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Maim   Listen
noun
Maim  n.  (Written in law language maihem and mayhem)  
1.
The privation of the use of a limb or member of the body, by which one is rendered less able to defend himself or to annoy his adversary.
2.
The privation of any necessary part; a crippling; mutilation; injury; deprivation of something essential. See Mayhem. "Surely there is more cause to fear lest the want there of be a maim than the use of it a blemish." "A noble author esteems it to be a maim in history that the acts of Parliament should not be recited."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Maim" Quotes from Famous Books



... most often heard—was the story going round that he had been, and probably still was, out of his mind. No deadlier or crueler weapon can be used against a man than that same charge as to his sanity. It has been known to destroy, or seriously maim, brilliant and able men with no trace of any of the untrustworthy kinds of insanity. Where the man's own conduct gives color to the report, the attack is usually mortal. And Norman had acted the crazy man. The second reason was the hostility of Burroughs, reinforced by all the hatreds ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... the treatment so long as H. did. Once during his three years he uttered three words aloud; for that he was punished so long and so savagely that the horror of it yet remains with him. Prisoners constantly maim their hands voluntarily in the machinery in order to be quit of the torture of the work; the bleeding stumps of their fingers or hands are roughly bound up, and they are driven back to their machines. The warden is an oily, comfortable rogue, who beams upon visitors and fools the prison commission ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... of one travail born, Doomed to one death, in one brief life we moil; The pangs that maim us and the powers that spoil Are common sorrows heired from worlds outworn. Alike in weakness, time too long hath torn Our mother, Patience, and our father, Toil. Brothers in hatred of the fates that foil, Say not in vain ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... it. We acknowledge in sorrow that we have followed strange gods, and worshiped at the worldly altar of wealth and cleverness, and believed that these things were success in life. Now we have had before our eyes the spectacle of clever men using their cleverness to kill, maim and destroy innocent women and children; we have seen the wealth of one nation poured out like water to bring poverty and starvation to another nation, and so, through our tears, we have learned the lesson that it is not wealth or cleverness or skill or power which ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... run off out of the Province, upon conviction he was punished with forty lashes, and branded on the forehead with a red hot iron, "that the mark thereof may remain." If a white man met a slave, and demanded of him to show his ticket, and the slave refused, the law empowered the white man "to beat, maim, or assault; and if such Negro or slave" could not "be taken, to kill him," if he would not "shew ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... hears thee groan, 50 Maim'd, mangled by inhuman men; Or thou upon a Desart thrown Inheritest the Lion's Den; Or hast been summoned to the Deep, Thou, Thou and all thy mates, to keep An ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let" boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting, So they watch'd what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... sanitation, and all this damned 'welfare'. Fancy a girl chained up for twelve hours every day to a thundering, whizzing, iron machine that never gets tired. The machine's just as fresh at six o'clock at night as it was at six o'clock in the morning, and just as anxious to maim her if she doesn't look out for herself—more anxious. The whole thing's still going on; they're at it now, this very minute. You're interested in a ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... the war has thrown up the sordid passions, the hidden reserves of destructive hate and cruelty in our common human soul. In war all things are permissible. To murder, to maim, to destroy, to deceive, to make hideous waste of fertile land, to cause weeping and wailing amongst the innocent—these are the necessities of warfare. They are the commonplace incidents of war. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... its best at the new trade. It was utterly inadequate on either side. It's always so in war. The work of war is to maim, to murder—not ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... my Mexicans. It's low-down business for you to shoot my men who are working for me at fifteen dollars a month. I'm the responsible party—I'm the man to kill. I want to say right here that I hold you accountable, and if your men maim one of my herders or open fire on 'em again I'll hunt you down and kill you like a wolf. Now ride on, and if you look back before you top that divide I'll put a bullet through ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... gale, On shoreless and unfathom'd sea to sail, To build on sand, and in the air design, The sun to gaze on till these eyes of mine Abash'd before his noonday splendour fail, To chase adown some soft and sloping vale, The winged stag with maim'd and heavy kine; Weary and blind, save my own harm to all, Which day and night I seek with throbbing heart, On Love, on Laura, and on Death I call. Thus twenty years of long and cruel smart, In tears and ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... after Magna Charta, villains were sold with their "chattels and offspring," named in that order. Long after Magna Charta, it was law that "Le Seigniour poit rob, naufrer, et chastiser son villein a son volunt, salve que il ne poit luy maim."