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Distinctive   Listen
adjective
Distinctive  adj.  
1.
Marking or expressing distinction or difference; distinguishing; characteristic; peculiar. "The distinctive character and institutions of New England."
2.
Having the power to distinguish and discern; discriminating. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Distinctive" Quotes from Famous Books



... not take you long to discover that the chief objects of interest in San Giovanni are the women. Many Calabrian villages still possess their distinctive costumes—Marcellinara and Cimi-gliano are celebrated in this respect—but it would be difficult to find anywhere an equal number of handsome women on such a restricted space. In olden days it was dangerous to approach these attractive ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... union is an organization of wage-earners in the same handicraft or occupation. Unions exist among workers in all the old distinctive handicrafts, such as the printers, stone cutters, cigar makers, carpenters and in many other groups such as musicians and retail clerks. The local chapters in many cases have been long united in national ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... casting deep shadows even to the kitchen garden, whose long rows of vegetables, bordered with old-fashioned blooming herbs and savories, led the observer out into the meadows to the Home Farm and beyond to the dim line of Paradise Ridge. "It is different and distinctive and—and American," I added. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the community, that the rooms occupied by the inmates were fitted with sliding panels in the walls and partitions, through and by means of which most of the robberies were committed. But, as will be seen hereafter, the term is a misnomer, so far as the fact is concerned. But they had to have some distinctive appellation, and "panel house" is ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... that the smaller details of the surface were soon lost in a confused mass, and it was only the lofty heights, the wide craters, the great ring mountains, and the vast plains that still continued to give sharp, distinctive outlines. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... found in compounds it is inconvenient to use such long names, and hence chemists have adopted a system of abbreviations. These abbreviations are known as symbols, each element having a distinctive symbol. (1) Sometimes the initial letter of the name will suffice to indicate the element. Thus I stands for iodine, C for carbon. (2) Usually it is necessary to add some other characteristic letter to ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... fit (of apoplexy for instance) may die while a surgeon is being fetched from only the next street. We shall give, as far as the fact of our editing a work for non-professional readers will permit, the peculiar and distinctive symptoms of all kind of fits, and the immediate treatment to be adopted in ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... or plants, or between animals and plants: true symbiosis is where both parties to the relation benefit: see also parasitism, commensalism. Among the ants social symbiosis exists in its most highly developed form and distinctive terms have been proposed for the ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... collection of specimens of every tribe in Hindustan and of nearly every other race in the world besides: red-bearded Delhi Pathans, towering Sikhs, lean sinewy Rajputs with bound jaws, swart agile Bhils, Tommies in their scarlet tunics, Japanese and Chinese in their distinctive dress, short and sturdy Gurkhas, yellow Saddhus, Jats stalking proudly, brawling knots of sailormen from the Port, sleek Mahrattas, polluted Sansis, Punjabis, Bengalis, priests, beggars, dancing girls; a blaze of colour ever shifting, a Babel of tongues ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... particularly—that they always seem to keep the beautiful charming coquetry that belongs to every woman. I often arrived without warning. I never saw hair disarranged or dress neglected. This exterior perfection is, I may say, a distinctive mark of our nurses. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... (two-formed); Fig. 12.—This is a small plant, and is intermediate between this genus and the Epiphyllums. It possesses no particular beauty or distinctive character such as would render it of much value for garden purposes. The branches are short, rather narrow and drooping, the margins notched and tinged with red. The flowers are borne generally on the ends of the branches, and are drooping in habit; in form they are more like the Epiphyllums than ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... began the movement at Gloucester, England, in 1781. They had been already introduced in New England, but were now making their way in Philadelphia and elsewhere. The first Methodist bishop, Asbury, zealously furthered them. They had, to begin with, no distinctive religious character, and churches even looked upon them with disfavor; but their numbers increased and their value became more apparent until the institution was adopted ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... His father, Alexander Nasmyth of Edinburgh, was a landscape-painter of great eminence, whose works are sometimes confounded with those of his son Patrick, called the English Hobbema, though his own merits are peculiar and distinctive. The elder Nasmyth was also an admirable portrait painter, as his head of Burns—the best ever painted of the poet—bears ample witness. His daughters, the Misses Nasmyth, were highly skilled painters of landscape, and their works are well ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... noticed that he always smoked a heavy black cigar which he had made for him especially in Cuba. It had a quite distinctive odor." ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... learned." Roscoe was delighted. Furthermore, Roscoe was as frank and ingenuous and modest as the young men I have described. But when we got out to sea and he began to practise the holy rite, while I looked on admiringly, a change, subtle and distinctive, marked his bearing. When he shot the sun at noon, the glow of achievement wrapped him in lambent flame. When he went below, figured out his observation, and then returned on deck and announced our latitude and longitude, there was an ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... is a new and extremely inviting subject to me. The peculiarities of the starch of any plant are quite as distinctive of the plant as are those of the hemoglobin crystals in the blood of an animal. I have analyzed the evidence of my microscope in this case thoroughly. When the arrow poison is introduced subcutaneously—say, by a person shooting a poisoned dart, which ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... century, attached to the court of Henry III. Poets there were before Chaucer,—vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,—but search Rymer from cord to clasp and you shall find no documentary evidence of any one of them wearing the leaf or receiving the stipend distinctive of the place. Morbid credulity can go no farther back than to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... numerous farms, and the hills were deeply intersected by the gorges of several winding rivers interrupted at intervals by the banked-up ponds and weirs of electric generating wheels. It was dotted with bright-looking, steep-roofed, villages, and each showed a distinctive and interesting church beside its wireless telegraph steeple; here and there were large chateaux and parks and white roads, and paths lined with red and white cable posts were extremely conspicuous in the landscape. There were walled enclosures like gardens and rickyards and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... emphasis he puts on churchianity is a loss to Christianity. The contribution which modern thought is making to Biblical interpretation is sealed to him. He pursues his beaten path along the old ruts of ecclesiasticism. He believes in a revelation which is non-progressive and whose distinctive feature is sameness for all times. He is painfully liberal in the construction of the Bible. He thinks he is a curse himself according to the prophet Noah, for he has not yet discovered the distinctive and conditional element in prophecy. His theology ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma

... picturesque customs have disappeared from the weddings of the townspeople and the more educated classes on the Continent; but many distinctive points of etiquette still remain, and we shall find that in matters of detail there is much that ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... Rembrandt's being much richer in tone, it is produced by glazing and fresh touches of transparent colour, whereas the tints of Hals seem to have been mixed in the first instance on his palette; hence that undisturbed dexterity of handling which gives so much the appearance of life in his best works. The distinctive characteristics between a portrait painter and a historical painter, is "that the one paints man in general, the other a particular man;" hence, to ennoble the work, it is necessary to make it conform, as much as can be done with safety to the likeness, to the great ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... this question does not arise. It is enough that a wicked rebellion has undertaken to detach certain States from the Union, and to take them beyond the protection and sovereignty of the United States, with the menace of seeking foreign alliance and support, even at the cost of every distinctive institution. It is well known that Mr. Madison anticipated this precise danger from Slavery, and upheld this precise grant of power in order to counteract this danger. His words, which will be found in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... staff will use a whistle of distinctive tone; the captain and company musicians a second and distinctive whistle; the platoon leaders and guides a third ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department

... inherited. So, too, from them, it may be, came another characteristic—that instinct to endure, to wait, to abide the issue of circumstance, which in the days of his power made him to the politicians as unintelligible as once he had been to the forest huntsmen. Nevertheless, the most distinctive part of those primitive women, the sealed passionateness of their spirits, he never from childhood to the end revealed. In the grown man appeared a quietude, a sort of tranced calm, that was appalling. From what part of his heredity did this derive? Was it the male ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... new stories for boys and girls are not plentiful. Many stories, too, are so highly improbable as to bring a grin of derision to the young reader's face before he has gone far. The name of ALTEMUS is a distinctive brand on the cover of a book, always ensuring the buyer of having a book that is up-to-date and fine throughout. No buyer of an ALTEMUS book ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... lower one. The flowers are set opposite each other at the end of the smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have the naming ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... inseparably associated as peculiarly characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances, the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... of my two waltzes. The Eton Boating Song—one of my favourites. I threaded my way through the room in search of