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Germ   /dʒərm/   Listen
Germ

noun
1.
Anything that provides inspiration for later work.  Synonyms: seed, source.
2.
A small apparently simple structure (as a fertilized egg) from which new tissue can develop into a complete organism.
3.
A minute life form (especially a disease-causing bacterium); the term is not in technical use.  Synonyms: bug, microbe.



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"Germ" Quotes from Famous Books



... to "Seein' Things" of 1894. The sex of the victim is different, and the spirit of the incorrigible western tease gives way to the spirit of Puritanic superstition, but there can be no mistaking the persistence of the Bugaboo germ in the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... got when I filled the cab full of turkeys and set out for Camden town. The old Christmas feeling seems to have been chilled. The public has grown critical. Instead of dancing for joy, it looks suspiciously at the gifts and asks: 'Where did they get them?' It has been so impressed by the germ theory of disease that it foolishly fears that even money may be tainted. It's a preposterous situation. Generosity is a drug on the market, and gratitude can't be had at any ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... the testimony of Ulric Zell, an eminent printer of Cologne, who is quoted in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, and Hadrian Junius, a Dutch historian of repute, who wrote in the next century. Both agree in ascribing the invention of book-printing from wooden blocks, as well as the first germ of movable wood and metallic type printing, to Haarlem; and Junius adds the name of Laurence Koster. His surname of Koster is derived from his office, which was that of custodian, sexton, or warden of the Cathedral Church of Haarlem. The story told of the accident by which the discovery was made ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... research which are nothing more than the application of the principle of trial and error to the particular problems with which his science is confronted. Once the experimenter has discovered a way to compel mechanical power to toil for man, or to destroy the typhoid germ, or to talk across a continent without wires, the next task is to find a better way or an easier way. Far from decreasing the necessity for experiment, each new discovery in the realm of natural science opens the door to additional ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis give us Glastonbury traditions as to the tomb of Arthur, &c., which show that by the middle of the twelfth century such traditions were clustering thickly about the Isle of Avalon. All this time, however, it is very important to notice that there is hardly the germ, and, except in Caradoc, not even the germ, of what makes the Arthurian Legend interesting to us, even of what we call the Arthurian Legend. Although the fighting with the Saxons plays an important part in the Merlin branches of the story, it has extremely little to do with the local ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... of loving like this; but, to do Lady Barbara justice, she had done much to freeze the germ of noble passion; she had not killed, but she ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... inhuman castigation, Landry (the owner of the girl) pleaded guilty, but urged, in extenuation, that the girl had dared to make an effort for that freedom which her instincts, drawn from the veins of her abuser, had taught her was the God-given right of all who possess the germ of immortality,—no matter what the color of the casket in which it is hidden. I say "drawn from the veins of her abuser," because she declared she was his daughter; and every one in the room, looking upon the man and woman confronting ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... had the warm friendship of Sir Isaac Newton. He published some short discussions on economic matters, and in 1695 gave valuable assistance in the destruction of the censorship of the press. Two years earlier he had published his Thoughts on Education, in which the observant reader may find the germ of most of Emile's ideas. He did not fail to revise the Essay from time to time; and his Reasonableness of Christianity, which, through Toland, provoked a reply from Stillingfleet and showed Locke in retort a master of the controversial ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... premier pas, embarcation [Fr.], rising of the curtain; maiden speech; outbreak, onset, brunt; initiative, move, first move; narrow end of the wedge, thin end of the wedge; fresh start, new departure. origin &c (cause) 153; source, rise; bud, germ &c 153; egg, rudiment; genesis, primogenesis^, birth, nativity, cradle, infancy; start, inception, creation, starting point &c 293; dawn &c (morning) 125; evolution. title-page; head, heading; van &c (front) 234; caption, fatihah^. entrance, entry; inlet, orifice, mouth, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... extravagant count. The noise of his exploits appears to have given rise to this work of Schiller's. It is an attempt to exemplify the process of hoodwinking an acute but too sensitive man; of working on the latent germ of superstition, which exists beneath his outward scepticism; harassing his mind by the terrors of magic,—the magic of chemistry and natural philosophy and natural cunning; till, racked by doubts ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... Sultan. Abdul Hamid, with his small, nervous, exacting nature, has always valued Ministers in proportion to their obedience, not to their power of giving timely advice. In every independent suggestion he sees the germ of opposition, and perhaps of a palace plot. He did so now. By way of reply, he bade Midhat come to the Palace. Midhat, fearing a trap, deferred his visit, until he received the assurance that the order for the reforms had been issued. Then he obeyed the summons; at once he was apprehended, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... and debauchery that can be imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for Peter than the palace. He met there something besides mere jesters: he encountered new elements which had as yet no place in the terem, but contained the germ of the regeneration