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Spectacular   /spɛktˈækjələr/   Listen
Spectacular

noun
1.
A lavishly produced performance.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spectacular" Quotes from Famous Books



... seats as we would subscribe to a lending library. During the last year in Germany, the plays of Schiller were given 1,584 times, of Shakespeare 1,042 times, the music-dramas of Wagner 1,815 times, the plays of Goethe 700 times, and of Hauptmann 600 times. There is no spectacular gorgeousness, as when an Irving, a Booth, or a Beerbohm Tree sugarcoats Shakespeare to induce us barbarians to go, in the belief that we are after all not wasting our time, since the performance tastes a little ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... service Monday evening, January 27, 1919, which included among other features an address by the pastor, Dr. Tanner, one by the presiding Bishop, John Albert Johnson, and an original poem by Dr. Robert E. Ford. The most spectacular number was the burning of the fourteen thousand dollar mortgage deed in the presence of the vast audience, the taper being applied by a committee of elderly members who had been connected with the church for a score or ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... Medusa to prove what strength results from a close relation between the accent of the verse and the music. Gluck was one of the most fervent disciples of this system, but Orphee, as we know, was derived from Orfeo. The question was whether he could even think of suppressing this spectacular chorus with its amazing strength which was one of the principal reasons for the work's success. Unfortunately the music of the chorus was moulded on the Italian text, and each verse ended with the accent on the antepenult, which occurs frequently in German and Italian, but never in French. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... the result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible not to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment which was not published until after his death, describing his first impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... 1, 2, 3), happy products of the ingenious fiscal policies of the Dukes of Brunswick, picture mining activity in the 17th century no less elegantly than do the woodcuts of De re metallica a century earlier. The Stangenkunst received its most spectacular application in France, in its application to the driving of the second- and third-stage pumps in the famous waterworks at Marly (1681-88), but its real importance is better illustrated in central Europe, by the many descriptions ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf

... about the size of a pea lying at the base of the brain, a short distance behind the root of the nose. It is of a grayish-yellow color, unpretentious and insignificant enough in appearance, and so long neglected by the scientists who boast their immunity to the glamor of the spectacular. Guesses at its nature ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... the same opinion as I. What I should like now would be a spectacular piece, an allegory or something like ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... copse, in order that the gardener or "improver" may show his art. Compare Figs. 14 and 15. Many persons seem to fear that they will never be known to the world unless they expend a great amount of muscle or do something emphatic or spectacular; and their ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... For Potsdam a first-rate spectacular effect is needed, and that effect would best be produced by a German national apology carried by a diplomatic mission with ceremony to Brussels and published in all German official papers, and emphasized ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... stunts—early in the morning when there ain't the hull town out to rubber—and then pull off an exhibition or two. Seventy-five dollars is the least you ever need to expect. Don't go in the air for less. From that up—depends on how spectacular you are. The public loves to watch for the death fall. That's what they pay to see—not hopin' you get killed, but not wantin' to miss seeing it in case yuh do. And with this the only airplane around here—why, say, ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... for Indian public," said the Bengali. "Prince of Chiltistan will say nothing. I make first-class leading article on reticence of Indian Prince in presence of high-class spectacular events. Good-night, sir," and the Babu shut up his book ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... been swift and spectacular. Almost as soon as he graduated from the college in the little "up-state" town where he had been educated, and his family had always lived, he became the prosecuting attorney of that town, and later, at Albany, represented the district in the Assembly. ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... the new colored butler was carrying the papers back to Bartlett & Bangs's, and Mr. Randolph's new secretary was sawing wood in Madam Bartlett's cellar. It was a humble beginning, but he whistled jubilantly as he worked. Already he saw himself climbing, by brilliant and spectacular deeds, to a dazzling pinnacle of security ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... the highest point in the center a fine flagstaff one hundred and twenty feet high was proudly crowned by a liberty-cap. This elevated plateau was the field of our display. On a spot not too near the flagstaff we planned for a spectacular center of flame. During the day we gathered material for an enormous bonfire. Huge casks formed the base and inflammable material of all kinds reached high in the air. At dark we fired the pile. But the chief interest was centered ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... spectacular, too violent?" she wondered, returning her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion. "Not too much like ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... spectacular, with fantastic shapes and colors. Then, as they went deeper, the colors gradually faded to a uniform green. Rick knew from underwater flash photographs that the appearance was deceptive. The colors remained, but the quality of ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... it so that he could not be traced save as a financial agent in each case), yet the charges had been made, and he was now revealed as a shrewd, manipulative factor, with a record that was certainly spectacular. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... the air and by the incomparably new field of experiment opened to them; but they were not. The great question, that of flight itself, had been answered, and but few were interested in working out the less spectacular applications of its principles. Aviation remained very much of a poor sister in the scientific world, held back by all the discredit attaching to the early stunt-flying and by failure to break through the ancient belief in its impracticability for ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... wonder at him! ... faces that were solemn, wistful, warning, and beseeching by turns! ... they drifted through the fire and smiled, and wept, and vanished, to reappear again and yet again! ... and as, with painfully beating heart, he strove to combat the terror that seized him at this strange spectacular delusion, all suddenly the heavy wreaths of smoke that had till now hung over the Inner Shrine of Nagaya parted like drapery drawn aside from a picture.. and for a brief breathing space of direst agony he saw ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... the labor movement in the United States were discussing vehemently political action versus direct action. A number of causes combined to produce a serious and critical controversy. The Industrial Workers of the World were carrying on a lively agitation that later culminated in a series of spectacular strikes. With ideas and methods that were not only in opposition to those of the trade unions, but also to those of the socialist party, the new organization sought to displace the older organizations by what it called the "one Big Union." There were ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... had been employed for some time now, even before the wire fence had been installed, but the really spectacular change was in the heat blasters each guard carried. This, more than anything else, impressed on everyone connected with the project, that to move the wrong way, to say the wrong thing, or to act in any suspicious manner ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell

... boiler might be improved. It is similarly impossible for men of the socialistic temperament to understand the general process of industry, or to judge how it can and how it can not be altered, from the purely spectacular impressions which its intricate ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... of other witch-doctors before, such as Savonarola, had been a faculty, inspired by, or derived from, hysterical epilepsy, of working himself up at will into a state of convulsion without actual loss of consciousness and the spectacular exhibition of foam, which no other sorcerer had been able to simulate so successfully. Therefore Bakahenzie invoked the great Tarum (apotheosis of ancestors' spirits) who, through the convulsed body, did proclaim that the disaster had been caused by the breaking of the magic circle ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... into the evangelization of other nationalities, which constitute a very large part of the population in the anthracite regions, and their splendid zeal helped to make the 'Billy Sunday' campaign in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton the most wonderful, even that spectacular man has ever conducted. As personal workers they are unsurpassed, and since the revivals they have organized workers' bands and Bible classes, and have gone out into all the country for fifty miles around holding meetings in which singing, personal testimony and ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... a flotilla of armored aeroplanes provided with machine guns has been organized to attack the German aeroplanes that fly over Paris. Spectacular sights are thus ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... the coronation as if it were a spectacular play. Every one, from the principal actors to the most insignificant assistants, studied his part most conscientiously; the Masters of Ceremonies were to act as prompters to those who might forget. The Imperial carriages and those of the Princes and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... possesses her, hitherto prosaic enough in so many ways; and it communicates itself to men like the Orloffs, Patiomkin, Suvaroff. It is, I think, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who remarks that in Russia the shows of things are more important than reality. So rite, ceremonial, the spectacular, the symbolic, seem to have a power there greater than in any ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... But Ludovic's spectacular performances were not yet over. The Speeds might be hard to get started, but once they were started their momentum was irresistible. When Theodora and Mr. Sherman came out, Ludovic was waiting on the steps. He stood up straight ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Inca and his mother and their principal chiefs and counselors were away from Uiticos on a visit to some of their outlying estates, Friar Marcos and Friar Diego decided to make a spectacular attack on this particular Devil, who was at the great "white rock over a spring of water." The two monks summoned all their converts to gather at Puquiura, in the church or the neighboring plaza, and asked each to bring ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... doing. He's