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Disfigurement   Listen
noun
Disfigurement  n.  
1.
Act of disfiguring, or state of being disfigured; deformity.
2.
That which disfigures; a defacement; a blot. "Uncommon expressions... are a disfigurement rather than any embellishment of discourse."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disfigurement" Quotes from Famous Books



... had missed its footing on a treacherous mountain track and she narrowly escaped with her life. She was thrown on a rock, and her forehead was crossed henceforth beyond remedy with a long broad mark. She had never cared much for company, and her disfigurement made her care for it less. She could not help feeling that everybody noticed it, and most people in truth noticed nothing else. She was 'the girl with a scar.' As time went on, this self-consciousness, or rather consciousness ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... rulers of Iran, and to become in a short time masters of Asia. Such a chief they found in Cyrus,* son of Cambyses; but although no more illustrious name than his occurs in the list of the founders of mighty empires, the history of no other has suffered more disfigurement from the imagination of his own subjects or from the rancour of the nations he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... highest. In conversation we do not insist on constant precision of phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of argument. Apostrophe is made natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the situation. Even vehement hyperbole, which is nearly always a disfigurement in written prose, may become impressive or delightful, when it harmonises with the voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid and exuberant converser. Hence Diderot's personality invested his talk, as happened in the case of Johnson and of Coleridge, with an ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... to Casa Felice. When she had found that the accident had disfigured her frightfully, and that the disfigurement would be permanent, she had at first thought of killing herself. But then she had been afraid. Life had abruptly become a horror to her. She felt that it must be a horror to her always. Yet she dared not leave it then, in her home in ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... bedridden. Her son, a strong man of thirty years or more, was doing something strange when the priest unexpectedly entered. He was suffering from a scrofulous ulcer in the neck, and it was a hideous disfigurement. He had just been standing before a broken piece of looking-glass, stuck in the rough plaster of the wall; and he hastily hid something as the priest entered. Father Letheby's suspicions were instantly aroused. And he said hastily,—for he detested ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... done any thing to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him to draw upon assurance—to feel "quite unabashed," and at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation. Her closed eyelids were not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay as though they might open again at any moment; and she had long eyelashes, which were considered a grave disfigurement. And her voice was strong, and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valley swains. So that she had ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... arrival, the grand duke was taken with the small-pox, and his natural ugliness was rendered still more revolting by the disfigurement it caused. On the 10th of February, 1745, when Catharine had been one year at Moscow, the grand duke celebrated his seventeenth birthday. In her journal Catharine writes that Peter seldom saw her, and was always glad of any excuse by ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... sensation has been caused in the town by a deplorable ebullition of local Hooliganism, which has resulted in the wanton disfigurement of the splendid statue of Sir Eustace Briggs which stands in the New Recreation Grounds. Our readers will recollect that the statue was erected to commemorate the return of Sir Eustace as member for the borough of Wrykyn, by an overwhelming majority, ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... Rhetta's shadow, brightened on the floor at his feet, and spread its beam upon his breast like a golden stole. The old wound on his check bone was a scar now, irregular, broad from the crude surgery that had bound it but illy. Its dark disfigurement increased the somber gravity of his face, sunburned and wind-hardened as any ranger's who rode that prairie waste. From where he stood Morgan could not see the girl's face, only her restless hand on the bridle rein, the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... described did much to dissipate the alarm of Jack Carleton for his friend. The overwhelming smile on the countenance of the chieftain made it attractive, for it was free from the disfigurement of hate. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... solicitude to the Conservators, and such attention as is by them devoted to this end is mainly confined to the Upper Thames, and not to the London river. Legislation to preserve natural beauty, or prevent disfigurement, has practically only been possible in recent years, and the wish to do so, though shared by most classes, is not yet so pronounced as it ought to be. What the Conservancy has been able to do, under these circumstances, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... making way through the wood show limbs naked from thigh to toe, smooth as moulded bronze, and proportioned as if cut by the chisel of Praxiteles. Their bodies above also nude; but here again differing from the red men of the prairies. No daub and disfigurement of chalk, charcoal, vermilion, or other garish pigment; but clear skins showing the lustrous hue of health, of bronze or brown amber tint, adorned only with some stringlets of shell beads, or the seeds of a plant peculiar to ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... and Bertrand his nephew conduct the caravan, dressed in rough boots (which hurt Bertrand's feet), blue hose, and coarse cloth frocks. The innocent paynims give them friendly welcome, though William is nearly discovered by his tell-tale disfigurement. A squabble, however, arises; but William, having effected his entrance, does not lose time. He blows his horn, and the knights springing from their casks, the town is taken. This Charroi de Nimes is one of the most spirited, but one of the roughest, of the group. The catalogue of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... swift, agile grace, caught the savage beast by the neck, and dragged it from its desired prey. Then, with the point of her little, silver- sandaled foot, she turned the fallen face of the dead man slightly round, so that she might observe it more attentively, and noting its livid disfigurement, smiled. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... last detachment behind, and had the country to ourselves. The disfigurement of war has not touched the fields of Artois. The thatched farmhouses dozed in gardens full of roses and hollyhocks, and the hedges above the duck-ponds were weighed down with layers of elder-blossom. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... girl's white face as she fell fainting into her mother's arms told the detective that their fears had been, to that extent at least, groundless. The girl's lovely features, although drawn and contorted by fear, showed no signs of the disfigurement they feared. ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks

... of joint. I examined that feature carefully in the looking glass, but could not discover anything usual about it. It was quite beyond me to imagine that our innocent little baby could have anything to do with the possible disfigurement of my face, but she did absorb the fondness of the whole family, myself included, and she became my father's playmate and darling, the very apple of his eye. I used sometimes to wish I were a baby too, so that he would notice me, but gradually ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... produce great disfigurement and inconvenience, and there is a risk of injury to the brain. The seventh nerve may be involved, giving rise to facial paralysis. Punctured wounds of the orbit are especially dangerous. Wounds apparently confined to the external parts often ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... or a murder, although the heroine for a moment meditates the one and goes to the theatre to behold the other. The dialogue, usually a weak point with this writer, is here for better managed than usual, having her customary piquancy, with less of disfigurement from flippancy and bad puns. The plot shows none of those alarming pieces of incongruity and bathos which have marred some of her stories. And one may fancy that it is not far to seek for the originals of Azarian, Charmian, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... comparison, Dinah fell into the snares that surround the provincial woman. If a Parisian woman's hips are too narrow or too full, her inventive wit and the desire to please help to find some heroic remedy; if she has some defect, some ugly spot, or small disfigurement, she is capable of making it an adornment; this is often seen; but the provincial woman—never! If her waist is too short and her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up her mind to the worst, and her adorers—or they do not adore her—must take her as she is, while the Parisian always ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... lighted, damaged by that contact—at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated, felt unworthy. The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better judgment pronounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she believed, so pronounce later when she had time to get a true perspective. But, just now, she could ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... dream interpretation is capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not, however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content serves only ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... castle. The failure to carry out the agreement with Dewa no Kami afforded ample reason for the extremity to which this latter's rage was carried. By all accounts he had lost a bride, the acknowledged beauty of the land, apart from the great influence of the connection. Perhaps his own hideous disfigurement was involved. He determined to lie in wait for the journey down to Himeji, Honda's fief; and kill or carry off the lady. The Sho[u]gun's Government got wind of the purpose. The lords were storming with wrath, and a public fracas was feared. All composition ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... STAINS.—They are of no importance, as far as the health of the infant is concerned. If situated in the face, however, they frequently cause great disfigurement, as the claret-stain, which may be seen sometimes to occupy nearly half the face. But they happily do not increase in size, remaining stationary through life; and as any operation that might be proposed for their removal, would only cause an equal, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... treacherously with the strength of her love for her sister, with the vehemence of the indignation that she felt for her sister's sake, the terrible temptation of her life fastened its hold on her more firmly than ever. Through all the paint and disfigurement of the disguise, the fierce despair of that strong and passionate nature lowered, haggard and horrible. Norah made an object of public curiosity and amusement; Norah reprimanded in the open street; Norah, the hired victim of an old woman's ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... disfigurement," returned John, "but the ole governor, he's a right smart sprinklin' of 'em, one squar' on the tip of his nose, and five or six more on ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely weary, exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of non-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defend my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and my clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now hides ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... better accommodation for casual visitors to the observatory than the spiral staircase and lead-flat afforded. As this cabin would be completely buried in the dense fir foliage which enveloped the lower part of the column and its pedestal, it would be no disfigurement to the general appearance. Finally, a path was to be made across the surrounding fallow, by which she might easily approach the scene of ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... should meet him, and to the printer's reader who passed his abominable blunder. The most indurated professional writer who takes any interest in his work likes it to appear before