[9] ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... operation, which may save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she flies away, rushes into the tube, which enables me, without touching her, to transfer her at once into a screw of paper. This ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... suppose Jord would have taken that skid for any blamed beggar who got in his way, but of course it didn't take any force off the way he jammed on those brakes when he saw it was a friend he was going to hit. And a friend he was going to maim—pretty hard choice to make, wasn't it? But of course it was sure death to Franz if he hit him, at that pace, so there was nothing else to do but take the chance for himself and Aleck. Maybe you can guess, though, how he feels ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... link, out of hardship and pain, Toil, sickness, endurance, is forged the bronze chain Of those terrible siege-lines! No change to that toil Save the mine's sudden leap from the treacherous soil. Save the midnight attack, save the groans of the maim'd, And Death's daily obolus due, whether claim'd By ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... padding on at all, would let the men dive into him running at full speed, and the men would throw him in a way that seemed as though it would maim him for life. Some of the men weighed a hundred pounds more than he did, but he would get up ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... the gulph of Cambaya, to Cape Comorin, contains what is properly called India, including part of Cambaya, with the Decan, Canara, and Malabar, subject to several princes. On this coast the Portuguese have, Damam, Assarim, Danu, St Gens, Agazaim, Maim, Manora, Trapor, Bazaim, Tana, Caranja, the city of Chaul, with the opposite fort of Morro; the most noble city of GOA, the large, strong, and populous metropolis of the Portuguese possessions in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... things and brought us up well. I remember that there was a door leading from the rear of the store into a garden. Sunny days mother would take us out and give us lessons in natural history. She taught us not to kill or maim song-birds, but said that we could kill and eat field mice or little blind moles, although we never saw any of them. She warned us that bees and wasps were too heating to the blood, and not to eat them, but if very hungry, a grass-hopper was not to be sneezed at; positively ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... no new care, No sense of danger, interrupt thy prayer? The sacred wrestler, till a blessing given, Quits not his hold, but halting conquers Heaven; Nor was the stream of thy devotion stopp'd, When from the body such a limb was lopp'd, As to thy present state was no less maim, Though thy wise choice has since repair'd the same. Bold Homer durst not so great virtue feign In his best pattern:[2] of Patroclus slain, 10 With such amazement as weak mothers use, And frantic gesture, he receives the news. Yet fell ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... have I done, I'd like to know, To make my master maim me so? A pretty figure I shall cut! From other dogs I'll keep, in kennel shut. Ye kings of beasts, or rather tyrants, ho! Would any beast have served you so?" Thus Growler cried, a mastiff young;— The man, whom pity never stung, Went ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... Echetus, the scourge of human kind, From whom is no escape. Drink then in peace, And contest shun with younger men than thou. 370 Him answer'd, then, Penelope discrete. Antinoues! neither seemly were the deed Nor just, to maim or harm whatever guest Whom here arrived Telemachus receives. Canst thou expect, that should he even prove Stronger than ye, and bend the massy bow, He will conduct me hence to his own home, And make me his own bride? No such design ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... as much!" he muttered. And, though he had not thought as much, he might have done so. "I knew that a man who could maim his own body in that way was capable of any ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... blind rage. He forgot everything but contact, rushed, closed and caught his antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms. The battle at once resolved itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier. And it was free! Each might kill or maim if so he could. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... his limbs was lopped off, he had the power of restoring it; and when his head was cut off, he could take it up and replace it. When Astolpho encountered this magician, he was informed that his life lay in one particular hair; so instead of seeking to maim his adversary, Astolpho cut off the magic hair, and the magician fell lifeless at ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... you have made your implements for the sport, you must never shoot at or towards anyone; nor must you ever shoot directly upwards. In the one case you may maim some one for life, and in the other you may put out your own eye as an acquaintance of the ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... know—and wise it were If each could know the same— That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim. ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... that the shape was human. It had the head and shoulders of a man, and a torso that could twist with muscular purpose, and massive hands that could maul and maim. It threw the hapless man from it with a sudden convulsive contraction of its entire bulk. I had never seen a human being move in quite that way, but even as its violence flared its manlike aspect became ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long

... But the greatest maim given to that general reception which the writings of our society have formerly received, next to the transitory state of all sublunary things, has been a superficial vein among many readers of the present age, who will by no means be persuaded to inspect beyond the surface and the rind ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... cannot entend the vnderstanding of a rule, which requireth both time and conceit in perceiuing, but can easilie run to a generall table, which is readier to their hand. By the which table I shall also confirm the right of my rules, that theie hold thoroughout, & by multitude of exa{m}ples help som maim (so) in precepts. Thus much for the right writing of our English tung, which maie seme (so) for a preface to the principle of Reading, as the matter of the one is the maker of the other.—1582. Rich^d. Mulcaster. The First Part ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... as sins die, your souls live, and it shall be a sure pledge to you of that eternal life. And though this be painful and laborious yet consider, that it is but the cutting off of a rotten member, that would corrupt the whole body, and the want of it will never maim or mutilate the body, for you shall live perfectly when sin is perfectly expired, and out of life, and according as sin is nearer expiring, and nearer the grave, your souls are nearer that endless life. If this do not move us, what can be said next? What shall he ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... veterinary surgeon of Montenegro. We had not got more than fifty yards from the hotel when we were forced to beat a hasty and ignominious retreat. At Eastertide, which is one of the biggest feasts in the Greek Church, beggars, halt and maim, blind and tattered, pour into all the larger towns of the country. They come from Turkey, Albania, Bosnia, and Dalmatia—in fact, from everywhere within reach—and make a rich harvest, for the Montenegrin opens his heart, his hand, and his house at Easter. In our ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... or disordered spirits for expressing their troubles, but other men only for the order and harmony he may have brought out of that chaos. The chaos in itself will offend, and it is no part of rational art to produce it. As well might a physician poison in order to give an antidote, or maim in order to amputate. The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better. The depth to which an artist may find current experience to be sunk in discord and confusion is not his special ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store thou shalt fill each jar brim-full, by-and-by, dost thou think that then wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... life-wearied:—Motley band! O! ere they quit the Land How maim'd, how marr'd, how changed from all that pride In which so late they left Orwell or Thames, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... manufacturers, who, utterly stark and bare of the vaguest idea of country life or country people, at once assume that all their "gifted pens" have to do is stupidly to misspell every word; vulgarly mistreat and besloven every theme, however sacred; maim, cripple, and disfigure language never in the vocabulary of the countryman—then smuggle these monstrosities of either rhyme or prose somehow into the public print that is innocently to smear them broadcast all over the face of the country ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... alteration, motion, or change; but all things immutable, unsubject to passion, blest with eternal continuance in a life of the highest perfection, and of that complete abundant sufficiency within itself which no possibility of want, maim, or defect, can touch." ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... am more an au fait in the extermination of elephants et hoc genus omne, and have hitherto reserved my powder and shot for a stag or some similar monarch of the glen. However, after lunch let us see whether I am not competent to kill, or at least maim, one of these same ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... affliction nature has laid on the spiders in compensation for the paltry drop of venom with which she, unasked, endowed them! And here, of course, I am alluding to the wasps. These insects, with a refinement of cruelty, prefer not to kill their victims outright, but merely maim them, then house them in cells where the grubs can vivisect them at leisure. This is one of those revolting facts the fastidious soul cannot escape from in warm climates; for in and out of open windows and doors, all day long, all the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... had received a maim on his limbs, that disabled him from following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got, by making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my mother's keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood. They had had several children; ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... the air, The hell-hounds of the deep, Lurking and prowling everywhere, Go forth to seek their helpless prey, Not knowing whom they maim or slay— Mad harvesters, who care not what ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke

... man no one could meet in arms and overcome? Is it thou that hath sunk him in slothfulness, so that the wolfish lords and tyrant barons upon his marchlands begin to creep out of their castleholds, and tear and maim his people and wrest from them and him ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... to their feet and fought toe to toe. Sledge-hammer blows beat upon bleeding and disfigured faces. No thought of defense as yet was in the mind of either. The purpose of each was to bruise, maim, make helpless the other. But for the impotent little cries of Sheba no sound broke the stillness save the crunch of their feet on the hard snow, the thud of heavy fists on flesh, and the throaty snarl of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... and away went Thomas at a dog-trot again: the lust to punish, maim or kill in his heart. He was not a university man; he had not played cricket at Lord's or stroked the crew from Leander; but he was island-born, a chap for cold tubbings, calisthenics and long tramps into the country ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... from the subtle law that emotional forces, like the forces of the physical sphere, are limited in extent and energy. One can feel so much, and no more. And how can it matter with what pleasure life tries to tempt one, or with what pain it seeks to maim and mar one's soul, if in the spectacle of the lives of those who have never existed one has found the true secret of joy, and wept away one's tears over their deaths who, like Cordelia and the daughter of Brabantio, can ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... and would actually be a good thing if it were enforced all round. I should not object to a law to compel everybody to read two newspapers, each violently opposed to the other in politics; but to forbid us to read newspapers at all would be to maim us mentally and cashier our country in the ranks of civilization. I deny that anybody has the right to demand more from me, over and above lawful conduct in a general sense, than liberty to stay away from the theatre in which my plays are represented. If he is unfortunate ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... but proud and vain. She had a bad disposition, people said. When she was little more than an infant it was a pleasure to her to catch flies, to pull off their wings, and maim them entirely. She used, when somewhat older, to take lady-birds and beetles, stick them all upon a pin, then put a large leaf or a piece of paper close to their feet, so that the poor things held fast to it, and turned and twisted in their endeavours ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... said. "Every Tough in the place is free to maim or kill any Jelly he sees, without fear of restraint or punishment. That should bring them to heel ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... had spent together; and though the friendship, of course, could never again be what it had been, there was something of it left, at least on Prosper's side. To struggle with this man, strike at his face, try to maim and disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground with him, like two dogs tearing each other,—the thought was hateful. His gorge rose at it. He would never do it, unless to save his life. Then? Well, then, God must be ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... certified that, as some benevolent minds have tried to infer, our dumb fellow-creatures would share a future existence, in which it is to be hoped we should neither beat, starve, nor maim them, our ambition for a future life would cease to be "lofty!" This is a notion of loftiness which may pair off with Dr. Whewell's celebrated observation, that Bentham's moral theory is low because it includes justice and mercy ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... It is in life that we create for ourselves real things out of what to some are airy nothings. Real things, against which we often bruise or maim ourselves, while to others they are ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to destroy. All the painful, thousand years' gains of man in his upward climb through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and Cheese- Face were two savages, of ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... dollars. In wounds a distinction is made in the parts of the body. A wound in any part from the hips upward is esteemed more considerable than in the lower parts. If a person wounds another with sword, kris, kujur, or other weapon, and the wound is considerable, so as to maim him, he shall pay to the person wounded a half-bangun, and to the chiefs