a bit inclined to the spectacular, is Monroe, and he wants to make the whole ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... girl; pretty, with the dash and piquancy of an oriole in a May apple-tree; clever and efficient in everything her swift hands touched; quite a spectacular housekeeper; and the sober, long-faced young downeasterner had married her with a sudden decision that he often wondered about in later ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... innumerable demands for roads, canals, and railways to the ports of Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago. There were actually hundreds of these enterprises undertaken. The development of the land behind Lake Superior was particularly spectacular and important, not only because of its general effect on the industrial world but also because out of it came the St. Mary's River Ship Canal. Nowhere in the zone of the Great Lakes has any region produced such unexpected ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... the story of Fra Diavolo is to be found in Lesueur's opera, "La Caverne," afterwards arranged as a spectacular piece and produced in Paris in 1808 by Cuvellier and Franconi, and again in Vienna in 1822 as a spectacle-pantomime, under the title of "The Robber of the Abruzzi." In Scribe's adaptation the bandit, Fra Diavolo, encounters an English nobleman and his pretty and susceptible wife, Lord and ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... enemies of Prussian Czarism? They were either holding their peace, or breaking forth into adulation of the anointed of the Lord—a musician and comedian like Nero, of a sharp and superficial intelligence, who believed that by merely skimming through anything he knew it all. Eager to strike a spectacular pose in history, he had finally afflicted the world with the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of fog or mist, when its meanest architecture would show stately. The city won its moving grandeur from the throng of people astir on its pavements, or the streams of vehicles solidifying or liquefying in its streets. The august groups of Westminster and Parliament did not seem in themselves spectacular; they needed the desertedness of night, and the pour of the moon into the comparative emptiness of the neighborhood, to fill them out to the proportions of their keeping in the memory. Is Trafalgar Square as imposing as it has ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... the floor. When a man was free, a really snappy salute gave a diverting result. The man's body tilted forward to meet his rising arm, the upward impetus was one-sided, and every man who saluted Brown immediately made a spectacular kowtow which left him rigidly at salute floating somewhere overhead with his back to Lieutenant Brown. With a little practice, it was possible to add a somersault to the other features. On one historic occasion, Brown walked ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... far and near, riding in bancas or on ponies, often spending several nights upon the way. The great church at the morning mass is crowded; women faint; and, as the heat increases, it becomes a steaming oven. It is more spectacular at vespers, with the women kneeling among the goats and dogs; the men, uncovered, standing in the shadows of the gallery; the altar sparkling with a hundred candles; and the dying sunlight filtering ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her—to herself quite spectacular—deposition from the command of The Hard and its household. She had sufficiently recovered her normal attitude, by this time, to pose to herself, now as a heroine of one of Charlotte Bronte's novels, now ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... great deal to go through with that day. She must have rehearsed well, or she would have been confused by the multiform ceremonials of that grand spectacular performance. The scene, as she entered Westminster Abbey, might well have startled her out of her serene calm, but it didn't. On each side of the nave, reaching from the western door to the organ screen, were the galleries, erected for the spectators. These were all covered with ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... homage. Yet he knew how to be comrade and brother to the lowliest. He won and held the confidence and friendship of the serious-minded Robertson no less than the idolatry of the wildest spirits on the frontier throughout the forty-three years of the spectacular career which began for him on the day he brought his tribe to Watauga. In his time he wore the governor's purple; and a portrait painted of him shows how well this descendant of the noble Xaviers could fit himself to the dignity and formal habiliments of state; ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... aliases will not help a man, no change of appearance, no protestations of mistake, if his prints correspond with those in the files. But it is all so simply done. There is nothing spectacular, nothing imposing about the process. Practically all that is needed is a piece of tin, some printer's ink, and a sheet of paper. Within a few minutes afterwards his ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... between our feet, his body under the seat, watched the proceedings, whining. It looked like good fun to him, but it was forbidden. A jackrabbit arrested in full flight by a charge of shot turns a very spectacular somersault. The dog would stand about five rabbits. As the sixth turned over, he executed a mad struggle, accomplished a flying leap over the front wheel, was rolled over and over by the forward momentum of the moving vehicle, scrambled to his feet, pounced on that rabbit, and ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... up the old 'bus so nice and proper, with all your colours and posters, and it would have been a spectacular Diorama for these 'ere poor people; but you know for why I didn't bring