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adjective
Unskilled  adj.  See skilled.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unskilled" Quotes from Famous Books



... distinctions are often achieved merely by a process of sterile cramming which leaves the recipients quite unable to turn mere feats of memory to any practical account, the sacrifices prove to have been made in vain. Whilst the skilled artisan, and even the unskilled labourer, can often command from 12 annas to 1 rupee (1s. to 1s. 4d.) a day, the youth who has sweated himself and his family through the whole course of higher education frequently looks in vain for employment at Rs.30 (L2) and even at Rs.20 ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... It is the average amount of labor expended in killing the beaver which counts, not the actual individual labor in a specified case. Nor did these writers overlook the important differentiation between simple, unskilled labor and labor that is highly skilled. If A in ten hours' labor produces exactly double the amount of exchange-value which B produces in the same time devoted to labor of another kind, it is obvious that the labor of B is not equal in value to that of A. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... son, unskilled labour was all that presented itself, so they became rickshaw coolies, as so many country people do. During a year, some two hundred thousand men, young and old and mostly from up-country, take up the work of rickshaw runners. It is not profitable employment, and the work is hard, and ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... allow these manifestations of suffering to deflect her from her task. She knew that her unskilled surgery was bound to pain him severely, and she welcomed the lapses into unconsciousness, since they made her task easier. At last she gave a sob of relief and stood up to survey her handiwork. The splicing and the binding looked terribly rough, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... inside this place of safety and drop the grating before the enemy could follow us, we were surprised by finding many of our own men lying dead about the entrance; and what was far worse for us, we found that unskilled hands had been at work with the machinery whereby the gate was lowered and by their bungling had managed to start it downward in such a way that it had jammed in the grooves. What actually had happened there, as we knew afterwards, was that the first of the cowardly wretches who had ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... factory tends to increase. With concentration of management goes concentration of wealth, and the gap widens between rich and poor. Out of the modern factory system has come the industrial problem with all its varieties of skilled and unskilled work, woman and child labor, sweating, wages, hours and conditions of labor, unemployment, and ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... would not reject body-covering shields for small bucklers while they were still wholly destitute of body armour. Nor would men arm only their stomachs when, if they had skill enough to make a metallic mitre, they could not have been so unskilled as to be unable to make corslets of some more or less serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the linothorex (like the Iroquois cotton thorex), and next, as a rule, superseded that with the bronze thorex, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... was lying on his back, apparently unconscious of all around him. His glazed eyes were turned upwards towards the ceiling, and his parched lips were parted, while the breath came in quick, spasmodic gasps. Even the unskilled eye of the merchant could tell that the angel of death was hovering very near him. With an ungainly attempt at tenderness, which had something pathetic in it, he moistened a sponge and passed it over the sick man's feverish brow. The latter ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... can excuse the stabbing cruelty of the judgment. Who is he that should say of an unknown woman: "She must be one who for some sufficient reason has long forfeited the society of her sex"? Is he one who has led a wild and struggling and isolated life,—seeing few but plain and outspoken Northerns, unskilled in the euphuisms which assist the polite world to skim over the mention of vice? Has he striven through long weeping years to find excuses for the lapse of an only brother; and through daily contact with a poor lost profligate, been compelled into a certain familiarity with the vices that ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the most vital event in the life of Ireland, in the words of the man who was chiefly instrumental in bringing it about. Though an unskilled writer, as he says himself he has nevertheless succeeded in breathing into every part of his epistle the power and greatness of his soul, the sense and vivid reality of the divine breath which stirred in him and transformed him, the spiritual power, humane and universal, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... rules adopted by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, neither the immigration acts nor the Chinese exclusion acts apply to a Chinese person born in the United States. Under the laws, all Chinese laborers, both skilled and unskilled, are prohibited from entering the United States, but this prohibition does not extend to merchants, teachers, students, and travellers who are to be granted all the rights, privileges, and exemptions accorded the citizens of any other nation. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... soldiers and the Indian, unable to trace his footprints, which the snow had hidden, pursued their way for the fort; but the Indian was ignorant of the country, and the Frenchmen were unskilled. They wandered from their course, and at evening encamped on the shore of the island of St. Ignace, at no great distance from De Nou. Here the Indian, trusting to his instinct, left them and set forth alone in search of their destination, which he ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... accident, we shall have to jump from the third or sixth story window. Lesser grandeurs do not find us very impressible. There is, however, something about the man who deals in horses which takes down the spirit, however proud, of him who is unskilled in equestrian matters and unused to the horse-lover's vocabulary. We followed the master of the stables, meekly listening and once in a while questioning. I had to fall back on my reserves, and summoned up ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... as the unmarried girls prefer to go to factories. A skilled hand can earn a fair wage at certain seasons of the year, as the demand for skilled work in this department always exceeds the supply. But the average wage of the unskilled worker is only 10 marks a week, while it sinks as low as 4 marks for petticoats, aprons, and woollen goods. A corset maker, who has learned her trade, can only