of Russia. He came across Russians who, if unscrupulous, were also unprejudiced, and who could aid him in his bold reform of the ancient society. He there became acquainted with Swiss, English, and German adventurers—with Lefort, with Gordon, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... the progress of our great nation within the present century. It is the centre of a railway system connecting the East with the West by fully twelve thousand miles of railroad, all tributary to Chicago; and that city, which was only the germ of a small village fifty years ago, now has more than a million inhabitants, and is the great grain ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... many of them have no club to go to except the corner saloon or the pool room? Do you know that the only exercise a lot of your poor clerks, assistants and factory workers get is standing around on the street corners, that the only drama and comedy they ever see is in a dirty, stinking, germ-infected, dismal little movie theater in the slums; that the only music they ever hear is in the back room of a Raines Law hotel or from ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... Theres no such thing. I do the work of ten men. Am I giddy? No. NO. If youre not well, you have a disease. It may be a slight one; but it's a disease. And what is a disease? The lodgment in the system of a pathogenic germ, and the multiplication of that germ. What is the remedy? A very simple one. Find the germ and ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... that a frog's leg twitched when placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely have been imagined that so apparently insignificant a fact could have led to important results. Yet therein lay the germ of the Electric Telegraph, which binds the intelligence of continents together, and, probably before many years have elapsed, will "put a girdle round the globe." So too, little bits of stone and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... point. "Under the microscope, the germ of, say, tetanus is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a tadpole. Of what ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... rapt Prophets, and the Psalms. The Gospel, and that ye yourselves did write, When ye were gifted of the Holy Ghost. In three eternal Persons I believe, Essence threefold and one, mysterious league Of union absolute, which, many a time, The word of gospel lore upon my mind Imprints: and from this germ, this firstling spark, The lively flame dilates, and like heav'n's star Doth glitter in me.'' As the master hears, Well pleas'd, and then enfoldeth in his arms The servant, who hath joyful tidings brought, And having told the errand keeps his peace; Thus benediction ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Spencer has discussed this whole subject at great length, and after stating that all the forces throughout nature tend towards an equilibrium, remarks, "that the need of this union of sperm-cell and germ-ccell is the need for overthrowing this equilibrium and re-establishing active molecular change in the detached germ—a result which is probably effected by mixing the slightly-different physiological units of slightly-different ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... that had been is amply demonstrated by the fact that no such crushing defeat had ever been inflicted upon Scotland as that of Flodden, in which the King and the great part of his nobles perished. Perhaps it was the germ of the design to attract the lesser country into the arms of the greater by friendship rather than to set her desperately at bay against all peaceful influences, which had prevented the successful army from taking advantage of the victory; but certainly through all ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... them by the Greeks. The sacred writings of the Hindoos form the earliest storehouse of the words of our common language, and the thoughts therein found, though recorded after the branches had parted from the common stock, are nearer the universal germ than those to be found anywhere else, and more nearly represent the primary notion of religion held by the race of Japheth, after that of Shem, to which God revealed Himself more distinctly, had parted from it. These oldest ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... he said quietly, "a notion in my mind, or, anyway, the germ of one, for the thing will want some worrying out. It's quite a serious undertaking. To begin with, I'll ask Gordon who cut these drains we've been falling into, and ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... France, and Cardanus in Italy. These men represent a tendency which was pursued by thousands in the learned world. It was a tendency which had the honour of being the last in history to embody itself in a distinct mythical cycle. "Doctor Faustus" may probably have had an historical germ; but in any case "Doctor Faustus," as known to legend and to literature, is merely a personification of the practical side ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... know. Scurvy is not a germ disease. It can't be caught. It's generated. As near as I can get it, it's due to an impoverished condition of the blood. Its cause is not something they've got, but something they haven't got. A man gets scurvy for lack of certain chemicals ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... theory of bacteriology a micro-organism is to blame for appendicitis. If this were true it would relieve humanity of all responsibility. There is a disposition on the part of man to shirk responsibility and the germ theory is not the first theory of vicarious atonement that he has spun. Those who wish to shirk all kinds of responsibility by adopting the germ theory and by making micro-organisms the scape-goat may do so, but I would advise all sensible ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... manner shown to be for ever opposed to those of all the other portions of society. Rent is supposed to be paid because land has been occupied in virtue of an exercise of power and not because the owners have done any thing to entitle them to it. Here we see the germ of that discord which everywhere in Europe exists between the payers and receivers of rent. The annual fund from which savings can