it out ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... occupations, or were industriously engaged in qualifying for such; in their leisure moments they smoked reasonably-priced cigarettes, went to the cheaper seats at music-halls, watched an occasional cricket match at Lord's with apparent interest, saw most of the world's spectacular events through the medium of the cinematograph, and were wont to exchange at parting seemingly superfluous injunctions to "be good." The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributary thoroughfares of Piccadilly ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... Dublin. There were 5,000 troops in garrison, including a battalion of Grenadier Guards, and ceremonial parades were in evidence. The trooping of the colors at guard mounting on the esplanade was one of the most spectacular. The marching past in slow time to the music of massed bands, together with the other beautiful movements attached to this grand old practice, drew thousands of citizens to witness it. Those grand displays were no doubt the means of establishing a friendship ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle

... absolute faith in these people's superstitions. He knew what to expect; but somewhere the equation had been off. He should have chosen a quieter event, he guessed. The audience had been too well schooled in the acceptance of the spectacular. ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban

... amendment. Efforts to defeat it in the courts. Unusual course taken by Supreme Court. Discussion of its true place in the development of American constitutional law. Less a point of departure than a spectacular manifestation of a change already under way. Effect of the change on ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... is an ordinary marital quarrel I will tell you, that it is a difference about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr Powell told us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious compassion. However, the Anthonys were free ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... comparisons must have been in her favour. Then suddenly she found herself up against a new standard. Being young and— er—vain, she evidently felt it necessary to her peace of mind to follow the leader. From a spectacular point of view the effect ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... dramatic poses, the artistic sensation arrests the mind at the surface of the picture. It is indeed strange that this devout churchman should have succumbed to the temptation, and there are moments when one suspects that his somewhat spectacular pietism disguised the spirit of one whose mind had little to do with the mysticism of the mediaeval church. Or perhaps it was that the strange friendship between him and Albertinelli, the man of the cloister and the man of the world, effected some ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... ludicrously prompt, some of them waiting in San Francisco for weeks so as not to miss the scheduled sailing-date. They departed on the Energon on June 15; and while they were on the sea, on the way to Palgrave Island, Goliah performed another spectacular feat. Germany and France were preparing to fly at each other's throats. Goliah commanded peace. They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing to fight it out on land where it seemed safer for the belligerently inclined. Goliah ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... contemplated an increase in prices, and were in sympathy with it. He transferred his spot-cotton to this company, the stock of which he himself held through his dummies, and then had his agents burn the entire two million bales. The burning was done quickly and with spectacular effect, and the entire commercial world, both in America and abroad, were astounded by ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... the British medical authorities that the Americans would not be permitted to start a hospital of their own in Archangel. The Russian sisters who owned the building were interested observers as to the outcome of this clash in authority. It was settled one morning about ten o'clock in a spectacular manner much to the satisfaction of the Americans and Russians. Captain Wynn of the American Red Cross came to the assistance of Captain Hall, supplying the American flag and helping raise it over the building and dared the British ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... through molten cast iron, held in a vessel called a converter, a stream of cold air under pressure. The combination of the oxygen in the air with the silicon and carbon in the metal raises the temperature of the latter in a spectacular way and after "blowing" for a certain period, eliminates the carbon from the metal. Since steel of various qualities demands the inclusion of from 0.15 to 1.70 percent of carbon, the blow has to be terminated before the ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop

... the trouble with Vladimir Igorievich, heir of Prince Igor. Father and son had been taken in battle, and were held captive in the camp of the Tartars; but, while Prince Igor felt very keenly his position (though treated as a guest rather than a prisoner and supplied every evening with spectacular entertainments), Vladimir beguiled his enforced leisure by falling in love (heartily reciprocated) with the daughter of his captor, Khan Konchak. An opportunity of escape being offered, Prince Igor seizes it, but Vladimir's dear heart is divided between passion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... perhaps therefore the finest, flower of the Teutonic stock, are closer to us and hence better known than the early Goths or Franks. Shut off in their cold northern peninsulas and islands, they had grown more slowly, it may be, than their southern brethren. Now they burst suddenly on the world with spectacular dramatic effect, wild, fierce, and splendid conquerors, as keen of intellect and quick of wit as they were strong of arm ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... a hexameter poem, 646 lines in length. The author laments the indifference shown by poets to the natural phenomena of his day. They waste their time on the description of the marvels of art, the spectacular side of human civilization, and the surface-beauties of Nature.