Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Familiar   Listen
noun
Familiar  n.  
1.
An intimate; a companion. "All my familiars watched for my halting."
2.
An attendant demon or evil spirit.
3.
(Court of Inquisition) A confidential officer employed in the service of the tribunal, especially in apprehending and imprisoning the accused.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Familiar" Quotes from Famous Books



... The negro villages—or "streets," as the term was—were without arms and without white police within call. They were ravaged by these marauders night after night, and negroes were not the only victims, for in remote districts even murder of the whites became a familiar horror. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... enormous prime cost had to incur that of shipment from the interior of Pennsylvania to the city of New-York. In all such cases the prime cost increases immensely, and to an extent that would hardly be credited by those not practically familiar ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... that little dog, and can at this moment not only recall my pain and terror—I have no doubt I was to blame—but also her face; and were I allowed to search among the shades in the cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still. All my life I have been familiar with these faithful creatures, making friends of them, and speaking to them; and the only time I ever addressed the public, about a year after being bitten, was at the farm of Kirklaw Hill, near Biggar, when the text, given out from an empty cart in which ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... yet came with such abandon to the foot of the throne to devote himself to its service. He not only forgave Douglas all his offences, but placed him at the head of his government, "used him most familiar of any man," and looked up to him with the half-adoring admiration which a generous boy so often feels towards the first man who ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... we have obtained the exclusive American rights, and these books cannot be procured in any other edition. Each volume handsomely bound with individual designs; each containing four original drawings. Those familiar with Mrs. Meade know her reputation for clean, wholesome stories, and these books should be in every home library. The titles named below ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like—sufficient in truth within awhile to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... Testament was brooded over and absorbed with a care and thoroughness which must have made every line and every thought familiar to her. St. John was her favourite book. A few specimens of her remarks ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... singularly familiar about her," mused the young man as he left the store. "Who can she be? I have ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... instant a gentleman ran against them with an umbrella, and lifting the same suddenly to make his excuses, a very familiar figure was revealed to them. Stuart Nightingale himself. A flash of disagreeable expression crossed his face for that one second of surprise, then he had regained ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, has been reckoned here amongst not the councillors, certainly, but the familiar and still celebrated servants of Henry IV. He held no great post, and had no great influence with the king; he was, on every occasion, a valiant soldier, a zealous Protestant, an indefatigable lover and seeker ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... bid them look at the enemy, and thus he accustomed them to the aspect of the barbarians and their strange and savage shouts, and to make themselves acquainted with their armour and movements, so that in course of time what appeared formidable to their imagination would become familiar by being often seen. For it was the opinion of Marius that mere strangeness adds many imaginary dangers to real danger; but that through familiarity even real dangers lose their terrors. Now the daily sight of the enemy not only took away somewhat of the first alarm, but the threats ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... familiar with the throbbing, grinding sound made by many military automobiles on the march, but he waited calmly, merely loosening his automatic for the sake of precaution. He felt sure that while he stood behind a hedge he ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it turns out we have three classes together, too—biology and algebra and English. We're both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... when we do. A glorious sun shone over an oily ocean of cerulean blue, over a hundred towering icebergs of every fantastic shape, and flashing all of the colours of the rainbow from their gleaming pinnacles as they rolled on the long and lazy swell. Birds familiar and strange left the dense shoals of rippling fish, over which great flocks were hovering and quarrelling in noisy enjoyment, to wave us welcome as they ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... was a young man of eighteen, and he had not yet become familiar with the grossness and selfishness of this calculating world. He was rather offended at the patronage which the Senator had proposed to bestow upon him, and he even regretted that he had so readily ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... the early dusk of a summer evening, she discovered old Ben Peters, half intoxicated, slumbering noisily on a pile of sacks in a corner of the parsonage barn. Carol was sorry, but not at all frightened. The poor, kindly, weak, old man was as familiar to her as any figure in Mount Mark. He was always in a more or less helpless state of intoxication, but also he was always harmless, kind-hearted and generous. She prodded him vigorously with the handle of the pitch-fork until he was aroused to consciousness, and then guided him into ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... Buckingham, in his bold and familiar manner, appears to have been equally a favourite with James I. and Charles I. He behaved with singular indiscretion both at the courts of France ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... upon the top of the hill. Finally, the early twilight set in, and he returned to his chair, but felt no impulse to light a lamp and take up a book. He sat tilted back, pulling Shakespeare's nose with meditative fingers. A gloom gradually settled over the room, withdrawing one after another of the familiar objects around him from the old gentleman's sight; it even seemed to creep into his heart, and create a vague uneasiness there. He tried to shake it off, telling himself that he was the happiest and most ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... two or three which are dovetailed into each other. Take, for instance, the remark of one of the characters in a play by Labiche, "Only God has the right to kill His fellow-creature." It would seem that advantage is here taken of two separate familiar sayings; "It is God who disposes of the lives of men," and, "It is criminal for a man to kill his fellow-creature." But the two sayings are combined so as to deceive the ear and leave the impression of being ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... of approaching winter began to make their appearance in the regions of the North Pole. The sun, which at first had been as a familiar friend night and day, had begun to absent himself not only all night, but during a large portion of each day, giving sure though quiet hints of his intention to forsake the region altogether, and leave it to the six months' reign of night. Frost began to render the nights bitterly cold. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... dreary gates and walked slowly back to Moon Street; and at intervals on her homeward walk she paused to gaze about her in a dazed way, like a person who had wandered unknowingly into some distant place where everything wore a strange look. The old familiar streets and buildings were there, the big shop-windows full of cheap ticketed goods, the cab-stand and the drinking-fountain, the omnibuses and perpetual streams of' foot- passengers on the broad pavement. She knew it all so well, yet now it looked so unfamiliar. She was a stranger, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... true story. All that imagination had to do with it was to find names for the boys and arrange a sequence of events. Other characters, white and Indian, appear under names similar to, or identical with their own. Any old alligator hunter, familiar with the swamps and the Ten Thousand Islands, can follow the course of the explorers from the text of the story. It would be possible for two fearless boys, imbued with a love of Nature and the wilderness, to repeat, incident by ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... system of painting continually on the spot is apt to lose touch with it very soon. For in the continual observation of anything you have set your easel before day after day, comes a series of impressions, more and more commonplace, as the eye becomes more and more familiar with the details of the subject. And ere long the original emotion that was the reason of the whole work is lost sight of, and one of those pictures or drawings giving a catalogue of tired objects more or less ingeniously arranged (that we all know so well) is the result—work ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... grinning cheerily at the familiar, sunlit city. His eyes darted to the chronometer beside him. The view seemed to be taken from a ship that was suddenly scudding across the heavens like a frightened thing, as it ran across from Manhattan ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... there is any easy road to learning, but there is a natural process which greatly accelerates the progress of acquisition, just as it is better to follow a highway over a rough country than to betake one's self to the stumps and brush. For example, if one is familiar with peaches, apricots will be quickly understood as a kindred kind of fruit, even though a little strange. A person who is familiar with electrical machinery will easily interpret the meaning and purpose of every ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... thus: Nine before and after the amount written in words. If the words are commenced close to the left margin the running line will be necessary only at the right. The signature should be in your usual style familiar to the paying teller. The plain, freely written signature is the most difficult to forge. Usually cheques are drawn "to order." The words "Pay to the order of John Brown" mean that the money is to be paid to John Brown or to ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... made my own heart thrill sweetly. I learnt how closely your soul is sister to mine, since God calls that soul to mount to Himself by the lift of love, without climbing the steep stairway of fear. I am not surprised you find it hard to be familiar with Jesus—one cannot become so in a day; but this I do know, I shall aid you much more to tread this beautiful path when I lay aside the burden of this perishable body. Ere long you will exclaim with St. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... shriek of growing fright and anguish came slowly toward them—the cry of a wheelbarrow carrying the great carcass of a pig, waxy white and waxy red, like an image from a chamber of horrors. In the blue twilight, fast deepening, the most familiar things became grotesque. A woman's voice telling stories behind shadow pictures, and the capricious play of the black puppets on her lighted screen, had the effect of incantation. Before the booth of a dentist, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... leaning on the ground, looked to see if there did not appear some motion in the body of his master. Nothing! Fear seized him; he rose completely up, and, at the very moment, heard some one coming up the stairs. A noise of spurs knocking against a sword—a warlike sound, familiar to his ears—stopped him as he was going toward the bed of Athos. A voice still more sonorous than brass or steel resounded ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... gettin' back to your own home town? Why, say, that mornin' when we unloads from the Agnes after a whole month of battin' around, New York looked to me like it had been touched up with gold leaf and ruby paint. Things seemed so fresh and crisp, and all so sort of natural and familiar. And the sounds and the smells! ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... of freedom that so was to be brought to final and consummate realisation in the life of a free people. But at no point and in no case have either the proposals or their carrying out taken shape as a concrete application of the familiar principle of popular self-direction. It has always come to something in the way of a concessive or expedient mitigation of the antagonistic principle of personal authority. Where the forms of self-government or of individual self-direction ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... privilege of visiting our old friends, Brother and Sister Pine, who were then living a few miles out of the city. Both we and they were much delighted to meet again. A day or two more of traveling on the railway, and we were again among familiar scenes, which seemed very dear to us after ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... political or present interest attached to Navarino: with the recent event which has raised, or we may say resuscitated such interest, our readers have doubtless become familiar, and leaving the ephemeral glory to the Sun of all newspapers, and meaner "chronicles of the times," we shall proceed to the sober duty of describing the Bay of Navarino, as, it will be seen, a place of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various

