"Signification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Princes, and Nobles. And because the whole kingdom is the body politic of the King, therefore the Sun, or a Tree, or a Beast, or Bird, or a Man, whereby the King is represented, is put in a large signification for the whole kingdom; and several animals, as a Lion, a Bear, a Leopard, a Goat, according to their qualities, are put for several kingdoms and bodies politic; and sacrificing of beasts, for slaughtering and conquering of ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... a conversation with Lord Grenville on this subject, in which his lordship explained the motives which had originally occasioned the order of the sixth of November, and gave to it a less extensive signification than it had received in the courts of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... ventured upon the readoption of the original Terra Australis, and of this term I shall hereafter make use, when speaking of New Holland [sc. the West] and New South Wales, in a collective sense; and when using it in the most extensive signification, the adjacent isles, including that of Van Diemen, must be understood to be comprehended." [Footnote]: "Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and 'Fast' Expressions of High and Low Society," published in 1864, "gag" is duly included, and defined to be "language introduced by an actor into his part." Long before this, however, the word had issued from the stage-door, and its signification had become a ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... stage itself—it has an historical signification. Here, by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there, close by the scene, whilst all the outlets ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... some entries have lines //// drawn across the writing, while upon others marks similar to the capital letters T, F, and A are placed at the end of the lines. But as the Promus is here printed page for page as in the manuscript, I am not raising the question of the signification of these marks, excepting only to say they indicate that Bacon made considerable use of ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... to change direction or stay my rowers, I saw a body of horsemen, whom I judged to be soldiers, moving hurriedly down the river bank toward the Castle. A band richly caparisoned, carrying two flags, one green, the other red, moved at their head. The former, you may know, has a religious signification, and is seldom seen in the field except a person of high rank be present. It is my opinion, therefore, that our arrest has some reference to the arrival of such a personage. In confirmation you may yet hear the musical flourish in ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... interspersed and scattered throughout the universe is a superior Wisdom that continually operates in all nature, especially in animals, just as souls act in bodies; and that this continual impression or impulse of the Divine Spirit, which the vulgar call instinct, without knowing the true signification of that word, was the life of all living creatures. They added, "That those sparks of the Divine Spirit were the principle of all generations; that animals received them in their conception and at their birth; and that the moment they ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... lost sight of is largely due to a misapprehension of the meaning of terms. The two words 'military' and 'army' have been given, in English, a narrower signification than they ought, and than they used, to have. Both terms have been gradually restricted in their use, and made to apply only to the land service. This has been unfortunate; because records of occurrences and discussions, capable of imparting much valuable instruction to ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the view.—[Note to First Edition.] Since the publication of this poem, I have been informed [by W. Scott, July 1, 1812] of the misapprehension of the term Nossa Senora de Pena. It was owing to the want of the tilde, or mark over the n, which alters the signification of the word: with it, Pena signifies a rock; without it, Pena has the sense I adopted. I do not think it necessary to alter the passage; as, though the common acceptation affixed to it is "Our Lady of the Rock," I may well assume the other sense from the severities practised there.—[Note ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the Roman armies, but the sovereign of the Roman world. The name of Emperor, which was at first of a military nature, was associated with another of a more servile kind. The epithet of Dominus, or Lord, in its primitive signification, was expressive, not of the authority of a prince over his subjects, or of a commander over his soldiers, but of the despotic power of a master over his domestic slaves. [98] Viewing it in that odious light, it had been rejected with abhorrence by the first Caesars. Their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... unparalleled in the history of philosophy. First of all, he maintained that the contemplation of the perfection of the Deity sufficed to procure all wisdom and knowledge; that the Bible was the key to the theory of all diseases, and that it was necessary to search into the Apocalypse to know the signification of magic medicine. The man who blindly obeyed the will of God, and who succeeded in identifying himself with the celestial intelligences, possessed the philosopher's stone—he could cure all diseases, and prolong life to as many centuries as he pleased; it being ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... reasons why the odoriferous principle of plants should not be denominated oils. In the first place, it is a bad principle to give any class of substances the same signification as those belonging to another. Surely, there are enough distinguishing qualities in their composition, their physical character, and chemical reaction, to warrant the application of a significant name to that large class of substances known as the ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... July 1838. But as such pieces have been hitherto reserved as your Majesty's Maundy money, and as such especially belong to your Majesty's service, Mr Goulburn considers that a coinage of them for general use could not take place without a particular signification ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... sayest with this silver Symbol, seeing that it is but the Talisman [Footnote: The Cross was held in singular veneration in the Temple of Serapis, and by many tribes in the East, ages before the coming of Christ] or Badge of the Mystic Brethren of Al-Kyris, and has no signification whatsoever save for the Elect. It was designed some twenty years ago by the inspired Chief of our Order, Khosrul, and such as are still his faithful disciples wear it as a record and constant reminder