[342] They write trivial epics on the voyage of Argo, the sack of Troy, Niobe, Thyestes, Cadmus, Ariadne, the Battle of the Giants[343]. They tell of the terrors of the underworld[344], ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, Monsieur, but surely you know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very particular about that. Your testimony ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... accomplished during the latter days of the war was spectacular. Waste lands along the Delaware overgrown with weeds were transformed within a year into a shipyard with twenty-eight ways, a ship under construction on each one, with a record of fourteen ships already launched. The spirit of the workmen ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... three thousand miles from the center of the crimes, there was wild confusion at the announcement of this second spectacular murder. The reader may recall the international effects of the infamous "Ripper" crimes which terrified London a few decades ago and he will understand how rapidly the Head-hunter's fame spread through ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... pay. For a long time she wasn't able to handle the situation. They're both young, you know. She's about twenty-four, and Laurie is a year younger. But last year she suddenly put her mind on it and pulled him up in a rather spectacular way." ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... may be applied to her with a reasonable degree of assurance. He only goes this far in his deductions: If, as he has gleaned, Challis Wrandall was engaged in an illicit—er—we'll say distraction—with some one unknown to Sara his wife, what could be more spectacular than her discovery of the fact and the subsequently inspired decision to lay a trap for him? Of course, it is perfect nonsense, but it is the way he goes about it. It has been established beyond a doubt that Wrandall ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... the rehearsals. The summer was devoted to the composition of Belshazzar, for which Jennens had supplied the libretto. The collaboration was not altogether happy, for although Jennens had considerable sense of the picturesque, and offered Handel opportunities for what may be called spectacular music on the grand scale, his literary style was pompous, rhetorical, and long-winded. Handel protested perpetually against the length of the work, for the Handelian style of composition naturally extended ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... thorough combustion of soft apple wood soon become familiar characteristics to those who have the opportunity to lay the fire in variety. Then there is, of course, the fascination and the weird coloring in a driftwood fire—most spectacular of all but unfortunately denied to ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... other plans—more spectacular plans—in mind. He put them into execution at once. The moment he felt his burden slipping over his back that active end grew busy again. Jumbo humped himself, letting out a volley of kicks so lightning-like in their swiftness that human ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... passengers whenever the train stopped. They all wore their beautiful peasant costume,—the square white linen head-dress falling to the shoulders, the crimson bodice, and the red scant skirt; and how they contrived to keep themselves so clean at their work, and to look so spectacular in it all, remains one of the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... Manassas staggered and steadied the North. The President called to the command of the army of the Potomac, General George B. McClellan, who had been winning small successes and sending large telegrams in Western Virginia. He was brilliant, bold, spectacular, a good organizer and soon trained the strong young raw recruits—farmers and artisans—into one of the finest armies the world had ever witnessed. While McClellan was drilling and preparing in the East, Fremont in the West assumed the authority ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... educational or literary basis, of which women could well avail themselves. Mrs. Croly sympathized with the more earnest purposes entering into her idea, and was in little related to any sensational, spectacular, or faddish features that may here or there become attached to it. She was a believer in seriousness, an exemplar of industry, a devotee to system, and a very remarkably punctual, effective and straightforward writer. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... 1885 was in some respects the most important, certainly the most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for Huck Finn's adventures; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sharp ears had detected the approach of the emissary. Not knowing whether it might be the villain himself, he cautioned the men to wait an instant. The emissary, coming along, crouching and listening, did not see Locke, and thus Locke was able to seize him and with a spectacular throw project him literally into the hands of the law in the person of one of his own men, who snapped the bracelets on the astonished thug as Locke, followed by Eva and the rest, ran on to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... was to pass through a similar experience. Indeed, one of the most striking facts of this age of the Renaissance is the swift and spectacular rise of Spain from a land of feebleness and internal strife into the most powerful kingdom of Europe. We have seen the Spanish peninsula in previous ages the seat of endless strife between Saracens ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... it was at the play, and that the Prince had come to see the play. It sat down reluctantly, saving itself for his departure, watching him as he entered into enjoyment of the brave and grandiose spectacular show on ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... raffish figure of a man as he rode up, weight on his under thigh, sidewise, and hand on his horse's quarters, carelessly; but his clean cut, unsmiling features, his direct and grave look out of dark eyes, spoke him a gentleman of his day and place, and no mere spectacular pretender assuming a virtue though ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... Self-sufficient in rice, Japan must import about 50% of its requirements of other grain and fodder crops. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch. Overall economic growth has been spectacular: a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s and 1980s. Economic growth slowed markedly in 1992 largely because of contractionary domestic policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. At the same time, the stronger yen ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... saw the last of the adventure I began that night—it was all written in the nth power, and introduced in more or less important roles the most charming girl in the world, the most spectacular hero of France, the cleverest secret-service agent in the pay of the fatherland, and I sometimes ruefully suspected, the biggest imbecile of the United States in the person of myself—I knew better than to call any idea impossible simply because it might sound wild. But ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... Heligoland Bight early in the war, as a matter of fact, a squadron of British battleships passed right through a nest of submarines and were not harmed. The most spectacular submarine success, the sinking of the three fine cruisers, Aboukir and Cressy and Hawke, was the result of an attack delivered upon unsuspecting craft, which were lying at anchor, or at all events under ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... proceeding so spectacular, but he was as he was made, and he could not keep his dare-devil spirit quite in abeyance. He twitched his hat farther back on his head, stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked deliberately out into the open, his neck as stiff as a newly elected politician on parade. He did not ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... sticks, as it were, of The Bale Fire (HUTCHINSON) are not very cunningly laid, with the result that from a spectacular point of view the conflagration fizzles out rather tamely. But there are so many bright passages in the book and so many sympathetic sketches of characters that I cannot help wishing the FRASERS ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... always rule that element. Today every soul in Paris saw the Taube. Until now anything about the Germans' approach has been rumor and hearsay, but now comes this plain fact for all the world to see; and what more convincing or spectacular evidence of their nearness could be set before the Parisians than a German aeroplane flying over their heads? I think it will prove the spark to light one of the historical explosions of the French people, and that this will probably show ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... England once a month. It seemed a possibility, as proposed in Mr. Corbin's scheme of harbours at Montauk Point. There were pauses in the breathless speed we were just beginning at this time. We paused to say farewell to the good men whom we were passing by. They were not spectacular. Some of them will no doubt be unknown ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... this elephant did was spectacular, as it showed the enormous strength of the animal as well as his great intelligence. He took up on his tusks a log of teak, the native wood of this country, as hard as hickory and much heavier, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... as one of the most disgraceful events in American history. To adjudge it so was a typical exaggeration and perversion of a society caring only about what was passing in its upper spheres. The spectacular nature of this episode, and the ruin it wrought in the ranks of the money dealers and of the traders, caused its importance to be grossly ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... at a time, a very little pleasure more than offsetting a very great deal of trouble and suffering. A desire to move around and to enjoy changes of scene is a special feature of the Creole, and hence the spectacular effects of the carnival procession appeal most ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... she had to leave Charmian to the belief that she was distraught and captious, solely for the reason they shared the secret of, and Charmian respected this with a devotion so obvious as to be almost spectacular. Cornelia found herself turning into a romantic heroine, and had to make such struggle against the transformation as she could in bursts of hysterical gayety. These had rather the effect of deepening Charmian's compassionate gloom, till she exhausted ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... having missed them. There is no pleasure, for instance, in seeing six hundred mules at once in "Clytaemnestra," or a whole army of gaily-dressed horse and foot engaged in a theatrical battle. These spectacular effects delight the crowd, but not you. If you were listening to your reader Protogenes, you had greater pleasure than fell to any of us. The big-game hunts, continued through five days, were certainly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... one early morning visit to the roost, on the 30th of July. It would be worth while, I thought, to see how much music so large a chorus