her. She was in neither of the doorways. I cast my eyes about the room. Her costume was so distinctive that I could hardly fail ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... in the distance was a man's figure striding along with incredible swiftness. Tony started to run all he knew. Now, seldom as William barked, he barked when people ran, and William's bark was so deep and sonorous and distinctive that it caused the swiftly striding man to turn his head. He turned his body, too, and came back to meet Tony ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... or meaning of things. The purpose of description is to form a picture; of narration, to portray an event; of exposition, to set forth the distinctive nature of an object or conception. The methods of exposition are various. In the first place, the distinguishing features of an object may be presented; and in this case exposition partakes of the nature of description. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... venetian blinds had not been lowered, and the afternoon sun, beating in, displayed a shabby patch on the carpet. It showed up, too, a coating of dust that had gathered on the desk-like, central table. There was the faint, distinctive smell of strange furniture. But what impressed Laura most was the stillness. No street noises pierced the massy walls, but neither did the faintest echo of all that might be taking place in the great building itself reach their ears: they sat aloof, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... quite modish and becoming, and her shoes were the admiration and envy of half the girls at the school. Dorothy Knerr used to say that "Mary Louise's clothes always looked as if they grew on her," but that may have been partially accounted for by the grace of her slim form and her unconscious but distinctive poise of bearing. Few people would describe Mary Louise Burrows as beautiful, while all would agree that she possessed charming manners. And she was fifteen—an age when many girls are ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... moment the building of ships went on "gallantly," as was indeed to be expected in a country whose chief industry was fishing and which was so admirably surrounded by natural bays and harbors. In 1665 we hear of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts—which distinctive term is still applied to the Massachusetts Legislature—forbidding the cutting of any trees suitable for masts. The broad arrow of the King was marked on all white pines, twenty-four inches in diameter, three ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... Semitic-Babylonian scribes and of Berossus. Some uncertainties naturally remain as to what exactly was included in the missing portions of the tablet; but the more important episodes are fortunately recounted in the extant fragments, and these suffice for a definition of the distinctive character of the Sumerian Version. In view of its literary importance it may be advisable to attempt a somewhat detailed discussion of its contents, column by column;(1) and the analysis may be most conveniently divided into numbered sections, each of which ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... examples of English humor. It would be easy to array a list of names as a set-off against that of Mr. Besant. But this is needless. Humor, in the sense in which the word is commonly understood, may almost be said to be a distinctive quality of English literature, which is pervaded by it in a far greater degree than that of any other people. It is a leading trait in all the great English novelists, from Fielding to Thackeray and George Eliot, without excepting Richardson, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... was over, the lay clerk sat himself down by the hanging drum, and, to its accompaniment, began intoning the prayer, "Na Mu Miyo Ho Ren Go Kiyo," the congregation fervently joining in unison with him. These words, repeated over and over again, are the distinctive prayer of the Buddhist sect of Nichiren, to which the temple Cho-o-ji is dedicated. They are approximations to Sanscrit sounds, and have no meaning in Japanese, nor do the worshippers in using ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... ordinance of August 9th, 1650, for the "punishment of atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions," which is the best summary and proof of the intense religious fanaticism then prevalent, and so curiously similar in all its details to that of the primitive Christian Church. At both periods the distinctive features were the claim to actual divinity, and to superiority to all ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... case a woman prepared to carry this new influence into all her future life, even if a large number of these women should eventually pursue special or higher technical branches; for we are women before we are teachers, lawyers, physicians, etc., and if we are to add anything of distinctive value to the world by entering upon the fields of work hitherto pre-empted by men, it will be by the essential quality ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... modification in the type of Morals which took place after the Reformation was certainly not the least important of its results. If it may be traced in some degree to the distinctive theology of the Protestant Churches, it was perhaps still more due to the abolition of clerical celibacy which placed the religious teachers in the centre of domestic life and in close contact with a large circle of social duties. There is even now a distinct difference between ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... self-indulgent humorist like Falstaff, now with an introspective student like Hamlet, now with a cynical criminal like Iago, now with a high-spirited girl like Rosalind, now with an ambitious woman like