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adjective
Rife  adj.  
1.
Prevailing; prevalent; abounding. "Before the plague of London, inflammations of the lungs were rife and mortal." "Even now the tumult of loud mirth Was rife, and perfect in may listening ear."
2.
Having power; active; nimble. (Obs.) "What! I am rife a little yet."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rife" Quotes from Famous Books



... so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too wise to be the Philosopher Square of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... warfare was waged incessantly between the juvenile aristocrats and the monied damsels without handles to their names. All recollections of Athenais had faded from Claire's mind, but hatred was still rife in Mlle. Monlinet's heart; and when her father, in view of her marriage, bought La Varenne for her, the chateau was a threatening fortress, whence she might ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... when speculation was very rife—in the year 1825— Mr. Telford was consulted respecting a grand scheme for cutting a canal across the Isthmus of Darien; and about the same time he was employed to resurvey the line for a ship canal—which ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords. The speech was very interesting to Mr Palliser, because in it the noble lord alluded to a break-up in the present Cabinet, as to which the rumours were, he said, so rife through the country as to have destroyed all that feeling of security in the existing Government which the country so much valued and desired. Mr Palliser had as yet heard no official tidings of such a rupture; but if ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... President of South China, which are stated to be marching north from Canton, are a rabble. Many are without weapons and a large percentage of the uniforms are merely rags. There is no discipline, and gambling and opium-smoking are rife. ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... like a nest Both thee and him about; His face looks down, a heaven of rest, Where comes no dark, no doubt. Its mists are clouds of stars that move On, on, with progress rife; Its winds, the goings of his love; Its dew, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... parliament was prorogued, first to the thirteenth, and afterwards to the eighteenth, of November. In the meantime, public attention was engaged by the equipment of a large squadron of men-of-war and transports at Portsmouth, and speculations were rife as to the policy of the monarch—whether it would be favourable to war or to peace. All classes of society, however, agreed in anticipating the happiest results from his rule, since he had been born and bred among them, and was well acquainted with the language, manners, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... and fermenting. The scientific society of his elders and of the contemporaries among whom he grew up was permeated with the leaven of Laplace and Lamarck, of Hutton and of Herschel. Inquiry was especially everywhere rife as to the origin and nature of specific distinctions among plants and animals. Those who believed in the doctrine of Buffon and of the 'Zoonomia,' and those who disbelieved in it, alike, were profoundly interested and agitated in soul by ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... neighbouring village, who had been away in America for seven years, and just returned rich and prosperous, and full of adventures, to his fatherland. His advent had been awaited with keen interest by all the village maids; rivalry for his favours ran rife. Every girl in the place was dying to talk to him, to dance with him, and he, in return, told them "how beautiful every woman was in America, how they talked, and sang, and danced, and laughed, and how America was enchanting," until ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... day, Where it stands alone by the mountain way, Hearing the merry young leaves at play; And soft on the stones its smile is cast, And it laughs with the wind as it saunters past, The fresh, young wind of May: And happily thus it lives its life Till the woods with sounds of summer are rife, When it silently ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the origin, period and coming of earthquakes as when Pliny wrote 1,800 years ago. The Roman observer knew that the tremor passed like a wave through the surface of the earth; he knew that it had a given direction, and he knew that certain regions were rife with seismic disturbance. More he could not say, and when this is said all has been ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... Mr. Hill, mentioned by Newman as the "old secretary of the Bible Society," Dr. Mozley speaks in connection with the constant opposition and ill-humoured references to Pusey which at that time were rife at Oxford. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... part of the soil of the United States, and more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing, and in late years of so much careful study.[155] Vague and wild were the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and their wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race quite different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our own, and more or less eloquence was ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... And no small skill ought he to haue, that should make true report, or nere the truth, of the numbers and Summes, of footemen or horsemen, in the Enemyes ordring. A farre of, to make an estimate, betwene nere termes of More and Lesse, is not a thyng very rife, among those that gladly would ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee

... poor and sick and sad, Broken in hope and weary of my life; My ventures all miscarrying—naught had For all my labor in the heat and strife. And in my heart some certain thoughts were rife Of an unsummoned exit. As I lay Considering my bitter state, I cried: "Alas! that hither I did ever stray. Better in some fair country to have died Than live in such a land, where Fortune never (Unless ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... made a swift diagnosis of the situation. All exits from Paris carefully watched; suspicion rife everywhere—strangers off in a canoe; a sentinel challenge and ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... assured of your constant and sedulous promoving of this blessed Work, and of the Lords assisting and carrying you on therein: And are confident that your late experience and present sense of the great danger and fearfull confusion flowing from the rife and grouth of Sects and Sectaries not suppressed, hath stirred up in your hearts most fervent desires, and careful endeavours for remedying the same, wherein we exhort you to continue and abound; knowing that your labours shall ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... she will spend some days in private with her family. I presume the Aristocracy will generally follow her example, so far as the Exhibition is concerned, leaving it to the poorer class, to whom five shillings is a consideration. Absurd speculations are rife as to what "the mob" will do in such a building—whether they will evacuate it quietly and promptly at night—whether there will not be a rush made at the diamonds and other precious stones by bands of thieves secretly confederated for ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... passed since Bostwick's arrival in Goldite, but excitement was rife in the air. Despite the angered protests of half a thousand mining men, the Easterner, with four of the shrewdest prospectors in the State, had traversed the entire mineral region of the reservation in the utmost security and assurance. Five hundred men had been forced to ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... ever have made strides towards the attainment of home police principles. However, in their place these men have done good work. Thieving in the city is now much less common, and gambling, although still rife under cover—when will the Chinese eradicate that inherent spirit?—is certainly being put down. One of the features of their work also has been the improvement they have effected in the appearance of the streets. Old customs are dying, and at the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... commencement exercises of the Peirce Business College. He paid his respects to Thomas W. Lawson in such terms as "frenzied fakir" and "crazed Malay running amuck." ... "There are abundant indications that this epidemic is now rife in the community. The extraordinary vote polled by a Socialistic candidate for President, in a time of general prosperity, seems to evidence this, as does the avidity with which many intelligent people read in a cheap 'penny dreadful' magazine the incoherent, self-contradictory, and self-incriminating ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... partridg, and the phesant The Thrush, the wren, the lark a prey to th' pesant, With thousands more which now I may omit Without impeachment to my tale or wit. As my fresh air preserves all things in life, So when corrupt, mortality is rife; ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... rife in Sandycliffe, but no one except Hugh Redmond knew the rights of the case, or why the girl should have abandoned her home when Raby Ferrers was lying on a bed of suffering, and Margaret was watching beside him in trembling anguish ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... of life, In every flame that glows, In every breath of being rife With aspiration or of strife Man feels more than he knows. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... left Richmond, giving the people to understand that he was gone to get a place to labor to support his wife. The people thought it strange that he did not tell where he was going and what he was to do. Speculation was rife. Many thought that it was an attempt at deserting his wife, whom he seemed unable to support. He arranged to visit ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... Confucius once more returned to Loo, only however to find that the condition of the state was still unchanged; disorder was rife; and the reins of government were in the hands of the head of the strongest party for the time being. This was no time for Confucius to take office, and he devoted the leisure thus forced upon him to the compilation of the "Book of Odes" and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... about, stalk abroad. render general &c adj.; generalize. Adj. general, generic, collective; broad, comprehensive, sweeping; encyclopedical^, widespread &c (dispersed) 73. universal; catholic, catholical^; common, worldwide; ecumenical, oecumenical^; transcendental; prevalent, prevailing, rife, epidemic, besetting; all over, covered with. Pan-American, Anglican^, Pan-Hellenic, Pan-Germanic, slavic; panharmonic^. every, all; unspecified, impersonal. customary &c (habitual) 613. Adv. whatever, whatsoever; to a man, one and all. generally &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... outbreak, whenever a sufficient pretext should offer. The visit of Tecumseh at Vincennes in the summer of 1810, with three hundred well armed warriors, and his haughty and insulting bearing toward Governor Harrison, indicated clearly, the hostile spirit that was rife among them. ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... the present hour, The sneers which now are rife, Not for the sake of earthly power, Nor ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... one or two rare occasions when even Sergius Thord's attractions as a speaker were thrown into the background, by the appearance of that mysterious personality known as Lotys,—concerning whom a thousand extravagant stories were rife, none of which were true. It was rumoured among other things as wild and strange, that she was the illegitimate child of a certain great prince, whose amours were legion—that she had been thrown out into the street to perish, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... true frontier town. It was "booming," full of life and all kinds of people, money plentiful, saloons, gambling-dens and dance-halls "wide open." Real Estate was moving freely, prices advancing, speculation rife, and—I caught the infection! A few successful deals gave me courage and tempted me further. I became a real gambler. On some deals I made tremendous profits. I even owned a saloon and gambling-hall, which paid me a huge rental and gave me my drinks ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... silence. Bitterness of hot humiliation possessed her. Heretofore, whatever her trial, she had been mistress of the situation; she had reigned a queen-mother, her authority undisputed. And now it appeared her kingdom was in revolt, conspiracy was rife. Richard's will and hers were in conflict; and Richard's will must eventually obtain, since he would eventually be master. Already courtiers bowed to that will. All this was in her mind. And a wounding of feeling, far deeper and more intimate than this,—since Katherine's nobility ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... seven," said Ephraim, and it was then he squeezed the hand that he found in his. He watched them calmly enough