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Debatable   /dəbˈeɪtəbəl/   Listen
Debatable

adjective
1.
Open to doubt or debate.  Synonyms: problematic, problematical.
2.
Open to argument or debate.  Synonyms: arguable, disputable, moot.
3.
Capable of being disproved.  Synonym: disputable.






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"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books



... success. He took shares in many mining speculations, and, in many instances, lived to repent it; for he got into troubled waters, and sought for his ore in vain. He attended agricultural meetings, and endeavoured to comprehend that debatable query, the corn question; he argued the point, like other great people, as if he did understand it, and got into repute with the leading Chiropodists, or corn cutters, of the day. He went to Cheltenham, and became proprietor of an acre of ground, on which he dug a score wells, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... of Kings is tucked away in Long Island, in the Debatable Land where the generous boundary of New York City zigzags in a sporting way just to permit horse racing at Belmont Park. It is the most rustic corner of the City. To most New Yorkers it is as remote as Helgoland ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... of which 'squatters' have begun to take possession, the surveyor is at all times a highly unwelcome visitor, and sometimes goes about his duties at the risk of his life. Besides this, a portion of the land traversed by Washington formed a part of that debatable land, the disputed right to which was the original moving cause of the 'Seven Years' War.' The French were already in motion, both from Canada and Louisiana, to preoccupy the banks of the Ohio, and the savages in ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... the Church would concentrate her forces in this inner fortress, the personality of Christ, and quit the debatable ground of historical enquiry, it would be to me and to many an unfeigned relief; but meanwhile, neither scientific critics nor irrational pedants shall invalidate my claim to be of the number of believing Christians. I claim a Christian liberty of thought, while I ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... "takin' notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... this to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority of the General's critics, and, on the other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... every experiment with its results, in classified orders. As the result of his studies and observations, he has published two books, one "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," published in 1860, and latterly, "The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next." I regard Mr. Owen as one of the few men who are capable of entering into an inquiry of this kind without an utter drowning of common sense, and his books are both of them worth a fair reading. To me they present a great deal that is ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... Malcolm replied, "that you would at once order a squadron of horse to escort me and my companion through the debatable land between your army and that of the Swedes, with orders for us to pass freely on as soon as we are beyond your outposts and in the neighbourhood of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... the Drina, we descended to that of the Morava by a steep road, until we came to beautifully rich meadows, which are called the Ushitkza Luka, or meadows, which are to this day a debatable ground for the Moslem inhabitants of Ushitza, and the Servian villages in the neighbourhood. From here to Ushitza the road is paved, but by whom we could not learn. The stones were not large enough to warrant the belief ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... by the study of the relations existing between phenomena apparently of very different orders that there can be any hope of reaching the goal; and it is this which justifies the peculiar interest accorded to researches effected in the debatable land between domains hitherto ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... your head thrice sweet and dear I lay, and spread your hair on either side, And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debatable borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the wind's way still ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... most ungracious. It may have been due to irritation caused by the appearance of a second edition of Priestley's "Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland." Nevertheless the thoughtful and dignified men of the City—men who admired Priestley's broad catholic spirit and brave attitude upon all debatable questions, men who appreciated his scientific attainments, invited him to the following subscription dinner, as announced ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... of about a hundred miles separated this mountain fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... illustrates one of the most debatable of all points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... cannot speedily agree upon a modus operandi, their energy is turned into profane disputing about the chief positions, and usually a game cannot be organized, or, if it is, lack of agreement as to put-outs, runs, fouls, and debatable points soon ruins the attempt, with little left to most of the boys except resentment of the might-makes-right policy. On the other hand, whether one has in mind a team or a chance group of players, the presence of a capable adult as an immediate and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... following the night I had fixed for the destruction of the enemy outpost two companies of enemy infantry and three guns marched out of Shmakovka as a reinforcement to the debatable position. I watched through my binoculars their slow movement along the dusty road. I judged what the enemy's intentions were, and knew also that I was powerless to prevent them. He quickly placed his guns in position, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... of men to women and of women to men are necessarily determined to a large extent by certain general ideas of relationship, by institutions and conventions. One of the most important and debatable of these is whether we are to consider and treat women as citizens and fellows, or as beings differing mentally from men and grouped in positions of at least material dependence to individual men. Our decision ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... constructed palisades, dug trenches, and kept up a regular military cordon. The troops composing this cordon were called Cossacks; but these were not the "Free Cossacks" best known to history and romance. These latter lived beyond the frontier on the debatable land which lay between the two hostile races, and there they formed self-governing military communities. Each one of the rivers flowing southwards—the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Yaik or Ural—was ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... themselves; and of the subsequent appearance of aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But whether these "protoplasts" would, if we could examine them, be reckoned among the lowest microscopic algae, or fungi; or among those doubtful organisms which lie in the debatable land between animals and plants, is, in my judgment, a question on which a prudent biologist will ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... material—a certain quality of expression, and secondly, a certain quality of subject. "What that quality of subject must be has been, as it seems to me, crudely and wrongly stated, but rightly indicated, in Mr. Matthew Arnold's formula of the "Criticism of Life." That is to say, in less debatable words, the greatest poet must show most knowledge of human nature. Now both these conditions are fulfilled in the sonnets of Shakespere with a completeness and intensity impossible to parallel elsewhere. The ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... few days before the paper's removal, a silly and characteristic note: "Since the freak grass has been stopped it seems indicated other abnormalities be terminated also. Your usefulness to this paper, always debatable, is now clearly at an end. As of this moment your putative services will be no ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... above show some of the really minor debatable topics that arise under the larger question. They show, too, how differently the same incidents may appear to different eyes. Perhaps some of the "points" are stated unfairly, to give strength to the argument. Bare assertions ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... without showing cheek muscles; well filled up under the eyes, with tapering, tightly-lipped jaws and level teeth. EYES—The eyes should be very small, sparkling, and bright, set fairly close together and oblong in shape. NOSE—Black. EARS—The correct carriage of ears is a debatable point since cropping has been abolished. Probably in the large breed the drop ear is correct, but for Toys either erect or semi-erect carriage of the ear is most desirable. NECK AND SHOULDERS—The neck should be fairly long ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... have been elected in the absence of this interference by the king, which the adventurers protested as an unwarranted invasion of their liberty, is itself an interesting and debatable question. By his many criticisms of the previous conduct of the company's affairs, Sandys had won the undying enmity of Sir Thomas Smith and his important friends. More than that, he had quarreled with his ally of the ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... which for many years had been a feature of its volumes. The question whether "the appetite for the strange and marvellous" has abated in an appreciable degree with the passing of time and is not perhaps keener than it ever was, is a debatable one. But it is undeniable that the present volumes of the Annual Register have fallen away dismally from the variety and human interest of their predecessors. Of the trial and execution of Peace the volume for 1879 gives but ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... he awoke his mind was apparently clear. He met Billie's anxious look with a faint, white-lipped smile. To his friend the young fellow had the signs of a very sick man. It was a debatable question whether to risk moving him now or take the almost hopeless chance of escaping detection ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... Glarus was scared, perhaps not; that point is debatable. But it was beyond doubt of debate that Hardenberg ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... to banter or to get the better of one; is so averse to witnessing discomfiture that even when forced into an argument, he is loath to push it to the bitter end. Yet when he does engage in argument, he drives things home with very telling force, especially when writing on debatable points. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... give, first, the missionary account in 4o 44' N., and then the Arab one in 2o N.—a debatable bit of ground, extending over 2o 44', or 160 English miles. Talking of the missionaries, "these two men," says Dr Petermann, "kept an annual hygrometrical and meteorological register with great ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... debatable land was an act of aggression to which the colonists were not bound to submit. The first to understand that it was a question of existence was the man on whose head the destinies of the country rested. Washington twice led expeditions against Duquesne, the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... by the fact that Uncle Ben seemed to be seeking information from the paragon and was perfectly submissive and humble. But the boy was considerably mystified when after a tramp of half an hour they arrived upon the debatable ground of the Harrison-McKinstry boundary. Having been especially warned never to go there, Johnny as a matter of course was perfectly familiar with it. But what was the incomprehensible stranger doing ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... changing hands daily or even hourly. We never knew, for sure, whether our troops or those of the enemy held any certain crater, except the ones on each end, numbers one and six (we held them throughout the entire two months of fighting), but numbers two, three, four and five were debatable ground for several weeks. On two occasions I made the complete circuit of all the craters at night, going through the Canadian trench and coming back via what had been our original front line. On one of these ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... himself, I should be disposed to claim but little credit for a discovery which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the common insight of some hundred or more students in time past. The difficulty begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. There are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland between one period and the next, with one foot lingering and one advanced; and these must be classed according to the dominant note of their ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... undefined, undefinable; confused &c (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent on circumstances; occasional; provisional. unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative; unascertained, unconfirmed; undemonstrated; untold, uncounted. in a state of uncertainty, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... us back to that debatable thing—the pathos of Dickens—from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell is another. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, who criticised "Marmion" and the "Lady of the Lake" so ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... Pilgrims sought. Wherever these rights, so fundamental to human happiness, are impugned, "Liberty!" is still the fitting rallying-cry.