make from 8 to 10 marks a week in a factory, while a woman who ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... English—ay, even the child's papa and the infant's daddy—all come from one root. But this cutting away of superfluities to get at the root, is precisely what a 'prentice hand should not attempt; like an unskilled gardener, he will prune ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... country more than any other, women should, to some extent, cultivate a spirit of independence. They should acquire a knowledge of how business is transacted, of the relation between capital and labor, and of the value of labor, skilled and unskilled. As housekeepers, they would then be saved from many annoyances and mistakes. If they chance to be left alone, widows, or orphans possessing means, they would be saved from many losses and vexatious experiences by knowing how to transact their ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... were so numerous that no Goose could remember them all who was not very constant in his attention, and endowed with an accurate memory. And in this respect they were no doubt useful;—that when young and unskilled Geese tried to monopolize the attention of the Room, they would be constantly checked and snubbed, and at last subdued and silenced, by some reference to a forgotten form. No Goose could hope to get through a lengthy speech without such interruption ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... anxious and a trying night for the three men. They were unskilled in the care of the sick; nevertheless, they realized that the girl's illness had reached its crisis and that, once the crisis had passed, she would be more than likely to recover. Hour after hour they sat beside her, administering her medicine ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... she was destined to bring the news to Alexandria as quickly as possible. Therefore, fulfilling the work which his Holiness had entrusted to my incapacity, I embarked, and rowed continually among the rest; and being unskilled in such labour, received many curses and stripes in the cause of the Church—the which I trust are laid to my account hereafter. Moreover, Satan entered into me, desiring to slay me, and almost tore me asunder, so that I vomited much, and loathed all manner of meat. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... that there is never end shake to the balance to make it absolutely safe when screwed into the case, and when this happens I take the point of a sharp graver and prick up a burr on the bridge, and never on the plate, as any unskilled workman does, for the under side of the bridge never being finished, you really mar nothing, and sometimes this raising of the cock (or bridge) becomes a necessity, to have it clear the rim of the balance, which, if raised, it will clear, and then by bending down the end of the cock ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... measure, on horseback a gallop, for his legs are his own, though horse and spurs are borrowed. He hath less use than possession of books. He is not so proud but he will call the meanest author by his name; nor so unskilled in the heraldry of a study but he knows each man's place. So ends ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... sections of the northern and eastern states, helped to crowd the cities, and overflowed into the fertile, free lands of the mid-West. Nearly 800,000 of them reached the United States in one year, 1882. Most of them were men—an overwhelming portion of them men of working age, unskilled, frequently illiterate and hence compelled to seek employment in a relatively small number of occupations. Both the chances of unemployment and the danger of a lowered standard of living were increased by ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... reason it is required to be quite safe from accidental unthreading. The neatest way of doing this is to pass the needle through the centre of the thread and draw it tight; this is a useful trick for any unskilled worker with needles and thread, for re-threading also may be a difficulty. When work has to be unpicked it is better to cut the threads rather than do any drawing out, for they are in any case unfit for further use, and this method wears the material less; a beginner must not shirk unpicking if ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... more, this time with a victim paralysed not by me, an unskilled operator, but by an adept whose ability ranks so high that it is beyond discussion. Chance favours me to perfection: yesterday, in a warm sheltered corner, at the foot of a sandy bank, I discovered ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... neckcloth which our climate renders necessary as a substitute for the nobler article of attire! The navvy, the scaffolder, the costermonger, the cab-tout—innumerable would be the varieties of texture, of fold, of knot, observed in the ranks of unskilled labour. And among these whose higher station is indicated by the linen or paper symbol, what a gap between the mechanic with collar attached to a flannel shirt, and just visible along the top of a black tie, and the shopman whose pride it is to adorn himself with the very ugliest neck-encloser ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... announced, as the result of much scrutiny, that both these pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy strength of feeling, in Elinor's countenance, bore reference to the more vivid emotion, or, as he termed it, the wild passion, in that of Walter. Though unskilled in the art, he even began a sketch, in which the action of the two figures was to correspond with their ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... on 'candygram'. {COBOL}, Apple's Hypertalk language, and a lot of the so-called '4GL' database languages are like this. The usual intent of such designs is that they be as English-like as possible, on the theory that they will then be easier for unskilled people to program. This intention comes to grief on the reality that syntax isn't what makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organization required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the invariable ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... living in outlying areas. The agricultural sector generates half of GDP. Timber has accounted for about 16% of export earnings and the diamond industry for 54%. Important constraints to economic development include the CAR's landlocked position, a poor transportation system, a largely unskilled work force, and a legacy of misdirected macroeconomic policies. Factional fighting between the government and its opponents remains a drag on economic revitalization, with GDP growth likely to be no more than 1.3% in 2003. Distribution of income ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... passage, using shorter spears than the Hellenes, and not being able to take advantage of their superior numbers. The Lacedemonians meanwhile were fighting in a memorable fashion, and besides other things of which they made display, being men perfectly skilled in fighting opposed to men who were unskilled, they would turn their backs to the enemy and make a pretence of taking to flight; and the Barbarians, seeing them thus taking a flight, would follow after them with shouting and clashing of arms: then the Lacedemonians, when they were ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... ready and we gathered around the festal board—a board literally as well as figuratively, for Peg's table was the work of her own unskilled hands. The less said about the viands of that meal, and the dishes they were served in, the better. But we ate them—bless you, yes!