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Ill-usage   /ɪl-jˈusədʒ/   Listen
Ill-usage

noun
1.
Cruel or inhumane treatment.  Synonyms: abuse, ill-treatment, maltreatment.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ill-usage" Quotes from Famous Books



... with them, came back halting and cursing, most horribly, their messenger; by reason of the ill-usage he had received from you, instead of the reward he had been taught to expect for the supposed good news that he carried down.—A pretty fellow, art thou not, to abuse people for the consequences ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... Turks, who were also Mohammedans, had lately obtained the mastery over the Arabs, and had secured dominion over the Holy Land. They were fierce warriors, ignorant and cruel, who either put the pilgrims to death or subjected them to torture and ill-usage. In 1095 Pope Urban II. came to Clermont to appeal to the Christians of the West to set out on a Crusade—a war of the Cross—to deliver the Holy City from the infidel. After he had spoken the multitude burst out with the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... thus occupied all his days; but the nights were his own. He often stole out unheeded, when all the household were fast asleep, poring over his studies in the fields, by the light of the moon; and thus taught himself Latin and the rudiments of Greek. He was subjected to so much ill-usage at home, in consequence of this love of study, that he determined to leave it. Demanding the patrimony which his father had left him, he proceeded to Treves; and, assuming the name of Trithemius, from that of his native village of Trittheim, lived there for some months, under ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... Malmayns, as she hastened towards Saint Paul's, after the reproof she had received from Doctor Hodges. "Well, it's a disorder that few recover from, and I don't think he stands a better chance than his fellows. I've been troubled with him long enough. I've borne his ill-usage and savage temper for twenty years, vainly hoping something would take him off; but though he tried his constitution hard, it was too tough to yield. However, he's likely to go now. If I find him better than I expect, I can easily make ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... that party from being as good as his word. A tradesman's word should be his bond." This purchase down among the factories had been his own special work, and he had been proud of it. He was, moreover, a man who could ill tolerate any ill-usage from others. "Can't we do anything to 'em, George? Can't we make ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... Montagu's being well and alone, if she could like to accompany the Colonel(807) and you to Strawberry Hill and the Vine, the seneschals of those castles will be very proud to see her. I am sorry to be forced to say any thing civil in a letter to you; you deserve nothing but ill-usage for disappointing us so often, but we stay till we have got you into our power, and then—why then, I am afraid we shall still be what I have been ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... and howling, the great creatures rushed away in all directions through the brushwood, while our allies yelled in their savage delight, following swiftly after their flying enemies. All the feuds of countless generations, all the hatreds and cruelties of their narrow history, all the memories of ill-usage and persecution were to be purged that day. At last man was to be supreme and the man-beast to find forever his allotted place. Fly as they would the fugitives were too slow to escape from the active ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it. He thought that he could trace the hands,—or rather the tongues,—through which the calumny had made its way down to the Hall. He would at once go to the Hall, and tell his uncle all the facts. He would describe the gross ill-usage to which he had been subjected. No doubt he had left the man sprawling upon the pavement, but there had been no sign that the man had been dangerously hurt; and when two days afterward the man had vanished, it was clear that ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... had passed between them with reference to the perilous drive. Alma spoke as if her illness were merely natural, due to nothing in particular; but her husband fancied that she wished to atone, by sweet and affectionate behaviour, for that unwonted ill-usage of him. He saw, too, beyond doubt, that the illness seemed to her a blessing; its result, which some women would have wept over, brought joy into her eyes. This, in so far as it was unnatural, caused him some disturbance; on the other hand, he was quite ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... is a traveller to some house in the wine trade. And yet he comes here, the bullying rascal! fretting the poor lass to skin and bone with pretending he can take the law of her for not living with him, and that after all his ill-usage.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... upon people fell on the scoffers and (5) them and beat them severely. beat them severely. On their When they returned to their ship return to the ship the seamen (5) they complained of (5) complained of this ill-usage, this usage; and upon that Blake whereupon Blake sent a messenger sent a trumpet to the viceroy to to the viceroy to demand the demand the priest who was the priest who was the instigator of chief (1) instrument in that the outrage. ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... especial of a pewter cup, their communion plate, which Mr. Eliot had given them, and which was much treasured by their native pastor. The General interfered in their behalf, but could not protect them from much ill-usage. The teacher was sent with his old father and young children to Boston, where Mr. Eliot saw and cheered him before he was conveyed to Deer Island. There, in December, Eliot, with Gookin and other friends, frequently visited the Indians, now five hundred in number, and found ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... as no doubt was his purpose, or were you in his hands to be mewed in a convent, then were your sister worth the wedding; but the Master will never wed her while you live and have friends to back you, and his father, the Regent, will see she has no ill-usage. You'll do best for yourself and her too, as well as Sir David, if you make for Dunbar, and call ben your uncles of Athole and Strathern.