"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is erudite, although oddly enough it ignores the researches of Morelli and Berenson. Gebhart attributes to Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi about eighty-five pictures, many of which were long ago in Morelli's taboo list—that terrible Morelli, the learned iconoclast who brought many sleepless nights to Dr. Wilhelm Bode of Berlin. Time has vindicated the Bergamese critic. Berenson will allow only forty-five originals to Botticelli's credit. Furthermore, Gebhart does not mention in his catalogue ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... justice for the settlement of controversies. Law and order have become stock phrases, dinned into their ears at every turn. The man who would settle his difficulty by trying the physical metal of his adversary is of the past. By the new order he is taboo as a savage. Individual self-restraint rings out in our vocabulary as nationally descriptive. The babe at the mother's knee learns first the virtue of it; the child at school is tutored to it soundly; the man in life is lectured with ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... been spilled upon the cloth, and still another leave the dining-car, with the announcement that he would forego his meal because informed by the conductor that men's shirt waists without coats were taboo. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... TABOO or TABU, a solemn prohibition or interdict among the Polynesians under which a particular person or thing is pronounced inviolable, and so sacred, the violation of which entails malediction at the hands of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... convention, of observance, of taboo, of folkways, ends. And into the brain of all living beings will be born the perfect comprehension ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... actually is, no League of Nations conceivable to us will be able to save us from war. Rend your hearts and not your armaments. Let us learn to look War in the face, and while the blood is cold, so that we may know what we are meaning to do. Let us put a moral taboo upon it, such as we have put upon parricide, or incest, or cannibalism. For certain, in those matters, the reason has put a sanction on the conscience. So will it in the matter of aggressive war. Side by side with that, as we now see, we must change the governance of nations. ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... I fancy, happy in both his marriages; the first bringing him rank and connection, the second lands and wealth. I bring him in here because he associated with Forster in one of his most grotesque moods. To Forster, however, this agreeable spirit was taboo. He had offended the great man, and as it had a ludicrous cast, and was, besides, truly Forsterian, I may here recur to it. Forster, as I have stated, had been left by Landor, the copyright of his now value unsaleable writings, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... prohibition, inhibition; veto, disallowance; interdict, interdiction; injunction, estoppel [Law]; embargo, ban, taboo, proscription; index expurgatorius [Lat.]; restriction &c (restraint) 751; hindrance &c 706; forbidden fruit; Maine law [U.S.]. V. prohibit, inhibit; forbid, put one's veto upon, disallow, enjoin, ban, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thoughts, and that his speculations have led him to conclusions which are, on the whole, true, although perhaps incorrect in matters of detail. Most children, unable to ask their mother or father direct questions upon matters which they feel instinctively are taboo, have pieced together, from their reading and observation, a faulty theory of sexual life. The pursuit of such knowledge, in secret, is not a healthy occupation for the child. His parents' silence has given him the feeling that the unexplored land is forbidden ground. In satisfying ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... the Ssassaror had discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins of the Humans. These, in turn, would ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... may say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... felt eyes, knew that they were being watched. But no Salarik stepped out of concealment. At least they had nothing to fear in the way of attack. Traders were immune, taboo, and the trading stations were set up under the white diamond shield of peace, a peace guaranteed on blood oath by every clan chieftain in the district. Even in the midst of interclan feuding deadly enemies met in amity under that shield and would not turn claw knife against each other within a ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... chats together in the cabin. He never referred to Van Luck, whom he seemed to have wiped from the slate of his recollection, nor did he again allude to the mutiny. Once, when I touched upon it, he had cut me short, and I could see from his manner that all reference to it must henceforth be taboo. But I could not help sometimes recalling the picture of the boat with the solitary man on board of her, drifting upon the grey waste of sea, and I often wondered if Dirk Hartog had been able to obliterate that picture from ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... haven't any specific taboo against taking life," Bronnath Zara, the dark-eyed woman in the brightly colored gown, told him. "They're just utterly noncombative, nonaggressive. When I was on the Dwarma Sector, there was a horrible scandal at the village where I was staying. It seems that a farmer and a meat butcher ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... burning questions, which put its seniors in a flutter. The seniors, under question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never till now dreamt of the need of any. If they are wise, they will put away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer these things out, and perchance clear their own minds ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... out of the corner of my eye. I wondered what was passing through his mind. The subject of my relations with papa was one which, without saying anything at all about it, we had consented to taboo. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the strain. One step—the single step by which she had dared to draw nearer him, stretching out yearning hands toward him—one step sufficed to take her back to the world of conventionalities and commonplaces, where the heart's aching is taboo. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and laughing and singing native songs that had been forbidden in the school, and, taking their shawls and Sunday dresses from their trunks, they arrayed themselves in all their finery and began dancing an old heathen dance which is taboo among the better class of natives and only practised in secret by the more degraded class of natives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... like us, yet in his nature and appearance godlike. And he was the first-born of us; he was greatly beloved by our parents; to him was given superhuman power—ka mana—which we have not.... Only his taboo rank remains, Therefore fear not; when he comes you will see that he is only a man like us." It is such a character, born of godlike ancestors and inheriting through the favor of this god, or some member of his family group, godlike power or mana, generally in some particular form, ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... professional rivals, Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo between them—their ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... moments of perplexity, moments during which she had racked her brain for a suitable remark, a new idea to interest him; for talk is difficult between new acquaintances when such matters as politics, literature and current events are taboo, and personalities are to be avoided; but since her mental attitude towards him had changed and love had taken possession of her, this ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... for yourself," he said curtly. "I'm taboo." And then, with a little break in his voice: "Even your dog feels it. Don, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... in their fight against the growing independence of women. Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to women ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... schoolmates had not made so much progress in getting acquainted as one would have thought. The new girl was unobtrusive, attended strictly to her studies, and made few demands on those about her; yet it was true that there was among them at least an unacknowledged conspiracy to taboo her, or an understanding that she was to be ignored almost completely. This Bernice attributed to her looks. Ever since she could remember, she had been called "homely," "ugly," "plain," and similar epithets. Now, though she preserved a calm exterior, she ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... while ago, to be an Infidel was to be socially taboo. But a little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But a little earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject to the penalty ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the still-room—drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... up while she was speaking, and the child ran away; for the little ones aped their elders in making Laura taboo. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... greatly interested in ships, but, because Uncle Cy was making it, she pretended to be vastly concerned about this one. On Saturdays and after school hours she sat on a box in the wood shed, where the captain had put up a small stove, and watched him work. The taboo which so many of our righteous and Atkins-worshiping townspeople had put upon the Whittaker place and its occupants included her, and a number of children had been forbidden to play with her. This, however, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of delights ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews—no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... an appearance of composure but in truth she was badly shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the office when he appeared the next morning, with her harness over her head. It was the sign in a way that she was strictly business and all personal confidences were taboo, but Rimrock did not take the hint. It annoyed him, some way, that drum over her ear and the transmitter hung on her breast, for when he had seen her the evening before all these things had ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... presence and love," I said. "But I try to keep him happy. I don't bother him with my troubles. I won't even let him talk of them. They're taboo." ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... on millet and on horseflesh, and drank mead and a liquor extracted from the birch tree. Their punishments continued to be most barbarous, quartering alive being a common practice. Their superstitions were interesting. Serpents were 'taboo,' so was a hut which had been struck by lightning, whilst the howlings of dogs and wolves were good omens, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... said Bertie, with some fervour. "Oh, does that shock you? I forgot you were a parson's daughter. Well, it may be your father is right after all. Anyway, I shan't quarrel with him so long as he doesn't taboo me too." ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... changed the subject almost violently. John Williamson made a practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore be taboo on Rodney's account, was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... said slowly, "the thing that keeps a woman straight and a man faithful is not a matter of bricks and mortar nor ways of thinking nor habits of living. It's something finer and stronger than these. It's the magic taboo of her love for him and his for her that makes them—sacred. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... luck, and look out. From an upper window of the house opposite the national emblem of the American Republic is hanging like an apron. Next door to it a man is decorating his windowsills with fairy lamps, and from his demeanour he might be devising a taboo against evil. I see no other sign that the new and better place of our planet was being acknowledged. The street is as the milkman and the postman have always known ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... ordinary costume of their race—a slip of native cloth about the loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion which would ensue, were the natives—men and women—allowed to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... by Alcmaeon, Democritus, Diogenes and others—was conducted on a large scale, but the human body was still taboo. Aristotle confesses that the "inward parts of man are known least of all," and he had never seen the human kidneys or uterus. In his physiology, I can refer to but one point—the pivotal question of the heart and blood vessels. To Aristotle the heart was the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... held it discourteous to mention money at table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a number of firms the executives have lunch together, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... as evidence of inconsistency, and might lead the weaker brethren into offence. The incident of the carpenters and the comic song is typical of a condition of mind which now possessed my Father, in which act after act became taboo, not because each was sinful in itself, but because it might ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... have to go back to the days of the cave-man to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat, and promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise self-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god might come ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... so. Finally, the jack-pot assumed altogether too large dimensions for the party, Kipling "called" and Bok, true to the old idea of "beginner's luck" in cards, laid down a royal flush! This was too much, and poker, with Bok in it, was taboo from that moment. Kipling's version of this card-playing does not agree in all particulars with the version here written. "Bok learned the game of poker," Kipling says; "had the deck stacked on him, and on hearing that ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Hartland gives there an ecumenical collection of parallels to the several incidents that go to make up our story—(1) The bride-capture of the Swan-Maiden, (2) the recognition of the bride, (3) the taboo against causeless blows, (4) doomed to be broken, and (5) disappearance of the Swan-Maiden, with (6) her return as Guardian Spirit to her descendants. In each case Mr. Hartland gives what he considers to be the most primitive form of the incident. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour the sea by such a discussion ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Meda," he said quietly; "your congratulations are premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo for three years—at ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... were ranged little piles of nuts and pine-branches, which supplied body-building material, and which she weighed out with scrupulous accuracy, in accordance with the directions of the "Uric Acid Monthly." Tea and coffee were taboo, since they flooded the blood with purins, and the kitchen boiler rumbled day and night to supply the rivers of boiling water with which (taken in sips) she inundated her system. Strange gaunt females used to come down from ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... mate for relief, as in nagging, whining, crying, or grumbling, is taboo. If you are tired or irritable, you can rest or exercise for restoration, as in the days before marriage. To pour out troubles or act out annoyance without restraint before the mate is to wear out his or her spontaneity and dry up the source of refreshment ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... usual groans of complaint about secrecy, but in the end avarice won over taboo and the door to the holy of holies was opened for Jason while two of the sciuloj, with bared and ready daggers, stood at his sides. At almost the same instant Jason looked in through the door he heard ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... dangerous class are confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the American ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... dead like the lover in the ballad of "The Bloody Gardener". They refrained also from killing the pigeon except sacrificially, and suffered agonies on a deathbed which contained pigeon feathers, the "taboo" ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... watermen. I am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," and the glances cast in my direction by the other customers indicate plainly enough that they consider the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... themselves in these islands in 1821, and are reported to have met with considerable success. The leading island is that which is called Tongataboo, or the 'consecrated island.' The name is properly two words 'Tonga Taboo,' signifying 'Sacred Island,' the reason of which appellative will appear, when I tell you that the priest of this island, whose name was Diatonga, was reverenced and resorted to by all the surrounding islands. Earthquakes are very frequent here; but the islands ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... risks in the defence of London, he, K., was not, and as he had already explained, big demands would make his position difficult with France; difficult everywhere; and might end by putting him (K.) in the cart. Besika Bay and Alexandretta were, therefore, taboo—not to be touched! Even after we force the Narrows no troops are to be landed along the Asian coastline. Nor are we to garrison any part of the Gallipoli Peninsula excepting only the Bulair Lines which had best be permanently held, K. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... is not l'homme de revolution, and he suffices for the small "spiritual wants" of his flock. He has charge of the "Kizila," the "Chigella" of Merolla and the "Quistilla" of James Barbot—Anglice putting things in fetish, which corresponds with the Tahitian tapu or taboo. The African idea is, that he who touches the article, for instance, gold on the eastern coast of Guinea, will inevitably come to grief. When "fetish is taken off," as by the seller of palm wine who tastes it in presence ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... bringing into activity the various motives which affect most powerfully the different individu- als. There should be a universal taboo on horse racing and all forms of gambling. Even "side lines'' should be completely discouraged. Some individuals are so hindered by the ordinary and necessary distractions of business that special protection should ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... get me to read anything I did not like, unless it was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given some other good book that I did like. There were certain books that were taboo. For instance, I was not allowed to read dime novels. I obtained some surreptitiously and did read them, but I do not think that the enjoyment compensated for the feeling of guilt. I was also forbidden to read the only one of Ouida's books which I wished to read—"Under Two Flags." I did read it, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I'll do it. With ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The wunnarl, or food taboo, was taken off a different kind of food for boys at each Boorah, until at last they could eat what they pleased except their yunbeai, or individual familiar: their Dhe, or family totem, was never wunnarl ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... disposed to defend their right to buy and sell as they please. On the same principle apparently that a great nobleman of the Scottish Lowlands has, since the last election, made his sovereign displeasure known to his tenants, have the party of agitation made "taboo" any tradesmen who have dared to run counter to the current of present opinion. When a baker is told he must not do a certain thing he obeys at once, and, with a certain quickness and suppleness of intellect, casts about ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... times was unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the recoil ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... from it with me," I promised. "Henceforth her name is taboo between us, and you shall choose our ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire—the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... sometimes with its fellows. Have you ever seen a colt or a calf throw up its heels and dash madly about the pasture from sheer excess of vitality and spirits? Well, there was one fly—the keenest player of them all, by the way—who, when it had alighted three or four times in rapid succession on my taboo wall and succeeded each time in eluding the velvet- careful swoop of my hand, would grow so excited and jubilant that it would dart around and around my head at top speed, wheeling, veering, reversing, and always keeping within the limits ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... The "taboo," or "tapu," prevails also in many of the South Sea Islands, where it may be considered as the substitute for law; although its authority, in reality, rests on what we should rather call religious considerations, inasmuch as it appears to be obeyed entirely ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... all, cobber. So one of your Security badges had the wrong man attached to it, and word got back. Couldn't be helped. You just ran into the sacred law of Marsport—the one they teach kids. Be bad, and the dome'll collapse. The dome made Marsport, and it's taboo!" ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... cast the first stone. And why single out syphilis as the badge of venery? The "itch" is transmitted by sexual relations too. Why not make the itch a sign of shame? The power that has done the damage is not the intrinsic viciousness of syphilis, but the survival of the old idea of sexual taboo, the feeling that sex is a secret, shameful thing, essentially unclean. To this age-old myth some one added the idea of punishment, and brutalized our conception of syphilis for centuries. If there ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... hosts. En route to the interior. Native flora and fauna. We arrive at the capital. A lecture on Filbertine architecture. A strange taboo. The serenade. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... McKay had downed a fat swamp deer. Since that day not a gun had been fired. The rations now were tough jerked beef and monkey meat, slabs of salt pirarucu fish, and farinha, varied by tinned delicacies from the stores of the Americans. Henceforth gunfire was taboo unless it ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... her immeasurably she was both too proud and too hurt to sue for a reestablishment of the old relations. On all other topics than his scientific work their interests were as mutual as formerly, but by what seemed a manner of tacit agreement this subject was taboo. And so it was that they came to Singapore without the girl having the slightest ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... early Friends ceased, the place of woman began to be circumscribed by new rules, and crystallized in a reaction under the influence of purely social forces; so that this most sensible people made women equal to men in meetings and in religious legislation through a form of sexual taboo. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... generals there is always an engine ready with steam up. Headquarters suddenly rolls off; and, after two or three days, it returns noiselessly, with its archives, its general staff, its restaurant, and its electric plant. The Grand Duke rules with an iron fist. Champagne and liquor is taboo throughout the war zone, and even the officers of the general staff get nothing except a little red wine. Woe to anyone who sins against this order, here or anywhere else at the front. The iron fist of the Grand Duke hits, if necessary, even the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of information, as far as she could, on the crops and animals. The big things, the size of rhinoceroses, are draft animals and nothing else; they're not eaten," Dorver said. "I don't know whether the meat isn't good, or is taboo, or they are too valuable to eat. They eat all the other three species, and milk two of them. I have an idea they grind their grain in big stone mortars ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... before the temple, there is a cry from the multitude, who instantly set on them with their clubs. Taro tells us not to grieve; that some are prisoners taken in war, others guilty persons who have broken a taboo, and others the lowest of the people. While we stand shuddering, a concourse of people arrive bearing fruits of all sorts, and hogs, and dogs. The human victims are stripped of all their garments, and placed in rows on the altars; the priests now offer up some prayers to ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... the pigs be tapu." It is impossible to explain tapu in a note; we have it as an English word, taboo. Suffice it, that a thing which was tapu must not be touched, nor a place ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the heavy smell ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... habit, some good besides piety may come out of a memorial Eleventh of November. Pitying, recording, respecting the dead or perhaps the bereaved, it may presently become a fixed idea with us that avoidable death is taboo. It may be borne in upon us on the next occasion when stung pride, outraged feeling or panic fear is sweeping like a plague over our land, that nothing but sorrow and loss was gained by the Four Years War. That is ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... influence of the older men is to throw restraints about the young men and obstruct their activities. This obstruction is seen quite as clearly on the food side as on the side of sex, in the fact that the old men make certain foods which are not abundant (notably the kangaroo and the opossum) taboo to the young men and the women, and thus reserve these delicacies for themselves. We have already seen, however, that the tribe usually makes some kind of a tardy sexual provision for its male members, and we shall presently examine this question more in detail; but the fact ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... dances of the Maori were such as only the active and vigorous could excel in. Slaves were there, but not enough to relieve the freemen from the necessity for hard work. Strange sacred customs, such as tapu (vulgarly Anglicized as taboo) and muru, laughable as they seem to us, tended to preserve public health, to ensure respect for authority, and to prevent any undue accumulation of goods and chattels in the hands of one man. Under the law of muru a man smitten by sudden calamity was politely ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... had followed us up from the beach were not permitted to enter the palisaded enclosure, which was strictly taboo to the common herd; our party therefore now consisted solely of those who had brought me up the river, four individuals who had joined us outside the gate—and whom I took to be officials of some sort—and my unworthy self; and, for my own part, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... February the 12th, the ships were put under a taboo, by the chiefs: a solemnity, it seems, that was requisite to be observed, before Kariopoo, the king, paid his first visit to Captain Cook, after his return. He waited upon him the same day, on board the Resolution, attended by a large train, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... with those of most African peoples, monogamous. At any rate only the rich among them had more than one wife, while the poor or otherwise ineligible often had none at all, since inter-marriage with other races and above all with the Black Kendah dwelling beyond the river was so strictly taboo that it was ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... to have more of it than less," said her father, gravely. "These Americans have some curious ideas. While they are proud enough to trace their ancestry back to French or English or even Italian rank, they taboo titles except such as are won by merit. And it must be confessed they have had many brave men among them, heroes animated by broader views than the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... will make pickle—still there are many things better kept out of the brine. Cabbage and cauliflower for example do not need it—green tomatoes, onions, and Jerusalem artichokes are likewise taboo. The artichokes make good pickle, but it must be made all at once. Cut anything intended for the brine with a bit of stalk, and without bruising the stalk. Cucumbers should be small, and even in size, gherkins about half grown, string beans, three parts grown, crook-neck ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... widow's weeds, and dresses in colors, why should she taboo society, and make herself the town-talk by refusing to receive even the clergy and their wives? She has lived here ten months, and I understand from Dolly Spiewell that not a soul has ever seen her. Of course such eccentricities provoke gossip and tickle the tongue of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... campaign had never before been known in England. Candidates who, even inadvertently, used such words as "Conservative," "Radical," or "Liberal," were hissed into silence. Even the word "Labour" was taboo, so far as it referred to any political party. "Duty," "Patriotism," "Defence," "Citizenship," "United Empire," "British Federation," and, again, ringing loudly above all other cries, "Duty"—those were ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off.' 'That's a taboo pig,' says he. 'A black fellow that died six months ago that pig belonged to. When he was dying, and leaving his property to his friends, he was very sorry to part with the pig, so he made him taboo; nobody can touch him. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... century the taboo prevailed. Certain subjects were rarely mentioned in public, and then only in euphemistic terms. The home, the church, the school; and the press joined in the conspiracy. Supposedly, they were keeping the young in a blessed state of innocence. As a matter of fact, other agencies were busy disseminating ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enjoyed a sip of Thackeray, reading at a venture, in "Vanity Fair," about the Battle of Waterloo. It was not like Lever's accounts of battles, but it was enchanting. However, "Vanity Fair" was under a taboo. It is not easy to say why; but Mr. Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom he found reading "Vanity Fair" under the table, that he had better read something else. What harm can the story do to a child? He ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... neighboring table was enough to cause her father to finish his meal in a hurry and leave the restaurant. They never went to the British Church, and even such cosmopolitan spots as the aquarium or the museum were equally taboo. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... belongs to the historical acquisitions of humanity and like other moral taboos it must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. (Cf. my work, Totem and Taboo, 1913.) Psychoanalytic studies show, however, how intensively the individual struggles with the incest temptations during his development and how frequently he puts them into ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... brought up, girls, you will not loiter on the street to talk to one another; much less to boys. Street visiting is taboo. ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... daybreak'—like Cupid—and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a} ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... fonder of their own society than women are. Men delight to breakfast together, to take luncheon together, to dine together, to sup together. They rejoice in clubs devoted exclusively to their service, as much taboo to women as a trappist monastery. Women are not quite so clannish. There are not very many women's clubs in the world; it is not certain that those which do exist are very brilliant or very entertaining. Women seldom give supper parties, "all by themselves ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... mysterious unknown, the strongly accentuated craving of the girl who knows may ill be balanced by any thought of possible disagreeable consequences. Still more important, however, is a second aspect. The girl to whom the world sex is the great taboo is really held back from lascivious life by an instinctive respect and anxiety. As soon as girl and boy are knowers, all becomes a matter of naked calculation. What they have learned from their instruction in home and school and literature and drama is that the unmarried woman must avoid ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... despicable bulletin of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent TIMES article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still TABOO; the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article. 'Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rendered sacred, by men appointed for that service, and it is death to trample over or disturb any part of this consecrated ground. The wisdom and utility of this regulation must be obvious to every one. But, however useful this taboo system is to the natives, it is a great inconvenience to a stranger who is rambling over the country, for if he does not use the greatest caution, and procure a guide, he may get himself into a serious dilemma before his rambles be over, which had nearly been the case with our party this day. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... the members, "I would but the devil take it, how can a man go around asking for a job in a dress suit? And I'm so rotten big that none of my friends can loan me a suit. And my credit is gone with at least twelve different tailors. I'm sort o' taboo as a borrower. Barry, old top, if you will chase the blighter after another highball, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Parker says:(1) "The former series" (with the low Baiame myths) "were all such legends as are told to the black picaninnies; among the present are some they would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred things, taboo to the young". The blacks draw the line which I am ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... evening passed pleasantly enough, though there was a noticeable effort on the part of each member of the family to keep the conversation from touching upon the subject of Ralph's affairs. Any reference to Cambridge was taboo, as Darsie swiftly discovered, but there were many points of interest left, which were both pleasant ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you," said Aurelle, "that his taboo is still effective. On the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the interpreter on duty? ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... back just after her lover's wedding. He returns to her. Now, as a rule, in popular tales, the lover's fickleness is explained by a spell or by a breach of a taboo. The old true love has great difficulty in getting access to him, and in waking him from a sleep, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... cabin—because "shure, he paid the rint"—I feel bound to take care of myself as a household animal of value, to say nothing of any other grounds. So, much as I should like to be with you all on the 3rd, I must defer to the taboo. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... they are to make successful use of the opportunities placed in their hands. This training needs especially to give the parents a right point of view respecting sex and sex-instruction. At present there is a powerful taboo in most country places regarding any constructive attempt to give helpful sex information, although, as a matter of practice, conversation often gravitates toward sex in a most unwholesome fashion. The taboo is fixed for the most part upon any public recognition ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... Its rigidity. Its necessity. The universality of this control in the form of taboos. Connection between the universal attitude of primitive peoples toward woman as shown in the Institutionalized Sex Taboo and the magico-religious belief in Mana. Relation of Mana to Taboo. Discussion of Sympathetic Magic and the associated idea of danger from contact. Difficulties in the way of an inclusive definition of Taboo. Its dual nature. ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... A wry (and thoroughly unofficial) name for IBM's internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by IBMers to voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be taboo in more ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of misery and ignorance covered over and clamped down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible superstition of sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor's office trembling with excitement over this situation. Oh, why had not some one warned him in time? Why didn't the doctors and the teachers lift up their ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... aside, Anna and myself had a mighty good time in Vienna (I forgot to say that Emperor Francis Joseph agreed with me that Danilo and Alexander were quite impossible and that henceforth Balkan marriages should be taboo). ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... one little thing I am going to talk to you about that really is a bigger thing than it seems—and that is gum—chewing gum. If you had had stage experience you would know that gum is taboo in the theatre, and the reason for this is not only that to chew in sight of an audience would be an insult and result in immediate dismissal, but also for this very important reason, that a cud of ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... were our races; Joy-riding was taboo in car or train; And when they ventured to kick o'er the traces She strafed her victims ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... whole idealism of Christendom and so used "idealist" itself as a term of reproach. But there were other and negative effects of Puritanism which he did not escape so completely. I cannot think that he has wholly escaped that element in Puritanism which may fairly bear the title of the taboo. For it is a singular fact that although extreme Protestantism is dying in elaborate and over-refined civilisation, yet it is the barbaric patches of it that live longest and die last. Of the creed of John Knox the modern Protestant has abandoned the civilised part and retained only the savage ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... felt as relieved and triumphant as an obstetrician after a hard case, and meekly handed over to Dinkie anything his Royal Highness desired, even to his fifth cookie and the entire contents of my sewing-basket, which under ordinary circumstances is strictly taboo. But once the ear-passage was clear the pain went away, and Dinkie, at the end of a couple of hours, was ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... streets were likewise garnished."{41} Many people of the last generation will remember the old English mode of decoration—how sprigs of holly and yew, stuck into holes in the high pews, used to make the churches into miniature forests. Only upon the mistletoe does a trace of the ecclesiastical taboo remain, and even that is not universal, for at York Minster, for instance, some was laid upon ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... his partner provided themselves with some dice and several hundred dollars in gold coin. With these they began shooting craps on the sidewalk in front of their office. Now gambling was taboo, hence the spectacle of two expensively dressed, eminently prosperous men squatting upon their heels with a stack of double eagles before them caused a sensation, and people halted to witness their impending ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the Knight of the Swan who came to the succour of the youthful Duchess of Brabant is based upon motives more or less common in folklore—the enchantment of human beings into swans, and the taboo whereby, as in the case of Cupid and Psyche, the husband forbids the wife to question him as to his identity or to look upon him. The myth has been treated by both French and German romancers, but the latter ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... persons and things are usually cathartic, that is, intended to purge away evil influences (kathairein, to make katharos, pure). But, as Robertson Smith observes, "holiness is contagious, just as uncleanness is''; and common things and persons may become taboo, that is, so holy as to be dangerous and useless for daily life through the mere infection of holiness. Thus in Syria one who touched a dove became taboo for one whole day, and if a drop of blood of the Hebrew sin-offering ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... better known as British roubles. Needless to say there was a great speculation in money and exchange. Nickolai and Kerensky and Archangel and British guaranteed roubles tumbled over one another in the market. Of course trafficking in money was taboo but was brisk. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the zeal of the young novelist Jonas Lie, who, to his great honor, bought for about L35 the right to publish it as a supplement to a newspaper that he was editing. Then the storm broke out; the press was unanimously adverse, and in private circles abuse amounted almost to a social taboo. In 1862 the second theatre became bankrupt, and Ibsen was thrown on the world, the most unpopular man of his day, and crippled with debts. It is true that he was engaged at the Christiania Theatre at a nominal salary of about a pound a week, but he ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... that it only required his passions to be roused to exhibit him under a very different aspect. His wife and daughter were permitted to sit close to him, to administer to his wants, no others being allowed so to do, on account of his taboo. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... she said. "But let's talk of something else. Margaret is taboo—she's spoilt half ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so well in the old slaving days among ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the feeling of duty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions which the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various expressions of the primitive feeling of taboo—a feeling of alarm and fear. If we confine our attention to this set of facts, we may say, with M. Loisy, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity'. We may however hesitate to follow him when ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... asked—what arrangement? He replied that we must make them gifts; also that we must do what we had promised and cure him—the chief—of the disease which had tormented him for years. In that event everything would be at our disposal and we, with all our belongings, should become taboo, holy, not to be touched. None would attempt to harm us, nothing should be stolen ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... this preliminary business is nauseating, and in real sporting circles it is taboo as a topic of conversation. No wonder The Times devoted a leading article to the matter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... change-about complete Since Adam Passed from View. For apples we are urged to eat And all else is taboo. A Million laws hold us in thrall, And we ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... saddled upon the country, against the expressed wish of at least two-thirds of the people, by the political chicanery of the same organization, and yet no one, during the long fight, thought to attack it directly; to have done so would have been to violate the taboo described. So when the returning soldiers began to reveal the astounding chicaneries of the Young Men's Christian Association, it was marvelled at for a few weeks, as Americans always marvel at successful pocket-squeezings, but no one sought the cause in the ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... that there is even nowadays a certain advance towards my views in this matter. Men may not pick out antagonists, and argue to the general audience as once they did: there is a tacit taboo of controversy, neither may you talk your "shop," nor invite your antagonist to talk his. There is also a growing feeling against extensive quotations or paraphrases from the newspapers. Again, personalities, scandal, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the duellists, for if duelling, for years past, had been a subject which no delicately-minded person alluded to purposely in Major Benjy's presence, how much more now after this critical morning would that subject be taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if closely questioned might have a different explanation, and it would be highly inconvenient to have two contradictory stories going about. But, as it was, nothing could be nicer: the whole of the rest of Tilling, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... showing Rebecca that she was taboo. Their attitude could not be mistaken. And so great was the influence of these older girls of Ardmore upon the whole college that Rebecca walked ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... immature and shapeless. They cannot express themselves, and moreover there is a very strict and peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is nasty and bestial. But it conceals ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... your friend, Buck," he said, "take my tip an' don't try no fool stunts around that girl. Which she once belongs to Whistlin' Dan Barry an' therefore she's got the taboo mark on her for any other man. Everything he's ever owned ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... of Queens in Fou-nan (Cambodia). If the Khmers were the ancient people of Cambodia, here we have an important landmark in common between them and the Khasis. M. Aymonier goes on to speak of priestesses, and the Cambodian taboo, tam or trenam, which Mr. Lowis, the Superintendent of Ethnography in Burma, suggests may be akin to ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... was full of lies, so gross and palpable that I told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that the people were superstitious—it is false. They have no taboo about days; they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned psychical rubbish, no damned "folk-lore," no triply damned ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... and females and dogs is taboo And I know, 'cause I've fussed with 'em all. There's only one pal that I know is true blue And it's that Thirty U.S. on the wall. She's stood by my shoulder and stopped a brown bear And she keeps the cache full in the Fall; She's got the one talk that a claim jumper knows ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... methods of cooking fish and meat and no other is admissible, under penalty of infringing a very important taboo. One method consists of boiling them in water, with a little seasoning of red pepper, ginger, and possibly lemon grass and one or two other ingredients. The second method consists of broiling the pieces of meat and fish in ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... apparently thought to be charged with a mysterious virtue which will run to waste or explode by contact with the ground, 6 sq.; things as well as persons charged with the mysterious virtue of holiness or taboo and therefore kept from contact with the ground, 7; festival of the wild mango, which is not allowed to touch the earth, 7-11; other sacred objects kept from contact with the ground, 11 sq.; sacred food not allowed to touch the earth, 13 sq.; magical ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... The first person to recognize him was the station agent at Bransford and his greeting was casual as he trundled the truck of empty milk cans to the far end of the platform. "Maybe these London tweeds are taboo in this central zone," he grumbled as he made his way up the shaded street to ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... village has several of them; indeed in the village of Sapi almost every family has its own guardian spirit. The name for these guardian spirits is tapum, which seems to be clearly connected with the now familiar word tapu or taboo, in the sense of sacred, which is universally understood in the islands of the Pacific. On the whole the tapum are kindly and beneficent spirits, who bring good luck to such as honour them. A hunter or a fisherman ascribes his success ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... only still further extended, may be detected in the sacredness attached to certain animals by so many nations of antiquity. It is now generally admitted that this 'sacredness' has two sides. A sacred animal may be 'taboo,' that is, so sacred that it must not be touched, much less killed or eaten; and, on the other hand, its original sanctity may lead people to regard it as "unclean," something again to be avoided, because of the power to do ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... provided by an article of the treaty. But no one was bound to offer them facilities; much less a luncheon, the first day they went ashore. True, they had plenty of gold; but to the natives it was anathema—taboo—and, for several hours and some odd minutes, they would not touch it. Emissaries of the Pope and the devil, as the strangers were considered—the smell of sulphur hardly yet shaken out of their canonicals—what islander would venture to jeopardize his soul, and call down a blight on his breadfruit, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Absolutely true. It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in the first place. How else are we to explain that the Nipe, for all his tremendous technical knowledge, is nonetheless a member of a society that is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse Effeminizing of the male. We were Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain. All we have done, or wise or otherwise, Traced to the root, was done for love of you. Let us taboo all vain comparisons, And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand, Companions, mates and comrades evermore; Two parts of one divinely ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... the use of "sick" for "ill" is taboo in England, except among the very youngest Realists. And, by the way, Mr. Hugh Walpole in "The Young Enchanted" goes so far in one of the speeches of the atrocious Mrs. Tennsen, that the shocking word "bloody" used by Mr. Bernard Shaw on one famous occasion ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night studying how little I could ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... that loose, luxuriant whiskers are unsanitary, because they make such fine winter quarters for germs; so, though the doctors still wear whiskers, they do not wear them wild and waving. In the profession bosky whiskers are taboo; they must be landscaped. And since it is a recognized fact that germs abhor orderliness and straight lines they now go elsewhere to reside, and the doctor may still retain his traditional aspect and yet be practically germproof. Doctor X was trimmed in accordance with the ethics of the ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... the taboo touched David that Dick was resentful, and then he was inclined to question the wisdom of his return. It hurt him, for instance, to see David give up his church, and reading morning prayer alone at home on Sunday mornings, and to see his grim silence when some ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of soot from the ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding to the number ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... owing to the rigorous climate, and they make it harder by their superstitions, for diseases are supposed to be cured by charms and incantations of the shaman or priest; and everything in the way of hunting, fishing, cooking, or of clothing themselves must be done in a prescribed way or it is "taboo" or "hoodoo" as the negroes say. When you read "The Baby Eskimo" you will see just a tiny bit of the hardships, but I should not like to tell you how much more terrible a time he might have had, if he had happened to be a ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... (more or less unconscious) working of the mind as that caused by some unexpected neglect of those social "taboos" or laws of behaviour which we call modesty, decency, and propriety. They either cause indignation and resentment in the onlooker at the neglect of respect for the taboo, or, on the contrary, the natural man, long oppressed by pomposity or by the fetters of propriety imposed by society, suddenly feels a joyous sense of escape from his bonds, and bursts into laughter—the laughter of a return to vitality and nature—which ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... laughed O'Neil. "I wonder if you would let me order dinner for both of us, provided I taboo fruit. Perhaps I'll think of something more to tell you about Dan. I'm sure ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... was well managed; we were wholesomely fed; but there had grown up a strange kind of taboo about many of the things we were supposed to eat. I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed. The theory was that one must just eat enough to sustain life. There was, for instance, an excellent tapioca pudding served ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one to enter ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... time he was not conscious of any special hate toward that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their love disappointments in rage against ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... and by far his best novel, La Religieuse, the paradox (he was himself very fond of paradoxes,[379] though not of the wretched things which now disgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of the greatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; and even if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. It originated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of the silly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and early nineteenth century ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... beginning, the conversation lasted an hour and a half, which was as long as Clelia dared remain in the aviary. Two or three times, when Fabrice trespassed on forbidden ground and alluded to matters that were taboo, she made no answer and walked away ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner |
