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Scurrilous   /skˈərələs/   Listen
Scurrilous

adjective
1.
Expressing offensive reproach.  Synonyms: abusive, opprobrious.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Scurrilous" Quotes from Famous Books



... press daily affords you of insulting the classes whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings. Yes; the Chartist poet is vain, conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, inexperienced, envious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous.—Is your charitable vocabulary exhausted? Then ask yourselves, how often have you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of these sins, when it has come across you just once in a way, and not as they came to me, as they come to thousands ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... that the Tory party, whose death-knell was soon to be tolled, constantly poured on the great Irish Tribune the most scurrilous abuse. One of the mock titles with which they honored him was that of "King of the Beggars." Such pitiful ribaldry awakened the highest powers of the Roman orator. "Poor, miserable, and most pitiful fatuity which, while intending to mock, actually did him honor. For, what ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... pair of reprobates, and that they themselves, being embittered by the fact that they were not admitted to the good society of their neighbourhood, had deliberately revenged themselves by writing scurrilous libels and caricatures in order to bring Yorkshire men and women into contempt. It all seems incredible now; yet this was the actual state of feeling prevalent in Yorkshire with regard to ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... successful that Wells's testimony was not called for. The case was withdrawn. No apology was even asked from Gilbert, whose solicitor tells me that Messrs. Lever "behaved very reasonably when once it was made clear to them that Gilbert was not a scurrilous person making a vulgar and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... School of Shakespeare."' The lectures began January 19, 1774, and help to fix the date of the poem. Goldsmith had little reason for liking this versatile and unprincipled Ishmaelite of letters, who, only a year before, had penned a scurrilous attack upon him in 'The London Packet'. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... villanous lampoons, and libels began afresh. The relatives of the fallen statesman could not appear in the streets without being exposed to insult, and without hearing scurrilous and obscene verses against their father and themselves, in which neither sex nor age was spared, howled in their ears by all the ballad-mongers and broadsheet vendors of the town. The unsigned publication of the States-General, with its dark allusions ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... withdrew their children from his school; but as his means of living decreased, his opinion of his own deserts enlarged; he mistook the cravings of want for spiritual illumination, and so perplexed his mind by reading the scurrilous libels of the day, as to be firmly persuaded that the King was the Devil's bairn, and Archbishop Laud the personal antichrist. A description of church ceremonies thrilled him with horror, and in every prosecution of a contumacious minister his ardent fancy saw a revival ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... Testament more true to the original than the Vulgate version, that those who knew only Latin might understand more fully the meaning of the original—in his old age, when irritated by the course of events, and by his controversies with Luther, consented to recommend this scurrilous pamphleteer to his friends in Scotland. His own letter is not now extant, or, if extant, is not at present accessible; but the answer sent to him by the Scottish king has been preserved, like his letter to Cochlaeus, among the MSS. in the British Museum. It is sufficient to ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... of the time is The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, commonly called Joan Cromwell, the Wife of the Late Usurper Truly Described and Represented and now made Publick for general Satisfaction, 1644. The preface is scurrilous beyond belief. Compiled from the gossip of servants, it is meant to cast ridicule on the housekeeping of the Protector's establishment. But the second part is a sober collection of by no means very penurious recipes from Joan's own ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... coarse or obscene gesture. Wallace, VI, 143. Probably from O.N. skripi. Cp. skripatal, scurrilous language, skripalaeti, buffoonery, scurrilous gestures. With the Sco. word cp. the Norse skripa, vb., skripa, sb. f., and Ic. ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom

... that the action of the Government was grossly illegal, and declared that it was a blow struck at the freedom of the press. Mr. W. Redmond took much the same ground. Mr. George Wyndham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, spoke of the article as containing "outrageous, scurrilous, gross and coarse remarks," and as using language more foul than that of certain foreign papers which had been so complained of during the year. He had ordered it to be seized because it was guilty of "seditious libel," because it was his duty to prevent such a nuisance from ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... sir. Not another of those scurrilous attacks on you for putting that bill through to relieve Colonel Pendleton? Yet it was a risky ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... another, for my sake! Must I be tortured with fear and anxiety, because a low fellow, true to his nature, will be scurrilous? Mr. Van Berg," she continued, with a sudden flash of her eyes, "are you and Mr. Stanton quarrelling with Mr. Sibley on your own account, or on mine? From henceforth I refuse to have the remotest relation to such a quarrel. No remarks of a man like Sibley can insult me, and hereafter any ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... calamity was made until Anna Dickinson went into the State, and galvanized the desponding loyalists to life. She spent two weeks there, and completely turned the tide of popular sentiment. Democrats, in spite of the scurrilous attacks made on her by some of their leaders and editors, received her everywhere with the warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, substituted her likeness, and applauded whatever she said. The halls where she spoke were so densely packed, that Republicans stayed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... contemptuous of the common herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious character named ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... show that the influence of the last century caricaturists had not yet left us, this auspicious event immediately gave rise to a coarse caricature,[22] published by Fores, and labelled, A Scene in the New Farce called the Rivals, or a Visit to the Heir Presumptive, in which the scurrilous satirist depicts the supposed mortification and jealousy of other members of the royal family. Her Majesty's father, the