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Uninitiated   Listen
adjective
Uninitiated  adj.  See initiated.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Uninitiated" Quotes from Famous Books



... societies. It is a common custom in the lower tribes to keep the sexes separate and to distinguish between the initiated and the uninitiated. There are often men's houses in which the young unmarried males are required to live.[880] Women and boys are forbidden to be present at ceremonies of initiation when, as in some instances, the secrets of the tribe are involved. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... permissible to lovers. For what lover ever spoke reasonably? The lover that can do so is not a lover; he is fathoms below that diviner atmosphere whose language is, of necessity, as well as choice, foolishness to the uninitiated. ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... thicket, cut into numerous little circular and semicircular paths, so contrived that the most ingenious are caught like flies in a spider's trap. Round and round, backwards and forwards, in and out, scuttle the uninitiated, only to find themselves at the precise point whence they had started hours before. The conviction of being thus foiled in my purpose, and for the second time, weighed upon my spirits. My companion also became somewhat dejected. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... said he, "I am not in the habit of talking much about the secrets of my profession, but in this case everything depends upon getting the right clue at the start. We have no common villainy to deal with here; genius has been at work. Now sometimes an absolutely uninitiated mind will intuitively catch at something which the most highly trained intellect will miss. If such a thing should occur, remember that I am your man. Don't go round talking, but come to me. For this is going ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... his knowledge of the wilderness bade him feign sleep and he moved not a muscle. Then, with a suddenness that was appalling, the insane cackle of a woodrail shattered the silence with its demoniacal cries. The sound, enough to drive the uninitiated into a frenzy caused even Oomah to turn his head toward the direction from which it had come, and what he saw were two points of greenish fire glaring at him out of the blackness ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... certain regard for the use of the right material in the right place. A wooden bridge will disclose its material even to the uninitiated at a very great distance, because everybody knows that certain things can be done only in wood. A stone, concrete, iron, or cable bridge, for example, will each always look its part, out of sheer material and structural necessity. A log house would have been ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... when they do return there is a certain something about them which, to the experienced observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been thirsty, they have not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... Fort Mackinac held a major, a captain, three lieutenants, a chaplain, and a surgeon, besides those subordinate officers who wear stripes on their sleeves, and whose rank and duties are mysteries to the uninitiated. The force for this array of commanders was small, less than a company; but what it lacked in quantity it made up in quality, owing to the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... for soap, care is taken to use none but the ashes of hard wood, as oak, ash, maple, beech; any of the resinous trees are bad for the purpose, and the ley will not mingle with the fat. In boiling, to the great mortification of the uninitiated soap-boiler, who, by being made acquainted with this simple fact, might have been spared much useless trouble and waste of material, after months ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... Government, backed up by the armed forces of one of the Allies, had a disastrous effect upon the situation throughout Siberia. If Semianoff and Kalmakoff could, with Allied help and encouragement, openly deride the Omsk Government's orders, then it was clear to the uninitiated that the Allies were hostile to the supreme Russian authority. If Semianoff and Kalmakoff can wage successful hired resistance to orderly government at the bidding of a foreign Power, why cannot we do so, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... dug, the mound thrown up, the sentinels posted, and all in so short a space of time that to the uninitiated in the art of war, it would have seemed little short of miraculous; but the discipline of the Danes, who owed their success generally to the skill with which they fortified their camps, had been partially inherited by their adversaries, and the hus-carles were ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... that pique at seeing some Daisy Miller attract all the attention will drive my lady back to the city where she is known and appreciated, nothing being more difficult for an American “swell” than explaining to the uninitiated in what way her position differs from that of the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... of all means for acquiring art sense is association; first, with a personality; second, with the product. The artist's safest method with the uninitiated is to use the speech which they understand. In conversation, artists, as a rule, talk freely, and one may get deeper into art from a fortnight's sojourn with a group of artists than from all the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... are fearfully and wonderfully made! The soul is touched with the strong necessity of loving; and its power becomes intense and inappeasable in proportion to the capacity of the heart; and yet some of the greatest of those have reposed so supremely in the innate and ineffable Ideal that to the uninitiated they have seemed in their serenity as pulseless as pearls. Through this sublime influence lovely women have become nuns, and have lived and died saints, that they might continually indulge and constantly cherish the blissful hope of being, in some spiritual form, the brides of Jesus. A long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... writer like Browning, original, I mean, in his spiritual attitudes, is always more of less difficult to the uninitiated, for the reason that he demands of his reader new standpoints, new habits of thought and feeling; says, virtually, to his reader, Metanoei^te; and until these new standpoints are taken, these new habits of thought and feeling induced, the difficulty, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... hypercaust below has caused the floor to give way in several places. The pavement of a smaller room is perfect and shows a finely executed design; another is decorated with cupids fighting. The details of the building, too numerous to be mentioned here, deserve careful attention even by the uninitiated and prove more forcibly than history-books the magnificence of the civilization which once was, before Sussex became an entity, and which the first Sussex ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... It hurt. Many were the night-beats I had been privileged to walk with Judlip, imbibing curious lore that made glad the civilian heart of me. Seven whole 8x5 inch note-books had I pitmanised to the brim with Judlip. And now to be repulsed as one of the uninitiated! It hurt horrid. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... to the crude and half-educated for the expenditure of a new fortune than the purchase of sumptuous apparel, the satisfaction being immediate and material. The wearer of a complete and perfect toilet must experience a delight of which the uninitiated know nothing, for such cruel sacrifices are made and so many privations endured to procure this satisfaction. When I see groups of women, clad in the latest designs of purple and fine linen, stand shivering on street corners of a winter night, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... to a trail, will generally tell at a glance its age, by what particular tribe it was made, the number of the party, and many other things connected with it astounding to the uninitiated. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... to state that presently a rusher is obliged to retire from the field by reason of a sprained ankle. It is not little Fred, but might it not have been? Suffice it to state that by the end of the first three-quarters of an hour—let the uninitiated here learn that a match is divided into two bouts of that length each, with an interim of fifteen minutes—the Yale team, by the most magnificent work (according to Sam Bangs), has forced the ball steadily and surely toward the Harvard line, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... solid figure of a man. It was not the first time that the apparition, under similar circumstances, had been seen by the rest of the household, but for him it bore a message of deeper mystery than for these uninitiated spiritualists; although in man's clothes, his observant eye recognised the face of the spirit; terrible and suggestive truth, it was the face of the vestal Virgin, who, far off in Calcutta, had fluidified in the third temple, and he ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... country to the professor of the natural sciences. Great mineral treasures will certainly be one day discovered here; the number and diversity of its stones is striking even to the most uninitiated. It abounds in hot and salutary springs. To the botanist it offers great varieties of plants, little if at all known; and the zoologist would find here, amongst the animal tribes deserving his attention, besides several kinds of bears, wolves and foxes, the celebrated sable whose skin is ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... may be described as, in a certain sense, guilds. But they are secret societies also, inasmuch as the arts and practices of each are special property which is kept secret from the others, and from the uninitiated members in the tribe. In order to become a member of a society of that kind secrecy is required and long apprenticeship. The novice rises slowly from one degree of knowledge to another, and only few attain ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... whole structure. Its past evil uses seemed ineradicably written over every part of it, as past crime and torment remain ineradicably written on the human face; the mind imbibed from it terrifying ideas of deadly treachery, of secret atrocities, of frightful refinements of torture, which no uninitiated eye had ever beheld, and no human resolution had ever ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... never made just such promises, or listened to them being made—occupations equally blissful and equally vain—had better pass this chapter by. It is not for the uninitiated. But ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... whole range of the world's literatures there are few books with so checkered a career, so curious a fate, as the Talmud has had. The name is simple enough, it glides glibly from the tongue, yet how difficult to explain its import to the uninitiated! From the Dominican Henricus Seynensis, who took "Talmud" to be the name of a rabbi—he introduces a quotation with Ut narrat rabbinus Talmud, "As Rabbi Talmud relates"—down to the church historians and university professors of our day, the oddest misconceptions ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... in a spiritualist journal takes me roundly to task for venturing to doubt the historical and literal truth of the Gadarene story. The following passage in his letter is worth quotation: "Now to the materialistic and scientific mind, to the uninitiated in spiritual verities, certainly this story of the Gadarene or Gergesene swine presents insurmountable difficulties; it seems grotesque and nonsensical. To the experienced, trained, and cultivated Spiritualist ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... present. Indeed, it had been said of her that in past, present, and future there had ever been but the one picture to interest her eyes—the one she was looking at now. This, however, was the remark of the uninitiated, for the true passion of a beautiful woman is never so much for her beauty as for its booty; as the passion of a gamester is for his game, not for ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... of the great Teutonic family have many representatives among us, and their names seem, to the uninitiated, even more fearfully and wonderfully constructed than those of their German cousins. It produces a good deal of surprise in the mind of an American to see on the sign of a tradesman from Belgium the familiar name of Cox spelled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... oranges, melons, pine-apples, guavas, citrons, bananas, peaches, strawberries, apples, pears, and, indeed, of almost every fruit which can be found in the whole