until they had disappeared in the barn behind the tannery house, and then his thoughts became riotous. Rumors had been rife that summer, prophecies of changes to come, and the resignation of the old man who had so long been postmaster at Brampton was freely discussed—or rather the matter of his successor. As the months passed, Ephraim had heard David Wheelock mentioned with more and more assurance for the place. He ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... either beauty's equal or Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore, Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food. Time past she has been attempted and pursued By many blows and banes; but now hears roar A wilder beast from West than all were, more Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... elected," declared Codfish to the lieutenant, when the talk over the coming election was rife. "The ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... of the voyage the two culprits suffered all the inconvenience peculiar to a loss of citizenship. The skipper blandly ignored them, and on two or three occasions gave great offence by attempting to walk through Bill as he stood on the deck. Speculation was rife in the forecastle as to what would happen when they got ashore, and it was not until Northsea was sighted that the skipper showed his hand. Then he appeared on deck with their effects done up neatly in two ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... brother, Mr. Eliot Yorke, though both pledged to the maintenance of the Corn Laws, refused to oppose the government of Sir Robert Peel upon the rumours of the minister's intentions which became rife in the course of the year 1845, when the Irish Famine forced the question to the front. By that time the Anti-Corn Law League had done its work of educating the country, and under its great leaders, Cobden and Bright, had organised a ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... in the Oxus basin, and to Mullah Khan, in the plain of Seistan. Dost Mahommed surrendered (November 5, 1840) and was sent to India, where he was honourably treated. From the beginning, insurrection against the new government had been rife. The political authorities were overconfident, and neglected warnings. On the 2nd of November 1841 the revolt broke out violently at Kabul, with the massacre of Burnes and other officers. The position of the British camp, its communications with the citadel ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... were rapidly losing self-respect. With their false idea of equality, discipline was difficult to maintain, and lawlessness was rife. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... recruiting. I have in round numbers, an hundred," Anderson began when they had been seated in the cypress walk. The moon was not yet half way to the zenith and lay a dull copper color in the eastern sky, partially eclipsed by the chimney of the great house. A solemn silence, terrifying and rife with mysterious sensations, seemed to pervade the place. It was a setting well fitted to shroud deep and dark designs. No one would ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... conquests we have traced, there were many changes in the caliphate. Abubekr was followed by Omar (634-644), Othman (644-655), and Ali (655-661), all of whom fell by the hands of assassins, for from the very first dissensions were rife among the followers of the Prophet. Ali was the last of the four so-called "Orthodox Caliphs," all of whom were relatives or companions of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... spirit of litigation, united with the extension of legal science, would give more than Norman acuteness to our constitutional lawyers? When that era shall arrive, if this quibbling spirit that is now so rife, shall not receive a timely check, where is the law, whose authority may not be questioned? Now is the time to arrest it, before our habits become indurated, and while our national character has that ductility which the changes our country is ever undergoing, naturally ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... The penalty was to be a bullet, the guards having been instructed to shoot upon the detection of an infraction of the order. One man was declared to have been killed for defying the order intentionally or from ignorance, but of this I cannot say anything definitely. Rumour was just as rife and startling among us on the field as among the millions of a humming city. But we understood that two or three men went raving mad, several were picked up unconscious, one Belgian committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt, while another Belgian was ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... nothing now? Would any good to himself or others come from a pain so exquisite, so rife with torture—a pain so strongly impregnated with fear and doubt that he scarcely dared own it to himself? Only now and again those few bitter words would ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... "Nameless" above its door. Many curious eyes followed them as they paused before it, and Jimsy inserted a key in the stout padlock. Who could the two pretty girls in natty motor bonnets, with goggles attached, the plain, heavy skirts and dark shirt-waists be? Speculation ran rife. There was a regular stampede of reporters and photographers to the shed of the Nameless. But when they arrived there, to their chagrin, they found that their prospective victims had slipped inside and only ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... earthly plans were being formed about us, the stirring of thought with the people on religious matters grew greater. Regularly now several of our people went ten miles to the church where we heard Mr. Ballou. A donation party for our minister was to be given the last day of April, and the air was rife with conjectures. Jane North made her appearance, and her ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... about us, candid speculation as to the probable venue of the performance was rife, while its style, length, value, etc., were all frankly discussed. Many were the questions raised, and many the inaccurate explanations accepted as to the reason of our being; but though my companion came in for some inevitable discussion, I was relieved to find that my panache ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... Probably the author of it has read "Liza of Lambeth," and said Faugh! The article, peculiarly inept, is one of those outpourings which every generation of artists has to suffer with what tranquillity it can. According to the Reviewer, ugliness is specially rife "just now." It is always "just now." It was "just now" when George Eliot wrote "Adam Bede," when George Moore wrote "A Mummer's Wife," when Thomas Hardy wrote "Jude the Obscure." As sure as ever a novelist endeavours to paint a complete picture of life in this honest, hypocritical ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... their bad feeling by maligning all whom nobility of birth or wealth or any other distinction made a mark for scandal. Many, besides, believed that some of Vitellius' soldiers had come to Rome to study the state of party feeling. Everywhere suspicion was rife, and terror invaded even the privacy of the home. But far greater was the alarm displayed in public places. With every fresh piece of news that rumour brought, men's feelings and the expression on their faces changed. They were afraid to be found lacking in confidence when things looked ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... is perhaps sufficient to impart some idea of the nature of the relations between the Barbary coast and the interior, and to suggest the importance of the enterprise on which I am engaged. Briefly, the exportation of slaves to Tripoli and beyond, in spite of certain changes of route, is as rife as ever, and in this respect everything remains to be done. But, on the other hand, the trade which, I trust, is providentially intended to supersede this inhuman traffic, is on the increase, though slightly. If ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... rife with the sweet and balmy air and the gay sunshine, so duly prized in our variable climate, because of the rarity of their occurrence; more especially when the year is yet too young to assist with vigour the energies of all-industrious nature. The trees, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... has come to light, with the result that, at present, controversy is rife. Up to date, the contention of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... had these young men and women found their little knowledge a deeply dangerous thing! Too quickly they perceived the imperfections of their government, the corruption rife among the officials of every class. And bitter was their reproach. The question to them seemed simple. To correct this, at once and forever, dig up the very soil in which the corruptive roots expanded—here ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... greatest provision market on the continent or in the world. At that place speculation has been quite rife for the past two or three years, operators obtaining a controlling interest in the stock for the purpose of putting up prices. Last year the plan did not work well, owing to various causes, one of which was the small number of works in progress, such as railroads, etc., the supply of the laborers ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... hateful heart declares thy wicked life: In the abundance of thy abhomination all evils are rife,— But what sayest thou, Conscience, to thy accusation, That art accused to have been bawd unto Lucre, and spotted ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... and continued: "Perhaps no minister of war—and the archives of the ministry are there for reference—ever received the portfolio under more critical circumstances: civil war within, a foreign enemy at our doors, discouragement rife among our veteran armies, absolute destitution of means to equip new ones. That was what I had to face on the 8th of June, when I entered upon my duties. An active correspondence, dating from the 8th of June, between the civil and military authorities, revived their ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... conduct; he had ever been a well-conducted young man, and had quite carried out the character with which he had come from school; but there were duties to be observed towards the community, and its undergraduate portion must be protected from the contagion of principles which were too rife at the moment. Charles was, if possible, still more surprised, and suggested that there must be some misunderstanding if he had been represented to the Vice-Principal as connected with any so-called party ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... probable and possible wants of the human race. We are treading every day upon the lids of great secrets that await the wants of the larger style and finer type of life that lie before us. Discovery has but just begun, and will, I doubt not, be as rife in future ages as in this. There is no end of it: yet the world is a thing to be weighed and measured. It is so many miles around it, and so many miles through it. Never mind; it has more in it ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... miles, and in about one year three, and I think four slaves have been murdered, within that circle, under circumstances of horrid cruelty.—What must have been the amount of murder in the whole slave territory? The whole south is rife with the crime of separating husbands and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... her she made an atmosphere of life, The very air seem'd lighter from her eyes, They were so soft and beautiful, and rife With all we can imagine of the skies;— * * * * * Her overpowering presence made you feel, It would not be ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... Speculations are rife as to the appointment of a new Minister of Education, and the best-informed opinion inclines to the view that Sir ERIC GEDDES, who has occupied his present position for quite a number of weeks, will succeed Mr. FISHER. Some experts however hold that the PREMIER has a magnificent opportunity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various