—How now, Rab? are ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... witnesses, and the formulation of a charge of blasphemy in consequence of his answer to the high-priest acknowledging himself to be the Messiah (Mark xiv. 61-64). The early hours before the day were given over to mockery and ill-usage of the captive Jesus. When morning was come, the sanhedrin was convened, and he was condemned to death on the charge of blasphemy (Mark xv. 1; Luke xxii. 66-71), and then was led in bonds to the Roman governor for execution, since the Romans had taken from the sanhedrin the authority to execute ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... York with feelings like those with which the mediaeval exile from Florence or Pisa was wont to regard his native city. They saw in it the home of enemies who had robbed them, the prison-house of gallant friends penned up to die of wanton ill-usage in foul ships' holds in the harbour. When at last the king's troops left the city, it was felt that a great day of reckoning had arrived. In September, 1783, two months before the evacuation, more than twelve thousand men, women, and children embarked for the Bahamas or for Nova ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... mind, and she has heard my views often enough; but I should like you to know this, and to remember that I who say it am a man of many faults, but one virtue: never in my life have I broken my word. If I find that my niece has disappeared through any ill-usage of yours, I will risk the few years that may be left to me of life, and I will shoot you like a dog the first time ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... responses loudly and plainly,—so loudly and plainly, that the parish clerk could by no means equal him, though with tremulous voice he still made the attempt. "T' squire'd like to be squire, and parson, and clerk, and everything; so a would," the poor clerk would say, when complaining of the ill-usage which ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... walking direct into the heart of it, a ferocious Russian mutiny, or uproar from below, which would have ruined everything in few minutes more. (Mannstein, p. 130 (no date, April-May, 1742.) He suffered, with excellent silence, now and afterwards, much ill-usage from above withal;—till Friedrich himself, in the third year hence, was lucky enough to get him as General. Friedrich's Sister Ulrique, the marriage of Princess Ulrique,—that also, as it chanced, had something to do with this Peace of Abo. But we ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... woman, she was always ready to bestow upon others. Her affections were unusually warm and deep, but they could find no outlet. She met, on the one hand, indifference and sternness; on the other, injustice and ill-usage. It is when reading the story of her after-life, and learning from it how, despite her masculine intellect, she possessed a heart truly feminine, that we fully appreciate the barrenness of her early ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... contrary, cruelty is always accompanied with cowardice, and also with perfidy, when that is called for by the circumstances of the case; and that habitual acts of cruelty to other creatures, will, nine times out of ten, produce, when the power is possessed, cruelty to human beings. The ill-usage of horses, and particularly asses, is a grave and a just charge against this nation. No other nation on earth is guilty of it to the same extent. Not only by blows, but by privation, are we cruel towards these useful, docile, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... the deep; out of the deep of sorrow, perhaps, and bereavement, and loneliness; or out of the deep of poverty; or out of the deep of persecution and ill-usage; or out of the deep of sin, and shame, and weakness which he hates yet cannot conquer; or out of the deep of doubt, and anxiety—and ah! how common is that deep; and how many there are in it that swim hard for their lives: may God help them and bring them safe to land;—or ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... in it that brought it closely home to him and his Government, that it became impossible for him not to concern himself in the business. There had been so much talk about Mr. Bonteen lately, his name had been so common in the newspapers, the ill-usage which he had been supposed by some to have suffered had been so freely discussed, and his quarrel, not only with Phineas Finn, but subsequently with the Duke of Omnium, had been so widely known,—that his sudden death created more momentary excitement ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... point of that knife hidden within the soft crumb; and as his mental capacity was nearly as dark as his skin, and his faith in the whites, unfortunately—from the class he had encountered and from whom he had received more than one piece of cruel ill-usage—far from perfect, he saw in imagination that sharp point suddenly thrust right through and into his black flesh as soon as he tried to ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... way across the bottom of the Kalowrat-strasse and through the centre of the city to the narrow ways of the Jews' quarter, his heart somewhat misgave him as to the result of his visit. He knew very well that a Christian was safe among the Jews from any personal ill-usage; but he knew also that such a one as he would be known personally to many of them as a Christian rival, and probably as a Christian enemy in the same city, and he thought that they would look at him askance. Living in Prague all his life, he had hardly been above once ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... barbarous manner: but I do not complain; the world shall be my judge; the world will do me justice, if you will not. I appeal to every body who knows me, have I ever given you the slightest cause for ill-usage? Can