... machinery has come in to replace the heavier and more mechanical portions of labor. The steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference. In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend their backs, but in how many household processes is ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... doctor was sent for!" he exclaimed, as if resuming a familiar subject with the girl. Then he turned to Theron. "I dare-say you have no such trouble; but with our poorer people it is very vexing. They will not call in a physician, but hurry off first for the clergyman. I don't know that it is altogether to avoid doctor's bills, but it amounts to ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... We have a familiar expression in taking leave of our friends, "Be good to yourself!" which, it will be seen, is the modern man's translation of the old "farewell," with the truly modern implication that the question of his faring well will depend upon ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... fact, nor mentally but be conscious of it. Like us, indeed, and yet so unlike are they that we seem, as we gaze at them, to be viewing our own humanity in some mirth-provoking mirror of the mind,—a mirror that shows us our own familiar thoughts, but all turned wrong side out. Humor holds the glass, and we become the sport of our own reflections. But is it otherwise at home? Do not our personal presentments mock each of us individually our lives long? Who but is the daily dupe of his dressing-glass, and complacently conceives ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... daintily with the glow, and even Rowdy's lean, brown features were for the moment glorified. They rode knee to knee silently, thinking each his own thoughts the while they watched the sunset with eyes grown familiar with its barbaric ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... undergraduates at the station to cheer us off. As the train pulled out the familiar strains of "Old Nassau" floated after us and we realized that the next time we would see that loyal crowd would be in the cheering section on the Princeton side ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... with marked courtesy of manner, but with an emphasis and tone that sufficiently acquainted the Signor Gradenigo with the nature of the suspicions that beset him. He had too long been familiar with the sinuous policy of the council, in which, at intervals, he had so often sat, not to understand that he would run the risk of a more serious accusation were he to hesitate in acknowledging its justice. Teaching his features, therefore, to wear a ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... give an account of our experiences, please allow me to relate an incident that occurred on the train. In a seat almost parallel with the one we occupied sat two women, one of whom was richly dressed. She repeatedly looked my way. Her face seemed familiar. Presently I ventured to accost her with that fact. She smilingly replied: "Of course it is. I'm —— ——. You came to my house in Santa Cruz dressed in a Salvation Army bonnet. If it hadn't have been for that, you would never have got in. One of my girls left because of what you said and did ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... In the absence of Finn, Reynard would have paid no other penalty for his theft than the loss of the rabbit. As it was, the incident cost him his life; and he was a master fox, too, who had ranged that countryside with considerable insolence for some years; a terribly familiar foe in a number ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... Lord Cromer's familiar preoccupation with the classics was a point in his mental habits which deserves particular attention. I have always supposed that he inherited it from his mother, the Hon. Mrs. Baring, who was a Windham. She was a woman of learning; and she is said to have ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... your tongues, whether you starve or not. My lords, this age is so familiar grown, That the low peasant hardly doffs his hat, Unless you beat him; and the raw mechanic Elbows the noble in the public streets. [To the Citizens.] Still as our gentle Duchess has so prayed us, And to refuse so beautiful a beggar Were to ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... better way of repaying them, than by consulting your family honour. In my boyhood, it seem'd as if nature had dropp'd me a kind of infant subject on your father's Cornish territory; and the whole pedigree of your house is familiar to me. ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... spoke of Mequinez, which, he said, was a Jennut, or Paradise, compared with which Gibraltar was a sty of hogs. So great, so universal is the love of country. I soon saw that both these people believed me to be of their own nation; indeed, the young one, who was much the most familiar, taxed me with being so, and spoke of the infamy of denying my own blood. Shortly before our arrival off Tarifa, universal hunger seemed to prevail amongst us. The hadji and his negroes produced their store, and feasted on roast fowls, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... a bit dull driving back alone. He was not familiar with the road; it was not the one by which he had come. Miss Farnsworth had not planned this outcome of the trip from the beginning—he gave her credit for that; neither could he expect a girl who had fallen in love with, and purchased, a saddle horse within the short ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Neighbours, and kept a greater Distance, than if he had enjoy'd all he had lost at Court; and took more Solemnity and State upon him, because he would not be subject to the Reproaches of the World, by making himself familiar with it: So that he rarely visited; and, contrary to the Custom of those in France, who are easy of Access, and free of Conversation, he kept his Family retir'd so close, that 'twas rare to see any of them; and when they went abroad, which was but ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... the various detachments of the army could intercommunicate for concentration upon any given point were numerous and well kept up, and were familiar to all ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... and travelling rapidly down the gorge, whirled something like a huge empty sack. For him it meant—what did it not mean?