the public without this kind of disfigurement; but it is only the beginner who experiences the full fury of pain a misprint can inflict, and I think that even the beginner must be a poet to know all ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... had been thrown upon the corpse to conceal the loathsome disfigurement of the face, over which masses of thick coagulated blood were laid in patches and streaks, that set all recognition at defiance. The formation of the head alone, which was round and short, denoted it to be not De Haldimar's. Not a feature was left undefiled; and even the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... St. Michel well, and, like the writer, have spent several days upon the island, cannot but feel that such a scheme would not only be a frightful disfigurement, but would entirely destroy all the associations and the poetry of the place. Practical people will say, "Modern improvement cannot stop in its march forward to consider poetical associations and mere artistic whims and fancies." Now, this would be a possible argument if Mont St. Michel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... to all appearance, her charming face will not receive any disfigurement by this cruel enemy to beauty, I am sure you will congratulate me upon a felicity so desirable: but were it to be otherwise, if I were capable of slighting a person, whose principal beauties are much deeper than the skin, I should deserve ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... nor indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel because it contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our nature leads us to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... welcome you to our poor abode.' And as he drew near: 'Ah, so young and so fair, to stain his soul with the blood of a fellow-creature! Oh, my poor young man, repentance, repentance with us here in nature's sanctuary, where the grandeur of God's works, without any of the disfigurement of man, is all that remains to you now. I welcome you, my poor fallen son;' and he stretched out his hand. But our hero simply gave the blasphemous vagabond a look of scorn ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... because we feel that not to believe this would be to turn the whole scheme of the universe, as we understand it, into one little short of nonsense. We do not stop to reason: such things are because they must be; they cannot cease to be without total disfigurement of the plan of our conception. Intuition points, and almost impulsively perhaps, in one direction. There is "an intelligent Author of Nature or Natural Governor of the world." Life is not made up of haphazards. ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... environment through any of the conventional instruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, university mental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physical disfigurement,—such as short stature, hare-lip, etc.,—repress the full psychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then a psychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place, and society accuses the revolutionist of ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... I think I provided for all of them in the case under discussion. Who, for instance, would conceive that you would have taken the trouble to call upon the American consul for the cipher message that has caused all this unpleasant row and facial disfigurement?" ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... degli Innocenti) at Florence. The chief drawback in these light arcades was their inability to withstand the thrust of the vaulting over the space behind them, and the consequent recourse to iron tie-rods where vaulting was used. The Italians, however, seemed to care little about this disfigurement. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... was also broken, indented, and blackened in several places, as if it had been battered with some heavy weapon. Somehow or other, there was nothing that fixed my attention so much as this door! I examined it—- I laid my hand upon it. Why should it have been so hastily built up, to the disfigurement of the wall? for the coarseness of the plaster and the rudeness of the work denoted haste. I was standing opposite to it, and asking myself this question, when I heard a heavy foot approaching; and before I had time to move, I saw the astonished face of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... hopeless. Had she not seen me pilloried as a shameful vagrant? Had she not seen me persecuted, tormented—the byeword, the laughing-stock for the offals of Falmouth town? Had I not been pelted by refuse? Was I not made hideous by disfigurement? How could I win her love? Then I hated the Tresidder tribe more than ever. They had robbed me of my home, my heritage, my all, and now through them I must be loathed by the one, the light of whose eyes burned into my heart like fire. But more than all this she would be with Nick Tresidder ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... man lying face downward where the soldiers had broken through, Aurora uttered a sharp cry. The figure was familiar. Quickly she turned the face to, the light. It was pale and bloodless; the only disfigurement was a small purple wound in a slight depression near the temple, but the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... and indeed she did have two ghastly looking scars, but she had exaggerated her disfigurement, for despite the scars hers was not an uncomely face to look upon. Her eyes were beautiful, and the detective was led to say with chivalrous ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey

... a beautiful island, dividing the Falls of Niagara, called Goat Island: they have thrown a bridge across the rapids, so that you can now go over. A mill has already been erected there, which is a great pity; it is a contemptible disfigurement of nature's ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... chubby; she had the neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream, or hasty pudding, that quivers when it is touched. Jesus, whose expression was the only interesting feature of the picture, a certain manly gravity that was shown without any disfigurement of the character of childhood, was also round and well-fed, and the scene took place on a lawn strewn with flowers—primroses, violets, and strawberries painted in fine stipple with the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... And above all, don't let us forget India, the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to the monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aureng Zeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the Bishop, though with a gratification he could not restrain, "would you recall the demon I strove to exorcise! It is true that the change is less of a disfigurement than I feared—ahem, hoped—but after all, may not the wish to please the eye of man be excusable? You shall receive a rich reward. Do you happen to have such a thing as change for a five-pound ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... chang'd Into som brutish form of Woolf, or Bear, 70 Or Ounce, or Tiger, Hog, or bearded Goat, All other parts remaining as they were, And they, so perfect is their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely then before And all their friends, and native home forget To roule with pleasure in a sensual stie. Therfore when any favour'd of high Jove, Chances to pass through this adventrous glade, Swift as the Sparkle of a glancing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... separately. The first alternative he is resolved on guarding against by summoning Ajax to his aid; of the last two, he prefers the abandonment of the arms, i.e. [Greek: syle], spoliation of the corpse, to [Greek: aeikeia], its disfigurement."—Kennedy.] ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... you were with us, I expect," Angelica answered, and then she turned her attention to Edith, but not by a sign did she betray, the slightest consciousness of the latter's disfigurement—unless making herself unusually agreeable was a symptom of commiseration; and in this she succeeded so thoroughly that when the others rose to go Edith did not feel inclined to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... thought he might have future use for the sand, and he knew he had no other present place of deposit for it; and there it remained, defying all my mother's ingenuity and love of beauty to convert it into any thing useful or ornamental, or other than a cruel eye-sore and disfigurement to our small domain. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... breast—'from his mother,' was engraven on it—who had come into the net across the river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery. This time, I was forced into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose expression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and 'come up smiling.' Oh what this large dark man cost ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... It was the Pug now, a curious whispering sibilancy in his voice, due no doubt to the disfigurement of his lips. "Give Pinkie a chance to shoot his spiel before youse injure yerself throwin' a fit! ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... but in no place between the two Gates I am referring to is the earthwork inside the parapet laid bare, nor has a breach, properly so called, been anywhere made. The doors and gate walls of both gates are smashed through, but all along, despite serious disfigurement, the parapet is ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... (p. 246) of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face; and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... contemplation, when he heard a little noise behind, and, looking round, he was surprised to see a gentleman close to him, who was also riding a mule. The stranger was richly dressed, and was altogether a very distinguished-looking person, but the excessive brilliancy of his eyes was a disfigurement. They shone in his head like two bits of burning charcoal. 'What do you want, cruel beast?' said St. Martin. This would scarcely have been saintly language had he not known with whom he had to deal. The gentleman thus impolitely addressed returned a soft answer, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... showed no change. It suddenly came to me, that, by some voluntary disfigurement of his exquisite beauty of feature, this man had cut away the lusts for pleasure, fame, and influence. What woman would kiss that ghastly cheek? What sycophant could fawn and smirk in that chilly presence? The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the most consummate sculptor, that can bring it to the eyes of men, and free it from all the incumbrances, which, till he makes application of his art to it, surround the statue, and load it with obscurities and disfigurement. The man, who, without long study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and expects to withdraw the curtain, will only find himself disgraced by ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... through the trees. Up to the sky-line, a thousand feet aloft, all is green; and that, instead of being, as in Europe, stone or moor, is jagged and feathered with gigantic trees. How rich! you would say. Yet these West Indians only mourn over its desolation and disfigurement; and point to the sheets of gray stems, which hang like mist along the upper slopes. They look to us, on this 30th of December, only as April signs that the woodlands have not quite burst into ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... blotched and mottled heads, faces, arms and hands. Their feet were very long and narrow, their legs long and thin. Their faces were kindly; the mottled skin, brown and white and black, seemed not to make them ugly. It was not a disfigurement; it seemed oddly familiar and ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... rehabilitation or disability compensation of injured workers of other establishments.