world; all of which appear to naturalise themselves at Madeira. It was now supposed by the uninitiated that the dinner was over; but not so: the dessert was cleared away, and on came an husteron proteron medley of pies and puddings, in all their varieties, smoking hot, boiled and baked; custards and sweetmeats, cheese and olives, fruits of all kinds preserved, and a hundred other things, from which ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... the formal social function, with its inevitable array of wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, into a coarse, inconsiderate drunkard. Confined for a week in their state-room on the steamer home with her husband, now a beast in drink, this poor, pure, uninitiated wife realized purgatory. Dark days were those next three years for them both. When sober, he was self-abased by the knowledge of the suffering of this woman he so truly loved, or was restlessly striving ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... speak of their own processes and materials as those authors spoke whom I have quoted, we must expect that the alchemical language would appear mere jargon to the uninitiated. In Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist, Surley, who is the sceptic of the piece, says to Subtle, who ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... others; how could I have known of the existence of these secret and sacred utensils? The men called me aside, and begged me never to speak of this to the women, as these objects are used, like many others, to frighten away the women and the uninitiated from the assemblies of the secret societies. The noise they make is supposed to be the voice of a mighty and dangerous demon, who attends ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... until it seemed as if the coveted blanket would have parted in twain. In the midst of the confusion a sentry at the door suddenly put his head in and shouted "Nix!" The signal had a magical effect on all but the uninitiated Stephen, who, profiting by his adversaries' surprise, made one desperate tug at his ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... Irvings—the pleasure was intensified, the incident being of great professional advantage. "I have just met old General Hardisty," he would say—"he was at our house," the knowing ones passing a wink around, and the uninitiated having all the greater respect and, therefore, all the greater confidence in that rising young firm of "Pawson & Pawson, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law—Wills ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... The uninitiated reader will doubtless miss in the Epic more than one of his most fondly cherished episodes. If he prefer the Cid of romance and fable, let him turn to the ballads and the Chronicle of the Cid. If he would cling to the punctilious, gallant ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... the sterilizer: he knew surgical instruments were boiling merrily away there. A table was littered with objects suggesting careful examination: a fine microscope in position; a centrifuge, Bunsen burners, test-tubes; elsewhere other apparatus of a description to make the uninitiated actively sympathetic with the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... jeweller of Delhi in the house of the magician Bennaskar, I at length reached a vaulted room, dedicated to secrecy and silence, and beheld, seated by a lamp, and employed in reading a. blotted revise, [Footnote: The uninitiated must be informed, that a second proof-sheet is so called.] the person, or perhaps I should rather say the Eidolon, or representative Vision of the AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY! You will not be surprised at the filial instinct which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... note from Lufa, concerning a point in rhythm which perplexed her. She had a good ear, and was conscientious in her mechanics. There was not a cockney-rhyme from beginning to end of her poem, which is more than the uninitiated will give its weight to. But she understood nothing of the broken music which a master of verse will turn to such high service. There are lines in Milton which Walter, who knew far more than she, could not read until long after, when Dante taught ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... ourselves to Lucy. It so happened that the squire's carriage was the last to arrive; for the coachman, long uninitiated among the shades of Warlock into the dissipation of fashionable life, entered on his debut at Bath, with all the vigorous heat of matured passions for the first time released, into the festivities of the ale-house, and having a milder master than most of his comrades, the fear of displeasure ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... practising the Seven Deadly Virtues; it's we who need to count our mercies, and realize anew what he's done for us, and what we ought to do for him! And it's for that reason that I urged Mr. Wade to speak here, in the very inner sanctuary of Pellerinism, exactly as he would speak to the uninitiated—to repeat, simply, his Kenosha lecture, 'What Pellerinism means'; and we ought all, I think, to listen to him with the hearts of little children—just as you will, Mr. Winterman—as if he were telling ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... facility of the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... adding to, and polishing, each chapter in proof, for no writer pays more attention to style and chiselled form than the man who has been called the French Dickens, and whose compositions, to the uninitiated, would ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... hesitation and doubting manner attracted his attention, and the man made the customary sign which conveyed the offer of his services. As she was nearly a stranger in the streets of Venice, labyrinths that offer greater embarrassment to the uninitiated than perhaps the passages of any other town of its size, she gladly availed herself of the offer. To descend to the steps, to leap into the boat, to utter the word "Rialto," and to conceal herself in the pavilion, was the business of a minute. The ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... they punctiliously observed in other affairs of life. A running fire of contemptuous remarks and aggressive satire accompanied each move, and the mere record of the conversation would have given an uninitiated onlooker the puzzling impression that an easy and crushing victory was ...
— When William Came • Saki

... the Sacred Order of the Twenty Knights of the Rose came to be initiated. They appointed a code of secret passwords and countersigns which were very difficult to remember, and which were only used when they might excite the curiosity of the other and uninitiated boys by their mysterious sound. They elected Myles as their Grand High Commander, and held secret meetings in the ancient tower, where many mysteries were ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... superb scorn, calculated to convince the uninitiated that he himself had never been a Venetian ragamuffin, gave three long strokes of the oar, which sent the gondola far out upon the Canal, well beyond the ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... for time, and he was glad to consent to the delay, so long as it did not keep him from seeing her. In matters of the emotions he was still as uninitiated as a child. He found himself a little dazed by the seemingly accidental tenderness, by the promises of devotion, in which she proved so lavish. Morning by jocund morning he built up his airy dreams, as carefully as she built up her nut-brown plaits. He grew heavily light-headed ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... Lucretia Crocker School, Miss Roche and Miss Hayes, who had, in some mysterious manner, convoyed these 57 atoms to the museum by car without mishap and who apparently did not dread the necessity of getting them back again, although to the uninitiated it appeared a task beside which grasping a comet by the tail was a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... her Protestant neighbours. Her thin white feet in toeless stockings and sabots, well-worn woollen petticoat, black stuff jacket, headgear of an old black silk handkerchief, would have suggested anything but the truth to the uninitiated. Here also the unwary stranger might have fumbled for a spare coin. She had a kindly, intelligent face, and spoke volubly in patois, having very little command of French. It was, indeed, necessary for ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a matter of classification into "arches," "loops," "whorls," and "composites." It is intricate to describe, but simple to carry out. To the uninitiated it inevitably suggests the old problem "think ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... chief tribute like every one else?" I replied by asking, "How could I know that this was a chief, who had allowed me to remain a day and a half near him without giving me any thing to eat?" This, which to the uninitiated may seem sophistry, was to the Central Africans quite a rational question, for he at once admitted that food ought to have been sent, and added that probably his chief was only making it ready for me, and that it ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... Italy upon heaps of rubbish, palmed off and sold under the imposing names, roba antica, roba dei scavi, and the like; and how little seems it known by those who do, that of all markets for such acquisitions, the worst that an uninitiated dilettante can have to do with is the Italian! First, because it abounds more than any other in trash; and secondly, because when any thing really good comes into it, the dealers take care to put their price upon it. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... does lie in the passage, and may by industry be got at; that a faithful editor's industry had already got at it before passing on. A compendious useful Glossary is given; nearly adequate to help the uninitiated through: sometimes one wishes it had been a trifle larger; but, with a Spelman and Ducange at your elbow, how easy to have made it far too large! Notes are added, generally brief; sufficiently explanatory of most points. Lastly, a copious correct Index; which no such Book should want, and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... attitude; no marble rigidity. Black he was, this savage, but not negro. The features were well cut and good. What the hair might be naturally could only be guessed at; the work of a skilful hair-dresser had left it something for the uninitiated to marvel at. A band of three or four inches in breadth, completely white, bordered the face; the rest, a very luxuriant head, was jet black and dressed into a perfectly regular and smooth roundish form, projecting everywhere beyond the white inner border. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... first thing I learnt was that I was "shadowed" by the police. To the uninitiated this is most uncanny. The same man keeps turning up. He does it very badly as a rule. You sit and have coffee on one side of a street and he sits and drinks beer at the restaurant opposite. You wander on and think: "What an ass I was to think he was following me!" and ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... ability of the cruiser to make and shorten sail, since a ship manned by one or two hundred men may safely profit by the breeze to the last moment, while one manned by a dozen often loses hours of a favorable wind, from the weakness of her crew. This explanation will enable the otherwise uninitiated reader to understand the reason why Ludlow had hoped the coming squall would aid ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... the mysteries to the uninitiated commits impiety The hierophant divulged the mysteries to the uninitiated The ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock

... praise of thee; statues would ere now have been erected to thee, had that hunch back and those flabby wings of thine been 'susceptible of artistic treatment.' But ugly thou art in the eyes of the uninitiated vulgar; a little stumpy old maid toddling about the world in a black bonnet and a brown cloak, laughed at by naughty boys, but doing good wherever thou comest, and leaving sweet memories behind thee; so sweet that the trout will rise ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... colonial expression, which may convey to the uninitiated the idea that knives, forks, plates, etc., are unknown in the bush; such was formerly the case, but the march of improvement has banished ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... theologians of the middle ages played rather dangerously, as it appears to me, for the uninitiated and uninstructed, with the perplexity of these divine relationships. It is impossible not to feel that in their admiration for the divine beauty of Mary, in borrowing the amatory language and luxuriant allegories of the Canticles, which represent her as an object of delight to the Supreme Being, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... son of the Lord-of-many-Lands!" returned Bakahenzie. "For the spirits of the river and the rocks mock the voices of those who have not eaten of the Sacred Banana" (the uninitiated). ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... evidently learning, but he draws his knowledge from sources that are esoteric and therefore inaccessible to all except the adepts. What he has written is, therefore, neither science nor history. It has the character rather of revelation. It is impressive, but not intelligible to the uninitiated. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... instruction as to the management of his chisel, or attention to the anatomy of the human body, he would produce something compared with which the Highlander at the door of a snuff shop would deserve admiration. If an uninitiated Raphael were to attempt a painting, it would be a mere daub; indeed, the connoisseurs say that the early works of Raphael are little better. Yet, who can attribute this to want of imagination? Who can doubt that the youth of that great artist was passed amidst an ideal world of beautiful and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is worth a page or two. And first, as to his color. Asirvadam comes from the northern provinces, and calls the snow-turbaned Himalayas cousin; consequently his complexion is the brightest among Brahmins. By some who are uninitiated in the chemical mysteries of our metropolitan milk-trade, it has been likened to chocolate and cream, with plenty of cream; but the comparison depends, for the idea it conveys, so much on the taste of the ethnological inquirer, as to the proportion of cream, and still so much more, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... been evil-entreated, when they have become soiled by dirty hands, or spoiled by water stains, or injured by grease spots, nothing is more astonishing to the uninitiated than the transformation they undergo in the hands of a skilful restorer. The covers are first carefully dissected, the eye of the operator keeping a careful outlook for any fragments of old MSS. or early printed books, which may have been used ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... the uninitiated, A peril—not indeed like Love or Marriage, But not the less for this to be depreciated: It is—I meant and mean not to disparage The show of Virtue even in the vitiated— It adds an outward grace unto their carriage— But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot, Couleur ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... committed against his race. His yammering notes rose and fell, ascending and descending the full run of the scale, swelled into a throaty howl and broke into jerky, wailing yaps like a chorus of satyrs. The uninitiated could never have believed all those sounds came from one wolfish throat; it seemed that it must be that the entire pack, or at least half a dozen animals, raised ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... Agelastes, in part recovering himself, "it is Sylvan! that singular mockery of humanity, who was said to have been brought from Taprobana. I warrant he also believes in his jolly god Pan, or the veteran Sylvanus. He is to the uninitiated a creature whose appearance is full of terrors, but he shrinks before the philosopher like ignorance before knowledge." So saying, he with one hand pulled down the curtain, under which the animal had ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... uninitiated mind it would have seemed marvelous and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie conducted himself between his two claimants—bending ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Kaffirs, a blacksmith is a man of considerable importance, and is much respected by the tribe. He will not profane the mystery of his craft by allowing uninitiated eyes to inspect his various processes, and therefore carries on his operations at some distance from the kraal. His first care is to prepare the bellows. The form which he uses prevails over a very large portion ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... beginning of the war some, especially the uninitiated, dreaded nothing more than a war council. To such it was a body of men invested with unlimited power, a council that could pronounce sentence of death on whomsoever they wished. To appear before this august assembly meant almost certain death. ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... uninitiated I must explain that under the Boer regime no black or coloured person was allowed on the pavements, nor to be out at night, nor to walk about without a registered pass. There was no ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... blossom as a result of possessing one of the rich silver mines of the State. Some one tossed to Fairchild a small piece of ore which had been taken from a car at the mouth of the mine; and even to his uninitiated eyes it was apparent,—the heavy lead, bearing in spots the thin filagree of white metal—and silver ore must be more than rich to make a showing in any ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... as to price. As soon as it becomes a fad to collect books relating to some particular subject, competition instantly steps in, and prices go up. It may be well to state, for the benefit of a very numerous and uninitiated public, that, because a book is old, it is not necessarily rare. There are many thousands of people who have most imperfect and valueless books, mostly on theology, or some controversial abominations, and these people spend days wasting their own and booksellers' time in seeking to ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... the ordinary uninitiated mind to be a stretch of the imagination; but if we are to believe Mr. Cornish, the old practised gunners on our coasts, who make the cries of our wild fowl a life-long study can almost understand them as well as human speech. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... an adult can learn to read with the fingers seems very wonderful to the uninitiated, and, indeed, it is a long step forward, but the ability to substitute fingers for eyes is only one of the marvels wrought. Helen Keller has truly said that "idleness is the greatest burden of the blind," and this ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... For the uninitiated man the question immediately presents itself: "What are you talking about? Why is mankind an organism, or similar ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... boarding that formed the rather flimsy partition at the side of the bunk. One heard many things in Chang Foo's if one cared to listen—if one could first win one's way through the carefully guarded gateway, that to the uninitiated offered nothing more interesting than the entrance to a Chinese tea-shop, and an uninviting one ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... infuriated beast, the riata flashing high in air, then, with unerring aim, descending upon the shoulders of some reluctant prisoner; amid all the confusion the bursts of musical laughter or noisier applause, then the oaths, in the liquid Spanish tongue sounding sweetly to the ear of the uninitiated. ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... Saturday the Windom rotunda was crowded with men. The speakerships, the house offices, were being contested for here; the real battle was being fought here, and under Cargill's cynical comment the scene assumed great significance to Bradley's uninitiated eyes. They took seats on the balcony which ran around the "bear pit," as he called it. Around them, flitting to and fro, were dozens of bright, rather self-sufficient ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... observer. The profound investigations of the chemist into the ultimate constitution of material nature, the minute researches of the physiologist into the secrets of animal life, the transcendental logic of the geometer, clothed in a notation, the very sight of which terrifies the uninitiated,—are lost on the common understanding. But the unspeakable glories of the rising and the setting sun; the serene majesty of the moon, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through the heavens; the soft witchery ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... for beaver is no child's play. A person unaccustomed to it may possibly look upon it as no very difficult task. A single trial is usually sufficient to satisfy the uninitiated on this point; for, the beaver, above all other wild animals of America is endowed with an extraordinary amount of instinct. His handiwork and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... himself up on end to see if no sheep are running away. A bred sheep-dog, if coming hungry from the hills, and getting into a milk-house, would most likely think of nothing else than filling his belly with the cream. Not so his uninitiated brother; he is bred at home to far higher principles of honour. I have known such lie night and day among from ten to twenty pails full of milk, and never once break the cream of one of them with ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... merest tyro totally unacquainted with elementary electrical principles can understand, and should therefore especially appeal to the lay reader. Especial interest attaches to the chapter on wireless telegraphy, a subject which is apt to 'floor' the uninitiated. The author reduces the subject to its simplest aspect, and describes the fundamental principles underlying the action of the coherer in language so simple ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... the spiritual needs of the uninitiated, preached a doctrine concerning good or bad Karma as the cause, and its retribution as the effect, in the three existences (of the past, the present, and the future). That is, one who commits the tenfold sin[FN324] must ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... carpenters, all the men employed in any way in the factories, perhaps even the clerks, and still they have not the courage to tell the whole truth. These publications teem generally with falsehoods, perversions, crooked statements, with calculations of averages, that prove a great deal for the uninitiated reader and nothing for the initiated, and with suppressions of facts bearing on the most important points; and they prove only the selfish blindness and want of uprightness of the manufacturers concerned. Let us take some of the statements of a speech with which Lord Ashley introduced ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... time allowed for its execution. Such essays may serve the hour fairly, but can seldom be of high worth ultroneously.' 