half of the fine for murder, with half of the bhasa lurah, etc. If the wound is trifling but fetches blood he shall pay the person wounded the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither; you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself is partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... This poem brought him into personal conflict with one Serjeant Bettesworth, who "openly swore, before many hundreds of people, that upon the first opportunity, by the help of ruffians, he would murder or maim the Dean of St. Patrick's." The lines to which the Serjeant took ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... become what by nature they are meant to be, but what society makes them. The generous feelings and higher propensities of the soul are, as it were shrunk up, scared, violently wrenched, and amputated, to fit us for our intercourse in the world, something in the manner that beggars maim and mutilate their children to make them fit for their future ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... mar and maim her, Easy with bonds to bind and bruise; What profit, if she yield her tamer The limbs to ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... lawful to wantonly torture or maim an enemy, whoever or whatever he may be, however great his crime. Not even the express command of a superior officer can justify such doings, because it is barbarity, pure and unmitigated. In war these things are morally just what they ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... between the bogs was a sort of bridge of dry land. By these two avenues the English might assail the Scottish lines. These approaches Bruce is said to have rendered difficult by pitfalls, and even by caltrops to maim the horses. He determined to fight on foot, the wooded country being difficult for horsemen, and the foe being infinitely superior in cavalry. His army was arranged in four "battles," with Randolph to lead ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... prejudice. pervert, prostitute, demoralize, brutalize; render vicious &c 945. embitter, acerbate, exacerbate, aggravate. injure, impair, labefy^, damage, harm, hurt, shend^, scath^, scathe, spoil, mar, despoil, dilapidate, waste; overrun; ravage; pillage &c 791. wound, stab, pierce, maim, lame, surbate^, cripple, hough^, hamstring, hit between wind and water, scotch, mangle, mutilate, disfigure, blemish, deface, warp. blight, rot; corrode, erode; wear away, wear out; gnaw, gnaw at the root of; sap, mine, undermine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... lost, where they are no longer understood, which is the present case. I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maim'd, when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few. How few are there who can read Chaucer so as to understand him perfectly! And if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure. 'Tis not for the use of some old Saxon ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... is a larger animal and far more ferocious, than the black bear. A bullet seems to prick rather than to maim him, and he will attack the hunter with the most desperate and persevering fierceness. Carson was helpless. He had discharged his rifle. The brutes were close upon him, and there were two of them. They could outrun him. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... In one year, 1917, we spent $96,700,000,000 for war. We blew it away to murder, maim, and destroy! Why? Because the blind, brutal crime of powerful and selfish interests made this path through hell the only visible way to heaven. We did it. We had to do it, and we are glad the putrid horror is over. But, now, are we prepared to spend less ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... hunger and yearning, asking for friendship, comradeship, and love. And so, I call them my neighbours—these hurrying throngs who pass me daily. Because they are my neighbours, they are my friends. Their rights are sacred. I will not rob, maim, or kill them, and I will defend them against ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... foe with a single blow of its mighty fore-arm, either crushing in the head or chest by sheer force of sinew, or else tearing open the body with its formidable claws; and so on the other hand he may, and often does, merely disfigure or maim the foe by a hurried stroke. Hence it is common to see men who have escaped the clutches of a grisly, but only at the cost of features marred beyond recognition, or a body rendered almost helpless for life. Almost every old resident of western Montana or northern Idaho has ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... had to determine, some years ago, whether it is in order to allude to the Members as "infesting" the House. Had Milton been called upon for such a decision he would doubtless have ruled that the word is applicable only to Members whose deliberate intention is to maim or destroy ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... that love like thine and mine 'Twixt two in state so sunder'd should be bred, That he who did all worths in him combine, Birth, beauty, wit, wealth, me thus honoured, Me, the poor motley, maim'd by Fortune's spite, Sear'd and o'erworn with tyranny of time, Whose wit was but the wit to learn to write When thou, my Muse, inspir'dst my pupil rhyme. Thou wert the wide world's pride, but I his ...
— Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost • Gregory Thornton

... and unrepented sin. They are poor friends of men who, for the sake of smoothing away the terrible side of the Gospel, minimise or hide the reality of the awful penalties which attach to every transgression and disobedience, because they thereby maim the notion of the divine forgiveness, and lull into a fatal slumber the consciences of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the apple out at arm's length between his thumb and forefinger, but his hand was trembling so that Fred had to be very careful for fear that he would hit the hand and thus maim him for life: but the bullet went square through the apple, and ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish

... into a league with Satan, worship him and attend his sabbaths, and have a familiar, in the shape of a cat, dog, toad, or mole, to obey their behests, transform themselves into various shapes—as a hound, horse, or hare,—raise storms of wind or hail, maim cattle, bewitch and slay human beings, and ride whither they will on broomsticks. But, holding the contrary opinion, you will not, I apprehend, aid Master Potts in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... if then the tyrants dare 340 Let them ride among you there, Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,— What they ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... weren mice, They broken speares all to slice. There might knight find his pere, There lost many his distrere:[13] There was quick in little thraw,[14] Many gentle knight yslaw: Many arme, many heved[15] Some from the body reaved: Many gentle lavedy[16] There lost quick her amy.[17] There was many maim yled,[18] Many fair pensel bebled:[19] There was swordes liklaking,[20] There was speares bathing, Both kinges there sans doute Be in dash'd ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... covers a wide range of deterrent arguments. Whatever goes beyond a verbal demand or insult to the man or his family and involves any use of physical force is included in the meaning of the term, and the action ranges from small injuries to the clubbings which maim and kill. Moreover, social ostracism is to be rated as tantamount to force as a means of preventing a free ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... power of the wretch who has disabled him for life—protecting the victim from the fury of his tormentor, by putting him into his hands! What but butchery by piecemeal can, under such circumstances, be expected from a man brutal enough at first to 'maim' and 'disable' him, and now exasperated by being obliged to pay his full value to the master, and to have, in addition, the daily care and expense of his maintenance. Since writing the above, we have seen the following judicial decision, in the case of Jourdan, vs. Patton—5 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... this would soon bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three days' journey off; for this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few hours. Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a sharp-pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow them to come up ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... paths that lead to their villages: if a man deviates from a path, he is sure to stumble into one of these contrivances, and to be lamed. The holes need not exceed one foot in diameter; and the stake may be a stick no thicker than the little finger, and yet it will suffice to maim an ill-shod man, if its point be baked hard. A traveller could only use these pitfalls where, from the circumstances of the case, there was no risk of his own men, cattle, or ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... fought a mad creature who, careless of defence, unconscious of his own hurts, sought only to maim and rend; whether reeling in desperate grapple or rolling half-smothered beneath my assailants, I fought as a wild beast might, utterly regardless of myself, with fingers that wrenched and tore, fists that smote untiring, feet that kicked and trampled, head that drove and butted—I was indeed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... repugnant duty. Men essentially gentle and essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand, laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw in the public eye, so that they might go out to kill and maim men as gentle as themselves. These men, who were perhaps, as a class, our most efficient soldiers (Frederick Keeling, for example), were not duped for a moment by the hypocritical melodrama that consoled and stimulated the others. They left their creative work to drudge ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw

... to be bought; B——, though rich, was sold, And gave his body up to shame for gold. 620 Let it be bruited all about the town, That he is coarse, indelicate, and brown, An antidote to lust; his face deep scarr'd With the small-pox, his body maim'd and marr'd; Ate up with the king's evil, and his blood Tainted throughout, a thick and putrid flood, Where dwells Corruption, making him all o'er, From head to foot, a rank and running sore. Shouldst thou report him, as by Nature made, He is undone, and by thy praise betray'd; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... declared. "You're past help, Clint. You've tasted blood. Go on, you poor mistaken hero, and maim yourself for life. I wash ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... conscience. He added to a passionate love of mischief a cruel disposition and a violent, ungovernable temper. He had no sympathy with any thing that was good. His boyish pleasures were of the criminal and unfeeling cast. He would rob the nests of birds, and mangle and maim the young ones, that he might be diverted by their mother's cries. He would throw broken pieces of glass into the street, where the children passed barefooted, that they might hurt their feet. He would persuade the little boys to come round the door of his shop, ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... he said. "It happened like an accident, but the man made it happen. I do not think that he intended to maim me for life, but he meant to hurt me badly, and he did. There was not a man or a boy in the furnace room who did not understand, for no workman ever yet let his blow-pipe slip