Lady Macbeth, and then with a hundred more characters hardly less distinctive than these. It means that he could contrive the coincidence so absolutely as to leave no loophole for the introduction, into the several dramatic utterances, of any sentiment that should not be on the face of it adapted by right of nature to the speakers' idiosyncracies. That was Shakespeare's ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... has developed the mental faculties of the people; but has also left the ignorant and the weak still under the feet of the intelligent and the rich, while the recognition of the doctrine of social and political equality has eliminated from the community those distinctive classes who formerly constituted themselves the supervisors and patrons of the indigent, and the providers for their material wants. It is for this reason that the lowest orders of modern society exhibit relatively a condition of physical misery unknown ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... the church vastly superior to that of the village priest, or batushka, as he is called. These batushkas belong to a hereditary caste, the members of which have been priests for generations. They are subject to the rulings of the district bishop; their livings, their distinctive names, even their wives—for they are allowed to marry—are provided for them by their religious superior. Their condition is not enviable. They are for the most part poor and ignorant, with no higher ambition than to perform the rites and ceremonies prescribed by their church. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... that, as he rose about five o'clock in the morning to light his own fire and begin the labors of the day by candle-light, he heard the parties breaking up and leaving Mr. Clay's rooms across the entry, where they had been playing cards all night long. In these little touches one sees the distinctive characters of ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... hall. Policemen in uniform and unmistakable detectives stood about the various entries, and little knots of people, evil-looking and unclean for the most part, lurked in the background or sat on benches and diffused through the stale, musty air that distinctive but indescribable odour that clings to police vans and prison reception rooms; an odour that, in the present case, was pleasantly mingled with the suggestive aroma of disinfectants. Through the unsavoury throng we hurried, and ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... The distinctive fighting feature of the car is the revolving turret of this armor-plate in which the offensive apparatus is situated. This turret rises above the four-foot armored body at about the center of the car. In it is the new model Maxim ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... justly admitted that B. termo is the exciting cause of fermentative putrefaction. Cohn has in fact contended that it is the distinctive ferment of all putrefactions, and that it is to decomposing proteinaceous solutions what Torula cerevisiae is to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... a quick glance at the stranger who sat between her stepmother and Hope, and the first look told her that she had found a friend, one who would be true and loyal as a man could be. There was nothing especially distinctive about Archie Holden. He was tall and blond and athletic, sufficiently good-looking, and with easy, off-hand manners. But his keen blue eyes, the curve of his little blond mustache, above all, the grip of his hand and the ring of his voice ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... that connected nearly all the people of mark, my informants had ever heard of in the great Commercial Emporium that was to be. How suitable is this name! Emporium would not have been sufficiently distinctive for a town in which "the merchants" are all in all; in which they must have the post-office; in which they support the nation by paying all the revenue; in which the sun must shine and the dew fall to suit their wants; ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... went out farther than across Barnes Common or into Richmond Park for exercise, and always accompanied by Sister Gertrude, the latter wearing the black habit of the Sisterhood, while Jean herself was in a distinctive garb as a nurse of the ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... decision in nearly all the great questions of the empire. Scarcely an edict or document of any kind is issued that does not go over his signature or under his direct supervision. To busy himself with the smallest details is a distinctive characteristic of the man. Systematic methods, combined with an extraordinary mind, enable him to accomplish his herculean task. In the eastern horizon Li-Hung-Chang shines as the brilliant star of morning that tells of the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... respectable Yogis in the past, but most of them have lost what sense their philosophic founders attached to the sign, and keep only the latter as their religion. Some, such as the [U]kharas and S[u]kharas, appear to have no distinctive features, all of them being the 'refuse of beggars' (Wilson). Others claim virtue on the strength of nudity, and subdue their passions literally with lock and key. The 'Potmen,' the 'Skull-men,' G[u]daras ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... about him, difficult to describe, and which only those who knew him could understand, for he was nothing if not original. It is impossible in this brief sketch to give an adequate portrait of a great personality and to tell the story of his life's work. I shall but try to mention some of his distinctive qualities and characteristics, illustrated by a few facts. Two or three real incidents sometimes give a better idea of a man's character ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... distinctive benefit of ideas, the service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general mind?