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Thoroughgoing

adjective
1.
Performed comprehensively and completely.  Synonyms: exhaustive, thorough.  "Made a thorough search" , "Thoroughgoing research"
2.
Without qualification; used informally as (often pejorative) intensifiers.  Synonyms: arrant, complete, consummate, double-dyed, everlasting, gross, perfect, pure, sodding, staring, stark, unadulterated, utter.  "A complete coward" , "A consummate fool" , "A double-dyed villain" , "Gross negligence" , "A perfect idiot" , "Pure folly" , "What a sodding mess" , "Stark staring mad" , "A thoroughgoing villain" , "Utter nonsense" , "The unadulterated truth"






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"Thoroughgoing" Quotes from Famous Books



... moment of his introduction to her, Ancrum had taken particular notice of David's handsome sister, who, on her side, had treated her old minister and teacher with a most thoroughgoing indifference. He saw that now, after some three months of life together, the brother and sister had developed separate existences, which touched in two points only—a common liking for Dora Lomax, and a common ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... satisfactions. What is it that is satisfactory here? Surely to BELIEVE in the postulated object, namely, in the really existing feeling of the other man. But how (especially if the postulator were himself a thoroughgoing pragmatist) could it ever be satisfactory to him NOT to believe in that feeling, so long as, in Professor Stout's words, disbelief 'made the world seem to him cold, dull, and heartless'? Disbelief would seem, on pragmatist principles, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically: Down to December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... done good work. She has made a name for herself. Standing, as she does, for thoroughgoing, non-sectarian, Christian education, for true manhood and womanhood, with mutual co-operation and helpfulness, with so many from all parts of this great State of Texas looking to her for light and leadership, her opportunities for usefulness ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various

... Of the more thoroughgoing of the multitudinous attempts to apply the principles of cosmic evolution, or what are supposed to be such, to social and political problems, which have appeared of late years, a considerable proportion appear to me to be based upon the notion that ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... was not a man to admire by halves, and to literary praise of Seneca's writings he added a thoroughgoing vindication of his career. In his early days he had referred disparagingly to Seneca,[181] but reflection or accident had made him change his mind. The cheap severity of abstract ethics has always abounded ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... been trying to justify lying, or that I do not consider lying a serious matter; nor, on the other hand, that you will consider a single application of the remedies suggested sufficient to make any child truthful. Thoroughgoing truthfulness comes hard and generally comes late. But for the majority of children truthfulness is attainable, although it will not be attained without a struggle. The finer instincts often enough lead to violations of strict veracity; but they may ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... none. I plead, on a footing with the nine thousand correspondents of the Daily Telegraph of London, for thoroughgoing allegiance to the truth, emancipation of the clerical intellect from tests, and comprehension in the inquiry not only of the material, but of the higher or spiritual nature of man, including his aspiration to progress, of which ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... the matter in the largest possible way. Modern psychology, finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thoroughgoing and complete. If we adopt the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a general way, if not in every detail: Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure; George Fox was an hereditary degenerate; Carlyle ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... public has not yet been worked out. Furthermore, the government has halted the old policy of diverting food from domestic consumption to hard currency export markets. So far, the government does not seem willing to adopt a thoroughgoing market system, that is, there is great caution in decontrolling prices because of public opposition. The government has sharply raised price ceilings instead ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... his heart in his life—not even to Julia. He never said much about his love-making with Julia to me. But his aunt did—and I listened between the words, as I always do. His four or five years' career in London as a thoroughgoing young rake had given him a very deep insight into woman's nature—an insight rare at his age, for all his perceptions were astonishingly acute, and his unconscious faculty of sympathetic observation and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... grunt, squeal, bark, neigh, quack, bellow, and growl; that last item, in George's estimation, had almost compensated for the tediousness of the rest of the concert. He smiled with pleasure at the thought of it. Yes, decidedly, he was no classicist in music; he was a thoroughgoing transcendentalist. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... bring to the judge the wardens' certificate that he had done so. On the day appointed Garrett was present in court with the vicar and wardens. The decree of the court is headed: "Negotiu[m] reparac[i]o[n]is eccl[esi]e de East Tilburie," and is so characteristic of the thoroughgoing and searching manner in which ordinaries supervised the administration of parish affairs that we cannot forbear to quote a large part of it in full. "Touchinge the same Wm Garrett," the registrar inscribes in the act-book, "the churchwardens do here testifie that he hathe payd ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware

... the game, which is fortunate, though my partners don't think so; but I am free to confess, that nothing short of an absorbing admiration for it and desire to excel, could tempt me to brave the sarcasms, even insults, to which I am subjected. Your thoroughgoing Whist-player as such—admirable in private life as I personally know him to be—the moment he begins the daily business of his life, seems to cast his better nature to the winds. At another time and place he would lend a sympathetic ear to any tale of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various

... other extreme of the scale. Of all the gentlemen holding place in our over-numerous college faculties, and commanding, one would expect, the very passes to the terra incognita of the human soul, how few seem disposed to prove their individual faculties by any thoroughgoing and successful incursions into unknown regions of the psychologic and pedagogic realm! The spirit of this should-be influential and leading class among us is one of serene assent in the iteration of the old steps, with of course some minor improvements, but with no attempts at a grand investigation ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... explanation of the Natives' Land Act, given to the Barolongs of Thaba Nchu by Mr. Dower, is so illuminative of the wretched unsatisfactoriness of the Act that the occasion certainly merits notice. It would be difficult to conceive a more thoroughgoing and drastic condemnation of the Act than this attempt at faint praise of it, delivered by the Secretary of the Native Affairs Department. All he can say to these unfortunate Natives is, that it would be better to engage as labourers or sell up than to trek ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... that a convulsion was averted only by the dexterous policy of Warren Hastings, who at last bought off the opposition of the Chief Justice for eight thousand pounds a year. It is notorious that, while the Supreme Court opposed Hastings in all his best measures, it was a thoroughgoing accomplice in his worst; that it took part in the most scandalous of those proceedings which, fifty years ago, roused the indignation of Parliament and of the country; that it assisted in the spoliation of the princesses of Oude; that it passed sentence of death on Nuncomar. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... at the hands of the voter at the General Election in December 1918, was its well-thought-out reconstruction program put forth under the telling title of "Labour and the New Social Order." This program was above all a legislative program. It called for a thoroughgoing governmental control of industry by means of a control of private finance, natural resources, transportation, and international trade. To the workingmen such control would mean the right to steady employment, the right to a living wage, and the appropriation ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... their plans of work. Others, in various moods, but more independent, more critical, more disturbed about consequences, or unpersuaded on special points, formed a kind of fringe of friendly neutrality about the more thoroughgoing portion of the party. And outside of these were thoughtful and able men, to whom the whole movement, with much that was utterly displeasing and utterly perplexing, had the interest of being a break-up of stagnation ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... furious with you an hour ago," she went on. "I'd made such a nice, reasonable, really beautiful plan for you, and given you a tip about it, and then I sat and watched you in that thoroughgoing way of yours, kicking it all to bits. But somehow, when I see you all by yourself, this way, it changes things. I get to thinking that perhaps my plan was silly after all—anyhow, it was silly to make it. The plan was, of course, to marry you off to ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... exploding. "I beg your pardon, sir. You're wrong there. That kid is hopeless. Nothing will do him any good. He's a perfect little nuisance. He's a thoroughgoing, out-and-out little varmint!" ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... the Three Compasses, one with a fireside corner to warm ale and tell grandfathers' tales in, the other with traditions of highwaymen and the road. They were pulled down. In Market Place there was once a fine Tudor house, the Castle Inn. The noble staircase remains, a good, thoroughgoing piece of carving of Bacchus and full casks; the house has gone. The church is old enough to have seen these and other losses; but the church is a mixed building; the tower, or most of it, is eighteenth century brick. Only one spot in the open streets of the town, I think, keeps an air of Kingston ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... of the Kalam is present in greater or less degree in the philosophers up to Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides. The latter gave this system its death blow in his thoroughgoing criticism,[22] and thenceforth Aristotelianism was in possession of the field until that too was attacked ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... variously accomplished man of letters was to show a gift that can almost be called unique. His Life of Burns, published in 1828, was