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Acute   Listen
verb
Acute  v. t.  To give an acute sound to; as, he acutes his rising inflection too much. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books



... exchanging the time of day! Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning to see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she sought to devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing swiftness they were whisked away. They were peepholes in the walls of her prison; and at night she often charmed herself to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... acute ears of the dogs had heard the hoofbeats of the horses in the still night, and they continued to emit a chorus of barks. At last their noise awoke Judge LeMonde, who was dreaming that twenty lawyers were all pleading a case ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... acute pain in the gullet and throat, vomiting of bloody fluid, which effervesces when chalk is added to it; hiccough, tenderness of the belly, cold sweats, pinched face, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... inelastic types succumbed, those only surviving which, through the fortunate possession of more varied reactions, were able to evolve modes of defense equal to the modes of attack possessed by their enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat, escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took refuge in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Clarence, who might possibly maintain that a female was incapable of inheriting. He was indeed unwilling to have it thought that he derived his title from a wife, and when Parliament met on November 7 he obtained from it a recognition of his own right to the throne, though it would have puzzled the most acute controversialist to discover in what that right consisted. Parliament, therefore, contented itself with declaring that the inheritance of the crown was to 'be, rest, and abide in King Henry VII. and his heirs,' without giving any reasons ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... Penelly saw, in the stern gaze before him, anger and a vindictive desire for revenge; he saw therein fierce hate, and an implacable, unchanging condemnation; he felt that Harry was sustaining him there where he had dragged him to make his sufferings more acute, and that, after holding him up for a while, he would loosen his hold, causing him to sink at once into the deep water by the rocks, and be swept away ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn

... me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands of some acute well-educated person, would give me away too much, and watching my opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing, and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... concentrating their attention upon the blockade of Santiago near their own shores, the situation in the distant islands of the Pacific was rapidly becoming acute. All through June, Dewey had been maintaining himself, with superb nerve, in Manila Harbor, in the midst of uncertain neutrals. A couple of unwieldy United States monitors were moving slowly to his assistance from the one side, while a superior Spanish fleet was approaching from the other. On the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... inquired if she had communicated in advance with this visitor. Miss Tramore merely said that he had been upstairs with her mother—hadn't she mentioned it?—and had been waiting for her. She thought herself acute in not putting the question of the girl's seeing him before her as a favour to him or to herself; she presented it as a duty, and wound up with the proposition: "It's not fair to him, it's not kind, not to let him speak to ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James

... far as I could, through the last Balkan crisis, and, Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but if this present crisis, so much more acute than any that Europe has gone through for generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible some more definite rapprochement between the Powers ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... iron—on the side of the ports, nine—set on end so as to break joints, and firmly bolted together, making a hollow cylinder eight inches thick. It rests on a metal ring on a vertical shaft, which is revolved by power from the boilers. If a projectile struck the turret at an acute angle, it was expected to glance off without doing damage. But what would happen if it was fired in a straight line to the center of the turret, which in that case would receive the whole force of the blow? It might break off the bolt-heads ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... septic processes, and also true diphtheria. On the other hand, to the processes produced by monadina belong especially a large series of diseases, which according to their clinical and anatomical features, may be characterized as inflammatory processes, acute exanthemata, and infective tumors, or leucocytoses. Of inflammatory processes, those belong here which do not generally lead to suppuration, such as rheumatic affections, including the heart, kidney, and liver affections, which accompany this process, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... cunning, nor his sword its sharpness. The satire, though partly, is not mainly political; and it is an interesting detail (though it only refreshes the memory of those who knew the facts then or have studied them since) that barely she years before a far more sweeping reform than that of 1832, a very acute judge who disliked and resisted it spoke of 'another reform lunacy' as 'not likely to arise in his time.' And these words, it must be remembered, are put in the mouth of Mr. MacBorrowdale, who is ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... she became conscious of such acute physical and mental suffering that she almost wished she had carried out her purpose the night before. Her headache was equaled only by her heartache, and her wronged, overtaxed nervous system was jangling ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... his despair he entertained serious thoughts of suicide as escape from his dilemma. Meanwhile, we are told, "a perfect hell" raged in the castle; each day brought its scandalous scene between his outraged Queen and himself. His unpopularity with his subjects became so acute that he was hissed whenever he made his appearance in the streets of his capital; and Artemesia was obliged to have