—the German air-fleet, Kurt, the Prince, Europe, all things stable and familiar, the forces that had brought him, the forces that had seemed indisputably victorious. And it went down the rapids like an empty sack and left the visible world to Asia, to yellow people beyond Christendom, to all that ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... God by one of those subterfuges by which it is necessary to approach the unseen and infinite, under at least a disguise of mortality. And the whole book, as no other such book has ever been, is lyrical. This prose, so simple, so familiar, has in it the exaltation of poetry. It can pass, without a change of tone, from the boy's stealing of pears: 'If aught of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin'; to a tender human affection: 'And now he lives in Abraham's bosom: whatever that be ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... M. Gautier himself. Of this group the short, very old, and very characteristic Couronnement Loys will supply a good subject for more particular treatment, a subject all the more desirable that Roland may be said to be comparatively familiar, and is accessible in ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... qualities the candidates of the two great parties possessed in a high degree. They were honest and sincere; they were familiar with the desires and needs of the various sections of the nation; they were national in the breadth of their policies. But they were different in temperament, equipment, and experience, and upon this difference the Republican leaders made ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... the joy and the wonder there fell a strange hush over the little company, for suddenly the Lord was seen standing in the midst and they heard the greeting so dear and familiar ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury

... off the order box and turned back to Ronny. "I understand you're familiar with hand guns. It's in this ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... levers. Having seen how the head is moved as a lever of the first order, we are now to choose a part which will show us the plan on which levers of the second order work, and there are many reasons why we should select the foot. It is a part which we are all familiar with; every day we can see it at rest and in action. The foot, as we have already noted, serves as a lever in walking. It is a bent or arched lever (Fig. 6); when we stand on one foot, the whole weight of our body rests on the summit of the arch. We are ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... her forward. And at that moment she could see below, at the edge of the lapping water, the outline of a small boat and of a man who sat in it using the oars against the force of the current so as to keep the boat always near the steps. She heard a dear familiar voice call out with ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... a planet like the earth, and a planet like our moon? Yet these things are simply examples of cosmical matter at four different stages of cooling. The physical differences between steam, water, and ice afford a more familiar example. In the organic world the perpetual modification of structures that has been effected through natural selection exhibits countless instances of differences in kind which have risen from the accumulation ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... thrilled sweetly from her lips she looked round at the crowd of queer half-human shapes about her, and something in their unlikeness to her own kind brought back to her mind the familiar scenes which lay so far away, so many millions of miles across the dark and ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... restoring parson and architect, standing amid an island of shapely trees and flower-beset cottages of thatched grey stone and cob, amidst the narrow stretch of bright green water-meadows that wind between the sweeping Wiltshire downs, so well beloved of William Cobbett. Or some new-seen and yet familiar cluster of houses in a grey village of the upper Thames overtopped by the delicate tracery of a fourteenth-century church; or even sometimes the very buildings of the past untouched by the degradation of the sordid utilitarianism that cares not and knows not ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... started, and a little loose—just enough to attract her attention. This she opened, and in it, strange to say, she found that very cipher which I have told you of. A key accompanied it, by which she was able to read as much as we have read; and there were also those letters with which you are familiar. She took them to her room, shut herself up, and studied them as eagerly as ever either you or I did. She then hurried back to Chetwynde Castle, and laid every thing before the Earl. Out of this arose his excitement and its very ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... that he craved. He had known Margaret too long; there was no surprise for him in any gesture that she made, in any word that she uttered. They had drunk too deeply of the same springs to offer each other the attraction of mystery, the charm of the unusual. He was familiar with every opinion she had inherited and preserved, with every dress she had worn, with every book she had read. As a whole she embodied his ideal of feminine perfection. She was gentle, lovely and unselfish; she never asked unnecessary questions, never exacted ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... probably the stars were not nearly so well known by the community at large, the new star in Cassiopeia had not shone an hour before the country people were gazing at it with wonder. Besides, Cassiopeia and the Whale are constellations very different in position. The familiar stars of Cassiopeia are visible on every clear night, for they never set. The stars of the Whale, at least of the part to which the wonderful variable star belongs, are below the horizon during rather more than ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... by the king at his leaving Agimere. He was now riding on an elephant, with no great guard or attendance. His people called out to me to give place to the prince, which I did, yet I staid to look at him, and he called on me to approach; and, after asking some familiar and civil questions, I departed. His person is comely, his countenance chearful, and his beard hung down as low as his middle. This I noticed, by his questions, that he seemed quite ignorant of all that passed at court, insomuch that he had never heard of any English, or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... a way of living, and it is as little in human nature to give up cheerfully in the middle of life a familiar method of dealing with things in favor of a new and untried one as it is to change one's language or emigrate to an entirely different land. I realize what this proposal means to diplomatists when I try to suppose myself united to assist in the abolition of written books and journalism ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... brother lost the light of his life-tide, Buried together wi' thee lieth the whole of our house: Perisht along wi' thyself forthright all joys we enjoyed, 95 Douce joys fed by thy love during the term of our days; Whom now art tombed so far nor 'mid familiar pavestones Nor wi' thine ashes stored near to thy kith and thy kin, But in that Troy obscene, that Troy of ill-omen, entombed Holds thee, an alien earth-buried in uttermost bourne. 100 Thither in haste so hot ('tis said) from ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... worth and historical meaning, we ask, as a quite fundamental inquiry: What that situation was? Thus the History of a nation's Poetry is the essence of its History, political, economic, scientific, religious. With all these the complete Historian of a national Poetry will be familiar; the national physiognomy, in its finest traits and through its successive stages of growth, will be dear to him: he will discern the grand spiritual Tendency of each period, what was the highest Aim and Enthusiasm of mankind in each, ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... accursed Basutos would be following us even in the dark. This would hamper them, no doubt, but they would keep the path, with which they were probably familiar, beneath their feet, and what is more, the ground being soft with recent rain, they could feel the wheel spoor with their fingers. I looked about me. Just here another track started off in a nor'-westerly direction from that which we were following. Perhaps it ran to Lydenburg; I do not know. To ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... horse without bridle, running most swiftly "from grace to grace, from virtue to virtue." One is accustomed by Plato—not to speak of Browning in "The Two Poets of Croisic"—to the image of the soul as a charioteer. Catherine's metaphor is less familiar but not less forceful. The will, to her, is only free when pure: impure and sinful desires, far from being the sign of liberty, are the bit and bridle that hinder its fiery course toward God. The same thought, less vividly put, is found in a modern theologian—Dr. Moberly. "The real ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... the wingless bipeds of Cape Evans) supposed to have been read by OATES' escaped rabbit to the Royal Society of Rabbits. Mr. TAYLOR, as a recorder of history in Scott's Last Expedition, was, I thought, a little too familiar; in these and other articles he is much more at home. But it is upon Dr. WILSON's pictures (both serious and comic) that The South Polar Times can most justly pride itself. I envy Mr. CHERRY-GARRARD so prolific and brilliant a contributor. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... post-office there were three roads stretching far away over hill and moorland. With two of those roads I had made myself thoroughly familiar; but the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... Count, half-audibly. "The name is familiar, certainly, though where I have seen or heard it before I cannot now recall. The lady is French by birth, the paper says, and that fact, at least, is a sufficient pretext for me to visit her. I will call on her as a fellow countryman, and the interview will ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... one kind of game which they at times found altogether too familiar. This was the grizzly bear, which they were the first white men to discover. They called it indifferently the grizzly, gray, brown, and even white bear, to distinguish it from its smaller, glossy, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... came a low, piteous groan, and a familiar voice muttered, "The cowards—to leave a comrade ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... striking change in the manners of the servants during the last three days. They are more familiar, without, however, evincing the least insolence; their spirits seem unusually exhilarated, and they betray an interest in the struggle in which the people are engaged that leaves no doubt as to the side that excites their sympathy. Every rumour of the success of the insurgents is repeated ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... her, and always manifested great deference for her opinion. She suffered much anxiety on account of the perils to which he was often exposed in his contests with slaveholders and kidnappers; and for many years, the thought was familiar to her mind that she might one day see him brought home a corpse. While the yellow fever raged in Philadelphia, she had the same anxiety concerning his fearless devotion to the victims of that terrible disease, who were ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... scene was fair, the spot indeed was one which rendered the performance of gracious offices to Sybil doubly sweet. She ever begged of the Lady Superior that she might be her minister to the cottages up Dale. They were full of familiar faces. It was a region endeared to Sybil by many memories of content and tenderness. And as she moved along to-day her heart was light, and the natural joyousness of her disposition, which so many adverse circumstances had tended to repress, was visible in her sunny face. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... the three white men, with twenty-five of their native followers armed with muskets and cutlasses, were following the coastline in the direction of Gape Stephens. The night was dark and rainy, but the route was familiar to both Adams and Stenhouse. All night they marched steadily onward, and only when daylight broke did they halt on the banks of a stream to rest and eat. Then, crossing the stream, they struck a native path which led to ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... shift, to grasp opportunities as they were presented, MacRae knew. They could not take root and stand still in one spot like the great Douglas firs. But he missed the familiar voices, the sight of friendly faces. He had nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company. A man of twenty-five, a young and lusty animal of abounding vitality, needs more than his own reflections ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... his childhood. His brother still dwelt there. He received a cordial welcome, though his presence imperiled the family; for the dragoons were still pursuing him. To that true and tender soul, how beautiful must have been the green fields, the rippling brooks, and the familiar hills, where he had roamed when a child! They made him a cave on the hillside; a bush covered its entrance. There he was hidden from the enemy, and there he lay in his last illness, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... of Jerusalem would be most naturally explained if the songs came from Jerusalem or its neighbourhood. With this agree the references to Engedi, Heshbon, Kedar, while the northern places mentioned, Lebanon, Hermon, Gilead, Damascus, are such as would be familiar, at any rate, by reputation, ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... in St. James Street, where I can recall his mother, Mrs. Colquhoun, and father, and brothers, Patrick and James. Patrick was a remarkable young man. He had graduated at Cambridge and Heidelberg and filled diplomatic capacities in the East, and was familiar with many languages from Arabic to Gaelic, and was the first amateur light-weight boxer in England, and first sculler on the Thames, and had translated and annotated the principal compendium of Roman law. He took me to see a grand ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... sun rose, both of us sat with eyes fixed upon the scenery, observant of every feature. It was all so strange, yet familiar! Barns with long, sloping roofs stood with their backs against the hillsides, precisely as in the illustrations to Hawthorne's stories, and Whittier's poems. The farm-houses, old and weather-beaten and guarded by giant elms, looked as if they might have sheltered ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... entirely unknown to the ages which have preceded him; those effects which his grandfathers contemplated as marvellous, which they regarded as supernatural efforts, looked upon as miracles, have become familiar to him in the present day, and are at this moment contemplated as simple and natural consequences, of which he comprehends the mechanism—of which he understands the cause—of which he can unfold the manner of action. Man, in fathoming Nature, has ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... when we get right views of God's holiness. Isaiah, the holiest man in all Israel, was cast down at the sight of his own sin after he had seen the vision of God's holiness. The same thing is true of Job (40:3-4; 42:4-5). We confess sin in such easy and familiar terms that it has almost ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... had finally laughed himself tired he gave a command and the soldiers formed about the lads and began escorting them toward the town. Once there, the officer led the way to a house with which he was evidently familiar. ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson

... harboured no resentment against the Duke of Wellington, and never seems to have hesitated about retaining him as his Minister when he came to the throne. His exaltation (for the moment) completely turned his head, but as his situation got familiar to him he became more composed and rational, if not more dignified in his behaviour. The moral and intellectual qualities of the King, however insignificant in themselves, now became, from their unavoidable influence, an object of great ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... ("Ghost-fighter"), who bore the additional titles of "director of prophets and general of infantry." There were pluralists even in those days. And the distinction between the privy councillor (Geheimrat) and real privy councillor (Wirk-licher-Greheimrat) was quite familiar; for we find it actually made, many an old Egyptian officially priding himself in his tomb on having been a real privy councillor! The Egyptian bureaucracy was already ancient and had its survivals and its anomalies even as early as the time ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... white to a degree, so that I wondered sometimes how I had the courage to go on—the drawn brows were so formidable! There was one moment when he talked of "trumpery objections," in his most House of Commons manner. It was as I thought. The new lines of criticism are not familiar to him, and they really press him hard. He meets them out of Bishop Butler, and things analogous. But there is a sense, I think, that question and answer don't fit, and with it ever-increasing interest and—sometimes—irritation. His own autobiographical ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... appearance of the pleasure-dog's owner as a familiar of his boarding-house piqued his curiosity not the slightest was only too evident. He bowed, his eyes returning from steak ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... faint rustling or fluttering in the corner of the room by the door. She got up and, feeling her way, opened it, and the instant she had done so she heard, a few steps only in front of her it seemed, the familiar notes, very, very soft ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... which spoke so unmistakably out of the familiar old graybearded, sunburnt face, did her no end of good." Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, "Is it indeed you, Justin? And you will still recognize me? And you do not flee from me?" At first the deplorable commission which the old man had to carry out threw her ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... evening Jinny came to him in his study. She carried the dreadfully familiar pile ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... having been first instructed, examined [whether they know and understand anything of the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments], and absolved. The children sing psalms in order that they may learn [become familiar with passages of Scripture], the people also sing [Latin and German psalms], in order that they may either learn or pray. With the adversaries there is no catechization of the children whatever, concerning which even the canons ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... in the tetralogy commencing "The Three Midshipmen" and ending with "The Three Admirals," so the three principal characters will have been familiar to Kingston's youthful readers. As with the other books it is a very good introduction to Naval life in the middle of the nineteenth century, but there are other things we can learn ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... instinctively; but it was hopeless. He knew Pierre, knew his greed for gold, his lack of scruple as to methods of acquiring it. He did not know Pierre's love for Elise; it would not have weighed with him had he known. For he was familiar with Pierre's class. Therefore he knew that Pierre would rather see Elise dead than in a station in life superior to his own, where she would either despise him or be ashamed of him. It was useless to appeal to Pierre on the ground of benefit to Elise. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... charters, that the Scottish minstrels of this early period enjoyed all the privileges and distinctions possessed by the Norman trouveurs, whom they nearly rivalled in the arts of narration, and over whom they possessed one manifest advantage, in their familiar acquaintance with the usual scenes of chivalry." These minstrels, like the majority of poetic singers, were no doubt sons of the people—bold, aspiring, and genius-lit—bursting strong from their mother earth, with all her sap and force and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... willingly persuade myself, that the preceding work will not be found altogether uninteresting. To elder persons it will recall scenes and characters familiar to their youth; and to the rising generation the tale may present some idea of the manners of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread. I shall be forsworn,—which is a great argument of falsehood,—if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; Love is a devil; there is no evil angel but Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. Cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules' club, and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard's rapier. The first and ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... four issued from the cottage, chatting together like old friends. It was very remarkable, indeed, how familiar the old couple insensibly grew with the elder traveler, and how their good and simple spirits melted into his, even as two drops of water would melt into the illimitable ocean. And as for Quicksilver, with his keen, quick, laughing wits, he appeared ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... card table would certainly have disturbed a man with less power of mind concentration. For Mrs. Worthington in this familiar employment was herself again—con fuoco. Here was Mr. Duplan in high spirits; his wife putting forth little gushes of bird-like exaltation as the fascinations of the game revealed themselves to her. Even Hosmer and Therese ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... all children will sing if encouraged early in life. In the family group one has only to start a familiar song and soon all will be singing. It is just as natural to sing "Abide with Me" when the family sits together in the evening as it is to start "My Alabama Choo-choo." Children like the swing of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" just as much ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... thanks for their passage through the wilderness and their safe arrival. Hay Stockard looked upon the function with sneering disapproval, the romance and solemnity of it lost to his matter-of-fact soul. Baptiste the Red, still gazing across, recognized the familiar postures, and remembered the girl who had shared his star-roofed couch in the hills and forests, and the woman-child who lay somewhere by bleak ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... who was so familiar with the interior of the Palais Royal, though he did not know the relations existing between the queen and the cardinal, pictured to himself, in his prison, all that dramatic excitement which would ensue ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... existence of the small nomination boroughs, seeing that the same arguments were made use of a whole generation afterwards by no less a person than Mr. Gladstone. These arguments, we need hardly say, were founded on the familiar assumption that a Burke or a Sheridan, a Canning or a Plunket, would have no chance whatever of getting into the House of Commons if some appreciative patron did not generously put a borough at his disposal. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... any song to that familiar little sparrow, the Socialis; yet who that has observed him sitting by the wayside, and repeating, with devout attitude, that fine sliding chant, does not recognize the neglect? Who has heard the snowbird sing? Yet he has a lisping warble very savory to the ear. I have heard him indulge ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... are nothing to the purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould of features and cast of character which had all along been familiar here—ever, as one representative of the race lay down in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main street—might still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as Martin left the fruit store and turned homeward, his marketing on his arm. At the corner an electric car had stopped, and at sight of a lean, familiar figure alighting, his heart leapt with joy. It was Brissenden, and in the fleeting glimpse, ere the car started up, Martin noted the overcoat pockets, one bulging with books, the other bulging with ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... nothing original or new in depositing the luckless collie pup in one of these wheeled receptacles. He was but following an old-established custom, familiar to many in his line of life. There was no ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... State, and for recommendations for the future which he is not prepared to give without that information. To fully answer the Senate's call, it would probably be necessary to employ some competent agent, familiar with the Spanish American States, to collate and arrange the information asked for. For this there is no ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... might be, in reviewing the charge which he had delivered to the jury, and upon the credit of which the miserable culprit had been doomed to die. I do not exaggerate when I assert, that at this moment—during this short reverie—his face, which I had never seen before, seemed, by a miracle, as familiar to me as my own—a fact which I afterwards explained, by discovering the closest resemblance between it and a painting of our Saviour, one of the finest works of art, the production of the greatest genius of his time, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... in action, which the other do make shew of: and no doubt many when they heare of any rare exploit performed which cannot enter into their capacity, and is beyond their reach, straight they attribute it to be done by the Deuill, and that they worke by some familiar spirit, when indeede it is nothing els but meere illusion, cosoning, and legerdemaine. For you haue many now adaies, and also heeretofore many writers haue bene abused, as well by vntrue reports as by illusion and practises of confederacy, & legerdemaine, &c. Sometimes ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid

... their aims, and justifies their action in the manner with which our readers will by now be familiar, and continues: ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... terms; but on perceiving his drift, we hauled up our grapnel and went away likewise. We landed at a small town, to see the manners of the people, and about 60 of them came about us, being at first shy, and seemingly afraid of us; but seeing we did them no harm, they came up in a familiar manner, and took us by the hand. We then went into their town, which consisted of about twenty small hovels, covered over with large leaves. All the sides were open, and the floor was raised like a scaffold about a yard high, where they work many ingenious things of the barks of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... in his throat that seemed to choke him. This question sounded familiar; it brought back in a rush a recollection of his late controversy with Mr. O'Brien. His face ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... is it indeed my father?" said Leila, recovering herself, and drawing back, that she might assure herself of that familiar face; "it is thou! it is—it is! Oh! what blessed chance ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... grown into a tall young man, his handsome countenance well bronzed by tropical suns. He stood at the entrance for some seconds without advancing. No one seemed to know him. Looking round he saw many of the old familiar faces ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... all of that beard and part of his eyebrows—they used to meet plumb in the middle, remember—till a body would hardly know him. I didn't. I knowed they was somethin' familiar about him, but I couldn't tell what till you mentioned Pap and the town together. Then I knowed. Yeah, Bull, this gent's the same Bill Smith Pap picked up on the trail. He's a respectable member of society now, I guess. Calls himself ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... was not with him, was certain, for only Andy came—Andy, who held his head so high, and looked round so defiantly, as he kept close to Richard's side on the way to the hotel. It was very dreary going up the old, familiar staircase into the quiet hall, and along to the door of the silent room, which seemed drearier than on that night when he first came back to it and found Ethie gone. There were ashes now upon the stove-hearth where Hal Clifford ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... of the Irish fairy stories and legends, in which those who are familiar with Mr. Croker's, and other selections of the same kind, will find much that is fresh, and full of the peculiar vivacity and humour, and sometimes even of the ideal beauty, ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown

... 1880. This is a pretty and interesting shrub belonging to the more familiar Witch Hazel family. Flowers clustered in small heads, the calyx pale green, and the long linear petals almost pure white. Being quite hardy, and interesting as well as ornamental, should insure this Chinese shrub a place ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... geniality of his reply that won him a place in the society of Forks Settlement at once. In five minutes his horse was stabled and cared for. In five minutes he was addressing the occupants of the saloon by their familiar nicknames. In five minutes he was paying for whisky at an exorbitant price. In five minutes—well, he sniffed his first breath of prairie ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... near the water, and at a distance shows a pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England meeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the service had begun. There was something familiar in the bareness and uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews had high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,—a sort of theological fortification,—approached by wide, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... codified, by the application of which to given states of society the historical student might predict the future course of political events, with a confidence similar to that with which he could foretell the results of familiar chemical combinations, or the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... that the firste battailes, as though thei wer sore charged, retire into the spaces of the second: and after, all into the thirde, and from thens every one to retourne to his place: and in soche wise to use theim in this exercise, that to every manne, all thyng maie be knowen, and familiar: the which with practise, and with familiaritie, is brought to passe moste quickly. The fowerth exercise is, that thei learne to knowe by meane of the sounde, and of the Ansigne, the commaundemente of their capitaine: for as moche as that, whiche shall ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... He did it. Yes, He did it. O His immense bounty and goodness! He regards not the words but the affection with which the words are uttered. That must be so, when He endures with such an impertinent and over-familiar and irreverent wretch as I am; endures and answers. May He be blessed to ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte

... Davis, one by Thomas Jefferson, one by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington Booth—the last representing a memory of the fact that he had been shot by a man named Booth, to whose surname the writer added the name with which he was most familiar in connection therewith. A request to name five of the States that seceded in 1861 received answers that included almost every State in the Union. It happened to be at the time of the silver agitation in the West, and the Rocky Mountain States accordingly figured in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... making shift and doing all things for themselves—there has always been another influence at work upon my neighbours, leaving its indelible mark on them. Almost from infancy onwards, in a most personal and intimate way, they are familiar with harrowing experiences of calamity such as people who employ them are largely able to escape. The little children are not exempt. There being no nursemaids to take care of the children while fathers and mothers are busy, the tiniest are often entrusted to the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... like a Texican," Smith thought. There was something familiar in the stranger's outlines, the way he threw his weight in one stirrup, but Smith was taking no chances. He put out a hand in warning, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart



Words linked to "Familiar" :   fellow, retainer, escort, common or garden, strange, beaten, familiarity, comrade, friend, tovarisch, unfamiliar, long-familiar, playmate, old, disembodied spirit, familiar spirit, conversant, companion, associate, common, usual, intimate, playfellow, known, servant, well-known, tovarich, date



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com