of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... To te barbarikon kai to Hellenikon to entautha strateuma].] There has been much dispute about the exact signification of [Greek: entautha] in this place. Zeune would have it mean "illuc, in illum locum ubi sunt Pisidae;" and Krueger thinks that "towards Sardis" is intended. But this is to do violence to the word; I have followed Weiske and Kuehner, who give it its ordinary signification. "Barbarorum ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... rendered everlasting, eternal, and forever, which are, in a few instances, applied to the misery of the wicked, do not prove that misery to be endless, because these terms are loose in their signification, and are frequently used in a limited sense; that the original terms, being often used in the plural number, clearly demonstrate that the period, though indefinite, is limited in its very nature. They maintain that the meaning of the term must always be sought in the subject to which it is applied, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... or the Galician Village (for the two words are Spanish, and have that signification), it a place containing, I should think, about four thousand inhabitants. It was pitchy dark when we landed, but rockets soon began to fly about in all directions, illuming the air far and wide. As we passed along the dirty unpaved street which ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... living members. I wish you would take it so, and flatter yourselves no more with church titles, as if these were sufficient evidences for your salvation. You would all be called Christians, but it fears me you know not many of you the true meaning and signification of that word, the most comfortable sense of it is hid from you. The meaning of it is, that a man is renewed by Christ in the spirit of his mind. As Christ and the Spirit are inseparable, so a Christian and a spiritual nature are not to be found severed. Certainly, the very sound of the name ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... ambition. Innocence of life and great ability were the distinguishing parts of his character; the latter, he had often observed, had led to the destruction of the former, and used frequently to lament that great and good had not the same signification. He was an excellent husbandman, but had resolved not to exceed such a degree of wealth; all above it he bestowed in secret bounties many years after the sum he aimed at for his own use was attained. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the question of name, that is to say, of what may be called natural, would not be of great importance were it not that Aristotle and Hobbes fastened upon it the notion of natural right, each one following his own signification. I have said here already that I found in the book on the Falsity of human Virtues the same defect as M. Descartes found in ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... who lived in the sea: also that there were beings half-man and half-horse; others half-man and half-bird; and others, again, half-man and half-fish. In respect to the wild man of the woods, it may be said that those words are the literal signification of the Malayan words orang outang; and that animal's appearance seems to determine that the Satyr and kindred creatures were not entirely imaginations. For the half-man and half-horse we have abundant explanation in the various wild riding tribes of men, especially the Tartars. The half-bird ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... is the signification of this word? Naturally it must be (1) One who learns and uses Esperanto; (2) This little Gazette printed in the ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... usual signification of it, and in fact the most characteristic of the Ethics. The word Principle means "starting-point." Every action has two beginnings, that of Resolve ([Greek: ou eneka]), and that of Action ([Greek: ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... concourse of people present at the sacrifice; and, after all the rites and ceremonies of the sacrifice were over, when we had seated ourselves again at the table, there was an inquiry made first of all into the signification of the word bulimy, then into the meaning of the words which are repeated when the servant is turned out of doors. But the principal dispute was concerning the nature of it, and all its circumstances. First, as for the word bulimy, it was agreed ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the reverse of Socrates, who, it was said, reduced philosophy to the simplicity of common life. But let us attend to what he himself says in his concluding paper: 'When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarised the terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas[647].' And, as to the second part of this objection, upon a late careful revision of the work, I can with confidence say, that it is amazing how few of those words, for which it has been unjustly characterised, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... her, her deep eyes glowing. Mrs. Falchion continued: "In short, he finds the bandbox, as you call it, suited to his renunciations. Its simplicities, which he thinks is regeneration, are only new sensations. But—you have often noticed the signification of a 'but,'" she added, smiling, tapping her cheek lightly with the ivory knife—"but the hour arrives when the bandbox becomes a prison, when the simple hours cloy. Then the ordinary incident is merely gauche, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... idea may be formed from the difficulty he found himself under respecting the meaning of a line in the Incantation in Manfred,—"And the wisp on the morass,"—which he requested of Mr. Hoppner to expound to him, not having been able to find in the dictionaries to which he had access any other signification of the word "wisp" ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... mutual relations, naturally ensues from extinction going on at all periods amongst the diverging descendants of a common stock. These terms of affinity, relations, families, adaptive characters, &c., which naturalists cannot avoid using, though metaphorically, cease being so, and are full of plain signification. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... whatever is said of these men who are not its citizens is given either that it may profit or be made glorious by a comparison with what is different. Yet it is not to be supposed that all that is recorded has some signification; but those things which have no signification of their own are interwoven for the sake of the things which are significant. Only by the ploughshare is the earth cut in furrows; but that this may be, other parts of the plough are necessary. Only the strings of the harp ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... sounded an octave higher than the notes would indicate. When found below the staff the same sign serves to indicate that the tones are to be sounded an octave lower. The term 8va bassa has also this latter signification. ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... I found the signification of "take care of any one" very different on shore from what it was on the river, where taking care of you means getting out of your way, and giving you a wide berth; and I found the shore reading much more agreeable. Cook did take care of me; she was a kind-hearted, fat woman who melted ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... untarnished, the conquering prince. But that miserable guinea! He racked his brains. There was his gold watch and chain, a symbol, to his young mind, of high estate. When he had bought it there crossed his mind the silly thought of its signification of the infinite leagues that lay between him and Billy Goodge. He could pawn it for ten pounds—it would be like pawning his heart's blood—but where? Not in Morebury, even supposing there was a pawnbroker's ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... train had passed, Christopher asked who was being buried. It was a simple burgher, it was not Gellert; and in the deep breath which Christopher drew lay a double signification: on the one hand, was joy that Gellert was not dead; on the other, a still small voice whispered to him that he had now really promised to give him the wood: ah! but whom had he promised?—himself: and it is easy to argue with one's ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... glorified by the presence of Lady Maulevrier and suite. Her ladyship's suite was on this occasion limited to three servants—her French maid, a footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward, but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any other member ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... develop this principle more accurately. Let us examine into the nature of ennui, and fix with exactness its true signification. Let us see if it be a principle of action widely diffused. Let us ascertain the limits of its power; let us trace its influences on individual character. Perhaps the investigation may lead us to a more intimate acquaintance with ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and over again: I felt that an explanation belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import. I was still pondering the signification of "Institution," and endeavouring to make out a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my head. I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... O'Leary to himself, who, knowing that the word meant a "turnpike," never supposed it had any other signification. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... plain by an example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the method of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for instance, a black line of an inch in length: this, which in itself is a particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its signification general, since, as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line in general. And, as THAT PARTICULAR LINE becomes general by being made a sign, so the NAME 'line,' ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... This signification of goodness is lucidly put in the remark of Shakespeare's Portia, "Nothing I see is good without respect." We must have some respect or end in mind in reference to which the goodness is reckoned. Good always means good for. That little preposition cannot be absent from our minds, ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... "What matters a signification, commodore, when people understand each other? This overland journey has put me to my wits, for you will understand that I've had to travel among natives that cannot speak a syllable of the homespun; so I brought ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... word has attained a far wider signification, and has been adopted in connexion with a considerable variety of hydraulic works. A caisson in this sense implies a case or enclosure of wood or iron, generally employed for keeping out water during the execution of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... be a comfort and support to the widows and orphans who trusted in me, as well as a source of strength, security, and honour to the nation and its rulers, and I resolved that henceforth my name, the Bank of England, should carry with it a meaning wherever it was heard, far beyond its original signification; it should be another term for wealth, honour, and thrift—a something to be trusted, and in which nothing foul, mean, or ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... yet finished) the deepest obscurity prevailed. Nevertheless a goodly number of tapers were burning in honor of the saints on the triangular candle-trays destined to receive such pious offerings, the merit and signification of which have never been sufficiently explained. The lights on each altar and all the candelabra in the choir were burning. Irregularly shed among a forest of columns and arcades which supported the three naves of the cathedral, the gleam of these masses ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... dispositions, such as fear of oppression, vain-glory, ambition, pusillanimity, frugality, &c., with reference to the course of conduct they prompt to. Then he comes to a favourite subject, the mistaken courses whereinto men fall that are ignorant of natural causes and the proper signification of words. The effect of ignorance of the causes of right, equity, law, and justice, is to make custom and example the rule of actions, as with children, or to induce the setting of custom against reason, and reason against custom, whereby the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... a school began his address: "This morning, children, I propose to offer you an epitome of the life of St. Paul. It may be perhaps that there are among you some too young to grasp the meaning of the word epitome. Epitome, children, is in its signification ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... you may find a pettiness in those minute pieties, they have their signification as a testimony to the wholeness of Pascal's assent, the entirety of his submission, his immense sincerity, the heroic grandeur of his achieved faith. The seventeenth century presents survivals of the gloomy mental ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... for strings in "The Messiah;" he called it simply pifa, but his publishers called it a "Pastoral symphony," and as such we still know it. It was about the middle of the eighteenth century that the present signification became crystallized in the word, and since the symphonies of Haydn, in which the form first reached perfection, are still to be heard in our concert-rooms, it may be said that all the masterpieces of symphonic literature ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... friends struggled with Elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from his hands. He dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of Elfonzo, with so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his soul. Several long days and night passed unmolested, all seemed to have grounded their arms ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... primitive signification of all objects in Nature, unroll their symbolism, and thereby attain the first historical groundwork of poetry, must bear in mind that this system was formed, and, indeed, ripely developed, in an age anterior to all written records of humanity. By ascertaining ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... may vary according to the nature of the investigation in hand. It must not, therefore, be thought that I place myself in antagonism to critics such as Dr. Brotanek for example, if I give to the term masque its widest possible signification as including not only the regular and highly developed compositions of the Jonsonian type, but also mere pageants on the one hand, and what may be called miniature plays on the other; all dramatic or semi-dramatic pieces, in short, which it is undesirable or inconvenient to treat ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... difficulties." Dr. Lightfoot does not think that only [Greek: logoi] ("discourses" or "sayings") could be called [Greek: logia] ("oracles"), and says that usage does not warrant the restriction. [124:3] I had contended that "however much the signification (of the expression 'the oracles,' [Greek: ta logia]) became afterwards extended, it was not then at all applied to doings as well as sayings," and that "there is no linguistic precedent for straining the expression, used at that period, to mean anything beyond a collection of sayings ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... the vessels which had been there about fifteen months before us, and had lain on the east side of the island. They distinguished it by a name of the same import with rottenness, but of a more extensive signification, and described, in the most pathetic terms, the sufferings of the first victims to its rage, and told us that it caused the hair and the nails to fall off, and the flesh to rot from the bones; that it spread a universal terror and consternation ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... salvation of Communipaw. The sages of the place immediately saw in them the hand of St. Nicholas, and understood their mystic signification. They set to work with all diligence to cultivate and multiply these great blessings; and so abundantly did the gubernatorial hat and shoe fructify and increase, that in a little time great patches of cabbages were to be seen extending from the village of Communipaw ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... prophets, but most commonly the mystical philosophy, which was probably introduced into Palestine from Egypt and Persia. It was first committed to writing in the second century A.D. The Cabala is divided into the symbolical and the real, of which the former gives a mystical signification to letters. The latter comprehends doctrines, and is divided into the theoretical and practical. The first aims to explain the Scriptures according to the secret traditions, while the last pretends to teach the art of performing miracles by ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... two men by reason of the two natures, just as, on the contrary, the three Persons would be called one man, on account of the one nature assumed, as was said above (A. 6, ad 1). But this does not seem to be true; because we must use words according to the purpose of their signification, which is in relation to our surroundings. Consequently, in order to judge of a word's signification or co-signification, we must consider the things which are around us, in which a word derived from some form is never used in the plural unless there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... surroundings. We have heard and we can never forget the sorrows of those who are 'one man' with us. There is more in that word 'persecutions' than this, as no doubt {173} you have found. But this, I think, is part of its signification, isn't it? ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... Psalter, a work he had been engaged on for years, paying strict and reverent attention to the Hebrew original, and not thinking it right to interweave expressions of his own as guidance to meaning. His belief was that Holy Scripture is so many-sided, and so fathomless in signification, that to dwell on one point more than another might be a wrong to the full impression, and an irreverence in the translation. Thus, as a poet, he sacrificed a good deal to the duty of being literal, but his translation is a real assistance to students, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Martens, Low, Holls, and myself had a very thoroughgoing discussion of the Russian, British, and American arbitration plans. We found the eminent Russian under very curious misapprehensions regarding some minor points, one of them being that he had mistaken the signification of our word "publicist"; and we were especially surprised to find his use of the French word "publiciste" so broad that it would include M. Henri Rochefort, Mr. Stead, or any newspaper writer; and he was quite as surprised to find that with us it would include only such men as Grotius, Wheaton, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and Homer must be made to speak agreeably to Moses. Set side by side, the mere surfaces could never unite in any harmony of design. Therefore one must go below the surface, and bring up the supposed secondary, or still more remote meaning,—that diviner signification held in reserve, in recessu divinius aliquid, latent in some stray touch of Homer, or figure of speech ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... examination, even of the most modern of Pueblo pottery, shows us that certain types of decoration have once been confined to certain types of vessels, all which has its due signification but an examination of which would properly form ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... It is used, in different forms, sixty-five times by our Lord and his apostles; and on no occasion do they hint that they use the word in a sense different from its then accepted signification; to learn which, recourse must be had to the testimony of the Pagan, Jewish, and Christian writers of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... very pleasant garden full of lamps and lights; they then paused and their attention was fixed, because lamps with lights signify truths (veritates) which shine from good[p]. From this it was evident that they could be detained in the consideration of material things, provided only that the signification of those things in the spiritual sense were insinuated at the same time; for the things which belong to the spiritual sense are not abstracted from material things to the same extent, inasmuch as they ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... sorcery,—a man, or animal, or even element endowed with uncontrolled superlative and supernatural powers. It has been stated that since the introduction of Christianity and the printing of the New Testament in the Cherokee typographical character the word has been utilized with its subtleties of signification to express spirit or angel. In this story, however, the scene of which is laid in a period long previous to the conversion of the tribe, or even the accepted date of the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, the word is ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... now changed!—You was pleased to cast a favourable eye upon me. You addressed yourself to my friends: your proposals were approved of by them—approved of without consulting me; as if my choice and happiness were of the least signification. Those who had a right to all reasonable obedience from me, insisted upon it without reserve. I had not the felicity to think as they did; almost the first time my sentiments differed from theirs. I besought them to indulge me in a point so important to my future happiness: ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Italian invention from Maccaroni; but on being informed that this would infer that they were the most common and easy verses, maccaroni being the most ordinary and simple food, he was at a loss; for he said, 'He rather should have supposed it to import in its primitive signification, a composition of several things; for Maccaronick verses are verses made out of a mixture of different languages, that is, of one language with the termination of another[826].' I suppose we scarcely know of a language in any country where there ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... agrees perfectly with the age of King Alfred, and it seems to be the unhesitating opinion of all those who have investigated the subject that it was a personal ornament of the great West Saxon king. As to the manner of wearing it, and as to the signification of the enamelled figure, there has been the greatest diversity of opinion. Sir Francis Palgrave suggested that the figure was older than the setting. Perhaps it was a sacred object, and perhaps one of the presents ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... former. The sequel of the dispute betwixt Xavier and Fucarandono. The honour which the king of Bungo does to Xavier. The Bonzas present a writing to the king, but without effect. They wrangle about the signification of words. They dispute in the nature of school-divines. He answers the objections of the Bonzas, and their replies. The fruit of his disputation with the Bonzas. He leaves Japan, and returns to the Indies. God reveals to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... from the word ol, ale, which was much used in the festivities and merry meetings of this period; and the I in Iol, icol. Cimb. as the ze and zi in zehol, zeol, ziol, Sax. are premised only as intensives, to add a little to the signification, and make it more emphatical. Ol, or Ale, did not only signify the liquor then made use of, but gave denomination to the greatest festivals, as that of zehol, or Yule, at Midwinter; and as is yet plainly to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... did not merely prevail with the outer world, it actually penetrated within his walls. By his son, Richard Kearney, he was always called 'My lord'; while Kate as persistently addressed and spoke of him as papa. Nor was this difference without signification as to their separate ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... unapparent natures; as, for instance, that on hearing the adulteries, bonds, and lacerations of the gods, castrations of heaven, and the like, we may not rest satisfied with the apparent meaning of such like particulars, but may proceed to the unapparent, and investigate the true signification. After this manner, therefore, looking to the nature of things, were ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... that period of intellectual disturbance, immediately preceding Dante, amid which the romance languages define themselves at last, that this temper is manifested. Here, in the literature of Provence, the very name of romanticism is stamped with its true signification: here we have indeed a romantic world, grotesque [251] even, in the strength of its passions, almost insane in its curious expression of them, drawing all things into its sphere, making the birds, nay! ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... written to illustrate the principle, Let nothing be lost, and containing many sage and erudite directions for the composition and dimensions of that ornament to a gentleman's farmyard, and a cottager's front door, ycleped, in the language of the country, a midden—with the signification of which we would not, for the world, shock the more refined ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... physical fact, to which it is here attempted to give a moral signification, has been known to occur in ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... earth-mounds rising up over all the land, arrest the white man's attention and wonder. He inquires of the Indian inhabitant he is expelling from the country, Who was the architect of these, and what their signification? and is answered: We have no tradition which tells; our people found them when they came, as you find them to-day. These traditions give the history of the nations now here, and we find in every Southern tribe that they tell of an ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... up-and-down motion, or that it looks at all like those things on the top of the sea. The motion of the surface of the sea falls within that formula, and hence is a special variety of wave motion, and the term wave has acquired in popular use this signification and nothing else. So that when one speaks ordinarily of a wave or undulatory motion, one immediately thinks of something heaving up and down, or even perhaps of something breaking on the shore. But when we assert that the form of energy called light is undulatory, we by no means intend to assert ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... that the words, first made use of by men, had in their minds a much more extensive signification, than those employed in languages of some standing, and that, considering how ignorant they were of the division of speech into its constituent parts; they at first gave every word the meaning of an entire proposition. When afterwards they began to perceive the ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... subject to the Provisions of this Act and to Her Majesty's Instructions, either that he assents thereto in the Queen's Name, or that he withholds the Queen's Assent, or that he reserves the Bill for the Signification of the Queen's Pleasure. ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous
... Ages? We are perfectly contented to form no opinion upon the subject; but if compelled to express one, we should say that this last supposition (which is no novelty) possessed decidedly more likelihood than any other. Its plausibility will be confirmed by attending to the apparent signification of the name Robin Hood. The natural refuge and stronghold of the outlaw was the woods. Hence he is termed by Latin writers silvatious, by the Normans forestier. The Anglo-Saxon robber or highwayman is called a woodrover wealdgenga, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence. When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas, but have rarely admitted any words not authorized by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... Bellows-mender, and Gingerbread from a Grinder of Knives and Scissars. Nay so strangely infatuated are some very eminent Artists of this particular Grace in a Cry, that none but then Acquaintance are able to guess at their Profession; for who else can know, that Work if I had it, should be the Signification of a Corn-Cutter? ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... a body? If we will speak properly, He has none; yet is it no absurdity, speaking improperly, to ascribe a body unto God, that is, as the word is taken improperly and generally (and yet not very absurdly) for a true substance, in a large signification, ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... being understood, take these two contraries, joy and sadness; then these other two, white and black, for they are physically contrary. If so be, then, that black do signify grief, by good reason then should white import joy. Nor is this signification instituted by human imposition, but by the universal consent of the world received, which philosophers call Jus Gentium, the Law of Nations, or an uncontrollable right of force in all countries whatsoever. For ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... from the chambers of the sick children; we opened the door and listened. This daughter was singing, and the chorus of her little school song was, "All are here, all are here." She did not think of the signification which those words had to our hearts. It was one of those household pleasures which have so much of heaven in them. I can sometimes hear her singing to me now, from those upper skies, in the name of the four who have gone there from my dwelling, "All ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Nobody knows who sends them round, or the exact meaning of the signal, but it seems to be an equivalent for to 'prepare,' 'make ready.' Chupatties are quickly prepared; they are the bread eaten on a journey, and hence probably their signification. At any rate, these things have been circulated among the native troops all over the country. Strangers are known to have come and gone, and there is a general uneasy and unsettled feeling prevalent among the troops. A ridiculous rumor ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... them, wherefore it was that the people bought no more water of them, although the tank was full. And certain of the soothsayers answered and said, "It is by reason of overproduction," and some said, "It is glut"; but the signification of the two words is the same. And others said, "Nay, but this thing is by reason of the spots on the sun." And yet others answered, saying, "It is neither by reason of glut, nor yet of spots on the sun that this evil hath come to pass, but because ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... he tore open the envelope and began the perusal—proceeding with a measured gait, the result as well of the "damned cramp hand" as of the still foggy intellect and unsettled vision of the reader. But as the characters and their signification became more clear and obvious to his gaze, his features grew more and more sobered and intelligent—a blankness overspread his face—his hands trembled, and finally, his apprehensions, whatever ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... was a Christian, and did much for Augustine. She founded a nunnery in memory of Columba, which was named Sedes misericordioe, the House of Mercy, and, as the region was Mercian, the two names became involved. As Columba is the Latin for dove, the dove became a sort of signification of the nunnery. She seized on the idea and made the newly-founded nunnery a house of doves. Someone sent her a freshly-discovered dove, a sort of carrier, but which had in the white feathers of its head and neck the form of a religious cowl. The nunnery flourished for more than ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... Sabbaths with Mrs. Roberts, and on two of them she had been required to cook from similar reasoning. "For once" is apt, in such cases, to become a phrase of very extensive signification. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his residence, until his death in 1764. Is the name of Amorevoli, borne by one of the first singers of that day, an assumed one, or an instance of name fatality? Certain it is,that Amorevole is a technical term in music somewhat analogous in its signification with Amabile and Amoroso.] ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... commonly a sneak, and is very nearly allied to that other social pest, the "nice young lady." As applied to the immature male of our kind, the adjective "good" seems to have been perverted from its original and ordinary signification, and to have acquired a dyslogistic one. It is a term of reproach, and means, as nearly as may be, "characterless." That any one should submit to have it applied to him is proof of the ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... of answer are necessary to this curious argument, which is nothing less than an effort to define the mental by the unreal, and to suppose that an appearance cannot be physical. No doubt, we say, every image, fantastical as it may seem as signification, is real in a certain sense, since it is the perception of a physical impression; but this physical nature of images does not prevent our making a distinction between true and false images. To take an analogous example: ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... signifies little more than the absence of external control. In politics it is used, in the first place, for the absence of foreign conquest, and in this sense a country may be called free although it is governed by a despot. The next signification of liberty is political right, and this is the sense in which it has been most used until recent years. When a tyrant overthrew the liberties of a Greek city, he substituted his own personal rule for the rights of an oligarchy. The mass of the inhabitants may have been neither ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... style, and