written when the Scotland of the poet was still known to all his mature countrymen, though it was too early for the thoroughgoing scrutiny into every detail of his history practised by later writers; but, setting that consideration aside, the sympathy, intelligence, good taste, fairness, and above all, the sanity of the work, to say nothing of its admirable literary quality, have ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... the momentum which had been gathered. Defections on the imperialism issue, while affecting important party leaders, were numerically unimportant. Among the financial and industrial classes, therefore, confidence in President McKinley and his advisors was thoroughgoing. There was a strong bond of interest, moreover, between territorial expansion and industrial expansion, between Imperialism and the expansion of foreign markets. The primacy ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... another—in our life-time partly because we chose so completely to isolate ourselves—the democratic idea took root in Europe with disappointing slowness. It is, for instance, now perhaps for the first time, in a thoroughgoing way, within sight in this Kingdom. The dream of the American Fathers, therefore, is not yet come true. They fought against organized Privilege exerted from over the sea. In principle it is the same fight that we have made, in our domestic field, during recent decades. Now the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... the torture's sake. His eyes were his only organs that really lived still, and they expressed the steely hate and cruelty, the mad fanaticism, the greedy self-love—self-immolating for the sake of self—that is the thoroughgoing fakir's stock in trade. And his lips were like the graven lips of a Hindu temple god, self-satisfied, self-worshiping, contemptuous and cruel. He chuckled again, as ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... So authentic and thoroughgoing a piece of loyalty as this affected Dill tremendously; the hint of an Oriental exodus scarcely less so. Never should she go to Japan with the Knotts; she should go with him. His share in the work at the Grindstone would make this the easiest as well as the most delightful of possibilities. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... were a fine lot, and such thoroughgoing Americans, no matter from what country their parents had come. One of my buglers had landed in the United States only in 1913; he had been born and brought up on the confines of Germany and Austria, ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... most thoroughgoing that the world has ever seen; for he attacks the certainty of our knowledge of both mind and matter. But he dryly remarks that his own doubts disappear when he leaves his study. He avoids a runaway ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... is an interesting point, though there appears to be no essential difference between this new school and the thoroughgoing evolutionists; for both admit the principle of the survival of the fittest. To me the new school's conception seems to be grotesque. According to them, the world was originally full of an enormous number of animals, organisms and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... from everything before long, it is something that he had better be wrenched from. And if there be any occupations which dwindle into nothingness, and into which a man cannot for the life of him fling himself with any thoroughgoing enthusiasm or interest, if once the thought of death stirs in him, depend upon it they are occupations which are in themselves contemptible and unworthy. All good aims will gain greater power over us; we shall have a saner estimate of what is worth living for; we shall have a new standard ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... no more thoroughgoing international Mrs. Gummidge, and no more utterly useless and often utterly mischievous citizen, than the peace-at-any-price, universal-arbitration type of being, who is always complaining either about war or else about the cost of the armaments which act as the insurance against war. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... till noon they might drink nothing at all, not even water. They feared no doubt to defile the portion of God in their stomachs by contact with common things. A similar pious fear led the Creek and Seminole Indians, as we saw, to adopt the more thoroughgoing expedient of rinsing out their bodies by a strong purgative before they dared to partake of the sacrament ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." [1] Such is the outlook on human life of a frank and thoroughgoing irreligion, and there is nothing exhilarating about it. All progress possible in such a setting is a good deal like a horse-race staged in a theatre, where the horses do indeed run furiously, but where we all know well that they are not getting anywhere. There is a moving floor beneath them, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... mother and a daughter, my dear madam. Poor Meadowsweet left us six years ago. He was one of my churchwardens, a capital fellow, so thoroughgoing and reliable. A sound churchman, too. In short, everything that one could desire. He died rather suddenly, and I was afraid