police protection to shield her from the ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... than forty feet across at the mouth, but it rapidly closed until it ended in an acute angle, too straight and smooth for an ascent. Certainly it was not this which our pioneer had attempted to indicate. We made our way back—the whole gorge was not more than a quarter of a mile deep—and then suddenly the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that so warmly, that he was constrained to send for Leonardo and delicately urged him to work, contriving nevertheless to show him that he was doing all this because of the importunity of the Prior. Leonardo, knowing that the intellect of that Prince was acute and discerning, was pleased to discourse at large with the Duke on the subject, a thing which he had never done with the Prior: and he reasoned much with him about art, and made him understand that men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least, seeking out inventions ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... the taste of beer," said Tim with fierce conviction. "No, I never had a chance before, but I've got one now, and, by heaven, I'm taking it." Sir William's apprehension grew acute; if money was not the question, what outrageous demand was about to be made of him? Tim went on, "I'm nothing but a dirty, drunken tramp to-day. Yes, drunk when I can get it and craving when I can't. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... hard, so equable in her temper, so impenetrable, that Feemy could not bring herself to tell her tale of woe, which otherwise she would have been tempted to disclose. She had, therefore, the additional labour of keeping her secret from Mary's prying eyes, and Mary was nearly as acute ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... the work of nature or art; the figure of the eyes and tongues is very different. Some are elliptic, but, for the greater part round: some represent an hemisphere, others a segment, others an hyperbola. The glossopetrae are naturally of a conic figure, representing acute, obtuse, regular, and irregular cones. They are also of different colours, especially the eyes; for some of them are of an ash-colour, others liver colour, some brown, others blackish; but these, as most rare, are most ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... when he came, looked Kate over with interest. He was a smooth-faced, powerfully-built man, rough-looking and rough in speech, but he knew his business. It was an acute attack of rheumatism, he said, and he told Kate to keep her father in bed and to keep ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... had had three names in two days, and as many characters. I felt as if I had no home or position anywhere, and was only a stray dog with everybody's hand and foot against me. It was an ugly sensation, and it was not redeemed by any acute fear or any knowledge of being mixed up in some desperate drama. I knew I could easily go on to Edinburgh, and when the police made trouble, as they would, a wire to Scotland Yard would settle matters in a couple of hours. There wasn't a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... removed my camp down Comet Creek, and followed the Mackenzie for a few miles, as far as it was easy travelling along its bank. Comet Creek joins the Mackenzie in a very acute angle; the direction of the latter being east, and the course of the former, in its lower part, north-west. Our anglers caught several fine fishes and an eel, in the water-holes of the Mackenzie. The former belonged to the Siluridae, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... *what may be seen in the distance, experiment again, is the best judge. The human eye is so very different in each man that even the acute examination into what is known of the visual image of the Pleiades shows that the *average visual capacity of classic periods is no different from our own, but still that there was great variety in visual capacity. What enormous ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... ability than people are disposed to give him credit for. He is, or used to be, when I lived in England, considered a good man of business, acute in the details, and quick in the comprehension of complicated questions. Even this is no mean praise, but I think him entitled to more; for, though constantly and busily occupied with official duties, he has contrived to find time to read every thing worth reading, and to make himself acquainted ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... same time an antipathy, for man is somehow estranged from God, and resents Divine intrusion into his life. This is the situation at all times, and therefore in modern times; we only need to remark that when the Atonement is in question, the situation, so to speak, becomes acute. All the elements in it define themselves more sharply. If there is sympathy between the mind and the truth, it is a profound sympathy, which will carry the mind far; if there are lines of approach, through ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... been arrested. Food supplies which would ordinarily reach the civilian population are being taken by the German troops for their own support. The peasants and poor are without the necessities of life, and conditions of starvation grow more acute every day. Even where there is a supply of wheat available the peasants are not allowed to use their windmills, owing to the German fear that they will send ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... in such a condition of our nature. One cannot believe, that so philosophical an enquirer should impute much efficacy as a source of happiness to the mere brute passion; and it is equally unlikely that so acute an observer should discover any thing more refined than such an appetite in the sexual intercourse among so rude a tribe. Probably then his language is fully more poetic than becomes the sober narrator. This, indeed, is nowise uncommon with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... prove the existence of one of them. Yet there are the symptoms. Call it hysteria, or what you will. I call it an injustice on the part of the Higher Power. I suppose that is blasphemy, but I am forced to it. Can that girl help the longings for her rights, her longings which are abnormally acute because of her over-fine nervous system? Those longings, situated as she is, can never be satisfied in any way except for her own harm. Meantime she eats her own heart, since she has nothing else, and heart-eating ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... heart and conscience. You must spare her, citizen, if you do not want her to die. Every thing must be quiet around her, and you must be very careful not to agitate her nerves, lest she have an acute typhoid fever. I will send her some cooling medicine at once, and to-morrow morning I will come early to see how it fares with her. But, above every thing else, Simon, remember to have quiet, that your good wife ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... began to tire of Lucian's rigidity. She began to tire exceedingly of the vigilance she had to maintain constantly over her own manners and principles. Somehow, this vigilance defeated itself; for she one evening overheard a lady of rank speak of her as a stuck-up country girl. The remark gave her acute pain: for a week afterwards she did not utter a word or make a movement in society without first considering whether it could by any malicious observer be considered rustic or stuck-up. But the more she strove to attain perfect propriety of demeanor, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... Perenna felt an unspeakable anguish arise within him, he could not tell why. But it was so violent, the impression became so acute, that he muttered: ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... degree negative, but yet showing that the supposed "failure of natural selection in the case of man" was an unwarrantable conclusion from too limited a view of a very complicated question. The article abounds in acute and fertile suggestions, and its closing chapter, "on the probable future of the human species" under the laws of selection, is highly interesting and noteworthy. The other and shorter essay discusses a special point, and brings out a corollary of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... predestinarian theology, which denies the freedom of the will, is supported by names of great consideration, is cheerfully granted. No man, for example, was ever endowed with a genius more commanding, with logical powers more acute, with a faculty more surprising of writing on recondite subjects with force, perspicuity, and nervous eloquence, than President Edwards. Nevertheless, the correctness of his views is not implicitly to be inferred from his transcendant intellect and ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... water, and we were wonderfully refreshed as we found it here. The way up this canon was very rough and the bed full of sharp broken rocks in loose pieces which cut through the bottoms of our moccasins and left us with bare feet upon the acute points and edges. I took off one of my buckskin leggins, and gave it to Rogers, and with the other one for myself we fixed the moccasins with them as well as we could, which enabled us to go ahead, but I think if our feet had been shod with steel those ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... the other without this break, the voice is said to be joined. The soprano also has to contend with a similar difficulty. It often requires many months of constant and unremitting practice to overcome this natural defect of the vocal organ, and in some voices it is never entirely conquered. An acute ear might often detect the faulty joining of the voice, in both the Grisis, when executing a distant descending interval. This obstacle meets the student at the very threshold of his career; but we have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... the messenger, who stepped forward and delivered what had been given him to say. The hearing of the man holding the horse was acute and ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... as the result of these lessons. She was told in harsh terms that she would have to earn her own living, and not be a burden to others. As she listened to these cruel remarks Pierrette's throat contracted violently with acute pain, her heart throbbed. She was forced to restrain her tears, or she was scolded for weeping and told it was an insult to the kindness of her magnanimous cousins. Rogron had found the life that suited him. He scolded Pierrette as he used ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... little ears, perfect in shape, were, as she said herself, the ears of a mother and a slave. In after days, when our hearts were one, she would say to me, "Here comes Monsieur de Mortsauf"; and she was right, though I, whose hearing is remarkably acute, could ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... beheld the simple manners of the Spartan king and his soldiers, he could not help scoffing at their poverty, and making comparisons between their mean appearance and his own magnificence. All that were with him seemed to be infinitely diverted with the wit and acute remarks of their general, except a single person, who had served in the Grecian armies, and therefore was better acquainted with the manners and discipline of these people. This man was highly valued by Pharnabazus ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... else must sit up with him; thus she, was able to watch the progress of the malady and see with her own eyes the conflict between death and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... so also is a brief unfinished treatise, the work of some period during his exile, on the Common Speech, 'De Vulgari Eloquio.' It has intrinsic interest as the first critical study of language and of literature in modern times, as well as from the acute and sound judgments with which it abounds, and from its discussion of the various forms and topics of poetry, but still more from its numerous illustrations of Dante's personal experience and sentiment. Its object is to teach the right use ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... like wormwood against his heart. That story of Mrs. Home's! That explanation of Jasper Harman's! The story was a queer one; the explanation, while satisfying the inexperienced girl, failed to meet the requirements of the acute lawyer. Hinton saw flaws in Jasper's narrative, where Charlotte saw none. The one great talent of his life, if it could be called a talent, was coming fiercely into play as he sat now and thought about it all. He had pre-eminently the gift of discovering secrets. He was rooting up many ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... suddenly, and I lost my balance, falling my whole length on deck, upon my left side. Nothing broke the fall, my arms being raised to seize a hold above my head, and I came down upon deck with my entire weight, the hip taking the