DILIGENCE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Diligence

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dˈɪlədʒəns/ /dˈɪlɪdʒəns/ Listen

noun

Diligence n.

1.

The quality of being diligent; carefulness; careful attention; the opposite of negligence.

2.

Interested and persevering application; devoted and painstaking effort to accomplish what is undertaken; assiduity in service. "That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence."

3.

(Scots Law) Process by which persons, lands, or effects are seized for debt; process for enforcing the attendance of witnesses or the production of writings.

To do one's diligence, give diligence, use diligence, to exert one's self; to make interested and earnest endeavor. "And each of them doth all his diligence To do unto the festé reverence."

Synonyms: Attention; industry; assiduity; sedulousness; earnestness; constancy; heed; heedfulness; care; caution. Diligence, Industry. Industry has the wider sense of the two, implying an habitual devotion to labor for some valuable end, as knowledge, property, etc. Diligence denotes earnest application to some specific object or pursuit, which more or less directly has a strong hold on one's interests or feelings. A man may be diligent for a time, or in seeking some favorite end, without meriting the title of industrious. Such was the case with Fox, while Burke was eminent not only for diligence, but industry; he was always at work, and always looking out for some new field of mental effort. "The sweat of industry would dry and die, But for the end it works to." "Diligence and accuracy are the only merits which an historical writer ascribe to himself."

Diligence n. A four-wheeled public stagecoach, used in France.

See images of 'Diligence'

Etymology of 'Diligence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Diligence" Quotes from Famous Books

... made good. We have considered the different interests which the confederates have in the success of this war, and the different shares they have contributed to its support: we have with our utmost care and diligence endeavoured to discover the nature, extent, and charge of it, to the end, that by comparing the weight thereof with our own strength, we might adapt the one to the other in such measure, as neither to continue your Majesty's subjects under a heavier burden, than ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... I am speaking of, I had, by strict diligence and sobriety, so pleased my employer, that I had risen to be his foreman; and although I still superintended and occasionally worked at the cooperage, I was intrusted with the drawing off and fining of the wines, to prepare them for market. There was an Ethiopian slave, who worked under ...

— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... a carpenter and himself a respected printer, who by cannily marrying the daughter of the man to whom he was apprenticed, and by diligence in his vocation, rose to prosperity, so that by 1754 he became Master of The Stationers' Company and King's Printer, doing besides an excellent ...

— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... of a higher strain. Let him learn that everything in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, and not at that of others, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other men; for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him practise the minor virtues.[684] How much of human ...

— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to His disciples and admonished them to diligence. Having cautioned them against unguarded utterances or actions at which others might take offense, He proceeded to impress the absolute necessity of unselfish devotion, toleration and forgiveness. The apostles, realizing ...

— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com