Mrs. Meadowsweet would leave Northbury, but Bee did not wish it. Bee has a will of her own, and I fancy she's ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... proof of his ingenuity was that he had cheated at cards in that community for five years, and still he had never been caught at his work. He was not a bold-talking man. In fact he never started arguments or trouble of any kind; but he was a most dexterous and thoroughgoing fighter when he was cornered. In fact he was what is widely known as a "finisher." And it was Whitey whom Cartwright had chosen as the leader of the mob which he intended raising. He waited until the first shuffle was in progress after the hand, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... been content merely to reprint in the complete translation his earlier work from Syn og Segn, but he has made a thoroughgoing revision.[36] It cannot be said to be altogether happy. Frequently, of course, a line or phrase is improved or an awkward turn straightened out, but, as a whole, the first version surpasses the second not in poetic beauty merely, but in accuracy. Compare, for example, the two renderings ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... like to know who the Deuce you are?" said Chaffery, suddenly tilting his head back so as to look through his glasses instead of over them, and laughing genially. "For thoroughgoing Cheek, I'm inclined to think you take the Cake. Are you the Mr. Lewisham to whom this misguided girl refers ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... party that it had grown to such formidable strength, intellectually, spiritually, and numerically. The probability that the church might, with the continued growth and influence of this party, become Americanized and so lose the purity of its thoroughgoing Scotch traditions was very real, and to some minds very dreadful. To these the very ark of God seemed in danger. Arraignments for heresy in presbytery and synod resulted in failure; and when these and other cases involving questions of orthodoxy or of the policy of the church ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... childish lying and deception to act on the tacit assumption that thoroughgoing Socialism means something like a garden-city idyll, with play-houses, open-air theatres, excursions, picturesque raiment and fire-side art. This in itself quite decent ideal of the average architect, art-craftsman and ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... man, with a small sharp anaemic face buried in red hair. It was two or three years of mission work, first in Mexico, and then at Lima as the envoy of one of the most thoroughgoing of Protestant societies, that had given him his strangely vivid notions of the place of Romanism among the world's forces. At no moment in this experience can he have had a grain of personal success. Lima, apparently, is of all towns in the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... flying perhaps to a far country, to suffer, and sin and go down to the lowest depths of degradation. The prayer burst forth from the depths of the colonel's heart, "God have mercy on my son! God have mercy on me, a sinner!" There was a thoroughgoing penitence in that closed room. The colonel's whole life stood before him, with all its shortcomings and its sins. To the world it had been an outwardly blameless life, but within there had been an uncertain faith, a half-heartedness, an indecision in his inner life, that ill befitted one who ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker

... all-comprehensive charge to the people, which seems based, by its 'therefore,' on the preceding thought of Jehovah as the only God. The only attitude corresponding to His sole and supreme Majesty is the entire devotion of heart, which leads to thoroughgoing obedience to His commandments. The word rendered 'perfect' literally means 'entire' or 'sound,' and here expresses the complete devotion of the whole nature. Solomon meant that it should be complete, in contradistinction to any sidelong glances ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... innate, positive, entire, native, primitive, essential, natural, thorough, extreme, organic, thoroughgoing, fundamental, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... Clarke had to deal was, how did the offensive and malicious matter, contained in an affidavit taken by a judge and one witness at night, become public property? If General Clarke had been a more thoroughgoing politician, he would have found a better way to confound his enemies than that which he adopted; but he was deeply wounded by a foul charge made at night, and put in circulation by means of nods and ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... loved her as the pure love, and therein lay his safety—his and hers. He not only did not feel any desire to possess her, but the very thought of it filled him with horror. The fears of the more poetical Sophia Ivanovna, that Dmitri, with his thoroughgoing, resolute character, having fallen in love with a girl, might make up his mind to marry her, without considering either her birth or her station, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy



Words linked to "Thoroughgoing" :   exhaustive, unmitigated



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