[Footnote: The exact limits within which freedom of speech must be allowed are debatable, (a) Speech which incites to crime, to lawbreaking, to sexual and other vice, must be prevented; and (b) slander, the public utterance of grossly disparaging statements concerning any person, without reasonable evidence of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... fortified city, occupying a commanding hill overlooking the Danube; it is a rare old town, battle-scarred and rugged; having been a frontier position of importance in a country that has been debatable ground between Turk and Christian for centuries, it has been a coveted prize to be won and lost on the diplomatic chess-board, or, worse still, the foot-ball of contending armies and wrangling monarchs. Long before the Ottoman Turks first appeared, like ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... few points" (Mr. Playmore wrote) "which the recovery of the letter does not seem to clear up. I have done my best, with Mr. Benjamin's assistance, to find the right explanation of these debatable matters; and I have treated the subject, for the sake of brevity, in the form of Questions and Answers. Will you accept me as interpreter, after the mistakes I made when you consulted me in Edinburgh? ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... Anthology required years of accumulated experience; a mordant power of analysis; a gift of shrewd speech, a command of hard words that will cut like a diamond; a mental vigour analogous to, though naturally not so powerful, as that displayed by Browning in The Ring and the Book. It is still a debatable proposition whether or not this is high-class poetry; but it is mixed with brains. Imagine the range of knowledge and power necessary to create two hundred and forty-six distinct characters, with a revealing epitaph for each ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... break; but towards the mouth of the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers the landscape became varied with open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn glades and great barrens or prairies of long grass. This region, one of the fairest in the world, was the debatable ground between the northern and the southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein,[1] but both used it as their hunting-grounds; and it was traversed from end to end by the well marked war traces[2] which they followed ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... however, even more burning, because more debatable, than the fall of the monarchy; and this was the massacres, and beyond the massacres, the policy of the party that had accepted them. The great majority of the deputies on arriving in Paris from the provinces had been ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... few years since this valley was a place choked with jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two clans laid claim to it—neither could substantiate the claim, and the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It is for this very reason that it wears now so ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... at an early moment, and upon his own judgment, brought into full accord with the Republican Party upon the two debatable and most earnestly debated questions during Mr. Lincoln's administration—the prosecution of the war and ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... the society of gentlemen, in which she had formerly taken such pleasure. Richard and Archdeacon Long sat on the verandah, and in moving to and fro, Mary caught a fragment of their talk: they were at the debatable question of table-turning, and her mental comment was a motherly and amused: "That Richard, who is so clever, can interest himself in such nonsense!" Further on, Zara was giving Grindle an account of her voyage "home," and ticking off the reasons that had ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... dripping precipice. With what life was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge. Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone. He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... a discussion of its merits forms one of the principal occupations of the dwellers on the Pacific coast. It is indeed difficult to see how tourists could pass their time here without this topic of conversation, so infinite is its variety and so debatable are many of the conclusions drawn from it. It is the Sphinx of California; differing, however, from the Sphinx of Egypt in that it offers a new problem every day. The literature that treats of ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... and wrong is another thing. Such questions refer to action and the conduct of our lives. In religion, in politics, in economics, in sociology, what is truth to one man may be error to another. We may adopt a course of action because it seems the more expedient. Debatable questions have two sides to them. In the moral realm that is true which is agreeable to the largest number of competent judges. A mind that could see further and deeper might reverse all our verdicts. To be right on any question in the moral realm is to ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... found much to say of this non-evolutionist of letters, who is neither pure realist nor pure romanticist, and who has no new theory of art. Some, indeed, may have scorned him for the wise taste which refuses to tread the debatable ground common to French fiction. But the reading public has received him with less conscious analysis, and has delighted in him. If he sees only what any clever man may see, and is no profound psychologist, yet he tells what he sees and what he imagines with delightful ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required, in a haughty strain, that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labor of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk, with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the Imperial navy, escaped from their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... sacred," says a writer in The Moving Picture World, "even from the hand of the most circumspect of picture makers." It is a source of regret that even a shadow of reproach should be cast upon distinguished men, particularly when the question of blame is debatable, as when, for instance, a picture portraying the love affair between Sir John Millais, the artist, and Ruskin's wife, was actually ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... Trans-Mississippi Confederate States were included in the same Department with the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. Missouri on the Western side of the Mississippi, and Kentucky on the Eastern—respectively the Northernmost of the Western and Middle Slaveholding States—were debatable ground, and were already occupied, the former by both, the latter by one of the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... for many a year afterward and pondered them, and perhaps they enlarged his understanding. She also often thought of his condemnation of love-making out-of-doors. Kissing in public, especially promiscuous kissing, she knew to be a debatable pastime, but she also knew that there was not a flat in the Big Barracks in which a girl could carry on a courtship. Fancy her attempting it in her front room, with the room choked with people, with ...
— Different Girls • Various

... keeping him in view, and came up with him in a court, when he was rewarded with a sight of such a face as caused him to fall to the ground in a fit. This was the Clampcourt ghost, and I believe he was left in that debatable state, and never after ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... which the Amir made towards the close of the meeting the Viceroy agreed to, which was that we should call Persia to account for her alleged encroachments on the debatable ground of Sistan. This, which seemed but an unimportant matter at the time, was one of the chief causes of Sher Ali's subsequent estrangement; for the committee of arbitration which inquired into it decided against the Amir, who never forgave what he considered ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... referring, with admiration, to the work of my friend Dr. Bjrn Magnsson Olsen on the Sturlunga Saga (in Safn til Sgu Islands, iii. pp. 193-510, Copenhagen, 1897). Though I am unable to go further into that debatable ground, I must not pass over Dr. Olsen's argument showing that the life of the original Sturla of Hvamm (v. inf. pp. 253-256) was written by Snorri himself; the story of the alarm and pursuit (p. 255) came from the recollections ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they returned to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a horse,—such a horse as never yet ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... acting secretary of war. During this short period in the cabinet he established the naval academy at Annapolis, gave the orders which led to the occupation of California, and sent Zachary Taylor into the debatable land between Texas and Mexico. He also continued his pleadings for the annexation of Texas, as extending "the area of freedom," and though a Democrat, took high moral ground as to slavery; he likewise made ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... diplomatic covering of ceremony and further presents, the Aztec Emperor's reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... contemporary growth of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... inland a fertile region, embracing the whole or part of the Governments of Podolia, Poltava, Kharkof, Kief, Voronei, Don Cossacks, etc., including the districts of what was once known as the "Ukraine," which was for many years debatable land between Poland, Turkey, and Russia, and on which roamed the mongrel bands of the Cossacks, an uncouth population recruited among the many tramps and vagabonds from the northern provinces, mixed with all the races of men with whom they came into contact, settling ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... problems, which confront one at every turn in Florence, I am neither qualified nor anxious to enter. When doctors disagree any one may decide before me. The thought, moreover, that always occurs in the presence of these good debatable pictures, is that any doubt as to their origin merely enriches this already over-rich period, since some one had to paint them. Simon not pure becomes hardly ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... country is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman anti-trust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation; and should also supplement that great act by legislation which will not only clarify it ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson

... subsided. They subsided slowly back to 1—so slowly that you could hardly observe them going. A week later they were 63/64, which, of course, is practically the same as 1. A month afterwards they were 31/32, and it is a debatable point whether that is less or more than 63/64. Anyhow, by the time I had worked it out and decided that it was slightly less, they were at 61/64, and one had the same trouble all over again. At 61/64 I left them for a time; and when I next read the financial column they were ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... this problem. The opportunities for study which the Commissioners had must have made these empty spaces evident. Why then were we not taken into their confidence? Along what lines is investigation most needed? To what problems, what issues, shall we give our attention? What is the debatable ground in this territory? The Commission does not say, and I for one, ascribe the silence to the American preoccupation with immediate, definite, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... which limit would be passed in case a State should attempt to deprive a corporation of its property, without due process of law, by fixing rates too low to permit of a fair remuneration for its use. A large debatable ground yet remains open, with a possibility that the position of the railway in Federal jurisprudence may eventually ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... we may infer, good hearing extended to these unblushingly didactic Interludes attracted into authorship writers with purposes more aggressive and debatable than those pertaining to wise conduct. Zealous reformers, earnest proselytizers, fierce dogmatists turned to the drama as a medium through which they might effectively reach the ears and hearts of the people. Kirchmayer's Pammachius, translated ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... very debatable question, Mrs. Alving. A child's own home is, and always must be, ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... slighted with impunity. Foolish of him, for, man of the world to his fingertips, he knew perfectly well that a woman living with a man to whom she was not married could not be recognized by people with any pretensions to orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood those who have been divorced and are married again. But even a man of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Orange Free State, where the Volksraad thunders forth its mighty convictions, there is a model Young Ladies' College. It seems that one day recently the members of the Raad found themselves in want of debatable motions, and it fell to the lot of one of their number to save the situation. That member directed the attention of his brethren to a certain question affecting the proper conduct of the Young Ladies' College aforesaid. It had come to his knowledge that the Principal of ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann

... dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... North Protestant governments and Protestant nations. In the South were governments and nations actuated by the most intense zeal for the ancient church. Between these two hostile regions lay, morally as well as geographically, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the contest was still undecided. The governments of those countries had not renounced their connection with Rome; but the Protestants were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. In France, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... I justify the most debatable assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the [62] prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid; that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those whose will is evil; that he gives ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... times on the Munster circuit." But it was clearly recognized that there was a point beyond which neither of them could take his followers, and these points could not be brought to meet. Even if adjustment had been possible on the question of time-limit, neither would give up the debatable counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, in which the Nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in which the Ulster Volunteer organization was very strong. On Friday, July 24th, Mr. Asquith announced ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... woods upon him. Not a beaver skin went out of Acadia except through his hands. The traders of New France grumbled at his profits and monopoly, and the English of New England claimed his seigniory. He stood on debatable ground, in dangerous times, trying to mould an independent nation. The Abenaquis did not know that a king of France had been reared on Saint-Castin's native mountains, but they believed that a human ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... not to stay. It is not proper, and my cap at home, too," Katy kept thinking as she fidgeted in her chair, and watched the girl setting the table so cosily for two, and occasionally deferring some debatable point to her as if ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... present those parts which we are willing to accept as our own standards of action. If there are portions which do not seem practicable, let us post them in our minds as debatable propositions, as points to be tested by the experience of coming years, or as working hypotheses ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... Directory made itself an accessory after the fact, having issued a declaration of war on Venice which only reached Milan to be suppressed, when already Venice was no more. Whether the oligarchy or its assassin was the more loathsome still remains an academic question, debatable only in an idle hour. Soon afterward a French expedition was despatched to occupy her island possessions in the Levant. The arrangements had been carefully prepared during the very time when the provisional government believed itself to be paying the price of its new liberties. And earlier ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... premonition of his to-morrow, a vision of himself in skull-cap and seedy clothing (the trousers well-bagged at the knees) with rather more than a mere hint of an equator emphasized by grease-spots on his waistcoat, presiding over the fortunes of one of those dingy little Parisian shops wherein debatable antiques accumulate dust till they fetch the ducats of the credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... other writer, a vast field for ethnological, geographical, and historical speculation and research. The ancient world stands revealed in the Homeric poems. Besides, almost numberless volumes have been written based upon the equally debatable questions of the Homeric text and the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... an eye, the whole of the Northern slopes of the Kereves Dere Ravine was covered by bright coloured irregular surging crowds, moving in quite another way to the khaki-clad figures on their left:—one moment pouring over the debatable ground like a torrent, anon twisted and turning and flying like multitudes of dead leaves before the pestilent breath of the howitzers. No living man has ever seen so strange a vision as this: in its disarray; in its rushing to and fro; in the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... being rather embarrassed by the woods and hills. We made reconnoissances, too, to learn the country in different directions, and were apt to be fired upon during these. Along the farther side of what we called the "Debatable Land" there was a line of cottages, hardly superior to negro huts, and almost all empty, where the Rebel pickets resorted, and from whose windows they fired. By degrees all these nests were broken up and destroyed, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... V., he was too kingly as Hamlet, and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and scorn,—and there are points in "Richelieu" which leave this a debatable question,—Edwin Booth is more equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading distinct and musical as a bell. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft. Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. [Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... Holston again by a route which is nearly at right angles to the general trend of the valley. The Watauga is not easily fordable at an ordinary stage of water, and thus the triangle between the Holston on the left, the Watauga in front, and the Nolachucky on the right, made the debatable ground of the upper valley. Whilst we held the barrier at Bull's Gap the enemy could not stay on the hither side of the Watauga, nor could we pass the river and stop short of a strong ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... months, became very prominent towards the time of the Easter vestry, when he would appear, having enlisted a small band of supporters, with a number of grievances relating to rates, parish officials, rights of way, footpaths, and such-like debatable subjects. Of course, he should have been promptly squashed by the chairman, but too often an indulgent Vicar would allow ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... all Samoa. He who holds one royal name would be, upon this view, as much a sovereign person as he who should chance to hold the other four; he would have less territory and fewer subjects, but the like independence and an equal royalty. Now Mataafa, even if all debatable points were decided against him, is still Tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a sovereign prince. In the second place, the draughtsmen of the Act, waxing exceeding bold, employed the word "election," and implicitly justified all precedented steps ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the