—I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden, and prune an apple-tree, I am well ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men. Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their trade; some, for the most part with difficulty, carried muskets or rifles; some, the better-dressed and healthier looking, wore swords,—a weapon, as I afterwards found, distinctive of commissioned officers; some had with them only their pistols or cartridge-boxes, which, belted around the middle, served a double purpose in keeping up their ragged breeches. Then almost all of them, as they moved about or lay in the shade of the corridors, sucked or gnawed some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... sent out the Black Defiance, Great American, Beauty, Pioneer, and several others, claims that the "true method is to propagate by pairs, each parent possessing certain distinctive features." "My course," he writes, in a paper read before the N. J. State Horticultural Society, "is to select my pistillates after years of trial, subject them to severe tests, and place alongside of each such a staminate as I think ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... in which Britt entered the room proclaimed a distinctive character. He edged himself through the door, not stealthily, but carelessly, casually. He, too, was tall, with a wide, dark beard curling over very pink and rather plump cheeks, and in his bright black eyes a sardonic sheen played as he loosely shook ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... exaggeration which is a distinctive feature of American humour, and about which so much has been said and written, has its counterpart in sober and truth-telling England, though we are always amazed when we find it there, and fall to wondering, as we never ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... a possibility we have a very famous example in the Chinese. (107) They, too, have some distinctive mark on their heads which they most scrupulously observe, and by which they keep themselves apart from everyone else, and have thus kept themselves during so many thousand years that they far surpass all other nations in antiquity. (108) They have not always retained empire, but ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... characters and occupations of the agricultural population in that part of the country, who wear curiously interblended the old English and Dutch habits with here and there a sign of the French, and the republican freedom which in three generations has taken the tone of nature, are as distinctive as the descriptions of changes which the maple assumes in the autumn, or of the harvest of Indian corn, or a deer hunt in the snow. Upon a careless reading of "Rural Hours" we might fancy that Miss Cooper was less ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... it. Moreover, as the ship sped on, it rose rapidly above the horizon, the grey tint growing every moment darker and more distinct, and a few minutes later other land, more sharply defined in outline and more distinctive in colour, rose above the horizon immediately below it, showing that the table-land first made out lay at some distance from the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... tree, shrub and plant—has produced after its kind. It is a law that runs through all animal and vegetable life. Each family in the great world of living forms was created for a special purpose, and was intended to remain pure and distinctive until the termination of its mission. Whenever the family boundaries are overstepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon the generative functions, and the illegitimate product dies out, or subsides into hopeless degeneration. The mule is a ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... intelligible to all; but there are points at which the line of argument is necessarily subtle and complex. In the hope that most readers will be induced to master even these more difficult chapters, I will give an outline of the characteristic argument of the work. Haeckel's distinctive services in regard to man's ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... a whole new and intimate relation between actress and audience, and had the play possessed no other distinctive feature, this alone would have at once lifted it to a success that ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... genuine English beauty of tall and splendid proportions, finely chiselled features, and that white transparent skin which lends to Albion's daughters their distinctive charm. Abundant dark brown hair clustered in thick, natural folds round the broad forehead, and her blue eyes had the clear, calm gaze of a personality at once ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... qualities appear also in the lyrics which abound in the plays of John Fletcher, and yet it cannot be said that Fletcher's sweet melody is more classical than Elizabethan. His other distinctive quality is the tone of somewhat artificial courtliness which was soon to mark the lyrics of the other poets of the Cavalier party. An avowed disciple of Jonson and his classicism and a greater poet than Fletcher is Robert Herrick, who, indeed, after Shakspere and Milton, is ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... to put this suggestion in a more definite form. The pantheon of the north, as we have seen, was derived from the south. Not that all the gods of the south are worshipped in the north, but those that are worshipped in the north are also found in the south, and originate there. The distinctive features of Ashur are due to the political conditions that were developed in Assyria, but the unfolding of the conceptions connected