you accuse me of any extravagance, of any ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... own safety, afford to let me go, lest I should give information to the police. At any cost he would keep me under observation, and as far as I could see I should find it extremely difficult to escape. Yet, on the other hand, I felt certain that as long as I obeyed, I should be free from actual ill-usage. That he could be cruel on occasion I had no doubt, and he had certainly managed to overawe my little stock of courage. But when I had said my prayers that night, I felt stronger and braver; before ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... ill-usage in childhood by the cousin who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never wholly trusted her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have told her domestic sorrows to any ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... our haste, that without wisdom we are lost. Wisdom is, after all, but one attitude to life among many. It happens to be the one which will stand the hardest wear, because it is prepared for all ill-usage. But hard wear is not the only purpose which an attitude may serve. We may demand of an attitude that it should enable us to exact the utmost from ourselves. To refuse to accommodate oneself to the angularities of life or to make provision beforehand for its catastrophes is, indeed, folly; ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... Civilised. The word requires definition. But looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will make him. Herein he is the noblest specimen of humanity that ever walked the earth. Therefore, the white man exterminates his race. But the time will come when by mere force of numbers the black race will predominate, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... the old woman looked up glad and grateful, but then she shook her head sadly. "You can't do it, they are coming again to-night," she said, "and the ill-usage will kill me;" and she pushed up the sleeve of her gown and showed how her ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... negative a character as was possible. Had he been a dog, he would never have thought of doing anything for his own protection beyond turning up his four legs in silent appeal to the mercy of the heavens. He was an absolute sepulchre in the swallowing of oppression and ill-usage. It vanished in him. There was no echo of complaint, no murmur of resentment from the hollows of that soul. The blows that fell upon him resounded not, and no ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... of this picture, after it had been hung in the Doelen or assembly hall belonging to Captain Cocq's company, was as troublous as the later life of Rembrandt. Years afterwards when, blackened with smoke and ill-usage, it was removed from the Doelen to the Hotel de Ville, the authorities, finding that it was too large for the space it was destined to occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side. This is proved by a copy of the picture made by Lundens ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes

... "the talent," and so come to grief. Then "the talent" has to be mildly admonished from time to time lest they force the pace, set a bad example, and lure the other men on to "racing." This last leads to slovenly shearing, ill-usage of ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... early tutor, of writing more easily in French than English. Some of his writings were originally composed in French. He was, according to Bowring, elected to one of the King's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was apprehended' the appointment was declined.[207] He was at a boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably rougher. In June 1760 his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as a commoner at Queen's College. He came into residence in the following October, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... comely in hue, and most nobly clothed, and best of all educated. For they all had in declaration, by their quick lives, that they would have their clothes of one hue. Some had white, some had red; some had eke good green; and variegated cloth of each kind was to them wondrous odious; and each ill-usage they accounted unworthy. ...
— Brut • Layamon

... concert; the man hits about him in all directions, and is in the act of establishing an indisputable claim to gratuitous lodgings for the night, when the entrance of his wife, a wretched, worn-out woman, apparently in the last stage of consumption, whose face bears evident marks of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly equal to the burden—light enough, God knows!—of the thin, sickly child she carries in her arms, turns his cowardly rage in a safer direction. 'Come home, dear,' cries the miserable creature, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... Her surroundings cowed her, he judged. To Dryhope she was a stranger, a foreigner; to her Dryhope and the Dryhopedale folk were perilous matter. Her general appearance was that of a child who had never had anything but ill-usage; she flinched at every sudden movement, and followed one about with her great unintelligent eyes, as if she was trying to comprehend what they showed her. Her features were regular and delicate; her brows broad and eyebrows finely arched, her chin ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... visited the Foxes, whom he found in extreme ill-humor. They were incensed against the French by the ill-usage which some of their tribe had lately met with when on a trading-visit to Montreal; and they received the faith with shouts of derision. The priest was horror-stricken at what he saw. Their lodges,—each, containing from five to ten families,—seemed in his eyes like seraglios; for some of the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... attendant on an ill-sorted match. She was passionately attached to her husband, by whom she was treated with a callous, yet polite indifference, which, to one whose heart was as tender as her judgment was weak, was more painful perhaps than absolute ill-usage. Sir Philip was a voluptuary, that is, a completely selfish egotist, whose disposition and character resembled the rapier he wore, polished, keen, and brilliant, but inflexible and unpitying. As he observed carefully all the usual forms towards his lady, he had the art to deprive ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... however, that slaves, in any event, should be forfeited by all those who had shown themselves unworthy to hold them by neglect or ill-usage; by all public functionaries, or such as had held offices under the government; by ecclesiastics and religious corporations; and lastly,—a sweeping clause,—by all who had taken a criminal part in the feuds ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... in 1745, my friend, Tom Gumming, the Quaker, said, he would not fight, but he would drive an ammunition cart; and we know that the Quakers have sent flannel waistcoats to our soldiers, to enable them to fight better.' BOSWELL. 