'The extent and variety of the labours called for at the hands of those actively engaged on modern cheap periodicals can scarcely be conceived by the uninitiated public. If their eyes were opened on the subject, they would certainly wonder less why it is that the literary talent of the current generation does not tend to display itself by striking isolated efforts: they would also more readily understand wherefore parties in the situation of the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... mechanistic conceptions and impressed with the results of medical researches based upon them. The ardor of the psychoanalysts, also, though in part doubtless justified by experience, has, it is to be feared, excited a certain amount of antipathy among the uninitiated. ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... dark purple ground delicately and artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged with a material which—if not too impudently examined and no questions asked—might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white fox. Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... success—that is, much followed by the men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song "To the Evening Star," which everybody knew to stand for Mrs. Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep in his first devotion that he jumbled ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... gradually grew upon me that there was about it something quite out of the common way; that its four walls held within themselves some grim secret, the rites appertaining to which were gone through when I and the rest of the uninitiated were supposed to be in bed and asleep. I cannot tell what it was that first made me suspect the existence of this secret. Certainly not the midnight walks of Lady Chillington. Perhaps a certain impalpable atmosphere of mystery, which, striking keenly ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... all the causes of accidents from the engine, many of which cannot be understood by the uninitiated. As we read them over, and see in how many ways an engine can go wrong, we wonder that a train ever arrives at its journey's end in safety. At the conclusion of this formidable list, the author confesses that it is incomplete, and notifies young engineers that nobody can teach ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... with sashes thrown wide open, and chilly linoleum to replace warm carpets, were rather a trial to the uninitiated, early in January, with deep snow on the ground and fires none too plentiful. In addition to these drawbacks I had another personal one. Coming in the middle of the winter, it was naturally Hobson's choice as regarded the bedrooms. All the best and warmest aspects had been appropriated in the autumn, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... "General Reader" will recognise a new and piquant flavour. In places the manner suggests an Anglo-Indian BRET HARTE, and there is perhaps too great an abundance of phrases and local allusions which will be dark sayings to the uninitiated. But the stories show a quite surprising knowledge of life, a familiarity with military, civil, and native society, and a command of pathos and humour, which have already won a reputation for the author. Few can read Beyond the Pale, The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... suggest themselves. There is no end to the effects which can be had from this simple apparatus, and if the operators are sufficiently well drilled the result is truly remarkable to the uninitiated. The illusion, as presented by Hermann, was identical with this, only he, of course, had a big stage, and people clothed in black to creep about and do his bidding, while here the power behind the throne is but a ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... been his shelter. The burn across his chest was not his only brand, for Ross noticed another red stripe, puffed and fiery looking, which swelled the calf of one leg. The man studied Ross closely, and then his fingers moved in a sign which to the uninitiated native might have been one for the warding off of evil, but which to Ross was the "thumbs up" ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... gold-encircled arms leaned forward the better to hear. The grave Le Merquier had imported into the sitting the distraction of a show, the little spice of humour allowed in a charity concert to bribe the uninitiated. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... the entire set sparkled with a tawdry garishness apt to fool those uninitiated into the secrets of photography. On the screen, colors which now seemed dull and flat would take on a soft richness and a delicacy characteristic of the society in which Kauf's characters were supposed to move. Obviously fragile scenery would ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... along Rue Conti, or Saint Louis, or the Rue Bourbon, you could not fail to notice several large gilded lamps, upon which you might read "faro" and "craps", "loto" or "roulette,"—odd words to the eyes of the uninitiated, but well enough understood by those whose business it was to traverse the streets of the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... remoteness of their deep setting under that massive brow. His manner is very quiet, but he speaks as one tremendously convinced of what he utters, and who had much, very much, in him that was quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered to the uninitiated ear; and when the Englishman's sense of beauty or truth exhibited itself in vociferous cheers, he would impatiently, almost contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that were not the kind of homage which truth demanded. He began in a rather ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... variety in a flock of athletes as in a flock of sheep. Julius looked about him, and saw the same man in the same dress, with the same health, strength, tone, tastes, habits, conversation, and pursuits, repeated infinitely in every part of the room. The din was deafening; the enthusiasm (to an uninitiated stranger) something at once hideous and terrifying to behold. Geoffrey had been lifted bodily on to the table, in his chair, so as to be visible to the whole room. They sang round him, they danced round him, they ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... great work. But he was also indefatigable, as secretary to his college club, in seeking out all freshmen, even if their thews and sinews were not muscular models, and inducing them to aid the glorious cause by becoming members of the club. A Bump-supper - that is, O ye uninitiated! a supper to commemorate the fact of the boat of one college having, in the annual races, bumped, or touched the boat of another college immediately in its front, thereby gaining a place towards the head of the river, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... Arizona—the painted hills, looking as though someone had carefully swept them early in the morning with a broom; the valleys studded with mesquite trees and greasewood and dotted here and there with brown specks which even the uninitiated will know are cattle, and the river, one of Arizona's minor streams, a few yards across and only a couple of feet deep, but swift-rushing, ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... the same subject. It seemed that Pierce and his boy Fourney had written any amount of private and confidential letters on this to be kept very secret affair. George made himself quite at home. Indeed, the uninitiated might have mistaken him and the cat for fixtures of the establishment. Calling me on one side, he begged I would consider Mr. Buckanan entirely in his hands. In order to bring his speed to the right gauge, Dan and ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... those of Bushmen.' In Lucian's Treatise on Dancing, {41b} we read, 'I pass over the fact that you cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. . . . To prove this I will not mention the secret acts of worship, on account of the uninitiated. But this much all men know, that most people say of those who reveal the mysteries, that they "dance them out."' Here Liddell and Scott write, rather weakly, 'to dance out, let out, betray, probably of some dance which ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... plantation in this out-of-the-way region, and which is now, I am glad to hear, just coming into bearing. After leaving Ashchyouka, high land showed to the N.E., and at 5.15, without evident cause to the uninitiated, the Move took to whistling like a liner. A few minutes later a factory shows up on the hilly north bank, which is Woermann's; then just beyond and behind it we see the Government Post; then Hatton and Cookson's ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... followed this magnificent work, which as far as one of the uninitiated may judge, presents a promise of endurance worthy the best days of Rome: the width of the canal here varied, as my companion informed me, from eighty to seventy feet, and the depth from ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... we know, by superstition of a lower grade, the dread of having money of the murdered, a thought she never breathed to any but her husband; and to poor uninitiated Grace (who had not heard a word of Ben's adventure), her answer about Mrs. Quarles and Mr. Jennings in the dawn of the crock's first blessing, had been entirely unintelligible: Mary, then, said never a word, but looked on ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of Mental Impressions we need say but little, as the chances of it ever taking place are so small that we merely give it a passing notice and say that in all our experience we have never been troubled with a case. For the benefit of the uninitiated will briefly state that this consists of the mental impression made on the mind of a bitch by a dog with whom she has been denied sexual intercourse, affecting the progeny resulting from the union of another dog with the bitch, generally in regard to the color, and this ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell

... seem to have uttered some superficial commonplaces about his creed, and have displayed our total inability to penetrate to its true profundities. They will probably say that his theory can tolerate no partial statement, and that the attempts of the uninitiated can compass nothing but caricature and burlesque. We cordially give them the advantage of this supposed stricture, and as cordially refer all earnest inquirers to this first instalment of the heroic work. We say heroic, and would abate the adjective of no jot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... the greatest stumbling block for the uninitiated into the hermetic art lay in the determination of the true subject, the prima materia. The authors mentioned it by a hundred names; and the gold seeking toilers were therefore misled in a hundred ways. Hitchcock ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer



Words linked to "Uninitiated" :   inexperient, inexperienced, naive, uninitiate



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