with this god which make him the characteristic deity of Assyria, indeed, the only distinctive Assyrian figure in the Assyrian pantheon, does not preclude the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... The distinctive features of this genus are the involute margin and the soft, tough, and decurrent gills which are easily separable from the hymenophore. Some grow on the ground, others ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... of Flora we must include the mimosa, with its delicately pinnated foliage, so endowed with sensibility that it seems to have stepped out of the bounds of vegetable life. The bamboo, the king of grasses, forms a distinctive feature in the landscape of the Napo, frequently rising eighty feet in length, though not in height, for the fronds curve downward. Fancy the airy grace of our meadow grasses united with the lordly growth of the poplar, and you have a faint idea of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... because in it can be found at a glance just what is wanted. It is comprehensive, convenient, condensed, and the information is presented in such an interesting manner as when once read to be always remembered. A distinctive feature of the book is the pronunciation of the proper names, something found in ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... that your powers of perception are not particularly acute. The telephone face is no longer a physiognomical freak, but a prevalent expression among the several thousand unfortunate clerks and business men who find extensive use for the telephone necessary. It is a distinctive cast of features, too, which can readily be distinguished from any other by one who can ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman

... their name implies, were of common English blood, originally of some clerkly tribe and so possessing no distinctive patronymic. These Clarks were ordinary Yankee farmers, who had been settled in one place for upwards of two hundred years. Very likely some ancestor of my old Samuel Clark had stood at Concord with "the embattled farmers." I know not. He easily could have done so, for Alton was not many miles ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... down from their cerulean depths; the relievos glow, and color defines, as it etherealizes, the works of man. Painting, at first absorbed in the plastic arts, scarcely begins to show symptoms of life until she is fully born, and living in her own distinctive form! As that power which develops the almost infinite variety of forms is to the universe, so is painting with its ever ready and vivid canvas ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the result of discussion and analysis, all opinions are losing their prestige; their distinctive features are rapidly worn away, and few survive capable of arousing our enthusiasm. The man of modern times is more and more a prey ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... all growing together on a rise of ground near an old barn foundation. The ground is rich and they love it. Each bush is individual and distinctive as are their nuts—some tucked far in the husk, some bulging out in a precarious fashion, some fat and round, others long and narrow. They're interesting. I can let the butternuts, bitternuts and hickories ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... distinctive," she sighed. At the counter she found a friend, bent on the same errand, and conversed with her insipidly, wasting much time. "My husband and ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... other in many details, the eight palaces are alike in their outer walls, their domes and gables, and similar in their entrances. These portals give a distinctive character to each palace. While the palaces differ widely in details of decoration, they all have a common source; they are all Mediterranean,—not all Byzantine, or Roman, or Italian, or Spanish, or Moorish, but some thing of each. The manner in which these forms are carried over ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... Mrs. Spicture comes back"—thus Dolly—"she shall set in her own chair wiv scushions, and she shall set in her own chair wiv a 'igh hup bact, and she shall set in her own chair wiv...." Here came a pause, due to inanition of distinctive features. Dolly's style was disfigured by ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... this with the fowl; thus the two sexes of the pencilled Hamburghs differ greatly from each other, and from the two sexes of the aboriginal Gallus bankiva; and both are now kept constant to their standard of excellence by continued selection, which would be impossible unless the distinctive characters of both were limited ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... exudate forms a firm, yellow incrustation around the roots of the hair, and is embedded at intervals in the pits formed by the individual pocks, and in which there is no vascular excrescence; (3) from foot scabies (mange), in which the presence of an acarus is distinctive; (4) from lymphangitis, in which the swelling appears suddenly, extending around the entire limb as high as the hock, and on the inner side of the thigh along the line of the vein to the groin, and in which there is active fever, and (5) from erysipelas, in which ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... rather troublesome it is worth while to make the full quantity at once and keep it on hand for emergencies. Commercial liqueurs can take the place of the homemade ones here set forth. The result may not be quite so distinctive, but will not be disappointing. Dry sherry is a good substitute for cherry bounce, likewise apricot brandy, while vermouth or chartreuse will answer for peach liqueur, which is unlikely to be in hand unless you are a very ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... The idea