—as we would have eaten any witch's banquet set before us. Peg ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... what necessity is there for thee, being a man unskilled in war, to tremble here? Falsely do they say that thou art the offspring of aegis-bearing Jove, since thou art far inferior to those heroes, who were of Jove, in the time of ancient men. But what sort do they say that Hercules was, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... this woman. He understood, at last, how dear she was to him—dearer than anything else in all the world save just his principles and stern life work. He comprehended the meaning of all, his dreams and visions and long thoughts. And, caring nothing for consequences, unskilled in the finesse of dealing with women, acting wholly on the irresistible impulses of a heart that overflowed, he looked deep into those gray eyes and said in a tone ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... own until the young coloured men and women make up their minds to assist in the general development along these lines. The elder men and women trained in the hard school of slavery, and who so long possessed all of the labour, skilled and unskilled, of the South, are dying out; their places must be filled by their children, or we shall lose our hold upon these occupations. Leaders in these occupations are ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington

... Romans had equaled their living progeny in begging, they need not have dared and suffered so much to achieve the mastery of the world—they might have begged it, and saved an infinity of needless slaughter. These people have no proper pride, no manly shame, because they have no hope. Untaught, unskilled in industry, owning nothing, their government an absolute despotism, their labor only required at certain seasons, and deemed amply rewarded with a York shilling or eighteen pence per day, and themselves the virtual serfs of great landholders who ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... Canada. During a visit to one of the market towns in the neighborhood of his home, he had casually dropped into a gymnasium, and engaged in a fencing bout with a friend who accompanied him. Neither of the contestants had ever handled a foil before, and they were of course unskilled in the use of such dangerous playthings. During the contest the button had slipped from his opponent's weapon, just as the latter was making a vigorous lunge. As a consequence Savareen's cheek had been laid open by a wound which left its permanent ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... hath Fortune willed Long tost, like you, through sufferings, here to rest And find at length a refuge. Not unskilled In woe, I learn to succour the distrest." So to the palace she escorts her guest, And calls for festal honours in the shrine. Then shoreward sends beeves twenty to the rest, A hundred boars, of broad ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... flame in the virgin dew! Love came unto her own, and knew him not, who knew. O understood! O known! O apprehended bliss! O self unskilled in self! O taught ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various

... of the dead or the likenesses[68] of others. And he would often speak of the generals who had been defeated in Libya, mentioning by name Bestia[69] and Albinus, men of illustrious descent indeed, but unskilled in military matters, and for want of experience unsuccessful; and he would ask his hearers whether they did not think that the ancestors of Bestia and Albinus would rather have left descendants like himself, for they also had gained an honourable fame; not by noble birth, but by their virtues and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... infringe a custom, leave off a usage, cast off a usage, break off a usage, wean oneself of a usage, violate a usage, break through a usage, infringe a usage; disuse &c. 678; wear off. Adj. unaccustomed, unused, unwonted, unseasoned, uninured[obs3], unhabituated[obs3], untrained; new; green &c. (unskilled) 699; unhackneyed. unusual &c. (unconformable) 83; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... welcome extended only to his guest, Dane regretfully descended to the mess cabin to make unskilled preparations for supper—though there was not much you could do to foul up concentrates in an ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... it looks as if this art were one which made the wise and skilled possessor of it wealthy, whilst the unskilled, in spite of all the pains he takes, must live ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... little space in this chapter to the consideration of the limit of the power of labor monopolies; but it is obvious that this is very clearly defined. In the first place, while there are certain attempts at combination among unskilled laborers, and those not working at trades, these attempts cannot, as a general rule, be at all successful. Any man out of employment may be a competitor for the work which they do, and it seems practically impossible that any organization can combine, under ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... any useful occupation, and therefore out of sympathy with the serious work of the world. They are misfits in the social and economic world and are obliged to take their places in the ranks of the lowest-paid of unskilled labor—and work up ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... your unions are for the skilled workers, whose conditions aren't so bad,—and they're getting better every time you jack up the wages. You complain that we employers aren't thinking of you, but are you thinking of the millions of the unskilled who live from hand to mouth? The old structure's good enough for you, too. But what will the miserable men, who don't sit in, be doing while we're squabbling to see who'll have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in thraldom." She said "But tell me, how didst thou slay him? Was he drunk or asleep?" "Nay," said he, "I was champion for my grandsire, and the robber had a sword in his fist, and I another and we fought, and I overcame him." Said the maiden: "But was he mannikin or a dastard, or unskilled in weapons?" Spake Osberne, reddening: "He was a stark carle, a bold man, and was said ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... 7,000,000 dollars. Of these twelve only two remain ... and these are sorely stricken. These firms occupied the whole waterside premises of St. John's, gave employment to hundreds of storekeepers, coopers, stevedores, and others, beside some thousands of unskilled labourers occupied in the handling of the fish. All these men are now without a day's work, or any means of obtaining it. The isolation of the colony, away out in the Atlantic with no neighbour, is its greatest curse. People unemployed cannot emigrate, but must swell an army of industrials ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... 32. Why do unskilled and ignorant souls disturb him who has skill and knowledge? What soul then has skill and knowledge? That which knows beginning and end, and knows the reason which pervades all substance, and through all time by fixed ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... Constantius, thinking his prosperity had now raised him to an equality with the gods, and had bestowed on him entire sovereignty over human affairs, gave himself up to elation at the praises of his flatterers, whom he himself encouraged, despising and trampling under foot all who were unskilled in that kind of court. As we read that Croesus, when he was king, drove Solon headlong from his court because he would not fawn on him; and that Dionysius threatened the poet Philoxenus with death because, when the king recited his absurd and unrhythmical verses, he alone refused to fall ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... and repaired several times and the whole gun is crudely made and was evidently the work of an unskilled local gunsmith. Without doubt, this is an authentic Pennsylvania Mountain relic. Now ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker

... then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien—IF, indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... the backwoods ever followed the "trail" of beast or foe more unerringly than these Hottentots and mulattos tracked that lion through brushwood and brake, over grass and gravel, where in many places, to an unskilled eye, there was no visible mark at all. Their perseverance was rewarded: they came upon the enemy sooner than had been expected. At the distance of about a mile from the spot where he had killed the horse they found ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... destructive than it otherwise would have been. The spoils system did not enter the army or navy, the only extensive technical departments of the United States. In other branches of the Government a large majority of the officials were unskilled penmen, whose places could easily be filled with others as little skilled as themselves. Always a few clerks who knew the business were saved to guide the recruits, and the departments were generally working again before a President met his ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... arrived. The little Huldy, moaning piteously, with a stricken, terrified look in her big, childish eyes, was crouched upon the floor beside a rickety chair. Sammy, sullen and defiant, was at the desolate hearth, fumbling with unskilled hands at the sodden chunks of wood ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... love me?" And then he stood again silent, for there was no reply. "Is it that, Miss Staveley, that you mean to answer? If you say that with positive assurance, I will trouble you no longer." Poor Peregrine! He was but an unskilled lover! ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... is a rule which is industrial. A man is sent into the world to wield a hammer, a saw, and run an engine. If his rule over his hammer is weak, if he does not know how to use it well, if its blow is uncertain and its result unskilled, then he passes from the line of kings, and is subject, instead of in authority, in his own domain. He is captive to a piece of steel or wood. So with every tool of trade. Each man who conquers his tool is a ruler—is in control of elements of human ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... to pay 36 francs; another, a hatter, 72 francs; otherwise "they will be attended to that very night at nine o'clock." Nobody is exempt, if he is not one of the band. Poor old men who have nothing but a five-franc assignat are compelled to give that; they take from the wife of an unskilled laborer, whose savings consist of seven sous and a half, the whole of this, exclaiming, "that is good for three mugs of wine."[3217] When money is not to be had, they take goods in kind; they make short work of cellars, bee-hives, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and wage-capital is productive, not in virtue of any quality inherent in itself, but merely because as a fact, under the modern system, it constitutes the reins by which the exceptional ability of a few guides the labour, skilled or unskilled, of the many. It is the means by which the commonest labourer, who hardly knows the rule of three, is made to work as though he were master of the abstruest branches of mathematics; by which the artisan who only has a ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... actually stretched the lobes, and so spoiled the shape of what would otherwise have been a very pretty pair of ears. Upon each of her plump, finely- shaped arms, between the shoulder and the elbow, she wore four or five massive armlets of peculiar but by no means unskilled workmanship; and lastly, round each ankle she wore a single anklet of similar workmanship. On the previous night, when this rather lavish display of jewellery had first attracted my casual notice, I had imagined it to be brass; but ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... content merely with finding vacant positions, but approached manufacturers of all kinds through distribution of literature and by personal visits, and within twelve months was successful in placing not less than one thousand Negroes in employment other than unskilled labor. It also established a bureau of investigation and information regarding housing conditions, and generally aimed at the proper moral and social care of those who needed its service. The whole problem of the Negro was of such commanding importance after ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... inches long by seven inches wide, of a somewhat stiff texture, and tanned so that it was nearly white. On the inner side an unskilled hand had rudely drawn a map; and beneath the map was ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... not wholly unskilled in navigation, having given up a good deal of my spare time to yachting. With the aid of a chart which was on board, I had little difficulty in keeping a fairly straight course for ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... each player should observe closely before the game begins from which player he is to catch the ball, and to which player he is to throw. This will facilitate the rapidity of the play, a feature on which much of the sport depends. For very young or