would make, as well as to note the manner of its dispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped for something spectacular,—a grand burst of melody, and then a pouring forth of a dense, uncountable army of robins. I arrived about 3.40 (it was still hardly light enough to show the face of the watch), and found everything quiet. Pretty soon the robins ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... for his own start in life only one ten-dollar bill from fifteen hundred dollars was spectacular enough to soothe even so bruised an ego as Bud Moore carried into the judge's office. There is an anger which carries a person to the extreme of self-sacrifice, in the subconscious hope of exciting pity for one so hardly used. Bud was boiling with such an anger, and it demanded ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... from Athens, where I had found the Allied diplomats still smarting under the memories of their ignominious experiences following Constantine's spectacular coup of the previous December, and it was by no means the least of these who had told me point-blank that he could not conceive how it would be possible that Saloniki should be returned to Greece after the war. Of course it was the Royalist Government that my distinguished friend had ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... to the letter she herself had written offering herself and her love and faith for his taking. At first these things had hurt her. But these gifts of his were beginning to make her understand his silence. Selfish and spectacular all his life at his death Alan Massey had been surpassingly generous and simple. He had chosen to bequeath his love to her not as an obsession and a bondage but as an elemental thing like ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... hardships, again controlled the theater which bore his name, now Powers' Theater. Out of that chance meeting came a long friendship and a connection that helped in later years to give Charles Frohman his first spectacular success, for it was Mr. Hooley who helped to ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... the trade of the interior have been the prize sought by rival nations and rival cities, and the possession of a speedy and convenient route has been the means of securing the prize. The later warfare was less spectacular than the old, but no less keen. The navvy took the place of the Indian, pick and shovel and theodolite the place of bow and musket, and a lower freight {31} by a cent on a bushel of wheat became the ammunition ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... her family to rank equal to her own, and by a famous edict her children and their descendants had been brought within the succession to the crown. Her delight in amusements and in pageants was now at its highest, and it happened that the Abbe de Vaubrun, designing a spectacular piece in honor of Night, confided to me the task of writing and delivering an epilogue in that character. My stage-fright spoiled my elocution, but from that day I was entrusted with the organisation of these magnificent entertainments, and the last of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Lenoir, formed the famous gallery of the Louvre, which was formally opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of August. The arrival of the artistic spoils from Italy was stage-managed by Napoleon with consummate skill and imposing spectacular effect. Amid the applauding multitudes of Parisians a long procession of triumphal cars slowly wended its way, loaded with famous pictures, securely packed, but each bearing its title in monumental inscription. THE TRANSFIGURATION, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... an even more spectacular appearance than his British brother. No self-respecting German or French sportsman would think of faring forth after the incarnate brown hare or the ferocious wood pigeon unless he had on a green hat with a feather in it; and a green suit to match the hat; and swung about ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... the simplest in its movements. It is not the spectacular actions of an exercise that make it the best. As every exercise is a struggle upward it must necessarily be an emphasis of ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... "The Nature Island of the Caribbean" due to its spectacular, lush, and varied flora and fauna, which are protected by an extensive natural park system; the most mountainous of the Lesser Antilles, its volcanic peaks are cones of lava craters and include Boiling Lake, the second-largest, thermally active lake ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Marconi was not the kind of boy to produce a revolutionising invention, for he was not in the least spectacular, but, on the contrary, almost shy, and lacking in the aggressive enthusiasm that is supposed to mark the successful inventor; quiet determination was a strong characteristic of the young Italian, and a studious habit ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... great house, if of little architectural merit, and the ball had all the traditional spectacular splendor common to such festivities. The pillared hall and double staircase, the suites of spacious rooms, were filled with a glittering kaleidoscopic crowd of fair and magnificently bejewelled women and presumably brave, certainly well-groomed and handsome men. The excellence of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... satisfy the woman consumer because he is attempting to satisfy a dealer's demand for "flashy" rather than practical selling points and, therefore, loses sight of the value to him of a perfect functioning of his device. Exclusive points of design that can be used for a spectacular demonstration have been up to this time perhaps the strongest of selling aids; but manufacturers and dealers alike are beginning to realize that they have an element of danger. Thus, the confetti test for vacuum cleaners ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks

... from golden spears, and little palms and shrubs in green tubs are arranged on either side of the Shamiana; and the effect is quite pretty; but considering the historic importance of the occasion and the natural suitability of the surroundings for a Royal landing, the conception and arrangement of spectacular effect was astoundingly poor—and it must be admitted it is a mistake to hide the principal actors at the most telling point of a momentous event with bunting and shrubs in pots, or both! The actual ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... For although the spectacular major dune formations of the Great Erg have defied wheeled vehicles since the era of the Carthaginian chariots, and even the desert born camel limits his daily travel in them to but a few miles, the modern hovercraft, atop its air cushion jets, finds them of only passing ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... is like a landscape seen from a hill, a scene of woods and waters, of fields and hamlets—everything seems peaceful and idyllic there. He wants the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest. It is the same feeling which makes people wish to travel. When you travel, the new land is a spectacular thing—it is all a picture. It is not that you crave to live in a foreign land: you merely want the luxury of seeing life without living life. No ordinary person goes to live in Italy because he has studied the political constitution and organisation ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... a daring deed, and the spectacular side of it has been often commemorated, especially in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. There we see the gallant prince moving through a sort of military panorama. Most of the British troops were absent in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... was no particularly spectacular feat of arms. Mosby's party dismounted about 200 yards away from it and crept up on it, to find seven members of the Fifth New York squatting around a fire, smoking, drinking coffee and trying to keep warm. Their first intimation of the presence of any enemy nearer than the Rappahannock ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper

... were no buildings just underneath the center of explosion. The damage to the Mitsubishi Arms Works and the Torpedo Works was spectacular, but not overwhelming. There was something left to see, and the main contours of some of the buildings ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... Catholic teaching,' including frequent exhortations to the practice of confession; and partly on appeals to the eye, by symbolic ritual and elaborate ceremonial. Their more ornate services are often admirably performed from a spectacular point of view, and are far superior to most Roman Catholic functions in reverence, beauty, and good taste. The extreme section of the party is contemptuously lawless, not only repudiating the authority of the Judicial Committee ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... after their arrival were spent in preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and pulling whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White's fame as a painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep before ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... ward my entrance was spectacular—if not dramatic. The three attendants regularly in charge naturally jumped to the conclusion that, in me, a troublesome patient had been foisted upon them. They noted my arrival with an unpleasant curiosity, which in turn aroused ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... expression; when they don't know whether Master Jack or Miss Jill has merely a howling spell or is threatened with fatal convulsions; when they don't know whether they want a dog-muzzle or a doctor; when Mr. Youngwed has lost his sleep and his temper, together, and has displayed himself with spectacular effect as a brute, selfish, irritable, helpless, resourceless and conquered—then—then, my dear madame, you have doubtless observed him decrease in self-estimated size like a balloon into which a pin has been introduced, until he looks, in fact, like Master Frog ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... recurring, he thought of him with so little animosity that he judged his spectacular death inadequate. But who, he wondered, had staged it? Not Cassy. Cassy took things with too high a hand and reasonably perhaps, since she took them from where her temperament had placed her. Then, without further effort at the riddle, his thoughts drifted back to that afternoon when, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... the mark!) being bits of wood, which they beat one against the other, and saucer-like bones, held in the palm of the hands, which they knocked together, making a dull sound. It was a show at once amusing, spectacular, and hideous. ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... should," was the somewhat brusque reply. "I have no doubt that the New York papers have some wonderful headlines—'How an Englishman catches the steamer!' or 'An English diplomatist, eager to fight'—and all that sort of thing. But apart from the spectacular side of it, I don't suppose they consider your adventure ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... along this line in some places and give the reflex influence of the same on the community. It has surely meant a new heaven and a new earth to many a child, and glimmerings of the same to many a community. But I pass to less spectacular matters, continuing to discuss principles ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd



Words linked to "Spectacular" :   dramatic, conspicuous, public presentation, outstanding, prominent, impressive, salient, performance, spectacle, striking



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