[155] Compensation also need not be based exclusively on loss of earning power, and an award authorized by statute for injuries resulting in disfigurement of the face or head, independent of compensation for inability to work, has been conceded to be neither an arbitrary nor oppressive ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... at the paper to free the door. It flashed across her mind that Miss Todd might have something to say about the disfigurement of the wall, but as she had gone so far, that did ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... evidently acutely sensitive of his present disfigurement. Might I suggest that his most recent encounter was with a ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... often associated with epilepsy; in all cases it is a frightful and hereditary disfigurement of humanity, which appears, from the upshot of various conflicting accounts, to be on the increase. The neurotic constitution from which it springs is however not without its merits, as has been well pointed out, since a large proportion of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... which was inserted into the cartilage of each ear, which, of course, had previously been pierced and gradually distended to receive it. To Harry's unsophisticated eye these so-called ornaments constituted a hideous disfigurement, and he was glad to see that they were worn by men only, the ears of the women being for the most part innocent of artificial adornment, although a few of the ladies wore ear-rings of somewhat similar character to those ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... frankly with almost the childish popular belief in a dragon rolling a loathly bulk painfully, and breathing smoke. But note that the dragon, when it is thrown back into the pit, falls without sound; note that the combats are without the ghastly and foolish modern tricks of blood and disfigurement; note how the crowds pose as in a good picture, with slow gestures, and without intrusive individual pantomime. As I have said in speaking of "Parsifal," there is one rhythm throughout; music, action, speech, all obey it. When Bruennhilde awakens after her long sleep, the music is an immense thanksgiving ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... sometimes see in the face of the young that is sadder than the ravages of any disease or the disfigurement of any deformity. Shall I tell you what it is? It is the mark that an impure thought or an unclean jest leaves behind it. No serpent ever went gliding through the grass and left the trail of defilement more palpably in its wake ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... located in front and on the inside of the hock, varying from the size of a walnut to that of a man's fist. It very seldom causes lameness, but is a serious disfigurement and blemish. ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... sight of one's self, however little fond one may be of it, so thickly is the room set round with rose-draped mirrors. For the moment, O friends, I will own to you that I appear to myself nothing less than brutally ugly. I know that I am not so in reality, that the disfigurement is only temporary, but none the less does the consciousness deeply, deeply depress me. My nose is of a lively scarlet, which the warmth of the room is quickly deepening into a lowering purple. My quick passage through the air has ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... roar, Beseeching God to turn the cruel North And break it that her son might come once more; He was New England's maiden pale and pure, Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain; He was the mangled body of the dead; He writhing did endure Wounds and disfigurement and racking pain, Gangrene ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... dimensions; but three enormous flaps were made to rear their unwieldy height in the air, and were strengthened, stiffened, and supported, against the envious winds, to the torment of the wearer, and to the disfigurement of his person. All through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... have taught the protective power of this operation against the most loathsome and one of the most fatal diseases that ever afflicted the human race. And that mother who is careless and indifferent in this matter neglects for her children a means of preventing disfigurement and saving life, compared with which all other means ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... Being, must have been sent home with irresistible power to his mind, by the recollection that the mere sight of that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an ever-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just add, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton apokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe moi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina me huperairomai}; the meaning being thus given,—"and that I might not be exalted, a thorn ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... the second, with the letters "I L." The set of the Lateran was painted by order of Nicholas III. (1277-1280). Since his time the basilica has been burned to the ground twice—in 1308 and 1360—and restored three times. Its last disfigurement, by Innocent X. and Borromini in 1644, concealed whatever was left standing of the old building, and made it impossible for us to study its iconic pictures, if there were any still existing. We possess better information ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... in the way mostly of depressions—"wells" as they are termed by repairers—where the feet of the bridge rest. These are caused by the lid of the case coming down on to the hard wood of the bridge and pressing its feet like dies, into the comparatively softer pine (diagram 5). It is a disfigurement to the violin and is sometimes in a bungling manner altered by inlaying—badly in most instances—square pieces of wood to bring the surface level. This kind of damage to the violin has been attributed to the prolonged ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... on his favourite perch, the music-stool, swinging idly to and fro, with his customary serenity of demeanour. He moved to meet her with a quiet smile of welcome. A piece of strapping-plaster across his left temple was all that remained of his recent disfigurement. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... shaven. The women, on the contrary, wore their hair "a la pompadour;" the coarse kinky locks were sometimes a foot or more above their heads, and trained square or round like a boxwood bush. Their features were of the pronounced African type, but, notwithstanding this disfigurement, were not unpleasing in appearance. The figures of all were very good, straight, well developed, some of the young men having bodies that would have graced a Mercury or an Apollo. Their hands were small, showing no evidences of work, only the cruel marks of shackles. These in ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... fashion. Asano apologised to Graham for this offensive sight, but excused himself on the score of the convenience of this route. "This is what I wanted to see," said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see," trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... trembling. She would have begged for death upon her knees rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers lingering with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and about her throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the disfigurement, and she knew it. She could not pray for mercy. She could only lie quite still, as she was bidden, trying to control the shuddering of ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... incompetent persons are not to be permitted to maltreat classical music at their pleasure, how is it that the best and most influential musicians have not taken this matter in hand? why have they themselves led classical music into such a groove of triviality and actual disfigurement? In many instances the objection in question is merely put forward as a pretext for opposition to all efforts in the direction I have indicated. Indolent and incompetent persons form an immense majority: and, under certain circumstances, incompetency and ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... compounded for, from 900 solidi aurei, gold pieces, for a murder, downwards to the smallest breach of the peace. Each limb has its special price. For the loss of an eye, half the price of the whole man is to be paid. A front tooth is worth 16s., solidi aurei; their loss being a disfigurement; but a back tooth is worth only 8s. A slave's tooth, on the other hand, is worth but 4s.; and in every case, the weregeld of a slave is much less than ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... to prevent Sylvia's seeing the child that day and night, and the next morning came the specialist. He held out no hope of saving any remnant of the sight, but the child might be so fortunate as to escape disfigurement—it did not appear that the eyeballs were destroyed, as happens generally in these cases. This bit of consolation I still have: that little Elaine, who sits by me as I write, has left in her pupils ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... lamented sorely over the fact that he had a dark blood mark, about the size of a three-penny piece, upon his shoulder. Her husband, however, consoled her by pointing out that—as it was a boy—the mark did not matter in the slightest; whereas—had it been a girl—the mark would have been a disfigurement, when she attained to the dignified age at ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... that the story of the German atrocities is true, for Germany has admitted enough crimes to convince any sane man that she would stick at nothing. No action could be too cruel, no deed too beastly, no torture too diabolical, no insult too keen, no impulse too filthy, no disfigurement too hideous, no vandalism too shocking, no destruction too complete, no stooping too low that Germany would hesitate to do where she has opportunity. When Germany boasted of the murder by drowning of women and babes on the high ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... stayed with the Rev. Dr. Savin, and spent a very pleasant two days' rest here in his hospitable hands. It was in this district I first came across goitre, the first time I had seen it in my life. It is a terrible disfigurement. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... my boy; but we'll forgive you. Come on." Mark hurriedly covered as much of his disfigurement as he could with his cap, and followed his messmate on deck, where, to his horror, he found officers and men all drawn up, with the shabby port and town of Goldby glorified by the setting sun, and all beneath the quarter-deck awning bathed in ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... balsam she bestowed. How Sarabhanga's dwelling-place They sought; saw Indra face to face; The meeting with Agastya gained; The heavenly bow from him obtained. How Rama with Viradha met; Their home in Panchavata set. How Surpanakha underwent The mockery and disfigurement. Of Trisira's and Khara's fall, Of Ravan roused at vengeance call, Maricha doomed, without escape; The fair Videhan(55) lady's rape. How Rama wept and raved in vain, And how the Vulture-king was slain. How Rama fierce Kabandha slew; Then to the side of Pampa drew, Met Hanuman, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... the measure of human nature; but, at all events, it exceeds the bounds of poetic exhibition, even though such a monster should ever have appeared in the course of ages. But, overlooking this, what a disfigurement, nay, distortion, of history! He has stripped her, too, of her wonderful charms; not a trace of oriental colouring is to be found. Mahomet was a false prophet, but one certainly under the inspiration of enthusiasm, otherwise he would ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... it appears that Rutherford Hope, though at first affected with disgust by her disfigurement, and convinced that no healthy man could consort with 'so unnatural a woman,' had come at last to regard her as a possible wife—before he was confronted with the sudden temptation to secure a fortune by wedding Betty Ochiltree, in compliance with the conditions of her millionaire uncle's ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... be remarked, that when any thing is the matter with a person's face, be it a wall-eye, a squint, a cancer, very bad teeth, or any such disfigurement or malady, it is impossible to look at any other spot—it is sure to fix your gaze, you can look at no other part; you cannot keep your eye off it, unless you are more generous, or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... if you like,' said her husband patiently, '"a lucid interval." Don't please look at my face like that, Sheila. Think—think that it's just lupus, just some horrible disfigurement.' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... her face hidden, while she half heard him, it struck her suddenly, a shaft of light in darkness, that, indeed, he might help her. She dropped her hand to look at him and, with all its tear-stained disfigurement, he thought that he had never seen anything more heavenly than that look. It sought, it sounded him, pleaded with and caressed him. And, with all its solemnity, there dawned in it a tenderness deeper than any that he had ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... benefactions appear to have been lost by lapse or otherwise about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yet smaller letters, and a less prominent position, might have served the same purpose, with less disfigurement, and less offence to the decent humility which best befits the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... upon the back of her fair neck, and another upon either temple. Upon the forehead, as was then customary, the hair was divided into smaller curls, and cut much shorter, which fashion was a great disfigurement to beauty, and certainly left her less handsome than she otherwise would have appeared. Still, however, she was very, very lovely; and the fine lines of her features, the clear rich brown of her complexion, the glorious light ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... the vials of his wrath upon Paul,—to his own sore disfigurement. He threatened me with all the pains and penalties of the inquisition if I did not immediately promise to hold no further communication with Mr Lessingham,—of course I did nothing of the kind. He cursed me, in default, by bell, book, and candle, —and by ever so many other things beside. He ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... rises the choir, a gaudy and tasteless excrescence added by the Christians. Even Charles V., who laid a merciless hand on the Alhambra, reproved the Bishop of Cordova for this barbarous and unnecessary disfigurement. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... mention on which side the disfigurement was to be seen, and she ate an excellent dinner and talked very brightly to her host, who could not think why his wife had taken an evident dislike to the little woman. Edmund teased her several times, and would ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... perfect The shape of the face was a long oval. Many of the teeth remained, and the left ear, in consequence of the interposition of some unctuous matter between it and the cerecloth, was found entire. It was difficult at this moment to withhold a declaration, that, notwithstanding its disfigurement, the countenance did bear a strong resemblance to the coins, the busts, and especially to the picture of King Charles I. by Vandyke, by which it had been made familiar to us. It is true that the minds of the spectators of this interesting sight were well prepared ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... taken off his hat to wipe his, forehead, and his face, in spite of its disfigurement, was strangely like the face ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... Who ever said it? Again, they plead for women who "revolt" from the "disfigurement" of the gestation period. The great artist Botticelli did not think this was disfigurement. What true women do? Are they not those of whom Kipling writes, "as pale and as stale as a bone"? And, if so, are these unworthy ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... The work of disfigurement began without delay. Anukis moved her lips as busily as her hands, and described in regular order all that had befallen her during the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Harold lifted the head, but let it fall again with a shudder, for his fingers had slipped into the crevice of the cleft skull and were all smeared with the oozing brain. Yet, despite the obscurity and the disfigurement, despite the bursting eyeballs and the clenched jaws through which the blood was trickling, he recognized the features ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... pursued the Reverend Mr. Thorpe. "It seems that there is a new tenant in the old house on the hill that has been empty for so long—the one the village people say is haunted. It seems a woman is living there, quite alone; and she always wears a veil, on account of some—some disfigurement." ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... and they would walk in the park, a pitiful and mournful pair. They had to walk slowly, and often he would have to help her, for her burden had now become great. She had altered all her dresses, and she wore a long cape, and even then was not able to hide the disfigurement of her person. They would sit upon a bench in the cold, and talk about the latest aspects of his struggle, what he was doing and what he hoped to do. Corydon would bring him the opinions of a few more members of the bourgeois world, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... may be of the disfigurement of the boot; in others, of pain and disability resulting from the sensitiveness of the joint and of the enlarged bursa over the head of the first metatarsal. The inflamed bursa, which sometimes communicates with the joint, may suppurate, and the infection ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... lasted but five minutes, and every piece of furniture in the room, the chairs, the table, the carpet, the pictures, seemed to have upon it some new stain of disfigurement. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... mistakes. From this, and their own ignorance of marine engineering, Spezia has already, without the slightest evidence of a commencement, swallowed up above eight millions of francs—the only palpable results being the disfigurement of a very beautiful road, and the bankruptcy of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... discerned under florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and women would not have known—the twisted spine, the malformed limb that was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have perhaps brought on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. Emanuel could pity and forgive, if it were acknowledged candidly; but where his questioning eyes met dishonest denial—where his ruthless researches found deceitful concealment—oh, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... swelling which varies considerably in size in different subjects. Except in cases of acute synovitis, lameness is not present and in chronic distension of the capsule of the tarsal joint, no interference with the subject's usefulness occurs. In the majority of instances, the disfigurement which attends bog spavin is the principal objectionable feature. The condition is bilateral in many instances, and in such cases the subjects have a predisposition to this condition or it follows attacks of strangles or other debilitating ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see blots I threw upon it faded away, I see him, foremost of just judges and honored men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... comrades, an ex-sailor. He was nearly six feet in height, and possessed of such powers of strength and endurance that his name was known throughout the Western Pacific to almost every white man, but his once handsome features were marred by such a terrible disfigurement, that those who came to know the man