... Watchwords of party, on all tongues are rife; As if a Church, though sprung from heaven, must owe To opposites and fierce extremes her life;— Not to the golden mean and quiet flow Of truths, that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... cabins chiefly occupied by "bootleggers" and go-betweens—that is the Tanana situation in a nutshell. The men desire the native girls, and the liquor is largely a lure to get them. Tuberculosis and venereal disease are rife, and the two make a terribly fatal combination ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... the story of my life, And draw what secrets in my memory dwell From the dried fountains of her failing well, With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife, And such small facts, with good or evil rife, As happen to us all: I have no tale Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,— Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale: My life is in my books: the record there, A truthful photograph, is all I choose To give the world of self; nor will excuse Mine ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... lycanthropism, or that form of mania in which men have fancied themselves transformed into wolves. This disease also is contagious; and on many occasions has exhibited itself in all the terrors of a maniacal epidemic. As early as the time of Herodotus the belief was rife among the Graeco-Scythian colonies that a people called the Neuri were subject to this species of metamorphosis; and Giraldus Cambrensis, in the twelfth century, found the same superstition in full force in Ireland. It again broke forth in Livonia, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... which Chamberlain's new policy had created, a dissolution and a change of Government were now possibilities of a not distant future, and speculations were rife as to the future position of Sir Charles. Lady Dilke, who regarded the admission of her husband to office as a proof of his public exoneration from the charges brought against his character, was ardently desirous that he should accept without reserve any offer of a place ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... cornels, several viburnums, bush maples of two or three kinds, alder, elder, sumach, hazel, witch-hazel, the shadblow and other perennial, fair-blooming, sweet-smelling favorites, beneath which lies a leaf-mould rife with ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... note to the last quotation, the author says of the word screw: "For the information of the inexperienced, we explain this as a term quite rife in the universities, and, taken ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... noble descent, and came of families which combined the intellectual gifts of Tuscany with the vigour of their later island home[3]. From her mother's race, the Pietra Santa family, Letizia imbibed the habits of the most backward and savage part of Corsica, where vendettas were rife and education was almost unknown. Left in ignorance in her early days, she yet was accustomed to hardships, and often showed the fertility of resource which such a life always develops. Hence, at the time of her marriage, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... and hill and hollow Lead my fascinated eye; Some apocalypse will follow, Some new world of deity. Zoned unseen, and outward swelling, With new thoughts and wonders rife, Queenly majesty foretelling, See the expanding house ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... was rife with explorations in South Australia. A party of settlers consisting of Messrs. Swinden, Campbell, Thompson, and Stock set out, and at about seventy miles from the head of Spencer's Gulf, found fine pastoral country, and a permanent waterhole, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... simplicity sublime;... Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streams of rumour flow Through either babbling world of high and low; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe; Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right: Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named; Truth-lover was our English Duke; Whatever record ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... a very sickly one at Peshawar; fever was rife amongst the troops, and in the hope of shaking it off Brigadier Cotton got permission to take a certain number into camp. It was September, and the sun was still very hot, so that it was necessary to begin the daily march long before dawn in order to reach ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... seemed no adequate reason for being either surprised or offended; yet surprised and offended most people were, and scandal ran rife, and rumor wagged all its poisonous tongues to spread evil reports against the Princess Ziska's name and fame, till Denzil Murray, maddened and furious, rushed up to his sister in her room and swore that he would marry the Princess if he ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... just in such a spring that our young hunters had arrived at Petropaulouski; and stories of numerous bear conflicts, that had recently occurred in the neighbourhood, were rife in the village; while the number of fresh skies every day brought in by the Kurilski hunters, showed that bears could not be otherwise than plentiful in the ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... losing its inhabitants as it was after the Regulations of 1831, when we read that "in vain the rivers are assiduously watched, as if in a state of siege; the emigrants cross at the places which are clear of troops. Emigration is especially rife in winter, when the frozen Danube presents an ever-open bridge," yet among the Roumanians of Serbia it has been handed down from father to son what happened in the reign of Prince Milo[vs]. To take one case out of many such that are preserved in the National Archives ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... theories: with me reflection precedes decision, and execution instantly follows: the shortness of life forbids us to stand still. When I shall have passed away, there will be comments enough on my actions to exalt me if I succeed, to disparage me if I fail. Paradoxes are already rife—they are never wanting in France—but I shall still them to silence while I live; and when I am gone—no matter. My object is to succeed; for that I have some capacity. My Iliad I compose in action; every ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... that an incident occurred which well illustrates the character of the great philanthropist [Mr. Wilberforce]. As I passed through Hyde Park on my way to Kensington Gore, I observed that great crowds had gathered, and rumors were rife that the allied armies had entered Paris, that Napoleon was a prisoner, and that the war was virtually at an end; and it was momentarily expected that the park guns would announce the good ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... know at ones that rumours prejudicial to the Askertons reached Belton before they had been established there for six months. At Taunton, which was twenty miles distant, these rumours were very rife, and there were people there who knew with accuracy though probably without a grain of truth in their accuracy every detail in the history of Mrs Askerton's life. And something, too, reached Clara's ears something from old Mr Wright, the rector, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... Love, now soft and warm, And let us hear no sound of human strife After the click of the shutting. Life to life— I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm, And feel as safe as guarded by a charm Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife Are weak to injure. Very-whitely still The lilies of our lives may reassure Their blossoms from their roots, accessible Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer Growing straight, out of man's reach, on the hill. God only, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... Fever is very rife in October and November, and these are the most unhealthy months in the year, March and April being the best. The variations under fevers and plague from year to year are enormous. In 1907 the latter claimed 608,685 victims, and the provincial death-rate reached the appalling figure ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... I confine myself to saying part of the city) has not the whole city been cursed by rum? But I now refer to a special part. I have seen church after church move out of that part of the city where the nuisance and curse were so rife, but I never, to my knowledge, heard of one of those churches offering to build a reading room and evening home for boys, or to send out paid and sustained by their efforts, a single woman to go into rum-cursed homes and teach their ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... it is to distinguish them and estimate their significance without yielding to fancifulness, which is the well-nigh hopeless task. It is often forgotten that similar circumstances produce similar effects, and that coincidences from this cause are very rife. Then, too, it is forgotten that the influence that produces rivalry is stronger, more important, and less easily estimated, than that which is expressed by imitation or plagiarism; besides, it affects more original and fertile ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... the front and at home bitter differences of opinion are rife as to the offensive against the Central Powers demanded by the Allies and now also energetically advocated by Kerenski in speeches throughout the country. The Bolsheviks, as also the Socialists ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... which have no merits at all, either direct or incidental, may be brought into high repute by statistics. For a century past civilization has been cleaning away the conditions which favor bacterial fevers. Typhus, once rife, has vanished: plague and cholera have been stopped at our frontiers by a sanitary blockade. We still have epidemics of smallpox and typhoid; and diphtheria and scarlet fever are endemic in the slums. Measles, which in my childhood was not ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... weather that mischief breeds on shipboard, and gossip is rife. The idle passengers, by this time mostly on speaking terms, begin to let the common metal of their real make-up show through the nickel-plating of the first ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... a story of disaster the most unspeakable, could not, I am firmly convinced, have imbued my mind with one tithe of the harrowing and yet indefinable horror with which I was inspired by the fragmentary warning thus received. And "blood," too, that word of all words—so rife at all times with mystery, and suffering, and terror—how trebly full of import did it now appear—how chilly and heavily (disjointed, as it thus was, from any foregoing words to qualify or render it distinct) did its ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... vice-president of the United States in 1800, with Thomas Jefferson as president; but in 1804, when Jefferson was re-elected, Burr was not. The brain of this brilliant but ill- balanced and unprincipled man was ever rife with ambitious schemes, and the taste of political power in his position as vice-president of the United States seemed to have driven him towards the accomplishment of one of the boldest and most extravagant dreams he ever imagined. Mexico he thought could be wrested from Spain, and the ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... it is a very homely piece of advice, and may seem to be beneath the so-called dignity of the pulpit, let me venture just to remind you that self-conceit is no disease peculiar to the ten-talented people, but is quite as rife, if not a good deal rifer, among those with one talent. They are very humble when it comes to work, and are quite contented to wrap the one talent up in a napkin then; but when it comes to self-assertion, or what they expect to receive ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... been one of those empty girls that were so rife at the time, the sterling value of his conversation would have disgusted her, and his calm silence where there was nothing to be said (sure proof of intelligence) would have passed for stupidity with her. But she was intelligent, well used to bungling, straightforward flattery, and to smile with ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... authorities appeared at that time not to fully realize that that movement was rife with future dangers and complications to their own colonial interests, that it meant the creation of a nucleus of a people openly averse to the English, and who would independently carry out practices in near proximity, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... an idler on a summer day Piping with Iris by a dancing brook; And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay, And languid Follies ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... which he was to pass, and his friends in Washington, felt that there was cause for apprehension. It was believed by them that a plot existed for making away with Lincoln while passing through Baltimore, a city in the heart of a slave State, and rife with the spirit of rebellion. Detectives had been employed to discover the facts in the matter, and their reports served to confirm the most alarming conjectures. A messenger was despatched from Washington to intercept ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... punished the ringleaders of the revolt, and placed himself once more upon the throne. But his hold upon the people was gone. His former services were all forgotten, and, finding at length that dissensions and revolts were rife, he voluntarily abdicated the throne, and retired to his estates in the island of Scyros. Here Lycomedes, king of the island, feigned to receive him with the utmost friendship; but being, as it is supposed, in league with Menesthius, he led the old king to the summit of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... up as they are called—were rife at this period. Thefts also were common at the resting-houses. A gentleman who