be made is held to be continually diminishing, the poor becoming poorer as the rich grow richer. The tendency ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... Germany bore the germ of death and dissolution in her sick, lacerated breast, and the first symptoms of putrefaction already made their appearance. These first symptoms were the envy, jealousy, and hatred the rulers of Germany felt toward each other, and the malicious joy with which one ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... philosophers were associated with these dissensions, those, for instance, of Spallanzani and of Liebnitz, who applied the principles of generation even to the soul. "Thus I should think," said Liebnitz, "that the souls which will one day become human souls, were present in the germ; that they have always existed as organized bodies in their progenitors from Adam onwards—that is, from the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... "That's the germ of the idea," he said between puffs. "That capsule contains a mixture of vapours that give out disintegrating rays when the temperature is raised by thermic induction above six thousand. Most of 'em are stopped by the zirconium atoms in the capsule, which break down and liberate helium; ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... caused by badly ventilated rooms, dark, damp, and dirty houses, want of good food, or bad food, alcoholic drinks, frequent illnesses, dirty habits, are powerful causes in producing this low state of health, which is so favourable to the growth of the consumptive germ. Therefore we insist on fresh air, especially for children in schools, for employees in factories, for clerks in offices. All places of public resort should be provided with proper ventilation. The breath ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... Hence, the primordial cell germ of the Nigritians has no more potency than what is sufficient to form a being with physical power, when its dynamism becomes exhausted, dropping the creature in the wilderness with the mental organization ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... minuteness of their primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of examples for such contemplations. It is, however, a more profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic oak, whose roots shoot down to the centre, and whose branches aspire to the skies. Let it be, then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to ascertain the causes first put in operation at the period of our commemoration, ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams

... an old klipsie barb. Surgeons have died from poison received from knives used in post-mortem work. Lockjaw might very well follow upon a wound from a piece of dirty iron of this kind; but, luckily, the germ of that disease seemed not to exist in this case; at least the treatment which Rob applied proved quite effective and no evil results followed. Although Jesse limped for a time, in a few days he became quite well, and the swelling in the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... if early years Have drown'd the germ of joy in tears, A later gleam of hope appears— Just like the Indian summer: And ere the snows of age descend, O trust me, dear one, changeless friend, Our falling years may brightly end— Just like the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... August moon, Two vestals, gliding past like moonlight gleams, Conversed: one said, "His daughter's prayer prevailed!" The second, "Who may know the ways of God? For this, may many a heart one day rejoice In hope! For this, the gift to many a man Exceed the promise; Faith's invisible germ Quickened with parting breath; and Baptism given, It may be, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... remain still young. Thus I have known two young men great friends; each swore by the other's father; the father of each swore by the other lad; and yet each pair, of parent and child, were perpetually by the ears. This is typical: it reads like the germ of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... by Him';—they were much exercised. The expedients to which they had recourse were certainly extraordinary. That 'Beginning' (said Valentinus) was the first thing which 'the Father' created: which He called 'Only begotten Son,' and also 'God': and in whom he implanted the germ of all things. Seminally, that is, whatsoever subsequently came into being was in Him. 'The Word' (he said) was a product of this first-created thing. And 'All things were made by Him,' because in 'the Word' was the entire essence of all the subsequent worlds (Aeons), to which ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... camp, when fortunes came quickly, and men lived at a rapid pace, there was little time for sanitary precautions, and so it presently happened that a shadow, like a huge black bird of ill omen, suddenly hovered above the camp, sending a shudder through its entire length. A tiny germ, so small as to pass unnoticed and unheeded by, and yet withal so deadly as to be called a plague, crept along, insinuating itself into the streamlets making their way as best they could to their father, the Yukon; and the fever laid ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... Gallos expulerint, ac nunc Tungri, tunc Germani vocati sint: ita nationis nomen in nomen gentis evaluisse paullatim, ut omnes, primum a victore ob metum, mox a seipsis invento nomine, Germani vocarentur.—Tacitus, de Mor. Germ. ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... mighty, high, and, from the point of view of the worshipper, holy and set apart. There is always the feeling of being in the shadow of the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity. There is always the sense of uplooking, of worship, in the higher sense of that term. Always, at any rate, the germ of these; and this, it seems to me, we may be sure and certain, however it may clothe itself in the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... the numerous dwellings in Chelsea known as Manor House. It was the residence of the Steward of the Manor, and had great gardens reaching back as far as Flood Street, then Queen Street. This is marked in a map of 1838. This house was afterwards used as a consumption hospital, and formed the germ from which the Brompton Hospital sprang. On its site stands Durham Place. Below Durham Place is a little row of old houses, or, rather, cottages, with plaster fronts, and at the corner a large public-house known as the Chelsea Pensioner. On the site ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... different young woman this morning, Miss Ruth!" exclaimed her friend. "I hope this matter will be settled in a way satisfactory to you. I really think there is the germ of a splendid picture in this ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... superintendents and corporations with innumerable petitions and proposals; but no true friend of humanity, of music, and of singing, has yet been found to enlighten these authorities, and to prove to them that the most beautiful voices and finest talents are killed in the germ by these unsuitable so-called singing-lessons, especially in the public schools. Girls' voices may be carefully awakened, and skilfully practised, and made flexible and musical; but they should be used only in mezzo-voce, and only until ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals, inlaid colour designs of its facade, embossed panels of its baptistery font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of a school of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent period of four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the world in description of Form, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... sentiment is common to both sexes. It attracts them together and unites them, and when the germ of a new being is fecundated, the individuals can ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... are equatorial plates of a polar spindle (fig. 224) and of a segmentation spindle (fig. 225) of the parthenogenetic egg, where 10 chromosomes are present, 2 of each of the sizes found in the sexual germ cells. ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens

... deal; and that was enough for her; she would not inquire further; what were the general principles underlying that fact—or even whether there were any—she refused to consider. Years after the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister, she laughed at what she called the 'germ- fetish'. There was no such thing as 'infection'; she had never seen it, therefore it did not exist. But she had seen the good effects of fresh air; therefore, there could be no doubt about them; and therefore, it was essential that the bedrooms of patients should be well ventilated. Such was ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... it, or advocated similar principles, and for a good many years it was decidedly in the ascendent. With such a favourable introduction, and with such talented exponents, it must have become established if it had had any germ of truth in it; yet it quite died out in a few short years, its very existence is now a matter of history; and so rapid was its fall that its talented creator, Swainson, perhaps lived to be the last ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... it," the cowboy asserted. "It can be given easy, from one steer to another, just by rubbin' horns, so t' speak. Or the trouble may break out sudden in a herd, if th' germ ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... A germ disease highly contagious and one of the most injurious of those which affect dairy cattle. The money-making value of a herd in which the germs of contagious abortion are permitted to ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.

... He shuffled the papers some more. Then: "Well, when that kind of a germ gets into the system, I guess the best thing to do is to get it out before it causes mischief. If it coagulates in the system, it can cause a ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... self-deception; he laughed at his folly. What filth and corruption lay behind this hypocritical morality, this insane desire for emancipation from healthy, natural instincts. It was the ascetic teaching of idealism and Christianity which had implanted this germ into the ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... complex forms. While the external characteristics are very different, all are but variations of a single plan, which exists as the basis of all, and is varied in each individual only so as to accommodate it to the conditions under which the individual is to live. The germ of a higher animal—a mammifer, for instance—is the representative of a lower animal full-grown, like the volvox globator; the latter remaining in this initial stage, as an animalcule, through its whole existence; while the former is developed out ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... even more, of maize, rice or similar materials. The maize and rice preparations mostly used in England are practically starch pure and simple, substantially the whole of the oil, water, and other subsidiary constituents of the grain being removed. The germ of maize contains a considerable proportion of an oil of somewhat unpleasant flavour, which has to be eliminated before the material is fit for use in the mash-tun. After degerming, the maize is unhusked, wetted, submitted to a temperature sufficient to rupture the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... hath no pause; she toileth still; Above the last-year leaves Thrusts the lithe germ, and o'er the terraced hill ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... offered in support of the story.