'When a man is the aggressor, and by ill-usage forces on a duel in which he is killed, have we not little ground to hope that he is gone into a state of happiness?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, we are not to judge determinately of the state in which a man leaves this life. He may in a moment have ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... white neighbours escorted him home with a band of music. More frequently, unscrupulous employers, especially on the frontiers of civilization, will try to defraud their native workmen, or will provoke them by ill-usage to run away before the day of payment arrives. But there are no lynchings, as in America, and the white judges and magistrates, if not always the juries, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... have been, should have been the first to provoke the Roman Government to depart from its universal maxims of toleration, liberality, and indifference.... The use of the torture to extort confession.... The choice of women to be the subjects of this torture, when the ill-usage of women was, in like manner, abhorrent to the Roman ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... smallest indications of his will. He has all the ardour of friendship, and fidelity and constancy in his affections, which man can have. Neither interest nor desire of revenge can corrupt him, and he has no fear but that of displeasing. He is all zeal and obedience. He speedily forgets ill-usage, or only recollects it to make returning attachment the stronger. He licks the hand which causes him pain, and subdues his anger by submission. The training of the dog seems to have been the first art invented by man, and the fruit of that art was the conquest and ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... Queensberry supported his wife, and although the King pressed him to remain, resigned his office of Admiral of Scotland—though Gay wrote to Swift,[9] "this he would have done, if the Duchess had not met with this treatment, upon account of ill-usage from the Ministers," and that this incident "hastened him in what he had determined." The affair created an immense sensation in Court circles. "The Duchess of Queensberry is still the talk of the town. She is going to Scotland," Mrs. Pendarves ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... out to his brother, moved and reconciled to him by the recent fear of his death, all his grievances against the Tuscan Court, against his wife, and against her lover. A letter of Sir Horace Mann makes it clear that Charles Edward persuaded his brother that his ill-usage of his wife (which, however, Mann, with his spies everywhere, had vouched for at the time) was a mere invention, and part of an odious plot by which Alfieri had imposed upon the Grand Duke, the Pope, the society of Florence and Rome, nay, upon Cardinal ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... their former boarding mistress since they left her house at the close of the summer term, several months before. But she was so elate about the arrival of the new family that all memory of their former ill-usage seemed to have escaped her, and she grasped the hands of both and shook them cordially. "I am glad to see you," she exclaimed; "why have you not called on us this fall? Mary Madeline has often said I wish Jenny and Amy would come in, it would seem so much like old times. Here, my dear," ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... author's observation, which suggested such a character. This poor unfortunate man's name was David Ritchie, a native of Tweeddale. He was the son of a labourer in the slate-quarries of Stobo, and must have been born in the misshapen form which he exhibited, though he sometimes imputed it to ill-usage when in infancy. He was bred a brush-maker at Edinburgh, and had wandered to several places, working at his trade, from all which he was chased by the disagreeable attention which his hideous singularity of form and face attracted wherever he came. The author understood him ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... to Mostyn's disclaimers and denials. The Justice saw the state of affairs. Squire Rawdon and Mrs. Rawdon testified to Dora's ill-usage; the butler, the coachman, the stablemen, the cook, the housemaids were all eager to bear witness to the same; and Mrs. Mostyn's appearance was too eloquent a plea for any humane man to deny her the mother-help she ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... emancipation, not from man (as some foolish persons fancy), but from the devil, "the slanderer and divider" who divides her from man, and makes her live a life-long tragedy, which goes on in more cottages than in palaces—a vie e part, a vie incomprise—a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary, self-willed, self-conceited martyrdom, instead of being (as God intended) half of the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot which makes this world endurable. Towards ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... in London, the order was repeated, and Mr. Gibson was made prisoner, his house plundered, and his saddle horse, draught horses, and oxen carried off. He was imprisoned at Boston, Lincoln and "Tattors-Hall Castle," where he had "very ill-usage for 17 weeks." He was