Duke of Kent, died nine months afterwards, on ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... paper—he proceeded to say—that a most difficult political situation had been avoided by the birth of this child, as there was no possible heir at all, and immense complications would ensue upon the death of the present ruler—the scurrilous rag even gave a resume of this ruler's dissolute life, and a broad hint that the child could in no case be his; but, as they pithily remarked, this added to the little prince's welcome in Ministerial circles, where the lady was greatly beloved and revered, and the King had only ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... There was one scurrilous little journal among the newspapers at whose office Mr. Burchard neglected to call. In their next issue the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... cause of making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre, in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ashamed of." He lived ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... making all sorts of fun about the country pair. Now that is a pretty dangerous business, because there is no telling who may be an operator. Dick growled at him savagely under his breath and told him to shut up. Nay! Nay! Mr. Hanigan wouldn't shut up worth a cent. Finally he made some scurrilous remark, and then another knife and fork came into play. Mr. Bridegroom was doing the talking now, and this is what ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... to do what you could so well have done yourself, sire. You have brought out poets as the sun brings out flowers. How many have we not seen—Moliere, Boileau, Racine, one greater than the other? And the others, too, the smaller ones—Scarron, so scurrilous and yet so witty—Oh, holy Virgin! what ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Catholics Luther's greatest offense is what he has done to their Pope. This is Luther's unpardonable sin. Luther has done two things to the Pope: he has denied that the Pope exists by divine right, and he has in the most scurrilous manner spoken and written about the Pope and made his vaunted dignity the butt of universal ridicule. The indictment is true, but when the facts are stated, it will be seen to recoil on the heads of those who have ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... time to oppose us here, for we came upon traces of a camp just broken up, with embers still glowing in the hollow, over which they had prepared their food. Both French and Indians had been present, for the former had written on the trees many insolent and scurrilous expressions,—which gave me a poorer opinion of them than I had yet entertained,—and the Indians had marked up the number of scalps they had taken, some eight or ten in all. Whatever their intention may ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... December 1583, and proceeded by methods which Burghley himself held to be too inquisitorial. A good deal of indignation was aroused, and the Puritans were in effect made more aggressive, their attacks on the existing system culminating in 1589 in the distinctly scurrilous "Martin Mar-prelate" tracts, which were so violent as to produce a marked reaction. This on the one side, coupled with the partly genuine and partly mythical plots of the ultra-Catholics on the other, brought ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... doe: Nay they commanded the banishment of they knew not whom; and every Citizen bringing his Oystershell into the market place, written with the name of him he desired should be banished, without actuall accusing him, sometimes banished an Aristides, for his reputation of Justice; And sometimes a scurrilous Jester, as Hyperbolus, to make a Jest of it. And yet a man cannot say, the Soveraign People of Athens wanted right to banish them; or an Athenian the Libertie to Jest, or to ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... wonderful thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in Brazil. As for his old father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour. 'I had always bread for him,' he said; ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said Grey. "Elect Fremont, my boy, and the Union will go to pieces. Does the North suppose we will endure a sectional President? No, sir, it would mean secession—the death-knell of the Union. Sir, we may be driven to more practical arguments by the scurrilous speeches of the abolitionists. It is an attack on property, on the ownership of the inferior race by the supremely superior. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... consequences of Mr. Pitt's quarrel now appear in print, in a pamphlet published by Lord T———; and in a refutation of it, not by Mr. Pitt himself, I believe, but by some friend of his, and under his sanction. The former is very scurrilous and scandalous, and betrays private conversation. My Lord says, that in his last conference, he thought he had as good a right to nominate the new Ministry as Mr. Pitt, and consequently named Lord ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... my sight, Then slowly homeward turned my lingering steps. I wrote my kinsman on the morrow morn, And broached my project to a worthy man Who kept an office and a case of books— An honest lawyer. People called him learn'd, But wanting tact and ready speech he failed. The rest were pettifoggers—scurrilous rogues Who plied the village justice with their lies, And garbled law to suit the case in hand— Mean, querulous, small-brained delvers in the mire Of men's misfortunes—crafty, cunning knaves, Versed in chicane and trickery that schemed To keep ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... critically affected, even by his own admission, his employment in the Church. It is this evil character of the author, the priest with an indecorous and politically suspect humor, that offended some contemporary readers. To them, the engraved frontispiece of Jonathan Smedley's scurrilous Gulliveriana (1728) is the proper image of the author of the Travels. It portrays Swift in a priest's vestments that barely ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous

... in the world's upper gallery treated that incident, I am well convinced, with their usual vociferation; and every term of scurrilous reproach was most ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... reception accorded Dr. Priestley met in due course with a cruel attack upon him by William Cobbett, known under the pen-name of Peter Porcupine, an Englishman, who after arrival in this country enjoyed a rather prosperous life by formulating scurrilous literature—attacks upon men of prominence, stars shining brightly in the ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... Torvald. It is for your own sake. This fellow writes in the most scurrilous newspapers; you have told me so yourself. He can do you an unspeakable amount of harm. I am ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... dreadful line" to the private and public enemies with whom he grimly populates his hell is not exactly an amiable or attractive figure. Still less so is Milton in those prose pamphlets in which he passes so rapidly, and to us so strangely, from the heights of heaven to the gutter mud of scurrilous personalities. This is a disease from which our more amiable age seems at last to have delivered the world. But Milton has at least the excuse of a long and august tradition, from the days of Demosthenes, equally profuse of a patriotism as lofty and of ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... the less an important point. Yallobally I shall always recall with bitterness, for it was there I first felt the thorn of a vindictive press. The reader will see what little cause I had to love the Yallobally Record, a scurrilous sheet that often made my heart ache, for all I pretended to laugh and see the humour of its attacks. It was indeed a relief when I learned I might exert my authority and suppress its publication—and even hang the editor—which I did, I fear, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Blithers' daughter. That was more than could be expected of any self-respecting people! According to the Minister of Police, the name of Blithers was already a common synonym for affliction—and frequently employed in supposing a malediction. It signified all that was mean, treacherous, scurrilous. He was spoken of through clenched teeth as "the blood sucker." Children were ominously reproved by the threatening use of the word Blithers. "Blithers will get you if you don't wash your face," and all ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... consequently safe from everything but a discharge from their long muskets. But this remote risk sufficed to keep him awake, it being very different things to foster malice, circulate gossip, write scurrilous paragraphs, and cant about the people, and to face a volley of fire-arms. For the one employment, nature, tradition, education, and habit, had expressly fitted Mr. Dodge; while for the other, he ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... for some ten years—1763-73—contended for the rights of electors against the Whig Government. The battle began when George Grenville, the Whig Prime Minister, had Wilkes arrested on a general warrant for an article attacking the King's Speech in No. 45 of the North Briton, a scurrilous newspaper which belonged to Wilkes. Chief Justice Pratt declared the arrest illegal on the ground that the warrant was bad, and that Wilkes, being at the time M.P. for Aylesbury, enjoyed the privilege of Parliament. A jury awarded Wilkes heavy damages against the Government for false imprisonment, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time" (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... knew at Oxford, I found him a busy talkative politician; a petit-maitre in his dress, and a ceremonious courtier in his manners. He has not gall enough in his constitution to be enflamed with the rancour of party, so as to deal in scurrilous invectives; but, since he obtained a place, he is become a warm partizan of the ministry, and sees every thing through such an exaggerating medium, as to me, who am happily of no party, is altogether incomprehensible — Without all doubt, the fumes of faction not only disturb the faculty of reason, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... made that all visitors should quit the scaffold. In parting with his friends, Raleigh besought them, and Arundel in particular, to beg the King to guard his memory against scurrilous pamphleteers. The noblemen lingered so long, that it was Raleigh himself who gently dismissed them. 'I have a long journey to go,' he said, and smiled, 'therefore I must take my leave of you.' When the friends had retired he addressed himself to ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... in a passion spoke many scurrilous words; a friend being by, said, "You speak foolishly." He answered, "It is that ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... old spirit of insolent defiance, of outrageous violence, rose into fresh life at the challenge of persecution. A Protestant hung a string of puddings round a priest's neck in derision of his beads. The restored images were grossly insulted. The old scurrilous ballads against the mass and relics were heard in the streets. Men were goaded to sheer madness by the bloodshed and violence about them. One miserable wretch, driven to frenzy, stabbed the priest of St. Margaret's as he stood with the chalice in his hand. It was a ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... morning of Swift's installation as Dean, the following scurrilous lines by Smedley, Dean of Clogher, were affixed to the doors of ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... prided himself not a little upon becoming possessed of a carriage, the acquisition was regarded with envy and jealousy by his enemies, as will appear by the following extract from the scurrilous pamphlet, "A Hue and Cry after P. and H. and Plain Truth (or a Private Discourse between P. and H.)," in which Pepys and Hewer are severely handled: "There is one thing more you must be mightily sorry for with all speed. Your ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... soliloquizes MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, "that even a scalawag Northern spoon-thief, like our scurrilous contemporary, would get so mad at being reminded that he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... hear me; but I was rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged. With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly able, single-handed, to fight my battle against the advantages of superior talent and the trained ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... for his daughter, indeed, was so extravagant that it was made the subject of scores of scurrilous lampoons to which even Voltaire contributed, and was a delicious morsel of ill-natured gossip in all the salons and cabarets of Paris. At fifteen the princess was already a woman—tall, handsome, well-formed, with brilliant eyes and the full lips eloquent of a sensuous ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... scribbler, of whom I have learned no more than that, after having disgraced and deserted the clerical character, he picks up in London a scanty livelihood by scurrilous lampoons under a feigned name, has impudently and falsely asserted that the passages omitted were defamatory, and that the omission was not voluntary, but compulsory. The last insinuation I took the trouble publickly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... length of scurrilous songs about our worthy gentleman. The town has been ringing with scandals about him for a week, and I never heard a word about it ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... dance, run the rig upon, have a fling at, scout; mob. Adj. disrespectful; aweless, irreverent; disparaging &c 934; insulting &c v.; supercilious, contemptuous, patronizing &c (scornful) 930; rude, derisive, sarcastic; scurrile, scurrilous; contumelious. unrespected^, unworshiped^, unenvied^, unsaluted^; unregarded^, disregarded. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... come to business, and I do not want things to go easy. I believe you said some things of me in your newspaper that were very scurrilous." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... since the Rolliad, and wish you had published them. Tell the author 'I forgive him, were he twenty times over a satirist;' and think his imitations not at all inferior to the famous ones of Hawkins Browne. He must be a man of very lively wit, and less scurrilous than wits often are: altogether, I very much admire the performance, and wish it all success. The Satirist has taken a new tone, as you will see: we have now, I think, finished with Childe Harold's critics. I have in hand a Satire on Waltzing, which you must publish anonymously: ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... four columns each. Nearly every line of it was fresh news. Quotations from other papers were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the motto of the establishment. Small as it was, the paper was attractive. The story that its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a reference to the old files of the journal will prove. They were of a character similar to that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by the same industry, tact, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... scarce, and the arrival of a ship from Alexandria, supposed to be loaded with corn, filled the people with joy. It proved instead to be loaded with sand for the arena. In their disappointment the people broke at first into scurrilous jests against Nero, and then into rage and fury. A wild clamor filled the streets. On all sides rose the demand to be delivered from a monster. Even the Praetorian guards, who had hitherto supported the emperor, began to show signs of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... letters than to examine the writings of the ancients, and not to rest in their sole authority, or take all upon trust from them, provided the plagues of judging and pronouncing against them be away; such as are envy, bitterness, precipitation, impudence, and scurrilous scoffing. For to all the observations of the ancients we have our own experience, which if we will use and apply, we have better means to pronounce. It is true they opened the gates, and made the way that went before us, but ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... Commonwealth. Among various replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian vices: he would ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... I am dubious of, yet let them look to that. He looked over a Multitude of others. In the mean Time the Projectors quarrelled, each approving his own Scheme, and condemning the rest; and they grew so Scurrilous, they called one another Sons of Projectors instead of Sons of Whores. The Lord commanded Peace, and being tempted with their Offers, receiv'd and allow'd several of their Proposals: Whereupon they all swore they would stand by him in all Extremities. A few Days ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... are two pages of scurrilous faction, with a deal of reflections on great persons. Under the notion of High-Churchmen, he runs down all uniformity and church government. Here is the whole Lower House of Convocation, which represents the body of the clergy and both universities, treated with rudeness by an obscure, corrupt ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... Hooker. But its most interesting characteristic to the student of literature must always be the way in which it leads up to, without in the least foretelling, the bursts of eloquence already referred to. Even Milton's alternations of splendid imagery with dull and scurrilous invective, are hardly so strange as Raleigh's changes from jog-trot commonplace to almost inspired declamation, if only for the reason that they are much more intelligible. It must also be mentioned that Raleigh, like ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... well; but man is there, and consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even though it ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... itself would not pay; and I am a printer, sir, and it is on my conscience to tell you I have, in the course of business, been compelled this very morning to receive orders for the printing of various squibs and, I much fear, scurrilous things.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the tenth week of the strike at the Rathbawne Mills that the "Kenton City Record" made its long-remembered attack upon Lieutenant-Governor Barclay. The arraignment was one unparalleled for venom, even in the columns of that most notoriously scurrilous journal in the state, and, withal, there was about it a devilish ingenuity, a distortion of facts so slight as to defy refutation, and so plausible as to carry conviction. It was the last blow in the long series of discouragements which Barclay had suffered ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... very next day Thomas was obliged to acknowledge that he had misjudged Judas, so simple, so gentle, and at the same time so serious was Iscariot. He neither grimaced nor made ill-natured jokes; he was neither obsequious nor scurrilous, but quietly and unobtrusively went about his work of catering. He was as active as formerly, as though he did not have two feet like other people, but a whole dozen of them, and ran noiselessly without that squeaking, sobbing, and laughter of a hyena, with which he formerly accompanied his actions. ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... French book of one Monsieur Sorbiere, [Samuel Sorbiere, who, after studying divinity and medicine at Paris, travelled in different parts of Europe, and published his Voyage into England, described by Voltaire as a dull, scurrilous satyr upon a nation of which the author knew nothing.] that gives an account of his observations here in England; among other things he says, that it is reported that Cromwell did, in his life-time, transpose many of the bodies of the Kings of England from one grave to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B-, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then-and then think of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Burns," exclaimed Moodie, angrily. "He did worse than hide his ten talents in a napkin. I wonder, my lady, you defile your mouth with his scurrilous words." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... and betraying secrets of the King's table.' Sorrow on your red wig, and you!