arrived at this hotel, not long before I was there, took the saddle off his horse, and placed it under the verandah: when he returned, after leading his animal ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... the government focused its attention on implementing an ambitious economic reform program and professionalizing its parliament. Violence and organized crime were sharply curtailed in 1995 and 1996, but corruption remains rife. Georgia has taken some steps to reduce its dependence on Russia, acquiring coastal patrol boats in 1997 to replace Russian border units along the Black Sea coast. In 1998, Georgia assumed control of its Black Sea coast and about half of its land border with Turkey in line with a ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... still fresh in my mind, and the memory of distressing scenes was kept vivid by reports reaching me from friends who were still confined there. These private sleuths of mine I talked with at the evening entertainments or at other gatherings. From them I learned that brutality had become more rife, if anything, since I had left the ward. Realizing that my crusade against the physical abuse of patients thus far had proved of no avail, I determined to go over the heads of the doctors and appeal to the ex-officio head of the institution, the ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... with toil and strife, Sick of the din of life, With pain and sorrow rife, There's where I go; Soothing and sweet I find, Comforts that ease the mind, Leaving dull care ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... administration of M. Doumer, Governor-General of Indo-China from 1897 to 1902. During these five years the Parisian printer, turned Radical politician and administrator, showed what one able and determined man could do. When he arrived in the East, piracy and brigandage were rife, there was an annual deficit of some three million francs, and the feeble administration had done nothing to develop the possibilities of the country. When he left, the colony was upon its feet, lawlessness had been suppressed, the administration reformed, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... tell; I cannot even imagine. The rumor was rife in the place, and it reached your father's ear. The rumor may make people's wits sharper to know you in your disguise, than ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... that he stood upon the floor, For fifty hartes in were brought, 195 That were bothe great and store[51]. Raches lay lapping in the blood; Cookes came with dressing-knife; They brittened[52] them as they were wood; Revel among them was full rife. 200 Knightes danced by three and three, There was revel, gamen, and play; Lovely ladies, fair and free, That sat and sang on rich array. Thomas dwelled in that solace 205 More than I you say, parde; Till on a ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... Your books and your strings of beads have bewitched the country. Before you came, we were happy and prosperous. You are magicians. Your charms kill our corn, and bring sickness and the Iroquois. Echon (Brbeuf) is a traitor among us, in league with our enemies." Such discourse was still rife, openly and secretly. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... pay. He told the government that "it would be of vast benefit to have this army paid," [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 1027.] but this expressed his desire rather than a hope. Depression reigned in his camps about Lovejoy's Station, of which the name was a mockery. Dissent was rife among his general officers, and with the whole army he had lost prestige by the costly failure of his campaign. A period of rest might relieve the discouragement somewhat, and stringent means were to be ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... at a cost other than he had reckoned on; public opinion in those days was quite as powerful a force as it is now, though the channels along which its force could be felt and its strength find expression were limited. Indignation was rife, and monkish versifiers and chroniclers protested in lines more or less uncomplimentary, and more or less forcible, their loathing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... climate where the humanizing influence of female society was but little known. Dinner parties among the planters were frequent, where the most tempting liquors were produced, and excesses on such occasions, when fun and frolic were rife, were considered not only ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... country and forget all differences. There can be but two parties—the party of patriots and the party of traitors. We belong to the first."[982] And to friends in Missouri where disunion sentiment was rife, he telegraphed, "I deprecate war, but if it must come I am with my country, and for my country, under all circumstances and in every contingency. Individual policy must be subordinated to ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... was too near the race course, too intimately concerned in the drama, for the information she sought not to be already rife gossip there. When Mr. Rose came home, near noon, he had little left to tell his daughter except Gerard's condition and his defense ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... of mortal life, Feast on!—but think not that a strife, With such promiscuous carnage rife, Protracted space may last; The deadly tug of war at length Must limits find in human strength, And cease when these are past. Vain hope!—that morn's o'erclouded sun Heard the wild shout of fight begun Ere he ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... twixt the teadiousnesse of life, and trembling feare of death, she thus began: For when we cease to be the crimes are rife, which youth committed, and before vs then. For aged memorie doth clasp't containe, Those shapes of sin, which hot blood held as vain. O cursed Fates quoth she, that brought to passe this prodegie ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... the earl of Derby was active in stirring up feeling in the county against the king, and in 1266 assembled a considerable force, which was defeated by the king's party at Chesterfield. At the time of the Wars of the Roses discontent was rife in Derbyshire, and riots broke out in 1443, but the county did not lend active support to either party. On the outbreak of the Civil War of the 17th century, the county at first inclined to support the king, who received an enthusiastic reception ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... sister-in-law. They two had never met since the day on which Sir