[39] It is, perhaps, safer to regard one of the simple schools instituted at an early period in connection with cathedrals and monasteries as having contained the humble germ from which the proud university was slowly developed. But, by the side of this original foundation there had doubtless grown up the schools of private instructors, and these had acquired a certain prominence before the confluence of scholars to Paris from all quarters rendered necessary ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... chateau, where we are about to meet again with Athos and Bragelonne, the latter of whom had disappeared since the discovery of the infidelity of La Valliere. If there be one saying more true than another, it is this: great griefs contain within themselves the germ of their consolation. This painful wound, inflicted upon Raoul, had drawn him nearer to his father again; and God knows how sweet were the consolations which flowed from the eloquent mouth and generous heart of Athos. The wound was not cicatrized, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... are indebted for the earliest germ of the University. It was with them chiefly that education took that great leap, the greatest ever made, from the traditional teaching of the home, the shop, the social surroundings, to schoolmaster ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... question of the care of the mother—the efforts to stay the ravages of the germ in the tissues broken and weakened by the strain of child-birth. We had to invent excuses for the presence of the new doctor—and yet others for the presence of Dr. Overton, who came a day later. And then the problem of the nourishing of the child. It would be a calamity to have to put ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself actually what it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of universal history that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that history. The Orientals have not attained the knowledge ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... a school boy planted an acorn. Spring came, then the germ of this oak began to attract the moisture of the soil. The shell of the acorn was then broken open by the internal growth of the embryo oak. It sent downward a rootlet to get soil and water, and upward it shot a stem to which the first pair of leaves was attached. These leaves are thick and ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston

... forehead you loved, you shall see no more. The loves, the fears, the frailties that are born with the flesh, with the flesh they shall die. Let them die! There is that in man that cannot die—a seed, a germ an embryo, a spiritual essence. Higher than she was on earth, as the tree is higher than the seed, the man than the embryo, so shall you behold her; ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... Quimby at his worst but beneath it is the germ of the method and philosophy which have attained so luxurious a growth—the explaining, that is, of disease in terms of wrong belief. Inevitably in the elaboration of all this Quimby reached out to include ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... sea-captains on his council of war would have assented to its adoption. At any rate we may assert that the idea of ships attacking in succession so as to support one another without masking each other's broadside fire (which is the essential germ of the true line ahead) was in the air, and it is clearly on the principle that underlay Baskerville's tactics that Ralegh's fighting instructions were ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... presumably arises from the possibility that if you destroy even the humblest insect it may be a relation who has unfortunately had to assume this form, and causes even eggs to be classed amongst forbidden articles, because they contain the germ of life. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... formed such a resolution regarding His people. These words can be referred only to the threatenings of the Pentateuch, which a short-sighted criticism endeavoured to ascribe to a far later period, without considering that the germ of this knowledge of the future is found in the Decalogue also, the genuineness of which is, at present, almost unanimously conceded: "In order that thy (Israel's) days may be long in the land which the Lord ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from sprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... elect of the earth, to whom the Almighty had given the heathen for an inheritance, and in this he found a satisfactory justification for his harsh and high-handed dealings with weaker races such as the Indian and the Negro. Yet the germ of freedom contained in the limited democracy of the elect of Calvinism was bound in time to break the hard theological moulds in which it was originally cast. It did this subsequently under the stress of external events ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... whence to degenerate in our perruked forefathers. Moreover, I believe that any very spontaneous art is to a very small degree the product of one or even two or three generations of men. It has been growing to be what it is for centuries and centuries. Its germ and its necessities of organism and development lie far, far back in the soul's world-history; and it is but later, if at all, when the organic growth is at an end, that times and individuals can fashion ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... machine when you can get one FREE for introducing our wonderful fast-selling SKALPO, a combination Shampoo, Dandruff, Germ destroyer and Hair tonic in concentrated powder form, from the formula of an eminent scalp specialist. We spare no expense to introduce SKALPO in every home. Send us your name and address TO-DAY and we will mail ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... to have begun his preliminary training for his life-work when a boy attending school at Westminster. Even then the germ of his story-telling propensity seems to have evinced itself, for he was always awarded the highest ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty

... she was alone in the room, and laid her face against the cool, pure lily, and wept into it great burning tears. Poor, ignorant soul! She wanted, oh, how she wanted Dirk to be brave and good like Mark Calkins—her one type of manhood. Yet she did not know that she was crushing out the germ which might have grown in his heart. True, she knew herself to be very different from Sallie, but the thought, poor soul, that that was because Mark ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... controversy which has obtained during the last four decades there has emerged an element of truth—for there lurks a germ of truth in most errors—which has gained almost universal recognition among contemporary men of science, namely, the doctrine of Descent. The fact that living organisms form an ascending series from the less perfect to the more perfect; the further fact that they also form ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... under these conditions. When one looked up from the work, instead of the usual tiled walls of a hospital theatre, one saw nothing but the sea and the transports. After all, they were ideal conditions; for the air was absolutely pure and free from any kind of germ. ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... of Raphael and of Burne- Jones often seems identical; in temperament, disposition and aspiration they were one. That poetic and fervid statement of Mrs. Jameson, that Burne-Jones is the avatar of Raphael, contains the germ of truth. The dream-women of Burne-Jones have the same haunting and subtle spiritual wistfulness that is to be seen in the Madonnas of Raphael. Each of these men loved a woman—and each pictured her again and again. Whether this woman had an existence outside the figment of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... the evils that were past. And some of them led her into their gardens to show her their flowers, and to tell her how they had begun to study and learn how colours were changed and form perfected, and the secrets of the growth and of the germ of which they had been ignorant. And others arranged themselves in choirs, and sang to her delightful songs of the fields, and accompanied her out upon her way, singing and answering to each other. The difference between the simple folk and the greatness of the others ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant

... undoubtedly mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list of accusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in a characteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it fresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visible remains ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... pronounce on the constitutionality of legislative acts had received countenance in a few dicta in some of the States and perhaps in one or two decisions, this idea was still at best in 1787 but the germ of a possible institution. It is not surprising, therefore, that no such doctrine found place in the resolutions of the Virginia plan which came before the Convention. By the sixth resolution of this plan the national legislature was to have the power of negativing all state laws ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... house had been made over somewhat, and is now used as an office by the Registrar of Vital Statistics. This is the place where Dante Gabriel and a young man named Holman Hunt had a studio, and where another young artist by the name of William Morris came to visit them; and here was born "The Germ," that queer little chipmunk magazine in which first appeared "Hand and Soul" and "The Blessed Damozel," written by Dante Gabriel when eighteen, the same age at which Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis." William Bell Scott used to come here, too. Scott was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... native town in 1472. But, though so hastily put together, the 'Orfeo' marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. It is the earliest example of a secular drama, containing within the compass of its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the tragedy, and the pastoral play. In form it does not greatly differ from the 'Sacre Rappresentazioni' of the fifteenth century, as those miracle plays were handled by popular poets of the earlier Renaissance. But while the traditional octave stanza ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... I examine my own heart, I find not even the germ of a feeling which years might possibly ripen ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... years are a long while—anything might happen. She might leave him for someone else ... anything—anything—anything might happen. It was impossible to divine the turn human lives would take. The simple fact of his elopement contained a dozen different stories in germ. Each would find opportunities of development; they would struggle for mastery; which would succeed?... Keep women you couldn't; he had long ago found out that. Marry them, and they came to hate the way you walked across the room; remain their ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... force permeates matter, and wherever this in its development attains the conditions for the maintenance of life (and so a higher manifestation of force than in the mineral) it brings forth the intellectual life in the protoplasmic germ for the finest organism. Through the laws of inheritance, of change, of the multiplication of progressive development, of natural selection and of the persistence of the most gifted individuals, living beings are developed through all classes and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... the skull and the dust in the darkness beard. Each icy germ in its cerements stirred, As Lazarus moved at ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... and which has thus lent it a memory of the first Christian explorers on the spot, this mission is properly known by the name of San Carlos Borromeo, Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan. A few huts enclosed by a palisade, and forming the germ at once of the religious and of the military settlement, were hastily erected. But the actual building of the mission was not begun until the ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... haids," Daddy January consoled her when she complained to him about it. "Dey gets all kind o' fool notions 'bout all kind o' fool t'ings. You ain't got to feel so bad—de Jedge is lots wuss'n yo' boss is. Yo' boss kin see de bugs he run atter, but my boss talk 'bout some kind o' bug he call Germ. I ax um what kind o' bug is dat; an' he 'low you can't see um wid yo' eye. I ain't say so to de Jedge, but I 'low when you see bug you can't see wid yo' eye, you best not seem um 'tall—case he must be some kind o' spook, an' Gawd knows I ain't want to see no ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... which later sparkles in the wine-cup and inspires song and cheerfulness. Those, again, which are sombre and tragic have as background the gloomy forest, the dark and windy promontory which overhangs the darker river, or the secluded nunnery. In such surroundings is fostered the germ of tragedy, that feeling of the inevitable which is inherent in all great literature. It is to a tragic imagination of a lofty type that we are indebted for the