of the mind, I repeat, and the mind itself are in God by the same necessity and follow from him from the same power of thinking. Strictly speaking, the idea of the mind, that is, the idea of an idea, is nothing but the distinctive quality (forma) of the idea in so far as it is conceived as a mode of thought without reference to the object; if a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... exposure of the human body, together with the natural treatment of natural things, had the advantage that sensuous excitement—to-day artificially cultivated by the separation of the sexes from early childhood—was then prevented. The corporal make-up of one sex, together with its distinctive organs, was no secret to the other. There, no play of equivocal words could arise. Nature was Nature. The one sex rejoiced at the beauty of the other. Mankind will have to return to Nature and to the natural intercourse of the sexes; it must cast off the now-ruling and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... language of elevation, harmony and hope. The circle, of which he was the beloved centre, was composed of men equally sincere, resolute and hopeful; there was not one of them undistinguished. Some of them had now the first literary distinction. The character of each was remarkable for some distinctive and bold feature of originality. I, of course, exclude myself from this description. I know not to what circumstance I owe the happiness of their trust and friendship. My habits, my education, my former political connections, disqualified me for such association. Since first I took my ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... In the opinion of a judge who passed upon this law, its object was "to keep slaves as far as possible under the control of white men only, and to prevent free negroes from holding persons of their own race in personal subjection to themselves. Perhaps also it is intended to evince the distinctive superiority of the white ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... proper attention, prepare the cuts used in illustrating, have his copy to the papers early, proof carefully read, and any corrections made. He must study the character of his illustrations, the display part of the advertisement, and having secured a distinctive cut or style of the firm name must stick to it, as it adds an individuality to the advertising. The type used must also be selected, usually good, clear and legible, easily read, but characteristic, so that it distinguishes his ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips

... we have won, will not you loyally submit? We disclaim any attack on your domestic institutions. The invasion by John Brown was repudiated by practically the entire North. Honor for a brave, misguided man meant no approval of his criminal act. For the advance of our distinctive principles,—inimical, we own, to your system of slave labor,—we look only to the gradual conversion of individual opinion, and to the ultimate acceptance by your own people of the principles of universal liberty. We believe that civilization and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... Rexford had hit on for lessening the likeness between these two, clothing each habitually in a distinctive colour, had not been carried into her choice of material for their dressing-gowns. These garments were white; and, as a stern mood of utility had guided their mother's shears, they were short and almost shapeless. The curly hair which was being brushed over them had stopped its ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... recognize in him our own or others' qualities; or begin with the qualities shared by classes of people, embody these in a person who stands for the greatest common measure of the class, and finally—and only then—let him take on his distinctive traits: these are methods which are not confined to the drama, and at all stages of our literature have lived in helpful rivalry. Long before France had her La Bruyere, England had her Hall, Overbury, and Earle.[15] The Theophrastan character was at its best in this country at the beginning ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... illustrated novels, short stories, fairy tales, poems, parodies, satires, and jeux d'esprit, for the realistic, the fanciful, the weirdly imaginative and the broadly humorous, as my Punch colleague, E. T. Milliken, wrote, my more distinctive, natural and favourite metier is that of graphic art. This intimate friend, in publishing his "appreciation" of me, put in his own too highly-coloured opinion of my black and white work in this direction. I blush to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... walking amidst the mountains of my home on a snowy night. Neither moon nor stars shone in the heavens, there was merely the faint gleam of the snow in contrast to the edge of the dark forest; but Mara's figure was bright and of distinctive color, as she had appeared to me under the tropical sun. In red shoes she strode down the snow-clad river valley, stepped up to the dark houses, and peered in at the windows; immediately all the windows ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... West Saxon had no distinctive form for the future. The present was used both as present proper and as future. Cf. Modern English "Igo home tomorrow," or "Iam going home tomorrow" for "Ishall go ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... thousand guilders, I shall make experiments. With them I shall succeed in imparting scent to the tulip. Ah! if I succeed in giving it the odour of the rose or the carnation, or, what would be still better, a completely new scent; if I restored to this queen of flowers its natural distinctive perfume, which she has lost in passing from her Eastern to her European throne, and which she must have in the Indian peninsula at Goa, Bombay, and Madras, and