Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Briefless   Listen
adjective
Briefless  adj.  Having no brief; without clients; as, a briefless barrister.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Briefless" Quotes from Famous Books



... went on, "cannot for a moment believe this absurd libel to be true. For him to turn a Congresswalla is as impossible as it is for the leopard to change his spots. He is a man of genuine worth, and neither a disappointed candidate for Government employ nor a briefless barrister. He is not one of those who, after a brief sojourn in England, return aping our dress and manners, audaciously try to thrust themselves on Anglo-Indian society, and finally go back in dejection. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... muttered to herself. "All the balls in the world won't get that girl married as she wishes. She has set her heart upon that briefless barrister. I saw it as plain as daylight last season. As to entertaining all this cohue of aborigines, Caroline might spare her trouble and her money, as far ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... had at the time an interesting and miscellaneous staff of lay-curates. He asked no questions as to religious opinions, but in general the men who volunteered under him—civil servants, a young doctor, a briefless barrister or two—were men who had drifted from received beliefs, and found a pleasure and freedom in working for and with him they could hardly have found elsewhere. The two who had planted their outpost in what seemed to them a particularly promising corner ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are likely to need, and to attack him, if his surrender should be essential to their victory, at his weakest point. Men with political ambition are encouraged to aspire to preferment and are assured of corporate support to bring it about. Briefless lawyers are promised corporate business or salaried attorneyships. Those in financial straits are accommodated with loans. Vain men are flattered and given newspaper notoriety. Others are given passes for their families ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... Mr. BRIEFLESS, Junior, of Pump-handle Court writes, "I have carefully considered the circular you have forwarded to me, and am distinctly of opinion that my favourite reading is, 'With you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... even known by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth, a lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted. [127] Interest, therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open house ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that he had since become, had been much with him. Then they had often discussed together the objects of their ambition and future prospects; then Tom Towers was struggling hard to maintain himself, as a briefless barrister, by shorthand reporting for any of the papers that would engage him; then he had not dared to dream of writing leaders for The Jupiter, or canvassing the conduct of Cabinet ministers. Things had altered since that time: the briefless ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... Now I knew that the product of Camelot Freres is not bought as cheaply as British beer, and I also had learned that two short weeks before Mr. Lionel Dacre was at his wits' end for money. Yet he was still the same briefless barrister ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... by the spurs of necessity, duty, and affection, have run his race manfully, and reached the goal with the very foremost. Happily the question is an open one, for his affairs took another turn, which may have given Scotland one legal lord the less. For some time the briefless barrister diligently frequented the Edinburgh courts, on the lookout for business. If he had few cases, he had excellent company in another "limb," of his own kidney, John Gibson Lockhart. These two roystering pundits, having ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... Lucian Denzil was a briefless barrister, who so far departed from the traditions of his brethren of the long robe as not to dwell within the purlieus of the Temple. For certain private reasons, not unconnected with economy, he occupied rooms in Geneva Square, Pimlico; ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... with a queer volume. There may be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground floor, who drives off to Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends' kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Griggs in his lodgings wrote 'barrister-at-law' after his name, and had the right to do so. He had languished in chambers, briefless and half starving, either because he had no talent for the bar, or because he had failed to marry a solicitor's daughter. He himself was inclined to attribute his want of success to the latter cause. But he had not wasted his time, though he was ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... wrong there," observed the Briefless Barrister of mature years. "I think mine is a shade worse. I give you my word that during the last twelve months I have not earned enough fees to pay the rent of my Chambers and the salary of my Clerk. And things are getting worse and worse. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various

... Inn. Arthur Ansard at a briefless table, tete-a-tete with his wig on a block. A. casts a disconsolate look ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... given celebrity to any man of letters possessed of three thousand a year, with leisure to write quartos: as the legal acuteness displayed in his Remarks on Judge Eyre's Charge to the Jury would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his profession. This temporary effusion did more—it gave a turn to the trials for high treason in the year 1794, and possibly saved the lives of twelve innocent individuals, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... was a briefless barrister, frequenting the courts on their own peregrinations, to catch the eye of client or judge, he was at Clinton, Illinois, where a case came up of a very modern nature. To be sure, "the Shrieking Sisterhood" was then invented for the advocates of female suffrage and anti-slavery. But ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... wig and gown during the following session, and the delicate face that was so grave and refined looked very picturesque with the luminous eyes gleaming out from under the grey horse-hair. He joined the ranks of those 'Briefless Barristers' whose business it is to walk the hall of the Parliament House in search of clients. He had either one or two briefs, but he gave them away as he never acted as an advocate. His mother treasured the shillings he got for them among her relics ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... that Christmas-tide at Montfort Court. Thither flocked the cousins of the House in all degrees and of various ranks. From dukes, who had nothing left to wish for that kings and cousinhoods can give, to briefless barristers and aspiring cornets, of equally good blood with the dukes,—the superb family united its motley scions. Such reunions were frequent: they belonged to the hereditary policy of the House ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... cards has all come down with a run,' writes Fitzjames (March 14, 1873); 'Gladstone is out of office; Coleridge is going out; my Evidence Act and all my other schemes have blown up—and here am I, a briefless, or nearly briefless, barrister, beginning the world all over again.... I have some reason to think that, if Gladstone had stayed in, I should, in a few weeks, have been Solicitor-General, and on my way to all sorts of honour and glory.' However, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... upon her as from a great height, but she in return had been able to ridicule them. They had chosen their part, and she had chosen hers,—and had thought that she might climb to the glory of wealth and rank, while they would have to marry hard-working clergymen and briefless barristers. She had often been called upon to vindicate to herself the part she had chosen, and had always done so by magnifying in her own mind the sin of the men with whom she had to deal. At this ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... successful blacksmith, if that is in accordance with your endowment, respected by everybody within a radius of twenty miles because you can shoe a horse better than anybody else, than it is to be starving in an attic as a briefless lawyer, or lounging about the country as a minister of the gospel, eating yellow-legged chicken at the expense of the sisters, when you have no ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... women, in the temporary bitterness of some disappointment, have hastily made marriages which will embitter all their future life,—or which at least make it certain that in this world they will never know a joyous heart any more. Men have died as almost briefless barristers, toiling into old age in heartless wrangling, who had their chance of high places on the bench, but ambitiously resolved to wait for something higher, and so missed the tide. Men in the church have taken the wrong path at some critical time, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... on the 6th of June, 1606, in a family of lawyers, had been destined for the bar from his infancy; he was a briefless barrister; his father had purchased him two government posts, but his heart was otherwise set than "on jurisprudence;" in 1635, when he quietly renounced the honor of writing for the cardinal, Corneille had already had several comedies played. He himself said of the first, Melite, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot



Words linked to "Briefless" :   patronless, unpatronised



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com