principal force of the fall. The anguish I suffered was acute, and it was some time before I would allow my shipmates even ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... afterward told me, waited till it had grown dark, then began squeaking and rustling at intervals, to draw the attention of the fox when first he should come out into the clearing, for foxes have ears so wonderfully acute, that they are able to hear a mouse squeak twenty rods ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... The Dynasts arouse only an intellectual interest. But no one can read the whole drama without an immense respect for the range and the grasp of the author's mind. Furthermore, every one of its former admirers ought to reread it in 1918. The present world-war gives to this Napoleonic epic an acute and prophetic ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... the Emperor Alexander dined with Josephine at Malmaison. Grief, and a season unusually damp and cheerless, had seriously undermined her health. Notwithstanding acute bodily suffering, she exerted herself to the utmost to entertain her guests. At night she was worse and at times was delirious. Not long after this, Alexander and the King of Prussia were both guests to dine at Malmaison. The health of Josephine ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... in 1766, of the objectionable Stamp Act only postponed the crisis, which became acute when the port of Boston was closed by Parliament, because of the resistance of that city to the importation of East Indian tea. A General Congress of deputies from the several colonies was convened for September 5, 1773, at Philadelphia, in which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... two, and sometimes all four; but, in a great majority of cases, it attacks either one or both of the front feet. A chronic form sometimes occurs, and exhibits symptoms somewhat similar to those of contraction of the hoof; but acute inflammation of the laminae is what is ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... here she hoped to die, although at present she kept Death at a safe distance by hygienic means and dietary treatment. The house was a queer survival of three centuries, with a pattern of black oak beams let into a white-washed front. Its roof shot up into a high gable at an acute angle, and was tiled with red clay squares, mellowed by Time to the hue of rusty iron. A long lattice with diamond panes, and geraniums in flower-pots behind them, extended across the lower storey; ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... one of us. We may be snuffed out without an instant's warning, and for a brief day our friends speak of us with subdued voices. The following morning, while the first worm is busily engaged in testing the construction of our coffin, they are teeing up for the first hole to suffer more acute sorrow over a sliced ball than they did over our, to us, untimely demise. The labyrinthodon was coming more slowly now. He seemed to realize that escape for me was impossible, and I could have sworn that his huge, fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable appreciation ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Half the crew snatched a little sleep. For several hours more the issue hung aggravatingly in equilibrium. Then, with the opening of the channel into Stearn's Bayou the heaviest pressure was relieved. For the moment the acute ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... to the extended boundary between the Argentine Republic and Chile, stretching along the Andean crests from the southern border of the Atacama Desert to Magellan Straits, nearly a third of the length of the South American continent, assumed an acute stage in the early part of the year, and afforded to this Government occasion to express the hope that the resort to arbitration, already contemplated by existing conventions between the parties, might prevail despite the grave difficulties arising in its ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... niched himself, lay the dog. I called to him,—no movement; I approached,—the animal was dead: his eyes protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire. I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favorite,—acute self- reproach; I accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken. Had this been done in the dark? ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... parts. A taste for general information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to sap his manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind, unless, perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not infrequently accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the case of Joseph; the acute stage of this double malady, that in which the patient delivers gratuitous lectures, soon declared itself with severity, and not many years had passed over his head before he would have travelled thirty miles to address an infant school. He was no student; his reading was confined ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... everyone remembers the terrible and grotesque scene that occurred in—, when one of the most acute and forcible of the English judges suddenly went mad on the bench. I had my own view of that occurrence; but about the facts themselves there is no question at all. For some months, indeed for some years, people had detected something ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... SENSE IN FISHES are supposed to be possessed by them in a high degree, and others much more imperfectly. Of the latter kind are the senses of touch and taste, which are believed to be very slightly developed. On the other hand, those of hearing, seeing, and smelling, are ascertained to be acute, but the first in a lesser degree than both the second and third. Their possession of an auditory organ was long doubted, and even denied by some physiologists; but it has been found placed on the sides of the skull, or ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... conditions. For the most part of two days he had wandered over the moor in the bright, cold November weather reconstructing the scene in Israel on Scottish lines, and he entered the pulpit that morning charged with the Epic of Puritanism. Acute critics, like Elspeth Macfadyen, could tell from Carmichael's walk down the church that he was in great spirits, and even ordinary people caught a note of triumph in his voice as he gave out the first Psalm. For the first few sentences of his sermon he ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... limped through the thicket not unlike some awkward, shy quadrumane, stopping here and there to peer out through the openings over the marshes that lay beyond. His sight, hearing, and even the sense of smell had become preternaturally acute. It was the latter which suddenly arrested his steps with the odor of dried fish. It had a significance beyond the mere instincts of hunger—it indicated the contiguity of some Indian encampment. And as such—it ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... or the complaint of ravished virgins blushing to tell their adventures before the listening crowd of city damsels, whilst in thy faithful history thou intermingledst the gravest counsels and the purest morals. Nor less acute and piercing wert thou in thy search and pompous descriptions of the works of nature; whether in proper and emphatic terms thou didst paint the blazing comet's fiery tail, the stupendous force of dreadful ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... mistaken, however, and indeed had endangered what I desired should be considered as a secret; for I afterwards learned that a highly-respectable gentleman, one of the few surviving friends of my father, and an acute critic, [James Chalmers, Esq., Solicitor at Law, London, who (died during the publication of the present edition of these Novels. Aug. 1831.)] had said, upon the appearance of the work, that he was now convinced who was the author ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... Uterus.—Inflammation of the uterus may be either acute or chronic. When acute, as following an abortion, taking cold during menstruation, etc., there is considerable fever, pain in the lower part of the bowels, nausea, and sometimes vomiting, tenderness on pressure over the uterus, pain ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... herself, and her husband entered, to beg, for the first time in their lives, a morsel of food. Yes! timidly—with a blush, of shame, red even to crimson, upon the pallid features of Kathleen—with grief acute and piercing—they entered ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... what Letters may be there: and there is a seal on the Desk, and no key to it; neither must it, in time coming, seem to have been opened, even if we could now open it. A desperate pinch, and it must be solved. Female wit and Wilhelmina did solve it, by some pre-eminently acute device of their despair; [Wilhelmina, i. 253-257.] and contrived to get the Letters out: hundreds of Letters, enough to be our death if read, says Wilhelmina. These Letters they burnt; and set to writing fast as the pen would go, other letters in ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... the gods, and is therefore placed on the borders of heaven to prevent the giants from forcing their way over the bridge Bifrost (the rainbow.) He requires less sleep than a bird, and sees by night as well as by day a hundred miles all around him. So acute is his ear that no sound escapes him, for he can even hear the grass grow and the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... these monitions without active resentment; but when the Caledonian descends from his native heath to warn the Sussex man off Sussex ground—more, to warn the Saxon from his own bury—the situation becomes acute. By taking, however, the precaution of asking at a not too adjacent cottage for permission to ascend the hill, one ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... sensation of coming ill. How it came into my mind I know not; all I know is that I suddenly awoke and came into possession of all my senses with startling swiftness, so that while I had been sound asleep one moment I was wide awake the next, and looking and listening with very eager and acute perception. Also, my heart was beating hard in my breast, as a man's heart will when he suddenly fronts some great danger. And then I knew that evil was at hand, and as I held up my head and looked round I saw ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... scholarly and wisely than was necessary—she listened in placid silence; and whenever the point referred to common life, and was such as came under the grasp of a strong natural understanding, her views were more forcible, and her observations more acute, than his own. In acquired politeness of manners, when it happened that she mingled a little in society, Mrs. Butler was, of course, judged deficient. But then she had that obvious wish to oblige, and that real and natural good-breeding depending on, good sense and good ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... partisans of one side or the other, and all they wanted just now was to attend to their own affairs, important enough to them, whatever they might be to others. This answer satisfied the inquirers, and the travellers got on with less inconvenience than they had expected. They were not generally very acute persons, or they might have suspected that Stephen and his brother, who were fine-looking young men, were not farmers, though Simon, both in his dialect and appearance, showed his real character. At length the coast was reached. It was one of those rocky secluded little ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... has made him mad. Adolphe is not like other men; his passions are stronger; his feelings more acute; his regrets ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... Stoic philosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the manner of some persons who lived about his time—pede nudo Catonem. Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the secret of his principles of composition. That acute, though eccentric observer, had perceived, that to strike and interest the public, the marvellous must be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effects; that giants, magicians, fairies, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... created by the milk business is an acute one. One man can milk not more than twenty cows, and he is a stout farm-hand who can daily milk more than twelve or fifteen. As a farmer must keep between twenty and forty cows to do justice to his acreage, on the average Hill farm, there must be at least two men, and often there must ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... numbers are. The elusive, Protean character of the inter-penetrating realities behind them will be lost to view. The most signal defect of monophysite method is its unquestioning submission to the Aristotelian law of contradiction. The intellectual training that makes men acute logicians disqualifies them for dealing with the living subject. The monophysite Christologians were subtle dialecticians, but the psychology of Christ's being ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... latter fault hurt his intellectual sensitiveness, the former involved, through the excessive laughter it produced, a degree of involuntary exertion which, in his disordered physical condition, caused him acute pain. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... VI. He rewarded Cardinal Sforza for his timely assistance in securing his elevation, by giving him the Vice-Chancellorship he had himself occupied as Cardinal, the town of Nepi and the Borgia Palace in Rome. Dissensions between Alexander and the Sforza family soon became acute; Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and sometime husband of Lucrezia Borgia, was expelled, and his brother, Cardinal Ascanio was included in the papal disfavour. He sought refuge in Lombardy, where he was taken prisoner by Louis XII., of France. Peter Martyr had foreseen, in a measure, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Praecox. James C. Hassall. Psycho-Genetics of Androcratic Evolution. Theodore Schroeder. Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences. Otto Rank and Hans Sachs. Some Studies in the Psychopathology of Acute Dissociation of the Personality. Edward J. Kempf. Psychoanalysis. Arthur H. Ring. A Philosophy for ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... acute genius of his country, suspected there was something in this which he could not entirely comprehend, but, preparing himself to be upon his guard, he proceeded as follows: "Be it as it may, I care not who hears ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... and there was a great depth of snow." Xenophon said: "Upon my word, with weather such as you describe, when our provisions had run out, when the wine could not even be smelt, when numbers were dropping down dead beat, so acute was the suffering, with the enemy close on our heels; certainly, if at such a season as that I was guilty of outrage, I plead guilty to being a more outrageous brute than the ass, which is too wanton, they say, to feel fatigue. Still, I wish you would tell us," said he, "what led to my striking you. ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... the General's feeling towards his sister-in-law, seeing, too, that he and Nelly had hardly ever had a thought or taste that was not in common, a certain affection grew up on Nelly's part for Lady Drummond. An acute observer would have said that the affection had something conscience-stricken about it. There were times when Nelly's eyes asked pardon of the Dowager for some offence committed against her, and this usually happened when the Dowager was making much ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... apt to imagine that the air of Pall Mall, Paddington and Stowe, would have kept away such heavy misfortunes, and that you would have been easier and happier than you are now. I sometimes think, that idle men with good fortunes are happier than busy men; their enjoyments perhaps are not so acute, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... now, Carey clapped his hand once more to his breast, where the pain was most acute, shuddering meanwhile at the thought that his breast ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... of eight business men and lawyers and concerned itself mainly with the financial problems of the University. Mr. Nelson's approach was to the human element in each situation with which this Board had to deal. He served in this capacity for eight years, and became "an acute, piercing trustee." The University Medical School has oversight of the Cincinnati General Hospital, and Mr. Nelson was troubled by the large number of cases of tuberculosis among members of the staff and the nurses and interns. ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... so dull for him that he could not imagine its ever being otherwise in Homeville. It was a year since the world—his world—had come to an end, and though his sensations of loss and defeat had passed the acute stage, his mind was far from healthy. He had evaded David's question, or only half answered it, when he merely replied that the rector had called upon him. The truth was that some tentative advances had been made to him, and Mr. Euston had presented him to a few of the people in ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... valley church. Mrs. Caxton generally went with her, after the first week; but going in her car she was no hindrance to the thoughtfulness and solitude of the rides on horseback; and Eleanor sometimes wept all the way home, and oftener came with a confused pain in her heart, dull or acute as the case might be. She saw truth that seemed beautiful and glorious to her; she saw it in the faces and lives as well as in the words of others; she longed to share their immunity and the peace she perceived ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... primary duties are to feed, tend and wash his charge, and to take it for a walk morning and evening; but he is active and very acute, and many other duties fall naturally to him. It seems hard that he should come under the yoke so early, but we must not approach such subjects with Western ideas. The exuberant spirits of boyhood are not indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... d'adventures—it does not exactly run: the reader does not devour the story as he should. He may be—I am—delighted with the way in which the teller tells; but the things which he tells are of much less interest. One cannot exactly say with that acute critic (if rather uncritical acceptor of the accomplished facts of life and death and matrimony), Queen Gertrude of Denmark, "More matter with less art," for there is plenty of matter as well as amply sufficient and yet not over-lavish art. But one is not made to take sufficient ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... holding the little girl's hand. In the deep silence her hearing became acute, but for some time she could not detect the faintest movement. Hope had begun to spring up. Perhaps, after all, the bookcase had proved too heavy. Dared she venture to go to bed? Drawing her hand gently from Estelle's relaxed hold, she rose softly—then stopped. The dreaded ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... away when the acute ears of Hans caught the sound of groans. We searched about and in a clump of reeds near the foot of the mound, found an old woman