especially in that island which in olden times, as is asserted, was the terrestrial paradise, and which is called Ceylon,—oh, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... Balder's hair and beard were marked attributes of the Helwyse line. In these days of ponderous genealogies, who would be surprised to learn that the family sprang from that Balder, surnamed the Beautiful, who was the sun-god of Scandinavian mythology? Certain of his distinctive characteristics, both physical and mental, would appear to have been perpetuated with marvellous distinctness throughout the descent; above all, the golden locks, the blue eyes, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of humor peculiar to the American man. He has his own code of morals—very exalted ones—but honors them in the breach rather than ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... the German forests the stood a tree, which could not be classified by any of the learned scientists. It was not more beautiful than many others, but there were distinctive peculiarities which no other tree possessed. Her dress was of a sadder hue than that of her companions, and the birds refused to build their nests in her branches. She was unable to understand the language of her brothers and sisters and so stood ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt

... arrangement of plate-glass mirrors fitting closely at the sides and backed by the distinctive pattern of wall-paper with which the rest of the cabinet was covered. Immediately that the doors were closed, the performer drew these false sides outward, so that they met the centre post of the doors at an acute angle. The true side walls were thereby exposed, and, of course, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... sandy island, one-third of a mile from shore, offered a resting-place at noon; and there I dined upon bread and cold canned beef. A mile further to the eastward a sandy point of the marsh extended into the Gulf. A dozen oaks, two palmettos, and a shanty in ruins, upon this bleak territory, were the distinctive features which marked it as Jug Island, though the firm ground is only an island rising out of the marshes. Sandy points jutting from the lowlands became more numerous as I progressed on my route. Four miles from Jug Island the wide debouchure of Blue Creek came into view, with an unoccupied ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... need of in order that we may act, and on which we have modelled our fashion of thinking, are regulated by this simple law: the present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause. But suppose that the distinctive feature of the organized body is that it grows and changes without ceasing, as indeed the most superficial observation testifies, there would be nothing astonishing in the fact that it was one in the first instance, and afterwards many. The reproduction of unicellular organisms consists in ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... may be said to possess its distinctive character. Thus, marriage is to be distinguished from a partnership in trade, without recurrence to any particular form of words. Marriage, contracted by any ceremony whatever, is held to be a contract for life. The same is true of governments: in their nature they are intended to be indissoluble. ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... will protect us against the fists, as in the past. Labor is the slave of speculation, and violence is the slave of wisdom. Who will deny that cunning is the distinctive trait ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... Christ and the Mormons are so widely different in their respective beliefs that they are of necessity opposed to one another, as far as religion is concerned . . . . There is scarcely one point of similarity . . . . The Church of Christ has obtained a distinctive character." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... have any evidence.[10] It is not impossible then that it is the universal law; comprehending not simply those minor modifications which offspring inherit from recent ancestry, but comprehending also those larger modifications distinctive of species, genus, order, class, which they inherit from antecedent races of organisms. And thus it may be that the law of adaptation is the sole law; presiding not only over the differentiation of any race of organisms into several races, but also over the differentiation of the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... which the pews and galleries were made. Age had developed and darkened and rendered visible all the natural irregularities in the wood, just as it had brought out and strengthened the dry-woody, close, unaired, penetrating scent which permeated the meeting-house and gave it the distinctive "church smell." The children, and perhaps a few of the grown people, found in these clusters of knots queer similitudes of faces, strange figures and constellations, which, though conned Sunday after Sunday until known by heart, still seemed ever ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... The distinctive character of the rites in question lay in their appealing to the gloomy rather than to the cheerful and hopeful feelings, and in their influencing the mind through fear. The notions of guilt and expiation, of evil and good to come, and of dealings with the invisible world, were in some shape or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... on him since he was eleven and had his last serious illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance. He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel' ": he had an air of distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Distinctive" :   distinctiveness, characteristic, classifiable, distinctive feature, identifiable



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