisted with an eager hand in the overthrow of those who he thought were tyrannizing over the people. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... language, within the reach of the intelligent person with only an elementary school groundwork of education, don't get it; and the scholarly party, who treat any artificial language as a cheap commercial scheme, have their teeth set on edge by unparalleled barbarisms, which must militate most seriously against the correct use of ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... turned to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This, however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to militate against the general character of my ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... now adepts in contriving house accommodation, it will militate much against Ullathorne Court that no carriage could be brought to the hall-door. If you enter Ullathorne at all, you must do so, fair reader, on foot, or at least in a bath-chair. No vehicle drawn by horses ever comes within that iron gate. But this is nothing to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... additional members of the official bureaucracy. There will doubtless in time be gradual sorting of politicians into definite groups, but there are two unbridgeable gulfs in the Indian social system which must always militate against the building up of a solid political party system: first, the gulf between Hindu and Moslem, which still yawns as wide as ever, and second, the gulf between the Brahman and the "untouchables" who, by the way, have found their fears ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... Ridgeway mentions examples from Bologna, Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and Hungary. [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I.] The zoster is now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (zoma), so characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a mitre, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that the metallic mitre is just as much an intruder into the armament ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... life. If we take the Revelation of St. John, too, as having been written at Ephesus, this will accord well with the use made of Theodotion's version of Daniel in that book. Or if Theodotion made use, in whole or in part, of some previous version, as seems certain, this fact would not at all militate against St. John at Ephesus having also made use of the same earlier version. And it is quite possible that this version may have been of Alexandrian origin, although ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... be added another, also mentioned by Lord Bacon — a misdirected zeal in matters of religion, which induces so many to decry a newly-discovered truth, because the Divine records contain no allusion to it, or because, at first sight, it appears to militate, not against religion, but against some obscure passage which has never been fairly interpreted. The old woman in the story could not believe that there was such a creature as a flying-fish, because her Bible did not tell her so, but she believed that her son had drawn ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay



Words linked to "Militate" :   act upon, work, influence



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