with a great spear wound just above her skinny thigh piercing deep into the vitals, but of a nature which is not immediately mortal. One of Robertson's ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... alteration made obtuse or outside a square, in hewing timber, as opposed to acute, or under-bevelling, which is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... passengers, always easily aroused, became more thoroughly stirred up by the bulletins posted late that afternoon, indicating that the tension between the several European chancelleries was becoming acute, and that emperors and kings were exchanging ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... Here, he thought, was the only man who had the courage to carry through the army reform. Others thought as he did. Who so fitted to come to the help of the Crown as this man who, ten years before, had shewn such ability in Parliamentary debate? And whenever the crisis became more acute, all the Quidnuncs of Berlin shook their heads and said, "Now we shall have a Bismarck Ministry, and that will be a coup d'etat and the overthrow of ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... and management. People of a nervous, emotional temperament, especially those who are below normal in weight and physically and mentally negative, may be seriously and permanently injured by fasting. They should never fast except in acute diseases and during eliminative healing crises, when Nature calls for the fast as a ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... raised in their most acute form in South Africa, but they exist also in Australia, and even in Canada, where many Indians suffered heavily from the outburst of anti-Asiatic feeling which swept along the Pacific Coast a couple of years ago. They involve the position ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... rehaired head had relieved the pressure somewhat, but the vanity was still sore. In his new mood he was dreading a blow on that sore spot. He realized what kind of a grudge he was carrying around. A vague sense of an unjust deal in life is more dangerous to the possessor than an acute and concrete knowledge of specific injury. The vagueness causes it to be correlated to insanity. Britt, putting his belated aspirations to the test, hoped that nobody would presume to hit on that sore spot. He knew that such an adventure might be ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... in their locomotion and actions, turtles have well-developed senses. They can see very distinctly, and the power of smell is especially acute, certain turtles being very discriminating in the matter of food. They are also very sensitive to touch, and will react to the least tap on their shells. Their hearing, however, is more imperfect, but as during the mating season they have tiny, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you, and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... though she struggled inwardly, and fain would give no outward show of grief. In truth, an almost spiritual expression had come over her features; the impress of some deep and hidden sorrow, nobly borne, though chasing the rosy hue from her cheeks. Sadder grew the look, and some acute pain wrinkled her brow as she threw aside the book, and covered her face with her hands; while a heavy, yet smothered sigh, struggled forth, as if striving to relieve the ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... wondrous calm and quiet. Within one mile of a watchful foe and not a sound. Once or twice a machine gun awoke wild echoes with brief spluttering bursts ... in silence more acute for the interruption hearts beat faster, hands tightened involuntarily ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... proposed herself—again the word "delicately" must be used —for one of Honora's first house-parties. Only an acute perception could have read in the lady's praise of Hugh a masterly avoidance of that part of his career already registered on the social slate. Mrs. Kame had thought about them and their wonderful happiness ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... day dragged on. They were shelled with varying ferocity all the time. Once they attempted to launch an attack, but it failed, almost before it had started. The enemy artillery observation seemed too acute, the weight of his shells too heavy, and the wood in front ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... mine had been sick in bed for seven years with a nervous derangement, which baffled the most skilful physicians who had visited her. Her senses were so acute, that one morning she fell into convulsions from the effect of distant music which she heard. None of us could perceive it, and we fully believed that her imagination had produced this result. But she insisted upon it; telling ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... resented the man's exuberant and inordinate personality, and made haste to apply to it some drops of that sugared vitriol of which he had the secret. Taine is a fitter critic of the Comedie humaine than Sainte-Beuve; and Taine has come to other conclusions. Acute, coarse, methodical, exhaustive, he has recognised the greatness of one still more exhaustive, methodical, coarse, and acute than himself. English critics fall foul of Balzac's women; but Taine falls foul of English critics, and with the authority of a Parisian by profession declares that ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... of land that go their austere way to the edges of some vacant sea. They suggest, too, those less remote but perhaps even more aloof spaces of solitude which were ever Courbet's theme in his deeper hours, that haunting sense of subtle habitation, that acute invasion of either wind or soft fleck of light or bright presence in a breadth of shadow, as if a breath of living essences always somehow pervaded those mystic woodland or still lowland scenes. But highly ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... sick, and being, on the strength of Mrs. Physick's representations, formally escorted into the office, was found to have a quick pulse and sharp pain in one side. This led to a careful examination of the chest, and the discovery not only of "acute pleurisy," but of "some mischief probably of longer standing in the lungs," yet "no more," the Doctor said, "than many people carried about with them all their lives without knowing it, nor than others, if circumstances brought it to light, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... vocabulary is almost entirely the work of my wife Emily Cox Northup, whose collaboration is by no means restricted to this portion of the book. More than to any other one person I am indebted to Mr. Steven T. Byington of the staff of Ginn and Company, by whose acute and scholarly observations I have ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... time at his feet and showed the clearest symptoms of terror if he so much as moved towards the piano. On seeing this and recollecting how ill the ears of a dog can bear with our music, and how this dislike might be expected to be even greater in a fox, all of whose senses are more acute from being a wild creature, recollecting this he closed the piano and taking her in his arms, locked up the room and never went into it again. He could not help marvelling though, since it was but two days ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett

... the altercation going on within had reached a stage so acute that it was doubtful whether either of the disputants would have heard had she ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... the powerful intellect of Watt went for much in this matter: unquestionably his keen and practised glance enabled him to detect flaws and errors in many cases where an eye equally honest, but less acute, would have failed to discover them; but can we doubt that a moral element was largely involved in the composition of that quality of mind which enabled Watt to shun the sunken rocks on which so many around him were making shipwreck—that it was his unselfish devotion to truth, his humility, and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... tone. It is not at all unlikely that what little of melodic expression the music of the Greeks had, may have rested to some extent upon an unconscious perception of these relations, which, although foreign to their musical theory, may nevertheless have made their way into the ears of these acute minstrels. The discovery of simple tonality seems to have been due to the northern minstrels, for it is here that we find the earliest melodies purely tonalized. But the natural bounds of a melodic tonality as established by these northern harpers have been very much exceeded in modern times, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... "swapped ends" in the interval, and was heavy with about three barrels of water in the cockpit. I bailed out with a grocery box, kept under the seat for that purpose. It had been growing quite cold, and Emery's indisposition—or what was really acute indigestion—had weakened him for the past two days, but he pluckily declined to stop. I was soaked with my last immersion and chilled with the wind, so concluded there was no use having him go through the same experience and I ran his boat while he made a picture. We were both ready to ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... with his teeth. Trimalchio was the only one who was much impressed by these tricks, remarking that it was a thankless calling and adding that in all the world there were just two things which could give him acute pleasure, rope-dancers and horn blowers; all other entertainments were nothing but nonsense. "I bought a company of comedians," he went on, "but I preferred for them to put on Atellane farces, and I ordered my flute-player to play ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... over her useless effort. That evening at seven o'clock, Doublon came with the notification of imprisonment for debt. The proceedings had reached the acute stage. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... numbed—his will seemed paralysed. One feeble helpless effort he made to lock those lips into silence, to chain back the self-betrayal of that unconscious speech. But love had made him weak, and passion had stifled the acute, unerring faculties that once had ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... in the grounds he had been suddenly seized with an acute attack of rheumatism or sciatica in one of his legs, and had been unable to get back to the house alone. Then seeing me stop and step out to look at my mended tire, he had called as loud as he could, to attract my attention, hoping that I'd be kind and neighborly enough to help him to the house; ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... the tall figure of the new-comer, although it was obvious that her unpreparedness was not less than his own, there was to the most acute eye nothing in the remotest degree dramatic about the encounter—hardly more than a cool surprise, and yet there was that ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... and which was carried with them on their first emigration from England. Law, also, he said, had fostered this high spirit of liberty, since the study of it was more universal in America than in any other country in the world, and since that study made them acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, and full of resources. Burke next dwelt on the enlarged population of America, and the increased importance of her commerce, both in exports and imports, and animated by this view of their great ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... was picked out with fly-spots. It smelt—how shall I give it to you? The outgoing tenant had obviously used the hearth as a spittoon. He had obviously supped nightly on stout and fish-and-chips. He had obviously smoked the local Cavendish. He had obviously had an acute objection to draughts of any kind. The landlady had obviously "done up" the room once a week.... Now ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... we should know swiftly the thought of the other. And when the sense of our loss became quite intolerable, we should walk on silently, in a growing horror of the eternity ahead. At last one of us, moved by some acute remembrance of our deadened selves, would go to the Master of the Spirits and, standing before him in rebellion, would say: "Cast us out as unfit for this heaven, and if Thou canst not restore us into that past state at least give us Hell, where we may suffer a common ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... joint should first be carefully marked out with a marking knife, so as to cut across the fibres of the wood. For obtaining the bevel on the edge of the wood a joiner's bevel may be used, and the angle should not be too acute. (See previous chapter.) Take a chisel and pare away a small channel as at A, Fig. 315, to form a small shoulder ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham



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