—It is certain La Beaumelle, soon after this, left Berlin: not in love with Voltaire. And there soon appeared, at Franfurt-on-Mayn, a Pirate Edition of our brand-new SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE (with Annotations scurrilous and flimsy);—La Beaumelle the professed Perpetrator; 'who received for the job 7 pounds 10s. net!' [Ib. xx.] asseverates the well-informed Voltaire. Oh, M. de Voltaire, and why not leave it to him, then? Poor devil, he got put into the Bastille too, by and by; Royal ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... specimen among the collection was one entitled Lola Montez, oder Des Mench gehoert dem Koenige ("Lola Montez, or the Wench who belongs to the King"). There was also a scurrilous, and distinctly blasphemous, broadsheet, purporting to be Lola's private version of the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... polluted; scurrilous, abusive, obscene, insulting, blasphemous, vituperative, vulgar; shameful, detestable, odious, abominable, loathsome, disgusting, repulsive, offensive; unpropitious, unfavorable; feculent, roily, turbid, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Charles Parnell never accused the man of promiscuous conduct, nor of being selfish and sensual in his habit of life. He loved this one woman, and never loved another. And when a scurrilous reporter, hiding behind anonymity, published a story to the effect that Katharine O'Shea had had other love-affairs, the publisher, growing alarmed, came out the following day ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... been generated at the Club; chairs were broken, bottles smashed, and sporting prints kicked about—all on account of a comical but rather scurrilous speech contrasting Europe with Australasia by a new-comer, a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives, who limped home not long afterwards with a damaged shinbone and black eye. The more violent parties had been ejected ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... of six or seven thousand pounds, 'I will do him all the good I can,' says he. 'I thought he had never done any good; let me see him, and let him stand behind me where I sit:' I did so. At my first appearance, many of the young members affronted me highly, and demanded several scurrilous questions. Mr. Weston held a paper before his mouth; bade me answer nobody but Mr. Prinn; I obeyed his command, and saved myself much trouble thereby; and when Mr. Prinn put any difficult or doubtful query unto me, Mr. Weston ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... James. There is a man on the Times Literary Supplement who, whenever he writes about Henry James, makes me feel that I have mistaken my vocation and ought to have entered the Indian Civil Service, or been a cattle-drover. However, I can't help it. And I give notice that I will not reply to scurrilous letters. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... OF BOOKES, etc. From 1570, when Pope Sixtus V issued his bull of deposition against Queen Elizabeth, to 1590, great numbers of scurrilous pamphlets attacking the Queen and the Reformed church had ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... his enemies in the city against him. Addressing the people, he represented that Alcibiades had ruined their affairs and lost their ships by mere self-conceited neglect of his duties, committing the government of the army, in his absence, to men who gained his favor by drinking and scurrilous talking, whilst he wandered up and down at pleasure to raise money, giving himself up to every sort of luxury and excess amongst the courtesans of Abydos and Ionia, at a time when the enemy's navy were on the watch close at hand. It was also ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... posted in newspapers and dispersed in circles through every part of the kingdom, represent him as an object of great compassion, because he is treated, say they, with, nothing but opprobrious names and scurrilous invectives. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... known publicly, though I could hardly have done otherwise. I did not know my public, I did not know England." Here I think she was wrong in confusing England with a few anonymous letter- writers and scurrilous persons; for however opinions may differ upon the act itself, its wisdom or unwisdom, all right-thinking people honoured her for the sacrifice which she had made. They would have honoured her even more if they had known that she had ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... of the Cathedral is 2 acres 16 perches 70 feet. The western area of the churchyard marks the site of St. Gregory's Church. On the mean statue of Queen Anne a scurrilous epigram was once written by some ribald Jacobite, who ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct or attempt to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing

... not more than four or five lines in length and was a bitter and most scurrilous attack on Dr. Wise, ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... nobles exalt my name to the skies.' He was the bitter enemy of Poggio, and of all who supported the reigning family of Florence. Poggio had the art of making enemies, though he was a courtier by profession and had been secretary to eight Popes. He raged against Philelpho in a flood of scurrilous pamphlets; Valla, the great Latin scholar, was violently attacked for a mere word of criticism, and Niccolo Perotti, the grammarian, paid severely for supporting his friend. Poggio was always in extremes. His eulogies in praise of Lorenzo de' Medici, and Niccolo Niccoli ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... the reign of the first Ptolemy, was able from time to time to fan popular feelings into flame. In those days, when history and fiction were not clearly distinguished, he was apt to hide his attacks under the guise of history, and stir up odium by scurrilous and offensive accounts of the ancient Hebrews. Hence anti-Jewish literature ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... of the infamous traffic, in a pamphlet which excited extraordinary interest at the time, and met with a rapid and extensive circulation. But his exposure of kidnapping gave very great offence to the magistrates, who dragged him before their tribunal as having "published a scurrilous and infamous libel on the corporation," and he was sentenced to be imprisoned until he should sign a denial of the truth of his statements. He brought an action against the corporation for their proceedings, and obtained a verdict and damages; and he further proceeded ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... slunk away, and made as if he had no intention of throwing aught at me. After the horse-racing came music of drums, trumpets, and hautboys, and then in spite of my brother, the crowd pressed close about me, and many scurrilous things were said and many grinning faces thrust in mine, and thinking of it now, I would that I had them all in open battlefield, for how can a man fight ridicule? Verily it is like duelling with a man of feathers. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... the clatter of his horse's feet. The pedagogue hesitated a moment whether he should go after them; but Kennedy being a person in full confidence of the family, and with whom he himself had no delight in associating, 'being that he was addicted unto profane and scurrilous jests,' he continued his own walk at his own pace, till he reached the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... signed D. C. L. This is the signature always assumed by Mr Alexander Hope,[6] in his contributions to the Press, and Lord Aberdeen does not doubt that it is written by him. It is only a wonder to find it in such a quarter; and it shows some disposition on the part of that scurrilous paper to alter its course. There is perhaps no great objection to the papers dealing with the subject as they think proper, before the meeting of Parliament, provided the Times takes no part at ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... have the full measure of the rest which he coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,—a habit he had contracted so early in life as to ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... signpost than the style to warn him that he had fallen foul of the caustic journal which had flayed his plagiarism. He stole a glance toward the desk, wondering whether the Boss had read these things. Then he ran hastily through the scurrilous perversion of his words. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... be punished for it: Take heed: for you may so long exercise Your scurrilous wit against authority, The Kingdoms Counsels; and make profane Jests, (Which to you (being an atheist) is nothing) Against Religion, that your great maintainers (Unless they would be thought Co-partners with you) Will leave you to the Law: and ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... at these festivals, namely, Iambus. All the wanton extravagance which was elsewhere repressed by law or custom, here, under the protection of religion, burst forth with boundless license, and these scurrilous effusions were at length reduced by Archilochus into the systematic ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... [328], however, in the year of the Samian war, the comic drama assumed a character either so personally scurrilous, or so politically dangerous, that a decree was passed interdicting its exhibitions (B. C. 440). The law was repealed three years afterward (B. C. 437) [329]. Viewing its temporary enforcement, and the date in which it was passed, it appears highly probable that the critical events ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... had a dispute with a scurrilous fellow, who, in addition to obscene remarks and insolent abuse, reproached him with the misfortune of his mutilated person. "Look you," said {the Eunuch}, "this is the only point as to which I am effectually staggered, forasmuch as I want the evidences ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' 'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... the amelioration of the present disastrous state of affairs. The salvation of wrecked political theories loomed far more important in their darkened minds than the salvation, by hook or crook, of the British Empire. The other faction, more patriotic in theory, cried aloud stinking fish, and by scurrilous over-statement defeated their own ends. In the general ignoble screech the pronouncements of the one or two dignified and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... English Whig writer William Attwood, whose Superiority and Direct Dominion of the Imperial Crown of England over the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland, the true Foundation of a Compleat Union reasserted (1704), was burnt as "scurrilous and full of falsehoods," whilst a liberal reward was voted to Hodges and Anderson, who by their pens had advocated the independence of the Scotch crown. Ten years later Attwood contributed another work to the flames, called ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... not be suggested of me: and, therefore when I have brought in Britannia speaking of the king, I suppose her to be the representative or mouth of the nation, as a body. But if I say we are full of such who daily affront the king, and abuse his friends; who print scurrilous pamphlets, virulent lampoons, and reproachful public banters, against both the king's person and his government; I say nothing but what is too true; and that the Satire is directed at such, I freely own; and cannot say, but I should think it very hard to be censured ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe

... impetuous torrent, whose swift rush purifies in its flow the grossness and obscenity inseparable from the origin of comedy, and buoys up and sweeps along on the current of fancy and improvisation the chaff and dross of vulgar jests, puns, scurrilous personalities, and cheap "gags," allowing no time for chilling reflections or criticism. Jests which are singly feeble combine to induce a mood of extravagant hilarity when huddled upon us with such "impossible conveyance." This vivida vis animi ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... imagine that the writer was not well aware, before he published his book, that, whenever he gave it to the world, he should be attacked by every literary coxcomb in England who had influence enough to procure the insertion of a scurrilous article in a magazine or newspaper! He has been in Spain, and has seen how invariably the mule attacks the horse; now why does the mule attack the horse? Why, because the latter carries about with him that which the envious hermaphrodite does ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Pat, too, was his most enthusiastic admirer, for he had encouraged his going to spend his evenings in the neat attic rather than crawl to his own miserable abode to be contaminated with the fumes of rum and tobacco, and the scurrilous example ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour. This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake licentiousness for liberty. All I could ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rose, crushing the letter in his hand. "Blackguard! I'll read no more of his scurrilous stuff!" he exclaimed with angry emphasis. But the next instant he hesitated, glanced about the room with a sort of dazed uncertainty, then sank into the ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... he had said no such thing, and that it was a shame he should be abused by a scurrilous fellow, in ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... month and sixth day—and Adam, he had tired out even pious Bostonians by the time he reached New England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and evidently believed what he said too) that if Virgil ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... in Deut., qu. xvi] mentions four, namely, "obscene," "scurrilous," "wanton" and "foolish talking." There the aforesaid enumeration would seem to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... such a manner as they themselves had not yet agreed on; but up that government must. To which end there were many that wandered up and down and were active in sowing discontents and seditions, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the Church and State; but especially against the Bishops; by which means, together with venomous and indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as to believe the Bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructers ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... probably at enmity with him; cf. his sneers at mythological epics (x. 4, etc.), which hint indirectly at the Thebais. Martial also attacks his critics (i. 3; xi. 20, etc.), plagiarists (e.g. xi. 94), and those who wrote scurrilous verses in his name (e.g. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... Coridon, this Song was sung with mettle, and it was choicely fitted to the occasion; I shall love you for it as long as I know you: I would you were a brother of the Angle, for a companion that is cheerful and free from swearing and scurrilous discourse, is worth gold. I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning; nor men (that cannot wel bear it) to repent the money they spend when they be warmed with drink: and take this for a rule, you may pick out such times and such companies, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... hounding out of the Company by his friend Clive: nominal: I made more outside; to scurrilous abuse in public and private: mere words; say fifty rupees; to threat to hang me: mere words again: say fifty rupees. Total credit, say ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... of sincerity for having helped him out of many scrapes, and bequeaths him his portion of renown. But the portion of renown which belonged to a young thief, distinguished (if, at the period when he wrote this legacy, he was distinguished at all) for having written some more or less obscene and scurrilous ballads, must have been little fitted to gratify the self-respect or increase the reputation of a benevolent ecclesiastic. The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy of the poet's library, with specification of one work which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Press teems with scurrilous editorials against the Yankees, ridiculous to us who read them here, but I believe they are believed by the common people of the South. Years will not dispel this feeling, even if we come together again, which I fear will never be ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson

... Don Rodrigo; "profane not with thy foul remarks and scurrilous rebukes, that tender sentiment which thine own gross and brutish disposition is neither ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... men have already been mentioned from archbishops and abbots to the scurrilous impostors who used a religious exterior to rob poor people, at whose expense they lived well a wandering, loose, hypocritical life. In York, there were monks and friars, cathedral, parochial, and chantry priests, and clerks. The monastic life was a recognised profession. ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... and the bird. She was declaring to the guard at the window, that as she had paid for a first-class seat for her parrot she would get into any carriage she liked in which there were two empty seats. Her bird had been ill-treated by some scurrilous ill-conditioned travellers and she had therefore returned to the comparative kindness of her former companions. "They threatened to put him out of the window, sir," said the old woman to Morton as she was forcing her way in. "Windersir, windersir," ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... evidently a FOSTER-ing hand over its columns; and through them (let us add, as it is that of which we especially wish to speak,) over the reputation of Mr. WILLIS. The remarks in a late number of that journal, under the head of 'Mr. Willis's Defence' against a scurrilous attack on his private character in a down-eastern print, were equally just and felicitous. Had it been generally known in his native town who was the instigator of that attack, we have good authority for saying that, gross as it was, Mr. WILLIS would have considered ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... I will weary out your life with persecutions; I will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, it shall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word - I will put you in a song - a scurrilous song - an indecent song - a popular song - which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through these ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste."{19} ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... straits for amusement, that one Wednesday afternoon, finding himself with nothing else to do, he was working at a burlesque and remarkably scurrilous article on 'The Staff, by one who has suffered', which he was going to insert in The Glow Worm, an unofficial periodical which he had started for the amusement of the School and his own and his contributors' profit. He was just warming to his work, and beginning to enjoy ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... the girls out of countenance, he leered at some of them so offensively, that their male companions shook their fists or whips at him, and sometimes launched a stone at his head. Equally free was he in the use of his tongue; and his jests were so scurrilous and so little relished by those to whom they were addressed, that it was, perhaps, well for him, in some instances, that the speed at which he rode soon carried him out of harm's reach. The knave was not ill-favoured; being young, supple of limb, olive-complexioned, black-eyed, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... shivered and hastily closed the one eye he had opened. Then he valiantly tried both eyes and read by way of a second and happy headline, "The Lord Mayor revives Paganism in London." Sir Simon never knew how he finished that article. It was a most scurrilous attack. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... aware that Sir Bailey Barre has introduced a law of libel by which all editors of scurrilous newspapers are pub- licly flogged—as in England? And six of our editors have resigned in succession! Now, the editor of a scurrilous paper can stand a good deal—he takes a private thrashing as a matter of course—it's ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... coming into collision with politics, personal as well as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for other accomplishments than those of a recluse scholar, it seemed probable that this great classical critic would be found pedantic and scurrilous; and upon the affairs of so peculiar a people, it was certain that he would be found ignorant and self-contradicting. Even Englishmen have seldom thoroughly understood the feud of the great Parliamentary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... objects appeared in the class of emblems when used in designating the conflicting powers of Christendom and Islamism. Emblems do not necessarily require any analogy between the objects representing, and the objects or qualities represented, but may arise from pure accident. After a scurrilous jest the beggar's wallet became the emblem of the confederated nobles, the Gueux of the Netherlands; and a sling, in the early minority of Louis XIV, was adopted from the refrain of a song by the Frondeur opponents of Mazarin. The portraiture of a fish, used, especially ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... humour which the public calamities naturally produced was inflamed by every factious artifice. Never had the Jacobite pamphleteers been so savagely scurrilous as during this unfortunate summer. The police was consequently more active than ever in seeking for the dens from which so much treason proceeded. With great difficulty and after long search the most important of all the unlicensed presses was discovered. This press belonged to a Jacobite named ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... account darkly insinuated in some highly scurrilous and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy. They are docketed as being written "Upon the late Viscount Stair and his family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, a son of the Laird of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... asked me abruptly if I did not remember the scurrilous lines in which she had been depicted by Gifford in his 'Baviad and Moeviad.' And, not waiting for my answer, for I was indeed too much embarrassed to give one quickly, she recited the verses in question, and added, 'how do you think "Thrale's grey widow" ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... ship going to Leghorn the only new books at all worth reading. The Abuse(938) of Parliaments is by Doddington and Waller, circumstantially scurrilous. The dedication of the Essay(939) to my father is fine; pray mind the quotation from Milton. There is Dr. Berkeley's mad book on tar-water, which has made every body as mad ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... called 'meat'; it is so in our Bible, and 'horse-meat' for fodder is still no unusual phrase; yet 'meat' is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book or writing was a 'libel' once; now only such a one as is scurrilous and injurious. Any leader was a 'duke' (dux); thus "duke Hannibal" (Sir Thomas Eylot), "duke Brennus" (Holland), "duke Theseus" (Shakespeare), "duke Amalek", with other 'dukes' (Gen. xxxvi.). Any journey, by land as much as by sea, was a 'voyage'. 