Hugh had given her away in Clavering Church. To Hugh Clavering, who was by no means a man of sentiment, this signified little or nothing. When Lady Ongar had returned a widow, and when evil stories against her had been rife, he had thought it expedient to have nothing to do with her. He did not himself care much about his sister-in-law's morals, but should his wife become much complicated with a sister damaged in character, there might come of it trouble and annoyance. Therefore ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... chaplains in 1859, and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. After publishing "Village Sermons" and "The Saint's Tragedy," Kingsley took part with F.D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, attacking the horrible sweating then rife in the tailoring trade, calling attention to the miserable plight of the agricultural labourer, and the need for sanitary reform in town and country. In "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," first published in 1849, Kingsley ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... the account I have given of Miss Bronte's schooldays at Roe Head, he will there see how every place surrounding that house was connected with the Luddite riots, and will learn how stories and anecdotes of that time were rife among the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages; how Miss Wooler herself, and the elder relations of most of her schoolfellows, must have known the actors in those grim disturbances. What Charlotte had heard there as a girl came up in her mind when, as a woman, she sought a subject ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... cold but important fact that the application of Freud's sexual theories to stammering in children is, in my humble opinion, fraught with the greatest danger. I cannot do otherwise than look upon this as positively anti-social. It would, it is my belief, be a glaring and rife source of danger to the community and to society in general for these ideas to be spread broadcast. Freud himself has shown that the child, before puberty, with his more or less undifferentiated sexual impulse, may be swept along into any one or more of the sexual aberrations or to intrafamilial ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... had come to deliver a letter to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, but such a mission seemed so trivial that rumor as to the real intentions of the craft was rife throughout the entire country. There were suspicions that she had put in for fuel, or ammunition, or supplies. But nothing to justify these thoughts occurred. The U-53 hung around through the daylight hours, and at sunset, with a farewell ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... The spot was rife with memories, and Tom passed around the building to the front, treading softly as on hallowed ground. Whatever the future might hold for him, there would always be heart-stirring recollections to cluster about this frail old building sheltered by ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... bedroom there is a great hole made by a cannon-ball in the house-front; and two of the bridges are under repair. But these are small tokens which anything else might have brought about as well. The people are all at work. The little streets are rife with every sight and sound of industry; the place is as quiet by ten o'clock as Lincoln's-inn-fields; and the only outward and visible sign of public interest in political events is a little group at every street corner, reading a public announcement ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the bays and close under the ivy-covered heights of Europe. This was not from detestation or religious intolerance; at bottom there was a doubt of the common honesty of the strong-handed Turk amounting to fear. The air was rife with stories of his treachery. The fishermen in the markets harrowed the feelings of their timid customers with tales of surprises, captures, and abductions. Occasionally couriers rushed through the gates of Constantinople to report red banners in motion, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... ale is with malt and hop rife; 'Tis good; but don't quaff it from evening till dawn; For too much of that ale will incline you to strife; Too much of that ale has ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... that in the dim dawn of colonial settlement a rude log hut had been erected here by pirates, who came ashore to bury their ill-gotten booty, and rumors were rife of bloody deeds and midnight orgies,—all of which sprang into more vigorous circulation, when, in laying the foundations of the boat-house piers, an iron pot containing a number of old French and Spanish coins was dug out ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... highest point within easy reach, now stood interestedly watching the slow approach of the ship, her progress under the impulse of the gentle breeze being greatly retarded by the ebb tide. Speculation was rife among the little group of boys upon the question of the ship's identity, some maintaining that she must necessarily be a Plymouther, otherwise what was she doing there, while others, for no very clearly denned reason, expressed ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... of these strange manifestations ran—as the novelists say—rife. Some thought that, overcome with disappointment by the discovery that we had changed at Williams in the middle of the night, without his knowing anything about it, he was having a fit all alone up there. ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... place My heart a charmed slumber keeps, While I muse upon thy face; And a languid fire creeps Thro' my veins to all my frame, Dissolvingly and slowly: soon From thy rose-red lips my name Floweth; and then, as in a swoon, With dinning sound my ears are rife, My tremulous tongue faltereth, I lose my colour, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimmed with delicious draughts ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... allied with France, or, at least, had accepted French sovereignty, and pledged itself to neutrality in the hostilities still rife; but a few years before, far in the interior and leagued with the Kabailes, it had been one of the fiercest and most dangerous among the enemies of France. At that time the Khalifa and the Chasseur met in many a skirmish; hot, desperate struggles, where men ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]



Words linked to "Rife" :   abundant, prevalent, predominant, overabundant, prevailing



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