forest. When he saw the smoke of a neighbor's chimney it was time for him to move on. So William James was led by instinct from the crowded highways to the dim border-lands of human experience. He preferred to dwell in the debatable lands. With a quizzical smile he listened to the dignitaries of philosophy. He found their completed systems too stuffy. He loved the wildernesses of thought where shy wild things hide—half hopes, half realities. They are not quite true now,—but they ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... state. It seems that some eminent senator offered his candidacy, but the senate hesitated in perplexity, on the ground that if the authority of the members of the family of Augustus was already so uncertain, so debatable, and so darkly threatened, what would happen to a new emperor, unknown to the legions and the provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors? While the senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered Claudius ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... play-hours we amused ourselves with playing at ball, marbles, and especially at "Scotch and English," a game which represented a raid on the debatable land, or Border between Scotland and England, in which each party tried to rob the other of their playthings. The little ones were always compelled to be English, for the bigger girls thought ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... that year, in leaving the question of slavery to the States to be formed from these Territories, had already set aside the agreement of 1820. These assumptions were totally false. The act of 1850 gave Utah and New Mexico no power as Territories over the debatable institution, and contained not the slightest suggestion of any rule in the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... the tourist proceeded to the village of Margaux, in the true claret country—a general idea of which he gives by describing it as a debatable ground, stretching between the sterile Landes and the fat, black loam of the banks of the Garonne. The soil is sand, gravel, and shingle, scorched by the sun, and would be incapable of yielding as much nourishment to a patch of oats as is found on 'the bare hillside of some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to be still extremely debatable subjects.'' ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... seemed to me mainly to consist." Most lovers of the sonnet would differ here with these masters of the art. Whether the weight of thought and feeling can properly be shifted to a final couplet is another debatable question, and critics will always differ as to the artistic value of the "big" line or "big" word which marks the culmination of emotion in many a sonnet. The strange or violent or sonorous word, however splendid in itself, may not fit the curve of the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... other trees that are commonly selected for planting upon public grounds. Because of the inclusion of the economic factor the question as to whether nut trees may well supplant the kinds of trees commonly selected is not a debatable question. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... the day of restoration until it saw in the South what its majority believed to be loyal governments. Its majority could not believe that any party but its own was loyal, and was thus led to a policy much more debatable than that of actual reconstruction. Step by step it moved. The abolition of slavery, in the Thirteenth Amendment (effective December 18, 1865), was expected by all and accepted without a fight. The next ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... is never twice alike. He is unanimous on few debatable matters. One of them, as I have said, is the desirability of finishing the war—in the proper way. (But even here there are differences as to what constitutes the proper way.) Another is (I trust I shall not shock the reader) the extreme displeasingness ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... the outlook was less stormy in the Green Mountains. The conflicting claims were allowed to lie dormant, but the possibilities of mischief remained, and the Vermont question was not finally settled until after the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Meanwhile, on the debatable frontier between Vermont and New York the embers of hatred smouldered. Barns and houses were set on fire, and belated wayfarers were found mysteriously murdered in the depths ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... a debatable matter, which I don't intend to debate. You are our man. If you won't deny the Brown canard, then we must go ahead ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... thought he could argue it out with her. She so believed in eugenics, you see—a very radical, compared with Ferguson. It was she who had had no doubt about tow-head. And the love-part of it seemed to him fixed: it didn't occur to him that that was debatable. So he stuck to something that could be discussed. Then—and this was his moment of exceeding folly—he caught at the old episode of the Argentina. That had nothing to do with her present state of shock. She had seen tow-head; but she hadn't seen the sprinkled Mediterranean. And she had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Chiavari in ashes, and you will no longer need Inspector D, nor ask aid from the head-office. Here is what the age especially worships, a remedy combining cheapness with efficiency. It may be said that we have no more right to destroy Chiavari than Kagosima, but that question is at least debatable. Are not the headaches of tens of thousands of more avail than the head of one? What becomes of that noble principle, the greatest happiness of the greatest number? The Italians, too, might object: true, but they are neither Americans nor French. They come into the category of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... in this region more than in any other. Even with the best of them, he will have to be careful of the involuntary, unconscious and almost inevitable interference of telepathy, which is also very interesting, though it is a phenomenon of a different class, much less surprising and debatable than pure psychometry. He must also learn the art of interrogating the medium and refrain from asking incoherent and random questions about casual or future events. He will not forget that "clairvoyance ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... little of interest except the political question and the peculiar appearance of the people up in that particular part of India. It has been debatable