from his hand in swinging a piece. But ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... by primeval forest is but seldom seen in the interior here, though the country cannot be described otherwise than as generally covered with interminable forests. Insects kill or dwarf some trees, and men maim others for the sake of the bark-cloth; elephants break down a great number, and it is only here and there that gigantic specimens are seen: they may be expected in shut-in valleys among mountains, but on the whole the trees are ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely congenial. He had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite for these diversions. We are all puppets in the hands of Fate, and seldom ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... with which they adjusted their muscles to the eccentric movements of the horse under them, anticipating their every action, so far as anyone was able to anticipate the actions of a rage-maddened demon who has only one desire, to kill or maim its rider, and she knew that Calumet was an expert. He was cool, first of all, in spite of his grimness; he kept his temper, he was absolutely without fear; he was implacable, inexorable in his determination ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... asking with a smile, Like wealthy men who care not how they give. But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills, And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me, And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love, Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now, Close over us, the silver star, thy guide, Shines in those tremulous eyes that ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... more dear and precious than their very lives—we, by violently or fraudulently bereaving them of it, do them no less wrong than if we should rob or cozen them of their substance; yea, than if we should maim their body, or spill their blood, or even stop their breath. If they as grievously feel it, and resent it as deeply, as they do any other outrage, the injury is really as great, to them. Even the slanderer's own judgment and conscience ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... to him; he has no employment for his arms, but to eat spoon-meat. Beside, as good maim his body ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... pardon, Or mitigate his doom. A mighty angel, With flaming sword, forbids his longer stay, And drives the loiterer forth; nor must he take One last and farewell round. At once he lost His glory and his God. If mortal now, 580 And sorely maim'd, no wonder!—Man has sinn'd. Sick of his bliss, and bent on new adventures, Evil he needs would try: nor tried in vain. (Dreadful experiment! destructive measure! Where the worst thing could happen is success.) Alas! too well he sped:—the good he scorn'd Stalk'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Bourgogne. At another time M. de Bourgogne put a cracker under her chair in the salon, where she was playing at piquet. As he was about to set fire to this cracker, some charitable soul warned him that it would maim her, and he desisted. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... labour of bees. And then, when thou hast heedfully sought the grace of the goddess, retreat from the pyre; and let neither the sound of feet drive thee to turn back, nor the baying of hounds, lest haply thou shouldst maim all the rites and thyself fail to return duly to thy comrades. And at dawn steep this charm in water, strip, and anoint thy body therewith as with oil; and in it there will be boundless prowess and ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... is a great blessing, and not a curse, should be made clear. It may be stated that various blessings are sometimes converted into sources of destruction when not controlled. A spirited horse is a source of great enjoyment, but if not controlled may maim us for life. Fire is a great blessing and a great joy to us when we are camping by a lake or in the mountains; but, beyond our control, it may cause forest fires. Temper, the capacity for anger, is highly desirable; but it must be controlled or murder may result. We must control the sex ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... Notwithstanding his immense strength his hands and feet were scarcely larger than a woman's, and the small bones cracked like pipe-stems. Though I had not the will to kill him, my own safety demanded that I should maim him as the only other means of making good my escape. As the rock crushed his foot the pain seemed to bring him immediately into full possession of his faculties, and he roared like an enraged bull. I turned ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... respectable community. With whom does the fault lie? On whose head is this murder? Not with the authorities, for they do not countenance crime. Has it come to the pass that, counting on juggleries of the law, criminals believe that they may kill, maim, burn, and slay as they list without punishment? Is this to be another instance of the law's delays and immunity for a hideous crime, compassed by a cunning and cynical trickster of legal technicalities? ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim:— Thus ye teach us, every day, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... for saints. Good people, you do ill to kneel to me. What is it I can have done to merit this? I am a sinner viler than you all. It may be I have wrought some miracles, [4] And cured some halt and maim'd; but what of that? It may be, no one, even among the saints, May match his pains with mine; but what of that? Yet do not rise: for you may look on me, And in your looking you may kneel to God. Speak! is there any of you halt or maim'd? I think you know I have some power with Heaven From ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... who was visited by such a seductress. What is the legend? To get rid of her he burns off his hand, whereupon she falls dead. He prays and she returns to life and becomes a nun. No, Messer Diavolo, I am not Paphnutius. I will not maim myself, nor do I want Carlotta to fall dead; and I cannot pray and effect a pietistic resurrection. I am simply a fool of a modern man tempted out of his wits, who scarce knows what it is ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... or less unconscious insight into the secrets of Nature, offer up human sacrifices on their altars, and when some ignorant European intrudes and calls them "blood-thirsty" we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend the half, and sometimes more than the half, of our national incomes in sharpening ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... yourself, but with the constant thought for others. It is the law of our being that admits of no exception. You may hope that the law of gravitation will be suspended in your case, and leap out of the window; but you will suffer for your mistake; and you will be equally mistaken and equally maim your life, if you think that somehow the law of the spiritual world would admit of exception, and that you can win happiness, goodness, and the full tide of life; become the best that you are capable of being, while remaining isolated, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson

... wayside; go up in smoke, end in smoke &c (fail) 732. render powerless &c adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable^; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple^, maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten^, silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat [Fr.], spike the guns; take the wind out of one's sails, scotch the snake, put a spoke in one's wheel; break the neck, break the back; unhinge, unfit; put ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... all the practices by which he has attempted to maim the Company's records, I shall state one more to your Lordships,—that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents, who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and ostensible agents who are not in the secret. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... France of their arms are reft, Three hundred blades alone are left. The glittering helms they smite and shred, And cleave asunder full many a head; Through riven helm and hauberk rent, Maim head and foot and lineament. "Disfigured are we," the heathens cry. "Who guards him not hath but choice to die." Right unto Marsil their way they take. "Help, O king, for your people's sake!" King Marsil heard their cry at hand, "Mahound destroy thee, O mighty land; ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... "That's always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain I DID say. I reckon he can stand a little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Then you institute laws, and substitute custom to make them null. It is a poor apology for a namesake. But do you assert that in the freest and happiest country-a country that boasts the observance of its statute laws-a man is privileged to shoot, maim, and torture a fellow-being, and that public opinion fails to bring him ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... and of malice forethought, shall maim* another, or shall disfigure him by cutting out or disabling the tongue, slitting or cutting off a nose, lip, or ear, branding, or otherwise, shall be maimed, or disfigured in like** sort: or if that cannot be for want of the same part, then as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... end in smoke &c. (fail) 732. render powerless &c. adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable[obs3]; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple[obs3], maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten[obs3], silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat[Fr], spike the guns; take the wind out of one's sails, scotch the snake, put a spoke in one's wheel; break the neck, break the back; unhinge, unfit; put ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... trust you, my lad," said the captain. "I would not willingly have my name go out as one who would maim and torture a brave lad. My desperation is my excuse for my expedient of last evening. I want you to promise to keep that scene a secret. You may perchance some day have your own sins to cover. I have been reckoned brave and honorable, and I would ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... to be this: That a sentinel shall not use more force or violence to prevent the escape of a prisoner than is necessary to effect that object, but if the prisoner, after being ordered to halt, continues his flight the sentinel may maim or even kill him, and it is ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... London Times. In the first-class English journals a large space is always devoted to police reports, in which the vilest and most vulgar criminal cases are always given in full detail, to gratify the almost universal British craving for filth and cruelty. A drunken vagabond cannot maim his wife but all England must know all about it. Let it be borne in mind that while English writers are never weary of speaking of the blackguardism of the American press, nine tenths of our journals abandoned many years ago the abominable practice of regularly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... scientific instruments of travelling. I have, however, an hour-glass, which embraces four hours in the time of emptying, and which I found useful in Ghadames, but make no use of it en route. I consider the objects of my tour moral, a random effort to maim, or kill, or cripple the Monster Slavery, a small rough stone picked up casually from the burnt and arid face of The Desert, but with dauntless hand thrown at this Titanian fabric of crime and wickedness. However, as my friend Mr. Fletcher advises, it does not prevent ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... they form their opinions—so that to cut off the discussion of other personalities, on ethical grounds, is like any other stiff and Puritanical attempt to limit interests, to circumscribe experience, to maim life. The criticism, then, or the discussion, of other people is not so much a CAUSE of interest in life, as a SIGN of it; it is no more to be suppressed by codes or edicts than any other form of temperamental activity. It is no more necessary to justify the habit, than it is necessary to ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of profit out of the minimum of floor-space. It costs more to increase the floor-space than to maim ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton



Words linked to "Maim" :   mutilate, cripple, lame



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