who has a superb passion for beauty. Some of d'Annunzio's novels were a revelation, dazzling. And who that began even "Il Fuoco" could resist it? How adult, how subtle, how (in the proper signification) refined, seems the sexuality of d'Annunzio after the timid, gawky, infantile, barbaric sexuality of our "island story"! People are not far wrong on the Continent when they say, as they do say, that English novelists cannot deal with an Englishwoman—or could not up till a few years ago. They ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... derived. Pedro de Angelis, in his 'Coleccion de Obras y Documentos', derives it from 'gua', paint, and 'ni', sign of the plural, making the signification of the word 'painted ones' or 'painted men'. Demersay, in his 'Histoire du Paraguay',* thinks it probable that the word is an alteration of the word 'guaranai', i.e., numerous. Barco de la Centenera** ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... signification of incense in Buddhist ceremonies was chiefly symbolical, there is good reason to suppose that various beliefs older than Buddhism,—some, perhaps, peculiar to the race; others probably of Chinese or Korean derivation,—began at an early period to influence the popular use of incense ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... distinguishable? What is spirit? and what is matter? What does faith rest upon? What is to be said of inspiration, and authority, and the essential attributes of a church? These, and other questions of the most essential religious importance, as the nature and signification of the doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incarnation of Christ, of Redemption, of Atonement, discussions as to the relations between faith and morals, and on the old, inevitable enigmas of necessity and liberty, all more or less entered ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... or strange means (nuovo consiglio). The word nuovo is constantly used by Boccaccio in the latter sense, as is consiglio in its remoter signification of means, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... shown that the new birth has a higher signification than simply to be converted from the evil of our doings, as was required under the first dispensation. The new birth, so far as it concerns the present existence, embraces not only conversion, but the whole spiritual life of the christian's soul, denominated the kingdom of heaven ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... again, or practising;" as elegantes, elegant, ex eligendo, "from choosing, making a good choice;" diligentes, diligent, ex diligendo, "from attending on what we love;" intelligentes, intelligent, from understanding—for the signification is derived in the same manner. Thus are the words superstitious and religious understood; the one being a term of reproach, the other of commendation. I think I have now sufficiently demonstrated that there are Gods, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... omnes inquam, qui per eum renascuntur in Deum, INFANTES et parvulos et pueros et juvenes.' (At the sound of so much seriousness Paula turned her eyes upon the speaker with attention.) He next adduced proof of the signification of 'renascor' in the writings of the Fathers, as reasoned by Wall; arguments from Tertullian's advice to defer the rite; citations from Cyprian, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Jerome; and briefly summed up the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Set side by side, the mere surfaces could never unite in any harmony of design. Therefore one must go below the surface, and bring up the supposed secondary, or still more remote meaning, that diviner signification held in reserve, in recessu divinius aliquid, latent in some stray touch of Homer, or figure of speech in the books ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors; and, notwithstanding that Goethe (1791-4) had the advantage of a wide knowledge of morphological facts, and a true insight into their signification, while he threw all the power of a great poet into the expression of his conceptions, it may be questioned whether he supplied the doctrine of evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... more than one fulfilment. The expression, "all the world" does indeed sometimes mean the Roman empire, (Luke ii. 1;) but perhaps it would be rash to affirm, that it is to be always thus limited. Like "the kingdom of heaven,—the kingdom of God,"—phrases which have unquestionably a two-fold signification, so it will be safer to consider this expression as of a similar kind. All other churches would be exposed to trial, from which this one would be exempted. The trial might consist of persecution, or the spreading of heretical principles and wicked practices, followed by apostacies. At such ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... Italian states are lying before us—the returns of the Governments themselves—but unfortunately none of them come down later than 1839, so that it is impossible, however desirable, to carry out fully the comparison for 1840. Not that it is of any signification for more than uniformity, because, on referring to years antecedent to 1839, the relation between imports of cottons and re-exports, with the places from which imported and to which re-exports took place, is not sensibly disturbed. The returns for the whole of Sardinia are not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... had exerted its authority, and inflicted punishment on these rioters: but the queen, finding those remedies ineffectual, revived martial law, and gave Sir Thomas Wilford a commission of provost-martial: "Granting him authority, and commanding him, upon signification given by the justices of peace in London or the neighboring counties, of such offenders worthy to be speedily executed by martial law, to attach and take the same persons, and in the presence of the said justices, according to justice ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... London were able to procure. In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names. He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song. On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, the standard ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to this trinity gave the names of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. Such a figure, carved in stone, may be seen in the island Cave of Elephanta, near Bombay, India, and is popularly believed to represent the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer; but, in determining their true signification, we must be governed by the ancient teachings that "All things were made by one god-head with three names, and this God is all things." Hence the conclusion is irresistible that the first person represents neither the creator nor ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... it to the Israelites, in Levit. xix. 28. "Ye shall not make any cutting in your flesh for the dead, nor print any mark upon you." So in Deut. xiv. 1.; and Parkhurst, in his Heb. Lexicon, commenting on the passage in Deuteronomy, says, the word rendered to cut, is of more general signification, including "all assaults on their own persons from immoderate grief, such as beating the breasts, tearing the hair, &c. which were commonly practised by the heathen, who have no hope of a resurrection." He instances in the Iliad xix, line 284, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Essence, in its primary signification, means the principle of individuation, the inmost principle of the possibility of any thing, as that particular thing. It is equivalent to the idea of a thing, whenever we use the word, idea, with philosophic precision. Existence, on the other hand, is distinguished ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... habitation of Odin is distinguished by the appellation of As-gard. The happy resemblance of that name with As-burg, or As-of, [11] words of a similar signification, has given rise to an historical system of so pleasing a contexture, that we could almost wish to persuade ourselves of its truth. It is supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the Lake Maeotis, till the fall of Mithridates and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... signification putting your questions to us. We only do as we are directed. There is our authority. Look ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... what is Latin for Constitution, will not make you a particle the wiser; I will, therefore, explain it in the vernacular tongue.—Constitution then, in its primary, abstract, and true signification, is a concatenation or coacervation of simple, distinct parts, of various qualities or properties, united, compounded, or constituted in such a manner, as to form or compose a system or body, when viewed in ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... the external structure of the horse are known by names of obvious signification: but such is not, exactly, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical organization;—it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... same manner into English equivalents: and, at other times, the sound of a Latin or a French (Anglo-Norman) name was transferred to an English representative having a somewhat similar sound, without the slightest reference to the original signification. Who, for example, in the name of MONTAGU now recognises instinctively the original allusion to a mountain with its sharply peaked crests, and so discerns the probable allusive origin of the sharp triple points of the devices on the old Montacute shield, No. 20? It is easy to see how ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... in our language a noun singular, being identically the French "richesse," in which manner it is spelt in our early writers. From the form coinciding with that of our plural, it has acquired also a plural signification. But both words "have been adopted bodily into the language," and thus strengthen my argument that the process of manufacture is with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... the unenclosed fields, at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take the common fields at Daventry, which were three in number, containing respectively 368, 383, and 524 acres, divided into furlongs, a term which had now a very wide signification, each of which was subdivided into lands nearly always half an acre in extent, several of these lands when adjoining being often held now by the same owner. One furlong may be taken as an example. It was 37 acres 1 rood in extent, and contained ninety-six lands, owned by seventeen people. The ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... may give an instance of Mazer wood being mentioned by other writers; or inform me if the word Mazer, in itself, had any peculiar signification. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... done all for us, and that we have nothing to do, and can do nothing? To answer this question, we have to remember that that scriptural expression, 'salvation,' is used with considerable width and complexity of signification. It sometimes means the whole of the process, from the beginning to the end, by which we are delivered from sin in all its aspects, and are set safe and stable at the right hand of God. It sometimes means ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... De la Haye had so completely besotted me that I should have found some difficulty in understanding these words, however intelligible they were; but if I did not go any further than the outward signification of his answer, I could not help remarking that he had already taken the fancy of the two daughters of the house. They were neither pretty nor ugly, but he shewed himself gracious towards them like a man who understands his business. I had, however, already made such great progress in my mystical ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... making an image voluminous and vast;—the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China, to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a distance ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... back-ground effect, and artistically modulating the "Dio" through variation on variation of mimicked prayer (while we distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of uncultivated swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of the Third Commandment);—this gas-lighted, and gas-inspired, Christianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteousness in a plain English word ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of Bowring's Russian Anthology, will be found a short lyric piece of Dmitrieff, entitled "To Chloe." It consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of these five stanzas, three have a totally different meaning in the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look for in vain in the original. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style, subject, or diction, which could offer the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... plainly present. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was very common to call the pieces of music in any volume for an instrument by the name 'Lessons.' The first meaning, of course, was that they were examples for the pupil in music, but the word was used quite freely with the purely general signification of 'Pieces' ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... subjects they deal with are spoken of as "Natural History," and they called themselves and were called "Naturalists." But you will observe that this was not the original meaning of these terms; but that they had, by this time, acquired a signification widely different from that which ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley |
