Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Inefficient   Listen
adjective
Inefficient  adj.  
1.
Not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired, or achieiving the effect by unnnecessary and excessive expenditure of resources; inefficacious; as, inefficient means or measures; inefficient methods are too expensive.
2.
Incapable of, or indisposed to, effective action; habitually slack or remiss; effecting little or nothing; as, inefficient workmen; an inefficient administrator.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Inefficient" Quotes from Famous Books



... monastic and cathedral schools had been broken up, and the monasteries themselves often unworthily bestowed upon royal favorites. There had been a palace school for rudimentary instruction, but it was wholly inefficient and unimportant. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... self-governed people, the war lent powerful stimulus and tonic to the cause of free institutions everywhere, proving republican loyalty to be as firm and trustworthy as monarchical, and government by and for the governed to be not necessarily either inefficient or ephemeral. It demonstrated that a republic, without lessening its freedom, may become a great military power, generals of highest genius passively obeying a popularly elected Congress and Executive, these in turn maintaining full mastery, yet not ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... a regiment, yes! I have put a body of our patrole on a service where they can scarce be inefficient, viz. I have stationed them in the house, instead of without; and I shall myself bear them company through the greater part of the night: to-morrow I shall remove all that I possess of value to—(the county town) including those unlucky ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the capacity of any such body. If the Reparation Commission makes any serious attempt to administer the collection of this sum of $5,000,000,000 and to authorize the return to Germany of a part it, the trade of Central Europe will be strangled by bureaucratic regulation in its most inefficient form. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... suggest some remedy—which was sure to be tried as a last chance. This extraordinary experiment was of course not resorted to until all known forms of conjuration had been gone through and had proved inefficient. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... collections made, and the destitute supplied. She imparted life and energy to the Tract Society. She set on foot, and with the aid of a few friends, sustained the monthly distribution. There had been, for some time, a small temperance society in the town; but its movements were slow and inefficient. She undertook to impart to it new life and vigor. The plans and efforts which she, in conjunction with her friends, put in operation, produced a sensation which was felt in every part of the town, and in a ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... party looked a different way for peace and security. At length the majority agreed to call back their Stuart kings. Charles II, son of the Charles I they had beheaded, was voluntarily replaced upon the English throne. Religion had once more proved inefficient as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... an average or altogether desirable amount of amiability has fallen to the reader who can refrain from a malicious smile, when he is informed by reliable history that Lord Loughborough (no mean lawyer or inefficient judge), gave utterance to so much bad law, as Chairman of Quarter Sessions in canny Yorkshire, that when on appeal his decisions were reversed with many polite expressions of sincere regret by the King's Bench, all Westminster Hall laughed in concert at the mistakes ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... ability, all his sang-froid, all his enthusiasm were needed to save so inefficient a vessel from destruction, and to make important discoveries, under such conditions. If the perils of the voyage, add lustre to his renown, the shame of such a miserable equipment falls upon the English Admiralty, who, despising the representations of an able captain, risked his life and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... of the tribal ages—with Puritanism, or perhaps Protestantism itself for another, and still another specified in the latter part of this memorandum)—to it is probably due most of the ill births, inefficient maturity, snickering pruriency, and of that human pathologic evil and morbidity which is, in my opinion, the keel and reason-why of every evil and morbidity. Its scent, as of something sneaking, furtive, mephitic, seems to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... know only that he was of a virtuous and austere renown—that he wrote a great number of verses, as little durable as his laws [98]. As for the latter—when we learn that they were stern and bloody beyond precedent—we have little difficulty in believing that they were inefficient. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ship under ordinary circumstances, and is absolutely necessary in any case of accident and danger. It is the same case with the firemen. When, in a heavy storm, the fire department may be imperfectly manned, the ship has taken one of the first chances for rendering the engines inefficient, and being finally lost. And all of these extra and indispensable employees make an extra drain on the income of the ship, and add to the extreme costliness of ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... wants things particularly nice." And she hurried past them in search of the head waiter. The worry of nursing her husband had fixed a plaintive frown upon her forehead; she was pale and looked unhappy and more than usually inefficient, and her eyes wandered more vaguely than ever from ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... little gift was once simply a spontaneous act of thoughtfulness. It has degenerated into a perfunctory habit, but it should not be so. Excellent service deserves a recompense just as slip-shod service does not. And no one has a right to spoil a waiter (or any one else) by tipping him for inefficient work. In hotels and restaurants the standard fee is ten per ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... Environment.*—Our social environment includes the people with whom we are directly or indirectly associated. The presence in any community of those who are immoral, inefficient, or defective, places a burden upon those who are mentally and physically capable and renders them liable to results which are the outgrowth of weakness or viciousness. The fact that alcohol causes pauperism, crime, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... It has tended to secure good nominations for the public offices. The women as a class will not knowingly vote for incompetent, immoral or inefficient candidates. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... persuade them that they were still French subjects. Some were noisy, turbulent, and defiant; others were too tranquil to please the officers of the Crown. A missionary at Annapolis is mentioned as old, and therefore inefficient; while the cure at Grand Pre, also an elderly man, was too much inclined to confine himself to his spiritual functions. It is everywhere apparent that those who chose these priests, and sent them as missionaries into a British province, expected them to act as enemies ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... that I was gone. But I struggled upward, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen, in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched, when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient manner ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... across the path to remove the inefficient camera from the foreground, and in a moment was seated on a log by the wayside, his quick eye scanning the scene: the close file of the ranges about the horizon, one showing above another, and one more faintly blue than another, for thus the distance was defined; then the amphitheatre of the Cove, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... unexplained absence. Hester was putting away the ribbons and handkerchiefs, and bright-coloured things which had been used to deck the window; for no more customers were likely to come this night through the blustering weather to a shop dimly lighted by two tallow candles and an inefficient oil-lamp. Philip came up to her, and stood looking at her with unseeing eyes; but the strange consciousness of his fixed stare made her uncomfortable, and called the faint flush to her pale cheeks, and at length compelled her, as it were, to speak, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... best efforts used to adjust any errors made, and, where necessary, refer them to the Complaint Department. They should see that customers returning goods for exchange, or desiring money returned, are promptly and properly served. They should bring to the notice of the house the existence of inefficient or inattentive help, and report anything which in their judgment ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips

... all this now—how I used to sit in my bed-room at night with my head aching from thinking and trying to see impossibilities. Let it be sufficient if I tell you that after several trials at various things, for all of which I was soon told I was inefficient, I found myself, a big, sturdy, country-looking lad, seated on an old leather-covered stool at a double desk, facing Esau Dean, writing and copying letters, while my fellow-clerk wrote out catalogues for the printer to put ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... is even worse. She submits to innuendo and insult under the impression that she is the unwitting cause of all the domestic wretchedness and often wishes she had never entered the marriage state. We must remember that these conditions wreck ideals and homes, and that they frequently render inefficient both husband and wife. The economic business of marriage becomes a failure, ambition is crushed and hope dies ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... and seven he was knocking at the door in Welbeck Street. He had tried his latch-key, but had found it inefficient. As he was supposed to be at Liverpool, the door had in fact been locked. At last it was opened by Lady Carbury herself. He had fallen more than once, and was soiled with the gutter. Most of my readers will not probably know how a man looks when he comes home drunk ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... has written upon human affairs with so much ability and practical good sense, is perhaps entitled to as much respect as any that has ever been urged against the study in question. And so far as the objection bears upon those defective methods of instruction which experience has shown to be inefficient, or of little use, I am in no wise concerned to remove it. The reader of this treatise will find their faults not only admitted, but to a great extent purposely exposed; while an attempt is here made, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... to be torn up and removed. Picks, and wedges, and levers, were applied by my brother workmen; and simple and rude as I had been accustomed to regard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the way of using them. They all proved inefficient, however, and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata, and employ gunpowder. The process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly-amusing one: it had the merit, too, of being attended with some such degree of danger as a boating or rock excursion, and had thus ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... large city, fixed rates, and full preparatory training. A keen observer of social facts has stated: The intelligence offices of New York alone receive from servants yearly over three million dollars, and are notoriously inefficient. This, or even half of it, would provide a great centre with training-schools, lodgings for all who needed them, and a system by which fixed rates were made according to the grade of efficiency of the worker. Till household service comes ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... conversation I was able to learn that Badeloden was formerly overrun by Germans; that Franzheim was excellent if you stayed at the Grand, but at the Kurhaus the guests were unsociable, while at the Oberalp you were not done well and the central-heating was inefficient. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... unnatural and therefore unworkable. There can be no feasible or desirable process of leveling down. Such a course only promotes poverty by making it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing the efficient producer to become inefficient does not make the inefficient producer more efficient. Poverty can be done away with only by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along in the science of production to be able to see, as a natural development, the day when production ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... in our restaurants, right here in Zagurest, from an evidently widely published American travel reporter. He contends that the fact that there is no tipping leads to our waiters being surly and inefficient." ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... witness how the "Horse of the Pyrenees" would behave himself at Sadler's Wells. From the piece so called we anticipated no amusement; we thought the regular company would make but sorry equestrians, and, like the King of Westphalia's hussars, would prove totally inefficient, from not being habituated to mount on horseback. Happily we were mistaken; nothing could possibly go better than both the animals and the piece. The actors acquitted themselves manfully, even including ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... questions hardly require an answer. The measure of freedom the black man enjoys can be gauged by the power he has to vote. He has, practically, no voice in the government under which he lives. His property is taxed and his life is jeopardized, by states on the one hand and inefficient police regulations on the other, and no question is asked or expected of him. When he protests, when he cries out against this flagrant nullification of the very first principles of a republican form of government, the insolent question is asked: ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... hand, each convoy is usually provided with some guard of its own, though it is often absurdly inefficient. These valleys and ravines which branch out of the main pass are alive with Afridis and Pathans, who are keen robbers as well as religious fanatics. I wonder they don't swoop down on some of our caravans. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you coming. Anybody can see you coming, Daddy. That's why you ought to be so careful. I shall make you wear a hard hat. Those squashy hats of yours are hopelessly inefficient. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... from the delusion that fussing about in gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all effective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the Silence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be less feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... afforded in explaining difficulties to others, may even at that age have been useful. In other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the plan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, I am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to either. I went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and a considerable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's Commentaries, but afterwards ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... understand this question. He does not understand why we of the South want it—why we must have it settled. There was a time when the embargo law threw our slaves out of employment. The North then contemplated a dissolution of the Union. Why? Because she thought the Government wanted power—was inefficient. Now, there is a sense of insecurity felt throughout the South. Our property is depreciating, going down every day. We feel this want of security very deeply, this want of faith in the Government under which we live. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient. Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be painted,—they can only be believed. But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. That which in comedy, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... the services of a production engineer, skilled in the laying out of plants in the line of greatest efficiency, and in diagnosing and correcting the production mistakes of an inefficient mill. ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous

... one of three ways, (1) the road parties, (2) the chain gang, or (3) the penal settlements. (1) In the first case, the convicts might be kept in the vicinity of the towns or marched about the country according to the work in hand; the labour was severe, but, owing to inefficient supervision, never intolerable; the diet was ample and there was no great restraint upon independence within certain wide limits. To the slackness of control over the road parties was directly traceable the frequent escape of desperadoes, who, defying recapture, recruited the gangs of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... the infant, at birth, has not the power of generating heat, internally, to the extent which it possesses afterward. The lungs have as yet but a feeble, inefficient action. The purification of the blood, through their agency, is not only incomplete, but the heat evolved is as yet inconsiderable. In the absence of internal heat, then, there is an increased demand externally. If 60 be deemed ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... blossomed like the rose, or, at all events, like that chimerical flower, the Rose of Jericho. As it was, the conventionality around me, the intellectual drought, gave me no opportunity of outward growth. They did not destroy, but they cooped up, and rendered slow and inefficient, that internal life which continued, as I have said, to live on unseen. This took the form of dreams and speculations, in the course of which I went through many tortuous processes of the mind, the actual aims of which were futile, although the movements themselves were useful. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... loaded desk. The Alaskan situation was causing him keen anxiety. The old war between private ownership, with all its greed and unfairness to the common citizen, and government control, with all its cumbersome and often inefficient methods, had reached acute proportions in the great northern province. Enoch was faced with the necessity of deciding between the two. It must be a long distance decision and any verdict he rendered was predestined ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... cannot take the place of the Organized Class. Where it does, it is temporary, hurrah-in-character, inefficient and harmful. The Sunday school is educational in purpose. The Boys' Department ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... of the speed of the screw, which is probably an average of widely different conditions, including many single as well as twin screw ships. Then this curve shows that considerable negative slips mean inefficient screws; that screws may have very different positive slips without any appreciable difference in their efficiencies; and that very large positive slips and inefficient screws may be companions. For instance, a screw with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... lives and fortunes here, and our hopes of happiness hereafter, in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Was our devotion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance, which this new doctrine would make it? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing—a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection? Was this self-destroying, visionary theory the work of ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... not the extreme tactfulness of his so typically Catholic wife; he made it only too plain that he thought the British postal and telegraph service slow and slack, and the management of the Great Eastern branch lines wasteful and inefficient. He said the workmen in the fields and the workmen he saw upon some cottages near the junction worked slowlier and with less interest than he had ever seen any workman display in all his life before. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... the part of the two last, as they knew perfectly well they wouldn't gain anything by upsetting the actual cabinet. They would only get another one much more advanced and more masterful. I suppose their idea was to have a succession of radical inefficient ministers, which in the end would disgust the country and make a "saviour," a prince (which one?) or general, possible. How wise their reasoning was time has shown! I wanted to go to the Chamber to ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... cause which was apt to render Hohenlo's services inefficient, the prince was apt to suffer inconvenience in the persons placed in still nearer relation to himself. Count Philip of Nassau, brother of the wise and valiant Lewis William, had already done much brilliant campaigning against the Spaniards both in France and the provinces. Unluckily, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should reassure the supremacy of Rome. But Arminius was far too sage a commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broadswords and inefficient defensive armour, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield; who were skilled to commence the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins, hurled upon the foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... didn't have top-grade men. They couldn't be spared from work that required their total capacity. It's inefficient to waste a man on a job that he can do without half trying where there are more important jobs that will tax his ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... at forming a separate labor party failed as partisan movements. The labor leader proved an inefficient amateur when matched against the shrewd and experienced party manipulator; nor was there a sufficient class homogeneity to keep the labor vote together; and, even if it had so been united, there were not ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... affectionate and generous people. I then bid my postilion drive on fast; and I never looked back, never once cast a lingering look at all I left behind. I felt proud of having executed my purpose, and conscious I had not the insignificant, inefficient character that had formerly disgraced me. As to the future, I had not distinctly arranged my plans, nor was my mind during the remainder of the day sufficiently tranquil for reflection. I felt like one in a dream, and could scarcely persuade ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... often to make the charge a place to "take care" of a Conference member of that grade regardless of his fitness to follow up the type of program introduced by his predecessor. The taking of the automobile by the departing pastor deprives the community of its use. Leaving it for the use of an inefficient pastor is too great a burden on the community. Experience will determine the best means of handling this problem and should ultimately put ministers on the same basis as to having means of transportation furnished ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt

... public performance, we wish emphatically to state our conviction that in many cases both choruses and orchestras have been short-lived, being abandoned after a season or two of more or less unsatisfactory work, directly as a result of the inefficient methods used by the conductor in the rehearsal. In an earlier chapter (p. 18) we noted that the successful conductor of the present day must possess a personality combining traits almost opposite in their nature; viz., artistry and organizing ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... as is so often done. The next scene introduces us to a masquerade where are choruses of quasi-gypsies, matadors, and picadors,—sufficiently characteristic. The scene after the card-playing, which is so fine in the play, is inefficient in music. Act III in the book (though it was made Act IV on this occasion by subdividing the second) reveals the sick-room of Traviata. A sweet air, minor and major by turns, with some hautboy wailing, paints the sufferer's sorrows. A duet by the lovers, "Parigi, O cara," ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... and the screen cannot be penetrated in the daytime, unless we can defeat those members of the screen that try to hold us off. Now, inasmuch as all the considerable naval Powers of Europe have many battle cruisers, and we have no battle cruisers whatever, and no scouts of any kind, except three inefficient ones (the Birmingham, Chester, and Salem) the degree of success that we should have penetrating the screen in the daytime can be estimated by any lawyer, merchant, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... badly handled and go to the bottom, which would be a good thing if only their inefficient captains were drowned; but it's their crews as well. There, good-bye, Belton. Don't come to town again without calling on me. I'll try and serve your boy. One moment—where are you? Oh yes, I see; I have your card. Good-bye, middy. Remember me to ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... privates. When the story was brought to Lincoln, he said it was too bad about the men. Someone suggested that it was a pity the generals had been taken, but Lincoln said that did not matter much, as he could make some more. Joffre has made it uncomfortable for the inefficient generals in France. Many of them have lost their commands and most of them live in fear of his ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... (2) there is danger that he may be influenced in his official actions through desire to secure a second term; (3) the commercial depression that usually exists during a campaign would thus come less frequently. These arguments may be used in opposition to such a change: (1) in the case of an inefficient President, the short term is to be preferred; (2) the Presidential campaign is of value, in that the attention of Americans generally is for a time fixed on the problems connected with the conduct of our government. It furnishes the opportunity for ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James

... this particular branch of his profession, and advertises largely to that effect; while, in nine cases out of ten, if he attended to a legitimate branch of his vocation, he would prove worthless and inefficient. There are many abortionists in New York to-day who live in first-class style, attend to nothing but 'first-class' cases, receive nothing ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... full benefit of their precipitation; drifting over the plateau, or crown, with rapidly decreasing bulk. Thus, the great plain, in size the greatest, and in soil the richest part of us, is always labouring under the curse of irregular and inefficient rainfall; and whatever good we may do in the way of water storage and we may do so much-we have always the threat of many years of drought hanging over, during which our treasury of water will ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... neither to be arrested nor intimidated by a constable's warrant. Governor Tryon of New York offered twenty pounds reward for the arrest of the rioters, which was as inefficient as esquire ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... their representations answered; and it was remarkable, that the reply made to them was in these words. "We will have no share in a traffic, consisting in rapine, blood, and murder." He then took a survey of a system of duties progressively increasing, and showed that it would be utterly inefficient; and that there was no real remedy for the different evils complained of, but in the immediate prohibition of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... moral principle of duty. This allowed, in fact, a negative to every legislature, on every measure proposed by Congress; a negative so frequently exercised in practice, as to benumb the action of the Federal government, and to render it inefficient in its general objects, and more especially in pecuniary and foreign concerns. The want, too, of a separation of the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary functions, worked disadvantageously in practice. Yet this state of things afforded ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... different states and in the country at large, a sufficiently high standard. The examinations are not sufficiently extensive and intensive to separate the sheep from the goats. The unqualified thus rush in and drive out the qualified, for the efficient cannot compete with the inefficient. The calling is in no sense a "closed" profession, and consequently in the lower ranks it is scarcely ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... baulked and ruined him; and the result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... we are here at the core of why all regimes end up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible adversaries ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the family of production," interrupted Mr. Duncan. "Nothing is to be gained by that quarrel. I admit the husband has been overbearing, offensive, brutal, perhaps; but the wife has been slovenly, inefficient, shallow. Neither has yet been brought to realize how hopeless is the case of one without the other. And I don't think they will learn that by quarreling. What they need is not hard words, but mutual respect and sympathy, and an honest conception of what constitutes success. Doctrines ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... winning the heart of this country with sympathy, but also, if I am not offending you, with some humour. I'm not speaking only of your propaganda efforts. You've got, I know, one or two literary gentlemen here—a novelist, I think, and a professor and a journalist. Well, soon you'll find them inefficient, and decide that you must have some commercial gentlemen, and then, disappointed with them, you'll decide for the military... and still the great heart of Russia ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... ensue from the trivial exercise of high endowments. The finest mind, when thus destitute of a fixed purpose, passes away without leaving permanent traces of its existence; losing its energy by turning aside from its course, it becomes as harmless and inefficient as the lightning, which, of itself irresistible, may yet be rendered powerless by a ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... uncertain rays upon the objects within it. The height of the apartment, and the absorbing complexion of the dark oaken wainscot, here and there concealed by falls of tapestry, served to render such an illumination extremely inefficient. But Conrad knew that this must be the chamber of death, even before he was able to distinguish that an apparently light and youthful figure lay stretched upon the bed—still, motionless, impassive, as death alone can be. Two women, dressed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... present moment, then, the protection against fire in London consists, firstly, in the 300 and odd parish engines (two to each parish), which are paid for out of the rates. The majority of these are very inefficient, not having any persons appointed to work them who possess a competent knowledge of the service. Even women used now and then to fill the arduous post of director; and it is not long since a certain Mrs. Smith, a widow, might ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... be the cart that takes Away my books, my curse, my clog, Blessed the auctioneer who makes Their inefficient catalogue. ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang

... division of the artery, when that is not complete—for then the extremities contract and the blood clots—or by a ligature, or by the application of substances which arrest blood flow, aided by a compressive bandage. Other means are inefficient, and seldom and, at most, accidentally successful. His instruction for first aid to the injured in case of hemorrhage in the absence of the physician, is to apply pressure directly ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... at five-thirty this morning, having traveled from London by the mail train. I must lecture you on your inefficient window-catches, Mr. Grant. Several self-respecting burglars of my acquaintance would give your house the go-by as being too easy. And, one other matter. I suggest that any man who mentions the Steynholme murder again before the coffee ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... and other vessels of value in anti-submarine warfare as were available at once or would be available as time progressed. The German Staff may have had in mind the situation during the Spanish-American War when the fact of Admiral Cervera's weak and inefficient squadron being at large was sufficient to affect adversely the naval strategy of the United States to a considerable extent and to paralyze the work of the United States ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... which he had just left, perhaps the most sedate, certainly the most exclusive club in New York, it had been the one topic of conversation. Elderly gentlemen, not usually given to excitability, had joined with the younger members in a hectic denunciation of the police as criminally inefficient, and had made dire and absurdly vain threats as to what they, electing themselves for the moment a supreme court of last resort, proposed to do under the circumstances. The irony was exquisite, if they had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... merciful,—he is kind, and that implies folly; La Rochejaquelein is a superb sub-lieutenant; Silz is an officer good for the open field, but not suited for a war that needs a man of expedients; Cathelineau is a simple teamster; Stofflet is a crafty game-keeper; Berard is inefficient; Boulainvillers is absurd; Charette is horrible. I make no mention of Gaston the barber. Mordemonbleu! what is the use of opposing revolution, and what is the difference between ourselves and the republicans, if we set barbers over the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... begin at the very beginning: she knew the names and prices of the cheaper flowers; and her elation was unbounded when she found that Freddy, like all youths educated at cheap, pretentious, and thoroughly inefficient schools, knew a little Latin. It was very little, but enough to make him appear to her a Porson or Bentley, and to put him at his ease with botanical nomenclature. Unfortunately he knew nothing else; ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... whenever pretexts were needed, for a breach of allegiance. So long, indeed, as the character of the nation remained essentially military, it could as little tolerate an incapable king as an army in a dangerous campaign can bear with an inefficient commander; and whatever might be the theory of the title, when the sceptre was held by the infirm hand of an Edward II., a Richard II., or a Henry VI., the difficulty resolved itself by force, and it was wrenched by ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... contempt as if she was asking alms for herself. None but those who did that work in the early days, for the slaves and the women, can ever know the hardships and humiliations that were endured. But it was done because it was only through petitions—a power seemingly so inefficient—that disfranchised classes could be heard in the State and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... should. For, seeking to emulate those whom he so unstintedly admired, Bud Lee and Carson and the rest of the hard-handed, quick-eyed men in the service of the ranch, Hampton was no longer the careless, frankly inefficient youth who had escorted his guests here. He went for days at a time unshaven, having other matters to think of; he came to the table bringing with him the aroma of the stables. He wore a pair of trousers as cylindrical in the leg as a stove-pipe; ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... himself with these crazy dreams, it was because of his secret discontent with the Commune itself. He had lost all confidence in its members, he felt it was inefficient, drawn this way and that by so many conflicting elements, losing its head and becoming purposeless and driveling as it saw the near approach of the peril with which it was menaced. Of the social reforms it had pledged itself ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... Here is the new President of the Republic. Money is no more to you than water. You are a patriotic American. Have you forgotten that a warship of your country with six hundred of her devoted citizens was sent to the bottom by the treachery of one of this effete race? The war was an inefficient revenge. The country still flourishes. It is for you to avenge America. With money Marsine can establish a republic in Spain within twenty-four hours.' Sirdeller hesitates. He would point out that it had never been proved ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... scattered throughout the land of Israel. The territory immediately adjacent to the temple was assigned to the priests and Levites, and its sanctity was further guarded on the east and west by the domains of the prince. His chief function was, not to rule, as had the selfish and inefficient tyrants who had preceded him, but to provide the animals and the material requisite for the temple service. The territory on the north and the south of the temple was assigned to ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... sleep on a hard, uncushioned bench, in the open air, and this morning he must waken her to the life of a hunted thing. A week ago she had had at her command every luxury known to the civilized world; to-day she was friendless, but for his inefficient, worthless self, and in a strange land. A week ago,—had he known her then,—he had been free to tell her of his love, to offer her the protection of his name as well as his devotion; to-day he was an all but penniless vagabond, and there could be ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... cutter. She came dancing back half full of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so—better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... there is much doing in this Country, but in a disjointed, expensive, inefficient manner. Instead of one all-pervading, straight-forward, State-directed system, there are three or four in operation, necessarily conflicting with and damaging each other. And yet a vast majority really desire the Education of All, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... is translatable in the words "Be organized." The German has been eager to organize the world. He-believed in all seriousness that he was fighting the fight of order against chaos. It was the fight of the spirit against that which is dead and inefficient. The German believed that the systematic exploitation of the world was his peculiar mission. Ostwald is the great apostle of this view. He said that the war was a battle of the higher life against the lower instincts. Germany represents European civilization. The German emperor said that ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that "live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scale was—was—was inefficient. And there ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... have been expected that the Romans would here have made a stand. The siege of a fortified place by cavalry is ridiculous, if we understand by siege anything more than a very incomplete blockade. And the Parthians were notoriously inefficient against walls. There was a chance, moreover, that Artavasdes might have been more successful than his ally, and, having repulsed the Parthian monarch, might march his troops to the relief of the Romans. But the soldiers were thoroughly dispirited, and would not listen to these ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... portion of their wealth and estates by the blackest and most iniquitous political profligacy and oppression. For about a month after the first night of the unsuccessful pursuit after Reilly, the whole country was overrun with military parties, and such miserable inefficient police as then existed. In the meantime, Reilly escaped every toil and snare that had been laid for him. Sir Robert Whitecraft, seeing that hitherto he had set them at defiance, resolved to glut his vengeance on his property, since he could not arrest himself. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... to make the colonies expensive and the home treasury insolvent. The governors as royal favorites regarded their appointments as easy roads to quick wealth, and they plundered not only the inhabitants but their royal master. The inefficient and extravagant management of trade, which was a government monopoly, furnished a lamentable example of the effects of public ownership. And when possible the church interfered to add the burden of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... possessed the weakness or the vice, as the reader may consider it, and found, when too late, that a yielding resolution, or, to use a phrase perhaps better understood, a good intention, was but a feeble and inefficient instrument with which to attempt its subjection. Having made these few preliminary observations, as being suitable, in our opinion, to the character of the incidents which follow, we proceed at once ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... likely, therefore, to be a supply of substantially better seams which can be substituted for the worst of those in actual use. There is likely, on the other hand, to be available a supply of decent business capacity which can be substituted for the most inefficient of existing business men. The marginal concern, in other words, must be conceived as that working under the least advantageous conditions in respect of the assistance it derives from the strictly limited resources of nature, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... always what to do or to say. Mistakes, more or less, are occurring all the time. Many of the things we know we have learned by our mistakes. A farmer becomes successful by eliminating the mistakes of the past, by ceasing to do the things that proved to be inefficient. A manufacturer becomes successful by eliminating the weaknesses of his product, by eliminating his mistakes. So ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... the foregoing, the state service in the appointive state departments, shown by said investigations to be wasteful and inefficient, is becoming increasingly demoralized. All of these departments exercise functions pertaining to the protection of the public health, the conservation of the public peace and morals, or the promotion of the public safety. The necessity of placing their functions upon a sound, economical, permanent ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... a highly respectable and immensely perfunctory Peace Society, amply endowed with names and numbers, of which our late postmaster was the president, and whose presidency was vastly more inefficient than ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp. They included bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called "out of a situation" from fault or lucklessness, the inefficient of the professional class—shabby-genteel men, who did not know how to get rid of the weary time between breakfast and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eye of this species were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below. A man ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... morning by my application for a tooth-brush. Such a thing was never seen or heard of in a prison. I was obliged therefore to use my middle finger, which I found a very inefficient substitute. Another difficulty arose on the shirt question. The prisoners are allowed a clean outer shirt every week, and a clean inner shirt every fortnight. I explained that I would prefer the order reversed, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... blankets, great-coats, and kettles. The officers' mess was saved by a subaltern, who succeeded in procuring a Kaffir cooking-pot and some very tough fowls, which Captain Hensley boiled with great skill. The night was unpleasant, for khaki drill is but an inefficient protection against the cold and heavy dew. The experience proved too much for Major Butterworth, R.A.M.C., who had to go on the sick list soon afterwards. He had been with the battalion since Ladysmith, and his coolness and devotion at the battle of Colenso had made ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... Agra in 1842-43, and partly over new ground, as one may see by looking at the map of Northern India. The conditions of the journey were to a large extent those I have already described; but we suffered from bad roads, from our camp equipage falling behind, and I may add from inefficient service, much more than we had formerly done. On reaching Almora we mentioned to a friend the route we had taken, and he said, "Surely you have not come in a wheeled conveyance, for I am told that road is impassable." I told him the road was passable, for we had ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... regent of the kingdom, surrounded by his cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoon under a blazing sun over the dusty mile that separates the monument from the Ayuntamiento. The Spaniards are hopelessly inefficient in these matters. The people always fill the line of march, and a rivulet of procession meanders feebly through a wilderness of mob. It is fortunate that the crowd is more entertaining ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... it. These provinces formed a fringe round France, and included Languedoc, Provence, the duchy of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany, and some others. The central administration was so oppressive, at the same time that it was clumsy and inefficient, that every province and city was anxious to compound for its taxes, and to settle them at a fixed rate, though a high one. This was accomplished on the largest scale by the Lands of Estates, but similar privileges, to a greater or less extent, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... a wish to see all men start fair in the race of life, the only advantages allowed being not those of rank or station, but solely of innate capacity. And the reason the Socialist desires this is, because he believes, rightly or wrongly, that many inefficient men are, at present, only artificially protected from betraying their inefficiency; and that many efficient men are only artificially prevented from showing their efficiency; and that the fair start he proposes would not result ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... centuries later, the whole of the vast territory between that river and the mouth of the Zambesi. These claims raised the problem of the Hinterland, that is, the ownership of the whole range of territory behind a coast line. Furthermore, the Portuguese officials were notoriously inefficient and generally corrupt; while the customs system of that State was such as to fetter the activities of trade with shackles of a ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... of 1855 was much more than a confirmation of the Imperial Firman of 1850, nor was it a dead letter. A year afterwards Dr. Jewett, while admitting that it was inefficient in certain respects, declared it to have been in an important sense, a quickening spirit. "Never," he says, "within the same space of time, has there been as much religious discussion with the Mussulmans as since the issue of the late firman, and never before, I think, has there been such ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... then," Burris said instantly, "that a spy ring could be as utterly inefficient as the ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... is the demoralisation at some of our great London hotels to give place to reasonable service and cleanliness? On every side I hear complaints of inefficient attendance and dirty rooms. As for clean towels in the bathroom, they appear on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... coiled; in making you take that dark, solitary walk in search of the sleeping Alice; and even last night I might have spared you your lonely night watch, if I would. Had I told you that you were too inexperienced and inefficient to be a good nurse, you would have believed me and yielded your place, or at least shared it with another. Do you still think ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... true method of managing all the Public Departments, and every branch of the public service. I believe it would contribute immensely to both the efficiency and economy of the public service. Needless and inefficient appointments would not then be made; and it would greatly elevate the standard of action and attainments, and emulate the ambition of the young men and youth of the country, when they know that their selection and advancement in their country's service depended upon their individual ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... Spanish society does emerge from the dramas, indeed. It is a society in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty, in which the old titled families are generally degenerate and slothful, and the middle classes display admirable spiritual qualities, but are too often unthrifty and inefficient. Of the laboring classes, Galds has little to say. Bitter religious and political intolerance creates an atmosphere of hatred which a few exceptional characters strive to dissipate. Galds, however, was seldom willing to face ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... would you think of my logic, if I were to say to you (the idea is not mine—I found it in a book), if I were to say to you, 'I entertain a high regard for infantry, but, after all, the foot soldier is an incomplete soldier, deprived of his birthright, an inefficient body deprived of that natural complement of the soldier, called a horse! I admire his courage, I perceive that he makes himself useful in battle; but, after all, the poor devil has only two feet at his command, while we have four!' You see ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... That the industrially inefficient are often of subnormal intelligence has already been demonstrated in a number of psychological investigations. Of 150 "hoboes" tested under the direction of the writer by Mr. Knollin, at least 15 per cent belonged ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... a draught of cold water should have cured thee when the most precious drugs failed," said the Hakim, "thou mayest reason on the other mysteries attendant on this matter. For myself, I am inefficient to the great work, having this morning touched an unclean animal. Ask, therefore, no further questions; it is enough that, by sparing this man's life at my request, you will deliver yourself, great King, and thy ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... increasing its efficiency. On this point the King was inflexible, for he always refused to allow the army to be reduced organically, though he never refused to accept such a diminution of the rank and file as made it utterly inefficient for an emergency, so long as the cadres and the number of officers were not diminished. He sent a message to some senators who were in his confidence to the effect that the measure of Ricotti must be defeated there, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... law restoring the minority's privileges. But Bowell and his colleagues soon made their decision. Early in 1895 the province was ordered in uncompromising terms to restore to the minority its former rights and privileges. The legislature declined, on the ground that the old system was inefficient and disruptive, and urged the federal authorities to investigate school conditions in Manitoba, past and present, before taking the fatal step of coercion. But, after a commission had failed to induce the province to yield, the Bowell Government announced that at the next parliamentary {162} ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... Father,—As you well know, I have not always been an enthusiast on the subject of teaching. The task of cramming knowledge into these self-sufficient, inefficient youngsters of both sexes discourages me at times. The more stupid they are, the less they are aware of it. If my department were geography or mathematics, I believe I should feel that I was accomplishing something, for in those branches application ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... useless against this strange antagonist. Our finest steam-frigates, though accidentally prevented from getting fairly into action, seemed likely, however skilfully handled, to have proved almost as inefficient; for all our batteries and broadsides had produced no effect on this iron-clad monster. She had gone back to her lair uninjured. What was to prevent her from coming out again to break the blockade, bombard our seaports, sink and destroy everything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... business men get behind the churches and their preachers. Never mind if they are not perfect. Never mind if their theology is out of date. This only means that were they efficient they would do very much more. The safety of all we have is due to the churches, even in their present inefficient and inactive state. By all that we hold dear, let us from this very day give more time, money and thought to the churches, for upon these the value of all we ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... chiefs, during the whole period of the Revolutionary War; and early in the spring of 1782, these savage incursions became so frequent and galling, and the common mode of fighting the Indians on the line of frontier, when forced to do so in self-defense, proved so inefficient, that it was found absolutely necessary to carry the war into the country of the enemy. For this purpose an expedition against the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky, was gotten up in May, and put under the command of Colonel William Crawford, a brave soldier of the Revolution. This force, amounting ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... plans which ought to have been developed were withheld. The majority of the Council was rendered inefficient; the boldest orators were disconcerted, and the inutility of submitting any ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... of trying to beat anything sensible through the shells of them quahaugs?" snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for the inefficient. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... that the very air blazed, and that the end of all things had come. That day of Monmouth ever remained in his memory as the most awful and hopeless of his life. An ordinary defeat was nothing. But the American arms branded with cowardice, Washington ignobly deposed, inefficient commanders floundering for a few months before the Americans were become the laughing-stock of Europe,—the whole vision was so hideous, and the day so hopeless in the light of those cowardly hordes, that he galloped through the rain of British bullets, praying for death; he had ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... during the day. Forty winks or more in the afternoon makes a good deal of difference to them. Taciturn, inarticulate, lazy, slow, tired, are the adjectives applied to them by their friends as well as by their enemies. All because of an insufficient or inefficient supply of the thyroid's iodine to their cells. The mobility of energy in an organism is a measure of the amount of active iodine in it. The physiologic synonyms for "energetic and lazy" are "well-iodinized" and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... had started it were exhausted. In the political field, feudalism, originally beneficent, had become tyrannous and stifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be, beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the old methods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leading scientists were magicians and witches; in literature, no poet had arisen worthy to strike the lyre that Chaucer tuned to music. As for religion, the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of the monasteries ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... out, Hillsborough would at once be removed. For in that case it would be the policy of the government to conciliate the colonies, at any cost, for the time being. This crisis passed by, fortunately for the secretary and unfortunately for the provinces. Yet still the inefficient and ill-friended minister remained very infirm in his seat. An excuse only was needed to displace him, and by a singular and unexpected chance Franklin furnished that excuse. It was the humble and discredited colonial agent who unwittingly but not unwillingly gave the jar which ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.



Words linked to "Inefficient" :   wasteful, uneffective, ineffective, uneconomical, ineffectual, incompetent



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org