sequestrated from his benefice and an "intruder," named Obadiah How, put in charge. He was now accused of defending episcopacy, "refusing the covenant," &c. He retired to a "mean house," about a mile from Horncastle, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... words to Marinette). I have done it; it is thus I can revenge myself; if this step torments him, it will be a great consolation to me... Brother, you perceive a change in me; I am resolved to love Valere, after so much ill-usage; he shall become ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... no longer able to bear with your ill-usage, I think proper to be gone from you; however, that you may not want company, I have left you the bear, as the most suitable companion in the world, that could be ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... of earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they to fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave himself up to the captain of the Bellerophon, and whose health was now shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common people of this nation known all that was being perpetrated in their name, the Duke of Wellington and all his myrmidons could not have withstood the revolt against it, and were such treatment to be meted ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... reluctantly, followed them at a distance; neither the ill-usage he had received, nor the pain of his wounds, could make him unmindful of Master Merton or careless of his safety. He knew too well the dreadful accidents which frequently attend these barbarous sports, to be able to quit his friend till he had once ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... the darkness had hung so long over her prayers. Filled with unforgiving bitterness against her mother she had asked God to forgive her, scarcely deeming her fault one to be repented of. A brief struggle against the memory of bitter ill-usage and fierce wrong inflicted by her mother, and Mary drew a deep free breath. Her eyes filled, and meekly folding her hands she held them toward ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... show Mr. Bennett how fully we do justice to his situation, and allow for the irritation natural to such cases as his, where the loss is clothed with contumely, and the wrong is barbed by malice. But, for all that, we do not think such confidential communications of ill-usage ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... the queen was dead he repented of his cruelty to her; and now that he thought his ill-usage had broken Hermione's heart, he believed her innocent; and now he thought the words of the oracle were true, as he knew "if that which was lost was not found," which he concluded was his young daughter, he should be without an heir, the young Prince Mamillius being ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... followed. Owing to the amicable relations which had always existed between them and their masters, due no doubt in part to the Government having long accorded them legal rights and protection against cruelty and ill-usage, many continued in the same service, and after a little temporary difficulty in some cases, almost all returned to work either for their old or for new, masters. The Government took the very proper step of placing every emancipated slave under the surveillance of the police-magistrate. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... water-babies in thousands, more than Tom, or you either, could count.—All the little children whom the good fairies take to, because their cruel mothers and fathers will not; all who are untaught and brought up heathens, and all who come to grief by ill-usage or ignorance or neglect; all the little children who are overlaid, or given gin when they are young, or are let to drink out of hot kettles, or to fall into the fire; all the little children in alleys and courts, and tumble-down cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... the aborigines of America, they cling with tenacity to primeval habits and customs, resisting every attempt made by the white population, to make or persuade them to conform to civilized life. The ill-usage they have been subjected to by the Americans, may, however, account for this in a great measure. They were described to me by one of the residents as a dissipated set of fellows, who squandered all they got in "fire-water," as they term ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... a child. It may immediately show an obvious physical one; it may later develop a mental one. It may never seem to have injured it at all, and yet it may have shocked a sensitive nature and injured it permanently. Crime is evolved from perverted natures, and natures become perverted from ill-usage. It merges into a peculiar structure of the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... cut off his father. In the meantime Leod hearing of Murdo's resorting to these bounds, that he was kindly entertained by some of the inhabitants, and fearing that he would withdraw the services and affections of the people from himself, and connive some mischief against him for his ill-usage of his father, he left no means untried to apprehend him, so that Mackenzie was obliged to start privately to Lochbroom, from whence, with only one companion, he went to his uncle, Macleod of Lewis, by whom, after he had revealed himself to him alone, he was well received, and ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... he had almost ever been in his life, when he saw Roger kick her repeatedly, in different parts of her body, pull her by the tail, and haul up her head with a rope he had found in the stable. The poor cow never attempted to rise; and it was clear that she wanted comfort, and not ill-usage. Oliver determined that, when Roger came back, he would not speak a ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... what they can to blast Mrs. Bargrave's reputation, and to laugh the story out of countenance. But by the circumstances thereof, and the cheerful disposition of Mrs. Bargrave, notwithstanding the ill-usage of a very wicked husband, there is not yet the least sign of dejection in her face; nor did I ever hear her let fall a desponding or murmuring expression; nay, not when actually under her husband's barbarity; which I have been witness to, and several ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... Butler replied, "That he had not attended to the risk of ill-usage which the poor woman might undergo at the hands of the rabble, and that he would give her the necessary admonition in private, instead of bringing ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... oligarchy for another few years; but the end will be the same.' The extract reflects the tone of all the British press with the exception of one or two papers which considered that even the persistent ill-usage of our people, and the fact that we were peculiarly responsible for them in this State, did not justify us in interfering in the internal affairs of the republic. It cannot be denied that the Jameson Raid had weakened the force of those who ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... none of the scumbling and glazing and re-working so common in the English portraits of the time. It is to this that the canvases owe their admirable freshness which makes them look as if painted yesterday. The heads have all of Stuart's pearly gray and rose tones unimpaired by ill-usage or restoration. The clothes and accessories are more swiftly and summarily done, the silver lace and the high lights being touched in with amazing sureness and cleverness. The composition and arrangement is pleasing, and Stuart's besetting fault of putting his ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... to have been the most magnificent of his erections. Unfortunately, in neither case were his works allowed to remain as he left them. The sculptures with which he adorned Shalmaneser's palace were violently torn from their places by Esar-haddon, and, after barbarous ill-usage, were applied to the embellishment of his own residence by that monarch. The palace which he built at the south-eastern corner of the Nimrud mound was first ruined by some invader, and then built upon by the last Assyrian king. Thus the monuments of Tiglath-Pileser II., come to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... laughed; and Paragot bidding me sit on the wreck of a cane-bottomed chair, gave me my first lesson in Greek Mythology. He talked for nearly an hour, and I, ragged urchin of the London streets, my wits sharpened by hunger and ill-usage, sat spell-bound on my comfortless perch, while he unfolded the tale of Gods and Goddesses, and unveiled Olympus ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... know the common people well: they are laborious, grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased. When I or any other governor say to one of the people, 'Brother, this or that must be done,' he crosses his hands on his breast, and says, 'It shall ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... love and charity, and exhorting her to return to the cloister. But this she persistently refused to do; and fearing lest she attempt to fly before her foot was healed, and so expose herself to hunger and ill-usage, he promised not to betray her presence, or to take any measures toward restoring her to ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... spontaneous mutiny and aggression. While the generals within (who either took the communication more patiently, or at least, looking farther forward, felt that any attempt to resent or resist the ill-usage of the Spartan admiral would only make their position worse) were discussing with Anaxibius the details of the march just enjoined—the soldiers without, bursting into spontaneous movement, with a simultaneous and fiery impulse, made a rush back to get possession of the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... Joyce, in the most perfectly composed manner, "before I see this man (whose business I can guess at) I have three important questions to ask of you. In the first place, were you not a witness, last night, of his cruel ill-usage of that poor child? (Mr. Blyth told me of it.) The fellow actually beat her, did ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... captain told us a more coherent story than Smart had been able to give us, and said within a fortnight of their leaving us they were made prisoners by the pirates; that they dragged out lengthened days of misery, want, and ill-usage, only held up by the knowledge that our future deliverance depended upon their escape. And when time went on, and he thought it was almost impossible such a helpless party of women and children could survive and bear up under ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... picture. It is the living; but opposite it arises the dead. Let us turn aside from the crowd of the mediaeval city, and look at what the workmen have just laid bare, or what the merchant has just brought from Rome or from Greece. Look at this: it is corroded by oxides, battered by ill-usage, stained with earth: it is not a group, not even a whole statue, it has neither head nor arms remaining; it is a mere broken fragment of antique sculpture,—a naked body with a fold or two of drapery; it is not by Phidias nor by Praxiteles, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... said, "there is something I wish to say to you. Will you not sit down?" and he placed a chair for her. "What I have to say is most serious, and whatever your feeling of ill-usage may be, I hope you will try to look at the matter also a little from my side. The situation is this: Your father, as you doubtless know, is the inventor of a mechanism which will make the nation possessing it mistress of the world. That nation must be Germany. Apart from my ambition for ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... a bit further and come home with me. Dick Crosby was my good friend, and you have saved the kitten and maybe Nellie herself from ill-usage. It's dinner time, so you are just right. Run, Nellie, there is ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis



Words linked to "Ill-usage" :   abuse, ill-use, ill-treatment, child neglect, child abuse, cruelty, mistreatment, persecution, maltreatment, inhuman treatment



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