unskilled players the action should be rather slow, especially when the game is ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... actually being abandoned, when a skilled electrician, Robert Hope-Jones, entered the field about 1886. Knowing little of organs and nothing of previous attempts to utilize electricity for this service, he made with his own hands and some unskilled assistance furnished by members of his voluntary choir, the first movable console,[4] stop-keys, double touch, suitable bass, etc., and an electric action that created a sensation throughout the organ world. In this action the "pneumatic blow" was for ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... which is always accompanied by fear, lest something should prevent the realization of the one great earthly hope. And Mabel was more fitful than her aunt had ever seen her. Fearful lest her secret, as she thought it, should be discovered, she made as many turns and windings as a hare; and yet, unskilled in disguising her feelings, after spending many words in arranging and re-arranging, she suddenly wished that the spinnet could be opened, "If," she exclaimed, "that could be opened, I should be able to teach Mary Godwin music; and her mother seemed to wish it so much: surely we can ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... to breakfast at Spanish garden. The journey thereto, along river, with its busy mining scenes. The wing-dam, and how it differs from the ordinary dam. An involuntary bath. Drifts, shafts, coyote-holes. How claims are worked. Flumes. Unskilled workmen. Their former professions or occupations. The best water in California, but the author is unappreciative. Flavorless, but, since the Flood, always tastes of sinners. Don Juan's country-seat. The Spanish breakfast. The eatables and the drinkables. Stronger spirits for the stronger ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... the actual risk of starvation. A few may prefer the precarious existence of the tramp, or pauper; but they must pay the price in homelessness and hazard. Except for abnormal social conditions, the vile housing of the poor, the hopeless monotony and overlong hours of most forms of unskilled labor, the lure of drink, and the deprivation of the natural joys of life, there would be few of these voluntary idlers among the poor. The aversion to work, when it is decently agreeable, in decent surroundings, and not carried to the point of fatigue, is abnormal; and it is by ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... teachers are, truly learned in Bible knowledge, and yet be utterly incompetent to teach a class of children. He can no more hit the wandering attention, or make a lodgment of his knowledge in the minds of his youthful auditory, than the mere unskilled possessor of a fowling-piece can hit a bird upon ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... ornaments, and this is the hereditary craft of certain families. These transmit the secret of their skill from father to son, and keep the corporation to which they belong up to a due degree of closeness, by avoiding intermarriage with any of the more unskilled labourers. A little weaving, and a little potting, constitute the remaining arts of the Fanti—as far, at least, as they are either ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union men objected to unskilled labour—you'd have thought Australia was one big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... (all classes of skilled labor), 32; the professions, 26; merchants (all manner of dealers), 16; laborers (unskilled), 15; clerks, 10; public officers, 8; bankers and brokers, 7; railroad employes, 7; salesmen, 5; contractors, 2; foremen, 2; paymaster, 1; unclassified, 16. Thus, if the opponents of woman suffrage use the term "lower classes" according to some ill-defined rule of elite society, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... of unskilled labor was used on a mercantile basis to reduce wages to such an extent that it was almost impossible to rear a well nurtured, much less a well educated and well dressed family, and, moreover, the hours of labor in some branches of business were so long as to shorten the lives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... Bulawayo in September, 1895, was that native-labour question which, in one form or another, is always present to South African minds. All hard labour, all rough and unskilled labour, is, and, owing to the heat of the climate as well as the scarcity of white men, must be, done by blacks; and in a new country like Matabililand the blacks, though they can sometimes be induced to till the land, are most averse to working under ground. They are only beginning to use money, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... the legacy to us of the barbarian. Man in the future will enjoy bricks, asphalte, fog, machinery, "society," even picture galleries, as many men and most women do already. We are fortunate who inherit the older, not "the new spirit"—we who, skilled or unskilled, follow in the steps of our father, Izaak, by streams less clear, indeed, and in meadows less fragrant, than his. Still, they are meadows and streams, not wholly dispeopled yet of birds and trout; nor can any defect of art, nor certainty of laborious disappointment, keep us from ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... before he could work on it, plenty of time to skim through the newspaper. With the chronic worry of the unemployed, he snapped it open at the want-ads and ran his eye down the Help Wanted—Robot column. There was nothing for him under the Specialist heading, even the Unskilled Labor listings were bare and unpromising. New York was a bad town ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... at the wagon messes or family bivouacs. Men, boys, barefooted girls went out into the dew-wet grass to round up the transport stock. A vast confusion, a medley of unskilled endeavor marked the hour. But after an hour's wait, adjusted to the situation, the next order ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... epigram the Greeks, who were quite open to this sort of bad imitation, as may be seen in their Anthology which is stuffed full of such hyperboles. A good many fall into the same fault either because their talent is weak or because they write for the unskilled—a consideration which should move those who have no compunction about reading, let alone praising, the silly tales of Rabelais which are ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole

... (including dynamos) are more restricted than the targets so far discussed. They cannot be sabotaged easily or without risk of injury by unskilled persons who may otherwise have good ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... and then took ground on the opposite side of the brook, and directed his eyes as if the fish would only come from that point of the shore where Miss Kennedy sat. This happened more and more, as by degrees the line of fishers was broken and the unskilled or unsuccessful, tired of watching the water, gave it up, and strolled up the brook to see who had better luck. And so few fish were the result of the day's sport, so many of the company had nothing better ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... little—but I'll be on the lookout for any move. I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If we can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then, I'll show 'em they can't come in here and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... thou must not take. I, even I, my bow in hand, Will in the van of battle stand, And, while my soul is left alive, With the night-roaming demons strive. Thy guarded sacrifice shall be Completed, from all hindrance free. Thither will I my journey make: Rama, my child, thou must not take. A boy unskilled, he knows not yet The bounds to strength and weakness set. No match is he for demon foes Who magic arts to arms oppose. O chief of saints, I have no power, Of Rama reft, to live one hour: Mine aged heart ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... action is equivalent to tearing out whole pages from a history and destroying them for ever, for each antiquity, whatever it may be, is in its way a part of history, whether of politics, arts, or civilization. For the same reason anything like unauthorized excavation, especially by unskilled hands, is gravely to be deprecated. To dig an ancient site unskilfully or without keeping a proper record is to obliterate part of a manuscript which no one else will ever be able to read. The tendency of recent legislation is to allow more generous terms ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... Unskilled to argue, in dispute yet loud, Bold without caution, without honors proud, In art unschooled, each veteran rule he prized, And all improvement ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... that amounted to a vice was the furious and ill-considered efforts of totally unskilled women to make shirts and hospital garments for soldiers. If some of the results had not been pathetic one could almost be overcome with the comicality of the whole business. Soldiers' shirts were turned out by a circle of busily ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... understand how hard it is on the back. Then there is the continual standing, a tiresome business at best. Besides, mechanically as the task is rated, it is not such an easy one after all, for the cotton fibers stick firmly to the inside of the pods and as a result the unskilled person who tries to detach them in a hurry will probably succeed only in extricating a bare half of what is inside. And like as not he will break the fibers he does get out so that their value will be ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... athletics, being typically bare of suggestion and of relief from outside resources. The unbroken afternoons and the long evenings, when the only hope of entertainment is in such fire as one brain can strike from another, produce a situation as difficult to the unskilled as that of an untaught swimmer when first cast into the sea. Persons long habituated to these contests could face the position calmly, and see the early "tea-things" disappear and the contestants draw their chairs ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... reading of the kind that Rosalie had ever had the chance of devouring. Love was depicted in it, if not by a master-hand, at any rate by a man who seemed to give his own impressions; and truth, even if unskilled, could not fail to touch a virgin soul. Here lay the secret of Rosalie's terrible agitation, of her fever and her tears; she ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... That was the unskilled opinion, however. The civilians thought that—Lee did not. It was plain that this must end somewhere. Lee's line would not bear much further extension. It reached now from a point on the Williamsburg road, east of Richmond, to Burgess's Mill, west of Petersburg. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... mock-sentimental, lamented his celibacy so quaintly that she broke into peals of silvery laughter over him. Paul was pleased with her, and half inclined to be proud of her for the first time in his life, though he had a nervous fear lest her gaiety should topple over like an unskilled artist on ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... the camp I have just left behind me, it was my official duty on frequent occasions to see to it that current offenders had from fifteen to fifty applications of the black-snake in a public sort of way. The black-snake, I may explain, could be wielded by a strong but unskilled arm. It was different, however, with the cattle-adder. That had to be handled by an expert, one who could stand off twenty paces, more or less, and crack the long lash with such astonishing precision ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... Koh-i-noor thought he would begin, as soon as they got into the yard, by knocking his man down, and with this intention swung his arm round after the fashion of rustics and those unskilled in the noble art, expecting the young fellow John to drop when his fist, having completed a quarter of a circle, should come in contact with the side of that young man's head. Unfortunately for this theory, it happens that a blow struck ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... inch of dock, so that the water licked up at her shoes, Lilly stood poised. Not, it is true, with the diver's blade thrust of arms, but rather the unskilled, the indeterminate movement of one vaguely prompted from the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... his eyes. Imagine some unskilled player pitted against an expert at cards, awake at one moment to his weakness, and the next overwhelmingly aware that his opponent, by an incredible blunder, is delivered into his hands. The elation of it fairly frightened Mr. Chichester, and he so far forgot himself as to take ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... carpenters belonging to the national union of carpenters, the engineers to the national union of engineers, the butchers to the national union of butchers, etc. It also belongs to old style unionism to leave the unskilled workers unorganized. Our method would be to organize all the workers in a plant, as a branch of the Stockyard Workers' Industrial Union. This would imply the cancelling of trade distinctions and craft lines. As against the employer we would face him not as butchers, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... I, a poor ignorant shopkeeper, utterly unskilled in law, be able to answer so weighty an objection. I will try what can be done by plain reason, unassisted by art, cunning ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... laid aside the paper, put her face in her hands, and began to weep. There was something in the honest, unskilled way in which these boys had laid their hearts open before her in this time of general sorrow, that brought the tears into her eyes at