and his sterling character always thought or spoke of him with genuine and respectful pity. What had caused this cruel distortion was known to but three other persons ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... busy installing the new ayah whom Peter with the air of a magician who has but to wave his wand had presented to her half an hour before. The woman was old and bent and closely veiled—so closely that Stella strongly suspected her disfigurement to be of a very ghastly nature, but her low voice and capable manner inspired her with instinctive confidence. She realized with relief from the very outset that her faithful Peter had not made a mistake. She was sure that the new-comer had nursed sickly English children before. She went to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... among the herbal medicines, and they used laxatives and purgatives to good advantage. Down at Montpellier, Gilbert, the Englishman, suggested red light for smallpox because it shortened the fever, lessened the lesions, and made the disfigurement much less. Finsen was given the Nobel prize partly for re-discovery of this. They segregated erysipelas and so prevented its spread. They recognized the contagiousness of leprosy, and though it was probably as widespread as tuberculosis is at the present time, they succeeded not only ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... various sorts of mutilation named are of two types: (1) retaliation for bodily disfigurement, (2) symbolical of the offence itself. Thus eye for eye, tooth for tooth, limb for limb, are pure retaliations. But the hands cut off mark the sin of the hands in striking a father, in unlawful surgery, or in branding. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... shorter rations than they had been accustomed to, and it seemed to her that daily, almost hourly, their appetites grew larger and more terrible. She showed her right hand whereon the mere usage of a bread-knife had scored a ridge which was now a permanent disfigurement. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... thirteenth-century church founded by Bishop Bingham. The painting of the Last Judgment over the chancel arch was covered with whitewash at the Reformation and the Tudor arms were placed in front of it. About forty years ago this disfigurement to the church was removed and the picture brought once more into the light of day. The old font would seem to have originally belonged to another church, as its style antedates the foundation (1220) of St. Thomas' church. A few fragments of old stained glass remain in the east window ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... thousand pounds a year is spent on preserving and maintaining national monuments and buildings of antiquarian and architectural interest. In Germany steps are being taken which we might follow with advantage in this country, to control and limit the disfigurement of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... cajoled? Who likes to think that men are lying when they praise us? Must we not pray for a watch to be set on our lips? If there could be a physical effect caused, as there is a moral, would not there be a sad disfigurement? Men and women with lips blacker than coal! It is a wise prayer, "Let the words of my mouth be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord." Deceit, flattery, formalism in prayer are abominable to God. It would be well if, when in ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... bought up for the occasion was a great honour, and one youth in particular, with black hair, a large sharp nose—and oh! such a squint!—whose duty it was to open the door of the reception-room, at which I stood to receive the guests as they arrived, was positively proud of his unfortunate disfigurement, and every time he opened the door he flashed his weirdly set eyes upon me to such an extent that I felt myself unintentionally squinting at every guest I shook ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... face, a disdain, a trace of power, that attracted me before I knew her rank or history. Her once raven hair was streaked with gray, she trembled, and her step was feeble; but all her weaknesses and blemishes impressed me as the disfigurement by age and abrasion of a beautiful and noble statue. She was more savage-looking than any modern Tahitian woman, more aboriginal, and yet more subtle. I once contemplated in the jungle of Johore an old tigress just trapped, but marked and wounded by the pit and the blows of her captors. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... and relates the sorrows of her desolate heart. It would be indecorous for any warrior, while she is in this predicament, to show her any attentions of gallantry. She never puts on any habiliments but those of sadness and disfigurement. The only comfort she is permitted in this desolate state is, that her budgetted husband is permitted, when drams are passing, to be considered as a living one, and she is allowed to cheer her depressed spirits with a double dram, that ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... with one m. Moreover, the general appearance of the epistle was marred by the presence of a large blot. But Miss Millefleurs was plainly a young person of instant ingenuity, and she had turned the disfigurement to good purpose by drawing a circle around it and labelling it, "One ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... called forth. But that was all over now. He knew that it was the most unlikely thing in the world to have come to pass; and yet those were happy days when he could think of it as barely possible. Now all he could look forward to was disfigurement, feebleness, and the bare pittance that keeps ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Booth,' and by his neighbours he was deemed to be an old admiral in reduced circumstances. His house in Queen Anne Street was closed, terribly out of repair—black with dirt. After much knocking at the door it was opened, if at all, by an old woman, her face half-concealed, owing to some cancerous disfigurement; she had kept the visitor waiting while she assumed a large apron—hung always behind the door on a peg, handy for the purpose,—which hid the grimy and tattered state of her dress. The drawing-room was tenanted by half-a-dozen Manx ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook



Words linked to "Disfigurement" :   damage, visual aspect, harm, scathe, disfigure, defacement



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