greatest of these legends, and he who cannot appreciate their background of gloomy grandeur will never come at the true spirit of that ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... in his work as a germ. But he is not unheard: he uses the telephone to locate his victims, that is why I advised you to let your ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition embodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk to manhood, he retained a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted. The enjoyments which ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... society consisted in a great measure of war tempered by agriculture, there could be but little progress towards a better state of things. But the germ of industry sprouted and grew, though slowly. Merchants bought social privileges for money; even law was grudgingly sold them, and they continued to buy. Against the old idealism, against bugbears and mythology, fairy tales and astrology, dreams, spells, charms, muttered exorcisms, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... thoughts—wean him from sublunary vanities—and purify his nature. On an utterly depraved man, its effects may be fleeting also; for few can here expect a moral regeneration. But falling on Delancey, it was not thus. The slender thread that bound him to virtue, was snapt asunder; the germ whence the good of his nature might have sprung, destroyed for ever. Such a man could not love purely again. To expect him to wander to another font, and imbibe from as clear a stream, would be madness. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... in 1607, the ships of Captain Newport had conveyed to the banks of James River the first vital germ of English colonization on the continent. Noble and wealthy speculators with Hispaniola, Mexico, and Peru for their inspiration, had combined to gather the fancied golden harvest of Virginia, received a charter from the Crown, and taken possession of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... well as the prospect of their domestic happiness, seemed light in comparison to their rank and temporal greatness. But, like many a parent of hot and impatient character, she was mistaken in estimating the feelings of her daughter, who, under a semblance of extreme indifference, nourished the germ of those passions which sometimes spring up in one night, like the gourd of the prophet, and astonish the observer by their unexpected ardour and intensity. In fact, Lucy's sentiments seemed chill because nothing had occurred to interest ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... intimate relations in an atom, and it is itself material." The early Buddhist philosophers also taught that physical elements are among the five "skandas" which constitute the phenomenal soul. Democritus and Lucretius regarded the mind as atomic, and the primal "monad" of Leibnitz was the living germ—smallest of things—which enters into all visible and invisible creations, and which is itself all-potential; it is a living microcosm; it is an immortal soul. These various theories are not parallels, but they have striking similarities. And I believe ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... one heart from another takes The sweet contagion; but, my bride and I May humbly teach thee other human lore. Thou say'st thou hast no soul. This cannot be, Since reason and all mental gifts are thine; Within the lovely calyx sleeps the germ,— A flower as yet unblossomed. Warmth and light From the great spiritual Sun alone it wants To bud and bloom into the fullest life. Shall we expound this marvellous mystery?— Tell thee of Endless Life which still unfolds Till it doth circle every star ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... at least three writers of English fiction who, borrowing this germ-plot from the Gesta Romanorum, have handled it with distinction and originality. Nathaniel Hawthorne, having changed its period and given it an Italian setting, wove about it one of the finest and ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... of God. The popular saying, "Either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes"[237] contains a deep truth in its first as well as in its second part. It not only marks the likeness in style of the two writers, but it suggests that Philo, on the one hand, made fruitful the religious germ in Plato's teaching by his Hebraism, and, on the other, nourished the philosophical seed in Judaism by his Platonism. Plato's teaching falls into two main classes, the dialectical and the mythical, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... effects of the system.] There was more in it than this, however. There was a germ of organization planted in these western townships, which must be noted as of great importance. Each township, being six miles in length and six miles in breadth, was divided into thirty-six numbered sections, each containing just one square mile, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... displayed in finding her friends, the magnetism by which she drew them toward herself, the catholic range of her intimacies, the influence which she exercised to develop the latent germ of every character, the constancy with which she clung to each when she had once given and received confidence, the delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and the process of transfiguration which took place when ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... droop and detach itself and sink into the ground. Instead, tufted and fluffy, like dandelion seed or thistledown, it floated upward in incredible quantities, so that for hundreds of miles the sky was obscured by this cloud bearing the germ ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... powers; in other words, you would have a limited fiscal Parliament by the side of the British Parliament and the various Colonial Parliaments. This small body, which would have to be created, would perhaps be the germ of an Imperial Federation afterwards." He thought those were most remarkable, and striking words. If people would think the subject out in a calm judicial, and fair spirit, they would see in it the fulfilment of what would not only promote the best interests of the British Empire, ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... smooth