'Fairy' was not a ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... continuing with great perseverance; that the custom-houses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and New Orleans, had been swept clear; that violent partisans of Jackson were exclusively appointed, and that every editor of a scurrilous newspaper had been ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... from the case at one time wrote a scurrilous biography of Washington. The editor of the paper on which he was employed was compelled to make editorial apology for its unfortunate appearance. To make the matter more offensive the author on several different occasions reproduced the article and credited its authorship to the editor who ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... wise and trustworthy papers as may be found on the surface of the globe, are still conscious of their origin, though they possess added virtues of their own. 'The New York Herald,' as conducted by James Gordon Bennett the First, modelled its scurrilous energy upon the Press of our eighteenth century. The influence of Junius and the pamphleteers was discernible in its columns, and many of its articles might have been signed by Wilkes himself. But there was something in 'The ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... pen is said to have sometimes driven its victims to suicide. For a time also he imitated a much more recent satirist, Lucilius, whom he rejected later, as disliking both the harshness of his style and the scurrilous character of his verses. (Sat. I, x.) It has been conjectured therefore that his earliest compositions were severe personal lampoons, written for money and to order, which his maturer taste destroyed. In any ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... which we frequently observe, but wonder at, in men of slow parts, he seemed to anticipate the advice contained in Johnson's ode, and forbore a reply, though not his revenge.' This he gratified by reprinting in his own Magazine one of the most scurrilous ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... which should happen in revenge for the ill treatment they received. The fishermen would not sell them fish; and the boys in the street were taught to fly from them with horror, or to pursue them with hootings and scurrilous abuse. The principal charges against them were, that the children of two families were many times seized with fits, in which they exclaimed that they saw Amy Duny and Rose Cullender coming to torment them. They vomited, and in their vomit were often found pins, and once or twice a two-penny ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... was commissioned to combat the "pernicious and heretical" works of the "impious enemies of the Church." Tyndale wrote also a bitter Answer to the Dialogue, and this drew forth from More his abusive and scurrilous Confutation, which did little credit to the writer or to the cause for which he contended Tyndale's longest controversial work, entitled The Obedience of a Christian Man, and how Christian Rulers ought to govern, although it stirred up much hostility ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... and, with a forward inclination, threw him down and soiled his clothing. At this an uproar arose from all the rest, who praised the fellow as if he had performed some remarkable deed, and they sang many scurrilous anapaests upon the Romans, accompanied by applause and capering steps. But Postumius cried: "Laugh, laugh while you may! For long will be the period of your weeping, when you shall wash this garment clean with your blood." (Ursinus, p.375. Mai, 168. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... dear brother Warren to give himself no concern about the scurrilous piece in Tom Fleet's paper. It has served me as much as the song did last year. The tories are all ashamed of this, as they were of that; the author is not yet certainly known, though I think I am within a week of detecting him for certain. If I should, I shall try to cure him once for all, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... either shut its doors against the members of the other. The publication of reports, forbidden by a standing order of 1762, had for some time been carried on under various disguises, and the reports, which were founded on scanty information, were often unfair and scurrilous. In February, 1771, Colonel Onslow complained of two newspapers which misrepresented his conduct in the house, and held him up to contempt by describing him as "little cocking George". Disregarding a warning from Burke as to the folly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... the destruction of Britain, and their own aggrandisement. Are not the daily papers filled with treasonable resolves of American congresses and committees, extracts of letters, and other infamous pieces and scurrilous pamphlets, circulating with unusual industry throughout the kingdom, by the enemies of Britain, thereby poisoning the minds of our liege subjects with their detestable tenets?—And did you not this ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... Cook acted with Bradshaw as one of the counsel defending Lilburne in 1646. After the trial, of a scurrilous account of which he was probably the author, he was made Master of the hospital of St. Cross, and afterwards held various judicial posts in Ireland. On the Restoration he was tried and executed with the ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... had no "calling" to their office, and that recourse must be had to tradition to explain and supplement the Holy Scriptures. When Beza was about to reply, the floor was seized by a coarse Dominican friar, one Claude de Sainctes, who in a scurrilous speech went over much of the same ground, and, waxing more and more vehement, did not hesitate to assert that tradition stood on a firmer foundation than the Bible itself, which could be perverted to countenance the most opposite doctrines.[1151] An hour and a half of precious time was wasted ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird



Words linked to "Scurrilous" :   scurrility, offensive, abusive



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