ground as far back as the earliest days of Aryan colonization. Although Peshawur is regarded as a modern city, it is mentioned by the historians who wrote up the campaigns of Alexander the Great, and if you will go up there the guides will show you where he crossed ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... a particular feature of this parable any important doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other aspects it may suggest solemn thoughts as a picture of successive ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... something pleasant to say about the most immature and unpromising efforts, and he has the knack of so handling his own early experience as to make it an encouragement and a stimulus, and not (as the manner of some is) a burden and a bogey. Mr. Morley never obtrudes his own opinions, never introduces debatable matter, never dogmatizes. But he is always ready to pick up the gauntlet, especially if a Tory flings it down; is merciless towards ill-formed assertion, and is the alert and unsparing enemy of what Mr. Ruskin calls "the obscene empires ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... exhort you to refuse the offered shelter, and to scorn the base repose—to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the breezy leap of the torrent before the foetid stillness of the swamp. In the course of this Address I have touched on debatable questions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground—and this partly with the view of telling you that, as regards these questions, science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not to the point ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... origin of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North Carolina," Baltimore, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... learning was awakened which helped not a little to deflect many strong spirits from a life of warfare to a life of study. They made the problems of learning seem much more worth while, and their work helped to create a more tolerant attitude toward the supporters of either side of debatable questions by revealing so clearly that there are two sides to every question. This new learning, new interest in learning, and new spirit of tolerance ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... sheet of paper, rather dusty, as though it had lain by for some time. But it was the label that was attracting Poirot's attention. At the top, it bore the printed stamp of Messrs. Parkson's, the well-known theatrical costumiers, and it was addressed to "—(the debatable initial) Cavendish, Esq., Styles ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... controllers, of those whom they represent but do not govern. It is much the same now. The peoples of European civilization, after a period of comparative repose, are again advancing all along the line, to occupy not only the desert places of the earth, but the debatable grounds, the buffer territories, which hitherto have separated them from those ancient nations, with whom they now soon must stand face to face and border to border. But who will say that this vast general movement represents the thought, even the unconscious thought, of any one ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... and even strenuous, but not a successful way. He had good windfalls, too; for example, Brandenburg, as we shall see. He made friends; reconciled himself to his Brother Kur-Pfalz and junior Cousinry there, settling handsomely, and with finality, the debatable points between them. Enemies, too, he made; especially Johann the Luxemburger, King of Bohemia, on what ground will be seen shortly, who became at last inveterate to a high degree. But there was one supremely sore element in his lot: a Pope at Avignon to whom he could by no method ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... the phrase, "the American mind," was political. Shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century, there began to be a distinctly American way of regarding the debatable question of British Imperial control. During the period of the Stamp Act agitation our colonial-bred politicians and statesmen made the discovery that there was a mode of thinking and feeling which was native—or had by that time become a second nature—to all the colonists. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... I'd sooner lose an arm than a leg," remarked the Gunner from the next bed. For a while they pursued this debatable point, much as men discuss politics, and incidentally with far less heat. . . . It was a question of interest, and the fact that the Gunner had lost his leg made no difference to the matter at all. An onlooker would have listened ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... "Reprisals" (Art. 8), upon which the Brussels, and after it The Hague, Conference preferred to keep silence; and they take a definite line on many questions upon which there are wide differences of opinion. On most debatable points, the rules are in accordance with the views of this country—e.g. as to the right of search (Art. 22), as to the two-fold list of contraband (Arts. 34-36), as to the moment at which the liability of a blockade-runner ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying out the idea of panelling, to which there is hardly a limit ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... with India, such a medley is neither inconceivable nor improbable; the debatable question only is, what sufficient account of the cause thereof can be given. Why is it that Hindu doctrine has never set? Why this incongruity between doctrine and domestic practice? Why this double-mindedness in the same educated individual? ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... drive of the Dead, Striving before the irresistible will Through the strange dusk of this, the Debatable land Between ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... are modified by it. The true physiological formula is undoubtedly this:—Trees make their appearance in climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor. Why they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we assume a preA"xisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth to bring them forth, after his spirit (the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... poetry, as Tristan und Isolde is steeped in an atmosphere of music. Of historic themes, I would counsel this hypothetical genius to beware. If there are any which can fittingly be steeped in a lyric atmosphere, they are to be sought on the outskirts of history, or in the debatable land between history and legend. The formula of Schiller can no more be revived than the formula of Chapman or of Rowe. That a new historic drama awaits us in the future, I have little doubt; but it will be written in prose. The idea ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close that the Americans were able in the end to make surprisingly good terms in the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... a debatable proposition,” she replied, and I was angry to find how the mirth I had loved in her could suddenly become so hateful. She half-turned away so that I might not see her face. The thought that she should countenance Pickering in any way tore me ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... object is to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and report it in detail, because it seems to suggest valuable hints, if it does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... now on what had been the debatable ground, as much the enemy's as ours, and had not gone far before we were suddenly aware of a group of Spanish horsemen over the hedge of cactus to the left of the road, brightly dressed young fellows wearing the blue linen and red facings of the guarda civile, who ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris

... Mr. Badchild, calling upon his vice, observed that as in all probability there were gentlemen of different political and other opinions present, perhaps the best way would be to give a comprehensive toast, and so get over any debatable ground,—he therefore proposed to drink in a bumper "The king, the queen, and all the royal family, the ministry, particularly the Master of the Horse, the Army, the Navy, the Church, the State, and after the excellent dinner they had eaten, he would include ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... to conduct it with the gentlemanly leisure its pretended unimportance allowed—was Lieutenant Hugh Campbell, one of several officers of that name who served in the Highland regiment that had been stationed earlier at Valentine's Hill; he therefore knew the debatable country beyond Kingsbridge as well as I. He was a mere youth, a serious-minded Scot, and of a different sort from Captain Falconer: 'twas one of the elegant captain's ways, and evidence of his breadth of mind, to make ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... present it. Knowledge consists in being able to find a thing when you want it and accordingly an attempt has been made to pigeonhole each joke where it would be most useful. Such a classification is at best a difficult and debatable question, and numerous cross references have been placed wherever it was thought they might direct the reader to the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... organized, motions are in order. The party moving a resolution, or making a motion in its simplest form, introduces it either with or without remarks, by saying: "Mr. President, I beg leave to offer the following resolution," or "I move that," etc. A motion is not debatable till seconded. The member seconding simply says: "I second that motion." The resolution or motion is then stated by the chairman, and is ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... his own limitations, angry, too, with his erratic mental departure from the realm of reason into the realm of fantasy—for so he called the debatable land over which intuition held sway—Artois hounded out his mood and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... have taken ma bairn," she said, "this nicht o' a' the nichts in the year, when the fairy folk—preserve us frae them!—-have power. But they could nae take the blessed rood o' grace; it was beyond their strength. If gipsies, or robber folk frae the Debatable Land, had carried away the bairn, they would hae taken him, cross and a'. But the guid folk have gotten him, and Randal Ker will never, never mair come hame to ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... towards the outer edge, and forming a slight groove where the purfling is reached, but not the exaggerated scoop which is commonly seen in the instruments of the many copyists. This portion of the design has formed the subject of considerable discussion among the learned in the Violin world, the debatable points being the appearance of this peculiarity and its acoustic effect. As regards the former question, the writer of these pages feels convinced that the apparent irregularity is in perfect harmony with the general outline ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... subveniunt. ex l. pupillus. ff. quae in fraud. cred. et ibid. l. non enim. et instit. in prooem.—that when he had smelt, heard, and fully understood—ut ff.si quando paup. fec. l. Agaso. gloss. in verb. olfecit, id est, nasum ad culum posuit—and found that there was anywhere in the country a debatable matter at law, he would incontinently thrust in his advice, and so forwardly intrude his opinion in the business, that he made no bones of making offer, and taking upon him to decide it, how difficult soever it might happen to be, to the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... Twenty-one in explaining to the Crown Prince exactly what the Widding-Edison invention was. Models and blue prints were shown and American and German experts were called in to explain and discuss all debatable points. And the conclusion, established beyond reasonable doubt, was that German warships could not hope to defend themselves against the Widding-Edison method of torpedo attack. This was admitted by Field Marshal von Hindenburg and by Professor Hugo Muensterberg, who were allowed ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... debatable question as to whether the Negro's present industrial position is better or worse than it was, say, at the close of the Reconstruction period. As a mass, I am inclined to the opinion that it is worse, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... Old Testament Company was very slight as compared with that of the New Testament Company. The latter Company had, almost in every other verse, to settle upon a text—often involving much that was doubtful and debatable—before they proceeded to the further work of translating. The Old Testament Company, on the contrary, had ready to hand a textus receptus which really deserved the title, and on which, in their preface, they write as follows: "The received, or, as it is commonly called, ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott



Words linked to "Debatable" :   moot, disputable, problematic, questionable, controversial, debate, contestable, arguable, problematical



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