fashion of a supple and indifferent age, as to pay these seven writers a single compliment which they will care to accept. The most foolish composition of the seven is Dr. Temple's; the most mischievous is Professor Jowett's: but the germ of the last Essay is contained in the first; the foolishness of the first Essay is abundantly shared by the last: while the evidence of correspondence of sentiment between the two writers is unmistakable. The most unphilosophical Essay, (where all are unphilosophical,) ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... death unnumbered fall. Tyrrhenian Aulus, bearer of a flag, Trod on a Dipsas; quick with head reversed The serpent struck; no mark betrayed the tooth: The aspect of the wound nor threatened death, Nor any evil; but the poison germ In silence working as consuming fire Absorbed the moisture of his inward frame, Draining the natural juices that were spread Around his vitals; in his arid jaws Set flame upon his tongue: his wearied ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... ridicule what they do not understand, and the higher to look down with contempt on lower civilizations. Whoever is acquainted with the laws of the development of the plant, cannot fail to see in the seed the germ of its growth, and in its flower, the herald of decay. If there were inhabitants of the moon, and one of them should visit our earth, and find children and grown people side by side, while ignorant of the laws of human development, would he not look upon the most beautiful ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... enough to the world,—the world of many afflictions,—the little Sorrowful Star covered with toiling, anxious, deluded God-forgetting millions, in every unit of which was a spark of Heavenly flame, a germ of the spiritual essence that makes the angel, if only ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... characteristic, a general and strong, but vague and incoherent, belief in the immortality of the soul," was less a particular doctrine of their own than a sentiment innate in the race; "they had only to develop ideas the germ of which had not been imported by them." Nevertheless, so well organized was their communal order that they were, before the Roman epoch, the only central, definite power capable of consecutiveness in its conceptions ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... binding grasses, grain and trees, and diverted rivers to keep it fertile. When there were no rivers to divert they blasted out springs and lakes in the foothills to make their own. Biologists developed the necessary germ and insect life from what they found in the sea. Where that failed, they imported microorganisms ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet

... comprehension and sympathy; for he not only could not understand how they could possibly obtain solace in their trouble from this unconscious little creature, but he was angry and scornful of them for doing so. Phil Compton's brat, no doubt the germ of a thousand troubles to come, but besides that a nothing, a being without love or thought, or even consciousness, a mere little animal feeding and sleeping—and yet the idol and object of all the thoughts of two intelligent women, capable of so much better things! This irritated ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... how I should delight in this question! Yes, I should say: yes, by the fact of its germ every animal is originally carnivorous. The insect in particular makes a beginning with albuminoid materials. Many larvae adhere to the alimentation present in the egg, as do many adult insects also. But the struggle to fill the belly, which is actually the struggle for life, demands something ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... Life must develop out according to its type; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... jest. Yet rest assured of one thing, Socrates: if after you have put seed into the ground, you will await the instant when, while earth is being richly fed from heaven, the fresh green from the hidden seed first springs, and take and turn it back again, [12] this sprouting germ will serve as food for earth: as from manure an inborn strength will presently be added to the soil. But if you suffer earth to feed the seed of corn within it and to bring forth fruit in an endless round, at last [13] it will be hard for the ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... suns to shine To show the world their origin divine: And as the plant in darksome cave will grow Whether warm sunshine bless its face or no, A secret impulse yearning day and night In hourly striving tow'rds the unseen light, So lives the hero-germ in every heart— Of earthy life the bright, the heavenly part: The pow'r that brings the blossom from the sod, And gives to ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... purifying the air of a room, but even ordinary daylight has a good deal of germ-killing power. Therefore, a room that is well lighted is not only much pleasanter to live in, but much healthier, than one that is dull and gloomy. You see why we need plenty of windows and doors: we must let in the breezes ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... sense indeed the Socialist propaganda must be the germ of the collective self-consciousness of mankind in the coming time. If the purpose of Socialism is to prevail, its scattered writings, its dispersed, indistinct and confused utterances must increase in height and breadth and range, increase in power and service, gather to themselves every means ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... system required money, and a high tariff of duties on imports was a necessary concomitant to Internal Improvements. The germ of this system was also a product of the war of 1812. Hamilton had proposed it twenty years before; and the first American tariff act had declared that its object was the encouragement of American manufactures. But the system had never been effectively introduced until ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various



Words linked to "Germ" :   inspiration, taproot, muse, microorganism, micro-organism, anatomical structure, body structure, complex body part, structure, bodily structure



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