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Wrongful   /rˈɔŋfəl/   Listen
Wrongful

adjective
1.
Having no legally established claim.  Synonym: unlawful.
2.
Unlawfully violating the rights of others.  "A wrongful diversion of trust income"
3.
Not just or fair.  "A wrongful charge"



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"Wrongful" Quotes from Famous Books



... manufacture, and sale of intoxicating liquors in said district, except for medicinal, mechanical, and scientific purposes, is hereby prohibited under the penalties which are provided in section 1955 of the Revised Statutes for the wrongful importation of distilled spirits; and the President of the United States shall make such regulations as are necessary to carry out the provisions of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... criminations, violent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles, a persecutor of rank and merit, and a base flatterer and sycophant of the people." Thucydides also calls him "a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. "The taking ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... to set them aside, or invalidate them. The law of chivalry, sterner and more inflexible than that Mosaic code requiring an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, which demanded a human life as the sacrifice for every rash word, for every wrongful action, was the law paramount of every civilized land in that day, and in France perhaps most of all lands, as standing foremost in what was then deemed civilization. And the abbe well knew that discussion of this point would only tend to bring out the opinions of the Count de St. Renan, in favor ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... wrongful, quoad hoc, as to the fact itself; but 'tis rightful, quoad hunc, as to this heretical rogue, whom we must dispatch. He has railed against the church, which is a fouler crime than the murder of a thousand ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... robbery of the widow, the exploitation of the savage; against the crimes of the empires, the Almighty, through his lips, would make His anger known. He has done so often and often. Again and again has the preacher turned back the tides of national iniquity, again and again prevented the wrongful purpose upon which a people had set its heart. The need is with us still. This warning and accusing note of sternness must be regained. To tell men of their sins and that they are lost unless God delivers them; to tell the age of its iniquities and that the sure end of national vice is national ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... wrongful, Clarsie," he said sternly. "It air agin the law fur folks ter feed an' shelter them ez is a-runnin' from jestice. An' ye'll git yerself inter trouble. Other folks will find ye out, besides me, an' then the sheriff 'll be ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... age was then just nineteen, and hers sixteen. Shelley, who was a profound believer in William Godwin's Political Justice, rejected the institution of marriage as being fundamentally irrational and wrongful. But he saw that he could not in this instance apply his own pet theories without involving in discredit and discomfort the woman whose love had been bestowed upon him. Either his opinion or her happiness must be sacrificed ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... whether a man is under compulsion or free. Leaving the criminal law on one side, what is the difference between the liability under the mill acts or statutes authorizing a taking by eminent domain and the liability for what we call a wrongful conversion of property where restoration is out of the question. In both cases the party taking another man's property has to pay its fair value as assessed by a jury, and no more. What significance is there in calling one ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... served by awards of damages and profits. Damages are awarded to compensate the copyright owner for losses from the infringement, and profits are awarded to prevent the infringer from unfairly benefiting from a wrongful act.*** ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... noght the Pope mai comande The king wol noght the Pope obeie. This Pope tho be alle weie That he mai worche of violence Hath sent the bulle of his sentence With cursinge and with enterdit. The king upon this wrongful plyt, 2980 To kepe his regne fro servage, Conseiled was of his Barnage That miht with miht schal be withstonde. Thus was the cause take on honde, And seiden that the Papacie Thei wolde honoure and magnefie In al that evere is spirital; ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... tedious. They rarely talked of anything but politics; and as I have elsewhere said, they were very jealous to have every one declare himself of their opinion. Hemmed in by this jealousy on one side, and by a heavy and rebellious sense of the wrongful presence of the Austrian troops and the Austrian spies on the other, we forever felt dimly constrained by something, we could not say precisely what, and we only knew what, when we went sometimes on a journey into free Italy, and threw off the irksome caution we had maintained both ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... original. Look at the cadet and alumni establishments, at the seminaries, at the schools for clergymen, and at the homes for military orphans. In them many thousands of children, partly from the so-called upper classes, are educated in a one-sided and wrongful manner, and in strict cloister seclusion; they are trained for certain specific occupations. And again, many members of the better situated classes, who live in the country or in small places as physicians, clergymen, government employes, factory owners, landlords, large farmers, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... (Vagliano v. Bank of England [1891], A.C. 107; McKenzie v. British Linen Co. 6 A.C. 82; Ewing v. Dominion Bank [1904], A.C. 806). The doctrine of the fictitious person as payee may also exonerate a banker who has paid an order bill to a wrongful possessor. Payment on a forgery to an innocent holder is payment under mistake of fact; but the ordinary right of the payor to recover money so paid is subordinated to the necessity of safeguarding the characteristics of negotiability. Views differ as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... feature is the changed mental attitude of many young people towards this evil. Some offend because they crave popularity or want to do what their friends are doing. Some assert a right to do what is regarded by religion, law, and convention as wrongful. It was reported that some of the girls were either unconcerned or unashamed, and even proud, of what they had done. Some of the boys were insolent when questioned and maintained this attitude. The Committee has not overlooked the fact that in some cases this attitude may have ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... is frequently used by composers. In "Lohengrin," which for that reason affords to the amateur an admirable opportunity for orchestral study, Wagner resorts to this device in some instances for the sake of dramatic characterization. Elsa, a dreamy, melancholy maiden, crushed under the weight of wrongful accusation, and sustained only by the vision of a seraphic champion sent by Heaven to espouse her cause, is accompanied on her entrance and sustained all through her scene of trial by the dulcet tones of the wood-winds, the oboe most often carrying the melody. Lohengrin's superterrestrial ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... pardonable of all offenses—but then insisted, as I now insist, that no discrimination should be made against the note holder, but that until we are ready to pay him in coin he should be allowed, at his option, to convert his money into a bond at par. Until then our notes are depreciated by our wrongful act, and we have no right to take advantage of our own wrong by forcing upon the bondholders the notes we refuse to receive. This is the precise principle involved in the act to strengthen the public ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... government of the United Provinces became a settled government when it was recognised by Spain, and, but for that recognition, would never have been a settled government to the end of time. Another casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that a government, wrongful in its origin, might become a settled government after the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789, therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty to swear allegiance ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... notoriety, in Parisian society. This was Mrs. Helene Cecille Stille, otherwise the "Baroness de Reviere," and sometimes designated "The Buckeye Baroness," She came for the purpose of prosecuting a charge against the Baron de Reviere of "wrongful conversion and unlawful detention of personal property," arising from circumstances ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... my Beloved! taken with those glances, Ah, my Beloved! dancing those rash dances, Ah, Minstrel! playing wrongful strains so well; Ah, Krishna! Krishna with the honeyed lip! Ah, Wanderer into foolish fellowship! My Dancer, my ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... may possibly be accorded to it after the rejection of all such peccant poems. As already intimated, I have not in a single instance excised any parts of poems: to do so would have been, I conceive, no less wrongful towards the illustrious American than repugnant, and indeed unendurable, to myself, who aspire to no Bowdlerian honours. The consequence is, that the reader loses in toto several important poems, and some extremely fine ones—notably ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... place every day during the fair, but the story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same. There is a rightful heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrongful heir, who loves her too, and isn't beloved by her; and the wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill him off when convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of assassins—a good one and a bad one—who, the moment they are left alone, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... herewith a report from the Secretary of State and accompanying papers relating to the claim against the United States of the Russian subject, Gustav Isak Dahlberg, master and principal owner of the Russian bark Hans, based on his wrongful and illegal arrest and imprisonment by officers of the United States district court for the southern district of Mississippi, and in view of the opinion expressed by the Department of Justice that the said ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... perhaps equally illegal, yet the event soon showed that their policy in so doing was a mistaken one, and calculated to defeat the very object they intended to promote; for, as will always be the result where one party attempts to adopt the wrongful measures of their opponents, the tories, now armed with the fact that they had detected the other party in a wrong more glaring, because more public, than any they had perpetrated, made use of the advantage with such effect as to bring over several, intending to support the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... of twenty-three on bread and water!" cried Monsieur de Bonfons; "without any reason, too! Why, that constitutes wrongful cruelty; she can contest, as much in ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... of these indications (except the last) you must be on the look-out for signs of erasures, especially on the margins of the first leaf and on the fly-leaves at either end. Here the owner's name was usually written. Often it was accompanied by a curse on the wrongful possessor, and at the Dissolution there were many wrongful possessors, who, whether disliking the curse or anticipating trouble from possible buyers, thought it well to erase name, and curse, and all. They seldom did it ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... the court found the defendants guilty on the grounds that the agreements and the conduct of the defendants indicated a purpose to destroy competitors and monopolize trade in certain articles. The desired result was accomplished by wrongful means which injured the public as well ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... monastery. The Chapter claimed within their sphere the rights attributed to Athelstan's grant, and also assize of bread, ale, weights and measures; dues of fairs and markets; certain feudal dues; power over masterless goods, and to deal with cases of rent, wrongful detention of land, and theft; cognitio de falso judicio; execution of royal writs; 'sheriff-tourn'; coroners of their own; in fact the powers of a sheriff and of the justices-in-eyre, with a prison and the right of gaol-delivery, and even of inflicting capital punishment. In cases of homicide, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... hoodwinked and befooled will be seen, when I say that that which roused the temperance people was the truckling of the Canadian Pacific Railway to the liquor traffic, and its marked contempt for temperance men, its moral tyranny over its employees, and its wrongful dismissal of Mr. Smith, simply because his attitude on a moral question had exasperated the other side. But in the report which you give of the interview between this committee and Mr. Tait, all this is lost sight of, and the whole ground of complaint ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... from sorrow and thine own distress, When every place presents like face of woe, And no remove can make thy sorrows less! Yet go, forsaken! Leave these woods, these plains, Leave her and all, and all for her that leaves Thee and thy love forlorn, and both disdains, And of both wrongful deems and ill conceives. Seek out some place, and see if any place Can give the least release unto thy grief; Convey thee from the thought of thy disgrace, Steal from thyself and be thy cares' own thief. But yet what comforts shall I hereby gain? Bearing the wound, I needs must feel ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable

... equality in the treatment of the persons concerned. A judge has to decide without reference to bribes, and not be biassed by the position of an accused person. In that sense he treats the men equally, but of course he does not give equal treatment to the criminal and innocent, to the rightful and wrongful claimant. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... head, my lord," she rejoined; "for it is your hand that strikes the blow, and not my own. My honour is dearer to me than life, and I will unhesitatingly sacrifice the one to preserve the other. I have no fear but that the action, wrongful though it be, will ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... missioner—where the faithful are exhorted to exercise their charity to such a degree that it may be said that the rich and the poor have all things in common; third, passages directed against avarice and the wrongful acquisition or abuse of riches; and fourth, passages where the distinction between the natural and positive law on the ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... his career. He certainly did not make himself the cause of so much injury to the best interests of the State as George the Third had done, but it has also to be observed that when George the Third went wrong and obstinately maintained a wrongful course he was acting in dogged obedience to what he believed to be his conscience and the teachings of his creed. George the Fourth had absolutely no conscience and no law of life, and when he talked most vehemently and loudly ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... be said that among even such men as these there occur serious disputes, many wrongful acts are committed, and hotly contested litigation is the result. As though I ever thought that you had no trouble to contend with! I know that the trouble is exceedingly great, and such as demands the very greatest prudence; but remember that it is prudence much more than fortune on which, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... consequences of the act are diffused over the whole community, or a large aggregate of persons, so that the effect on each individual is almost imperceptible, we are very apt to overlook the mischief resulting from it, and so not to recognise its wrongful character, while, at the same time, from lack of personal interest, others fail to call us to account. Hence it is that men, almost without any thought, and certainly often without any scruple, commit ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... not a Socialist agitator, either, but he also recognizes the danger of corrupting our university teaching in this manner. After calling attention to the "wrongful and unflinching way" in which the wealth of the Standard Oil magnate has been amassed, he asks: "Is a college at liberty to accept money gained in a manner so hostile to the public welfare? Is it at liberty, when the Government is ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... know nor understand; but through their old and new unshamefast sins, those tyrants and enemies of Soothfastness shall be so blinded and obstinate in evil, that they shall ween themselves to do pleasant sacrifices unto the LORD GOD in their malicious and wrongful pursuing and destroying of innocent men's and women's bodies; which men and women for their very virtuous living and for their true knowledging of the Truth and their patient, wilful, and glad suffering of persecution for righteousness, deserve through the ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... are!" Chia Cheng exclaimed. "It is enough that you won't read your books at home; but will you also go in for all these lawless and wrongful acts? That Ch'i Kuan is a person whose present honourable duties are to act as an attendant on his highness the Prince of Chung Shun, and how extremely heedless of propriety must you be to have enticed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... supersede them and regulate all private rights between man and man. Civil rights such as are guaranteed by the Constitution against State aggression, thought Justice Bradley, cannot be impaired by the wrongful acts of individuals unsupported by State authority in the shape of laws, customs, or executive proceedings, for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... off nearly eight hundred women, yet kept only one, Hersilia, for himself, and distributed the others among the unmarried citizens; and afterwards, by the respect, love, and justice with which he treated them, proved that his wrongful violence was the most admirable and politic contrivance for effecting the union of the two nations. By means of it he welded them into one, and made it the starting-point of harmony at home and strength abroad. The dignity, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... they punished citizens with stripes; they took the lives of condemned criminals. As the republic grew in size, and party strife arose among its multitudinous citizens, innocent persons were taken off under the pretext of the law, and many wrongful deeds were committed with impunity. Then was the Porcian Law enacted, with others of like tenor, permitting convicts to depart into exile. This I esteem, O Conscript Fathers, the first great cause wherefore this novel penalty be not established ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... prodigal. When he came into the title and estate some twenty years ago, he dismissed the whole retinue of servants, and, indeed, was defendant in several cases at law where retainers of our family brought suit against him for wrongful dismissal, or dismissal without a penny compensation in lieu of notice. I am pleased to say he lost all his cases, and when he pleaded poverty, got permission to sell a certain number of heirlooms, enabling him to make compensation, and giving him something ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... to no resulting loss of her industrial supremacy. As to the economic arguments against trade unions, they have become less influential with the discrediting of much of the theoretical teaching on which they were based. In 1867 a book by W. T. Thornton, On Labor, its Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues, successfully attacked the wages-fund theory, since which time the belief that the rate of wages was absolutely determined by the amount of that fund and the number of laborers has gradually been ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... others deem ye, I understand your metonymy: Your words of second-hand intention, When things by wrongful names you mention; 590 The mystick sense of all your terms, That are, indeed, but magick charms To raise the Devil, and mean one thing, And that is down-right conjuring; And in itself more warrantable, 595 Than ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler



Words linked to "Wrongful" :   unjust, wrongful conduct, illegitimate, unlawful, wrongfulness



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