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Ill-use   Listen
verb
ill-use  v.  
1.
To treat badly.
Synonyms: mistreat, maltreat, abuse, ill-treat.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ill-use" Quotes from Famous Books



... feelings better were I to say by pride and diffidence. I look to our old friendship, to the authority given to me by my age, and to the thorough goodness of your heart for pardon in thus accusing you. That little men should have ventured to ill-use you, has hurt your pride. That these little men should have been able to do so has created your diffidence. Put you to a piece of work that a man may do, you have less false pride as to the way in which you may do it than any man ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... muttering to himself like a dam' fool; and then, these foreigners behave very queerly to women sometimes. And perhaps he would want to carry her off somewhere—or run off himself. It was not safe. He preached it to his daughter that the fellow might ill-use her in some way. She made no answer. It was, they said in the village, as if the man had done something to her. People discussed the matter. It was quite an excitement, and the two went on 'walking out' together in the face ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... couple to live in comfort and ease if the husband had conducted himself properly. The gentlewoman was a person of virtue and merit, but was unlucky in her choice of a husband—Porteous was no better a husband than he had been a son. They were not long married when he began to ill-use her. He dragged her out of bed by the hair of the head, and beat her to the effusion of blood. The whole neighbourhood were alarmed sometimes at midnight by her shrieks and cries; so much so, indeed, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... he had occasion to go and visit a distant part of his dominions, but fearing his high-born wives might ill-use Guzra Bai in his absence, at parting he gave her a little golden bell, saying, "If while I am away you are in any trouble, or any one should be unkind to you, ring this little bell, and wherever I am I shall instantly hear it, and ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... money to spare, and that his father had to work hard to get what money they had. He learned also that everything that came into the house, or was done for them, cost money; therefore, for one thing, he must not ill-use his clothes. He learned, too, that there was a great deal of suffering in the world, and that his father's business was to try to make it less, and help people who were ill to grow well again, and ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... due allowance for their often unreasonable alarms and suspicions, no fresh rising need be feared. The chief aim of the ruling officials should be to draw and not to drive them to labour, and to keep in check those white adventurers who hang about the frontiers of civilization and sometimes ill-use or defraud the Kafir in a way which makes him hostile to the next whites, however well intentioned, who come into his neighbourhood. It may be some years yet before the natives will seek work at the mines to the extent ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... upon you, boys of Venice," she cried, "thus to ill-use a stranger in your town! Is a score of such as you against one poor lad the boasted chivalry of Venice? Eh via! the very fisher-lads of Mendicoli could ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... hand may chide, Till foam-wreaths lie, like crested waves, along thy panting side: And the rich blood that's in thee swells, in thy indignant pain, Till careless eyes, which rest on thee, may count each starting vein. Will they ill-use thee? If I thought—but no, it cannot be,— Thou art so swift, yet easy curbed; so gentle, yet so free: And yet, if haply, when thou'rt gone, my lonely heart should yearn, Can the hand which casts thee from it now command ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... towards him, and detains him). The president is coming hither? He will ill-use my child! He will ill-use us all,—and yet, major, you are going to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... ye.—Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie you the order to travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about my hoose to ill-use my bairn." ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... just his life. The citizen risks a great deal more, for he has a wife and children, hearth and home. When a town is taken, the soldiers are either made prisoners of war or allowed to march out unhurt; it is into the citizen's house that the enemy comes, to ill-use his wife, children, and servants. These Swedes now are pressing the siege of our town so hard that we cannot possibly hold out for long. They say that even if Torstenson offers us fair terms, the commandant means to refuse them without ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... might therefore have made a good bargain in rye at Guetzkow if it had become my office, and had I not, moreover, been afraid lest the robbers, who swarm in these evil times, should take away my corn, and ill-use and perchance murder me into the bargain, as has happened to sundry people already. For, at this time especially, such robberies were carried on after a strange and frightful fashion on Strellin heath at Guetzkow; but by God's help it all ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... his naked feet. He dared not mount into the trees, for that would be stealing; but he leaped, and skipped, and slid when a russet-coated chestnut caught his eye. Gigi was with him, trusted to his care by Pipa, with many abjurations and terrible threats of future punishment should he ill-use him. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... advising a Jewess to marry a Gentile, which I am not doing, I would say, Select a man deeply rooted in religious principle, and clinging humbly to his Christian faith. Such a man would rarely, if ever, deceive or ill-use you." ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike or otherwise violently ill-use it, but gradually—very gradually—I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence as from the breath of ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... called, is often but a feather's weight in the balance of Motive. Revenge makes it kick the beam; and Passion; and even momentary Whim. It was one of the arguments advanced by Christian men in favor of slavery, that no man would ill-use his slave, because it was his own property; as though the lust of cruelty in a brutal nature were, while it lasted, not ten times as strong as the lust of gain. There are moments when a man is ready to part with not only his earthly prospects, but his hopes of heaven, rather than be balked ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... foliage, the flowers with their bright unshrinking gaze. The tallest trees seemed to look down on him from a height, regarding him with a dignified and quiet interest; his personal affection for them had led him indeed to be careful not to ill-use them; he had always disliked the gathering of flowers, the tearing off of boughs or leaves from shrubs. They seemed to suffer injury patiently, but none the less did he think that they were hurt. He liked to touch the full-blown heads ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... weird story, for her son, by name George, was done to death by the brutality of the officers. This was partially corroborated by a passenger named Gilmour, who called on her after his arrival in London. When he entered the house she said, 'Why did you allow them to ill-use my son.' He started, and said, 'Who told you?' She related all that happened during the weeks her son was ill, and when she finished her guest fainted. According to her, her son was ill-used from the time he started ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... Atsu," she said in a voice subdued with much weeping, "Wilt thou add more to mine already hopeless indebtedness to thee? Art thou blind to the ill-use thou invitest upon thine own head in thy care for me? Let me imperil thee no more. Is there no ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... all by himself in a great stone castle on the shore of a large lake. His principal pleasure consisted in tormenting everything and everybody he came near; but if he had any preference, it was for boys; to tease and ill-use them had the power of affording him great happiness. Lazy, loitering little fellows were in especial danger, for he would catch them quite easily by throwing over their head's the nets he used in fishing, drag them off to his castle, and keep ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... the same crew to go with him again, and the owner's back was scarcely turned before he commenced to drink and ill-use the poor half-witted Ralph who was in his watch. There does not appear to have been any reason for this except that of alcoholic viciousness. The dark horror of secret drinking quickly developed into hideous ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... terror. He knew that the whip was about to descend on his quivering body. And so it did, and there was no one by to interfere. No one but a woman in a ragged shawl who would have no influence with the driver. There was a very good humane society in Fairport, and none of the teamsters dared ill-use their horses if any of the members were near. This was a quiet out-of-the-way street, with only poor houses on it, and the man probably knew that none of the members of the society would be likely to be living in them. He whipped his horse, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders



Words linked to "Ill-use" :   ill-treat, do by, abuse, handle, step, kick around, mistreat, ill-usage



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