last, and for many minutes they flowed without restraint. Those who were with her knew that the danger ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with ancient literature enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more useful to the State and to the Church than one who is unskilled or little skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the blanket, and as the corners unrolled, disclosing the red-brown mass, even her unskilled eyes could see the gleaming grains of pure metal. She fell on ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... practise no kind of idolatry; on the contrary they firmly believe that all strength and power, and in fact all good things, are in heaven, and that I had come down from thence with these ships and sailors; and in this belief I was received there after they had put aside fear. Nor are they slow or unskilled, but of excellent and acute understanding; and the men who have navigated that sea give an account of everything in an admirable manner; but they never saw people clothed, nor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... tour, so we may continue to put our confidence in the many hopeful indications that exist of a distinct improvement in the ideal of life which has so long prevailed among our poor Indian fellow-subjects. The rise in the wages of both skilled and unskilled labour during even the last thirty years, especially in and near important ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... disbanded his army and the consumers became producers also. The sale of their products so brought down prices that farming was ruined, and their skilled and unskilled labour drove the artisans and labourers into the almshouses and highways. In a few years the national distress was so great that the Farmer, the Artisan, and the Labourer petitioned the King to reorganize ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... lies in the changes which the nineteenth century wrought in industry, transforming village life into city dwelling, and substituting for the skilled mechanic, using a tool, the machine, employing the unskilled worker. The men of the eighteenth century made political institutions, and were content with democracy; the men of the nineteenth century, accepting government as it stood, built up a new industry. The society which we in the twentieth century must erect upon the ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... The audience consisted of the better class of artisans, tradesmen, and foremen in factories: there was a sprinkling of black-coated clerks and unskilled labouring men. A few women's hats sprouted here and there among the men's heads like weeds in a desert. There were women, too, in proportionately greater numbers, on the platform at the end of the hall, and among them I was quick to notice Eleanor Faversham. As Campion disliked platforms and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... The unskilled part of the labour, such as sawing the cedar planks, of which she was mostly made, was done by the natives, who saw in a rough fashion, always leaving much planing and straightening to be done, in order to adjust the timber to a suitable ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... learned an Age as this, when Arts and Sciences are risen to such Perfection, there be any Gentleman unskilled in the Art of Loving, let him come to my School; where, if he hath any Genius, he will soon become an Adept: For I would by no means have any young Gentlemen think, that Erudition is unnecessary upon this Occasion. It is well known that the [1]Rules of Art are necessary to ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding

... wasted, for there is no man now alive such as Odysseus was, to keep ruin from the house. As for me I am nowise strong like him to ward mine own; verily to the end of my days {*} shall I be a weakling and all unskilled in prowess. Truly I would defend me if but strength were mine; for deeds past sufferance have now been wrought, and now my house is wasted utterly beyond pretence of right. Resent it in your own hearts, and have regard to your neighbours who dwell around, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... been astonished to know that a gentleman so uncourtly, if not uncouth—judged by the standard of the circle she moved in—and so unskilled in pleasing the sight and hearing of ladies as to treat them like junior comrades, had raised the vow within himself on seeing her: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... said too much, he ceased speaking abruptly, and then, after the fashion of one unskilled in tricks of speech, proceeded to remedy one blunder ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... begun south of Sarras at the latter end of March. At first the efforts of so many unskilled workmen, instructed by few experienced officers, were productive of results ridiculous rather than important. Gradually, however, the knowledge and energy of the young director and the intelligence and devotion of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... sore trial to speak to Lillie; but it would be sorer to be left at once desolate in the kitchen department, and exposed to the marauding inroads of unskilled Hibernians. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root, or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were opposed to it from conscientious principle,—many from far-sighted thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus it came to pass that for many years the rural population of New England, as a general rule, did their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... artisans who could form superior opinions on national matters, and ought to have the means of expressing them. We used to frame elaborate schemes to give them such means. But the Reform Act of 1867 did not stop at skilled labour; it enfranchised unskilled labour too. And no one will contend that the ordinary working man who has no special skill, and who is only rated because he has a house, can judge much of intellectual matters. The messenger in an office ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... to one reading, Epictetus said, This is the method of instruction; and he stopped. When the Roman asked him to go on, Epictetus said, Every art when it is taught causes labor to him who is unacquainted with it and is unskilled in it, and indeed the things which proceed from the arts immediately show their use in the purpose for which they were made; and most of them contain something attractive and pleasing. For indeed to be present and to observe ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... quickly as might be, and we bedded her on the floor, stripping our coats to soften the stone flagging for her and trying by all the means known to two unskilled soldier leeches ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... Master's divine logic, as seen in our text, contradicts this inference,—these are his words: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." That per- fect syllogism of Jesus has but one correct premise and [20] conclusion, and it cannot fall to the ground beneath the stroke of unskilled swordsmen. He who never unsheathed his blade to try the edge of truth in Christian Science, is unequal to the conflict, and unfit to judge in the case; the shepherd's sling would slay this Goliath. I once be- [25] lieved that the practice and teachings of ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... of the people from overseas had spread their beds wherever they might, while in one small place apart some five or six lay smitten with the deadly contagion, two or three in agony, one or two in painless collapse, under the unskilled, heartbroken care of a few terrified kindred. There, by stealth at first and by the captain's helpless leave when he found her there, attended by a colored man and maid from the cabin service, was Madame Hayle, ministering, now with medicine, now with the crucifix, amid the hammer's ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... this opportunity for furnishing the skilled labor of the South hereafter (as he has furnished the unskilled heretofore) slips away from the black man, he can never rise. In the race for property, influence, and all success in life, the industrially educated white man—whatever may be said of Southern white men "hating to work"—will outstrip him. Before an ecclesiastical ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... pigmies of the giants that lived in ancient days; I am a new bond between the old continent and the new, between the old order and the new; I speak for the faith of the past; I voice the faith of the hour; the hands that raised me are not unskilled and untrained; from what I am judge, ye people, of what stuff my builders are made.' And around the world, in all the capitals, in the great cities, of the English-speaking peoples, temples of lesser worth and beauty, are speaking in the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... possessing a respectable body of citizen-seamen, and of artists and establishments in readiness for ship-building."[62] The limitations of Jefferson's views appear here clearly, in the implicit relegation of defence, not to a regular and trained navy, but to the occasional unskilled efforts of a distinctly civil force; but no stronger recognition of the necessities of Great Britain could be desired, for her nearness to the great military states of the world deprived her land-board of the security which the remoteness of the United ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... lobe of the ear, which had been badly torn. Blakely had little the look of a squire of dames as, thus maimed and scarred and swathed in blood-stained cotton, he peered down the deep and shadowy cleft and searched with eyes keen, if yet unskilled, every visible section of the opposite wall. What could their silence mean? Had they found other game, pitifully small in numbers as these besieged, and gone to butcher them, knowing well that, hampered by their wounded, these, their earlier victims, could not hope to escape? ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... prescribed as the cake for weddings; at any rate, swift, sudden delicacy of feeling prevented her explaining any more to him, for she saw how it was: his means were too humble for the approved kind of wedding cake! She was too young, too unskilled yet in the world's ways, to rise above her embarrassment; and so she stood blushing at him behind the counter, while he stood blushing at her in ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... bodies of Indians to express the same idea, and that if any of these are regarded as rigidly determinate, or even conventional with a limited range, and used without further devices, they will fail in conveying the desired impression to any one unskilled in gesture as an art, who had not formed the same precise conception or been instructed in the arbitrary motion. Few of the gestures that are found in current use are, in their origin, conventional. They are only portions, more or less elaborate, of obvious natural ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... compound. An oven he forthwith determined to build. Having obtained the use of a corner of a factory yard, his aged father, two of his brothers, his little son, and himself sallied forth, with pickaxe and shovels, to begin the work: and when they had done all that unskilled labor could effect towards it, he induced a mason to complete it, and paid him in bricklayers' aprons made of aqua-fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a tantalizing failure. The heat was neither uniform nor controllable. Some of the pieces of India-rubber would come out ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... unskilled. She was obliged to trust her defence to time and practice; and has, by mere dint of perseverance, maintained her cause, and brought the enemy to a condition, in which she is now capable of meeting ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... ignorance and youth, till one, knowing some of them well, trembled for the errand if it were important. And many of them were really useful, which only goes to prove that a tremendous amount of unsuspected power is wasted every year and that unskilled labor often accomplishes almost as much as skilled. Some of them secured positions in the Navy Yard, or in other public offices, where they were thrown delightfully into intimacies with officers, and were able to ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding in the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untrue stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands, the chap who has "solidarity," and is always just going to ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... of the schooner and its captain was given, a list also of some of the things that he would need to bring with him. It was stated that upon the island he would receive lodging and food, and that there were a few women, not unskilled in nursing, who would carry out his instructions with regard ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... without encumbrance. Since so much has been accomplished in the Negro's pioneer days of freedom, may we not predict with a considerable degree of assurance that the next decade and a half will far exceed our most sanguine hope? The virgin fertility of our soils, and the vast amount of cheap and unskilled labor, have been a curse rather than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system of cultivation, the destruction of forests, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, together with the great multiplicity of insect and fungus diseases ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various



Words linked to "Unskilled" :   inexperient, incompetent, crude, botched, unskilled person, unprofessional, rough, semiskilled, rusty, bungling, hopeless, menial, amateurish, amateur, inexperienced, butcherly



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