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Combatant   /kəmbˈætənt/   Listen
Combatant

noun
1.
Someone who fights (or is fighting).  Synonyms: battler, belligerent, fighter, scrapper.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Combatant" Quotes from Famous Books



... on Lochiel and the whole race of Cameron. Dundee replied that the unfortunate gentleman who had fallen was a traitor to the clan as well as to the King. Was it ever heard of in war that the person of an enemy, a combatant in arms, was to be held inviolable on account of his name and descent? And, even if wrong had been done, how was it to be redressed? Half the army must slaughter the other half before a finger could be laid on Lochiel. Glengarry went away raging like a madman. Since his complaints were disregarded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the tempests that for a while shut out the political horizon. The Liberals of Northern Germany had little sympathy with the Italian cause in the decisive days of 1848. Their inclinations went rather with the combatant who, though bent on maintaining an oppressive dominion, was nevertheless a member of the German race and paid homage for the moment to Constitutional rights. Yet, as later events were to prove, the fetters which crushed liberty beyond the Alps could fit as closely on ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... begun; so that I had no time to make my observations upon it. They then went to single combat, and exhibited the various methods of fighting, with great alertness; parrying off the blows and pushes which each combatant aimed at the other, with great dexterity. Their arms were clubs and spears; the latter they also use as darts. In fighting with the club, all blows intended to be given the legs, were evaded by leaping over it; and those intended for the head, by couching a little, and leaping ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... and Charlie were given gas masks and shown how to use them. They were also each provided with an automatic pistol and were given uniforms. For they had to be on the firing line and on such occasions were not really of the non-combatant class, though they were not supposed to take part in the fighting unless it should be to ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton

... orders of the commanders, and the Governments are bound to issue instructions to those commanders to act in accordance with the Regulations. That is all. There is nothing in the Convention or in the Regulations dealing with the rights or the status of the non-combatant individuals, whether of enemy nationality or domiciled in enemy territory. They are, of course, if inhabitants of the theatre of war, affected by the provisions of the Regulations because they are individuals who are affected by the military operations, ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... of a criminal with a tiger. The poor man was condemned, as is the custom in that country, to fight a large royal tiger, whose ferocity was raised to the highest point by want of food and artificial irritation. The only weapon allowed to the human combatant was a lance, with the point broken off. After wrapping a cloth round his left fist and arm, the man entered the arena with an air of undaunted calmness, and fixed a steady, menacing gaze upon the brute. The tiger sprang furiously upon his intended victim, who, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... been sent up to the head of the valley to block the way in that direction. The sides were too steep for elephants to climb. Thus we had them, as it were, in a trap, and formed up the khedda in battle array. The catching, or non-combatant elephants, were drawn up in two lines, and the big, fighting elephants were kept in reserve, concealed by bushes. The sides of the valley were crowded with matchlock-men, ready to commence shouting and firing at a given signal, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... pleasure-seekers was the first revelation of the way in which war would hurt the non-combatant and sacrifice his business or his comfort to its supreme purpose. Fame was merely foolishness when caught in the trap of martial law. I saw a man of European reputation flourish his card before railway ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... patient fortitude for cowardice, began now to entertain the sincerest respect for his courage, and gathered round the combatants in silence. A second time did Harry rise and attack his stronger adversary with the cool intrepidity of a veteran combatant. The battle now began to grow more dreadful and more violent. Mash had superior strength and dexterity, and greater habitude of fighting; his blows were aimed with equal skill and force, and each appeared sufficient to crush an enemy so much inferior in size, in strength, in years; but ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... admit that Hyperides is a far superior orator to Demosthenes. For in Hyperides there is a richer modulation, a greater variety of excellence. He is, we may say, in everything second-best, like the champion of the pentathlon, who, though in every contest he has to yield the prize to some other combatant, is superior to the unpractised ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... are these men regarded by the non-combatant classes, that it frequently happens that one or two will go into a village and extort what they require without the ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver

... reputation. For the populace is variable and inconstant, so that, if a reputation be not kept up, it quickly withers away. Everyone wishes to catch popular applause for himself, and readily represses the fame of others. The object of the strife being estimated as the greatest of all goods, each combatant is seized with a fierce desire to put down his rivals in every possible way, till he who at last comes out victorious is more proud of having done harm to others than of having done good to himself. This sort of honour, then, is really empty, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... The successful combatant remained standing with the sweat pouring from his face and the blood still running down his chin. He stretched out his arms with a slow, mechanical movement as if to test the condition of his muscles after the tremendous ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... whichever adversary controls it permanently reaps all the advantages of its prosperity. Hence, as I have said, I endorsed Grant's programme, for I do not hold war to mean simply that lines of men shall engage each other in battle, and material interests be ignored. This is but a duel, in which one combatant seeks the other's life; war means much more, and is far worse than this. Those who rest at home in peace and plenty see but little of the horrors attending such a duel, and even grow indifferent to them as the struggle goes on, contenting themselves ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... they go to a separate college in the university, if they will become good stenographers, we don't mind having their cooperation, we welcome it. Women may even go to war—as an absolutely separate division of the army, said the men of Dahomi, as non-combatant pahia women or workers of magic, said the Roro-speaking tribesmen of New Guinea, or as Red (dross nurses, say the men of Europe and America. If we men can be sure women will not interfere with us, we really do not mind. Women have ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... to give him such courteous comfort, gave him hearty thanks, with promise to pray for his happy success. With that Rosader vailed bonnet to the king, and lightly leaped within the lists, where noting more the company than the combatant, he cast his eye upon the troop of ladies that glistered there like the stars of heaven; but at last, Love, willing to make him as amorous as he was valiant, presented him with the sight of Rosalynde, whose admirable beauty so inveigled the eye ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... played dominoes. Not at all! They were pursuing a course of technical insurrection. When they roared at the top of their lungs "Five on all sides!" certain players seemed to order a general discharge, and they had a way of saying, "I can not!" which evidently expressed the despair of a combatant who has burned his last cartridge. A "beard" in glasses and a stovepipe hat, who had been refused in his youth at the Ecole Polytechnique, was frightful in the rapidity and mathematical precision with which he added up in three minutes his barricade of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... be true that in the early days of monasticism the monks pursued the proper course in refusing to become Roman patriots. No human power could have averted the ruin which overtook that corrupt world. Perhaps their non-combatant attitude gave them more influence with the conquerors of Rome, who were to become ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... tale of wrongs—Bruennhilde, the dearest to him of all, followed her father to battle, serving him as Valkyrie. These warlike maidens hovered over the battle-field, directing the fortune of the day according to Wotan's determination, protecting this combatant and seeing his death-doom executed upon the other; they seized the heroes as they fell, and bore them to Walhalla to form part of Wotan's guard. From these "Slain in Battle" it was that Walhalla had its name. To make great their number, Wotan, who earlier had by ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... koloniisto. Colonize koloniigi. Colonnade kolonaro. Colony kolonio. Colossal kolosa. Color koloro. Color kolori. Color (complexion) vizagxokoloro. Colorless senkolora. Colt cxevalido. Column kolono. Comb kombi. Comb kombilo. Combat batalo. Combat batali. Combatant batalanto. Combine kombini. Combustible brulebla. Combustion brulado. Come veni. Come (after) postveni. Come (back) reveni. Comedian komedianto. Comedy komedio. Comely gracia, beleta. Comet kometo. Comfort komforti. Comfort komforto. Comic komika, ridinda. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... an old-fashioned manner of fighting called "gouging." In this brutal contest the combatant was successful who could, with his thumb, press his opponent's eyeball out. Strange to say, little serious or permanently bad results followed such inhuman treatment of the eye. Von Langenbeck of Berlin mentions an instance of fracture of the superior maxilla, in which the eyeball ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Strong in possession, founded in old custom; Power by a thousand tough and stringy roots Fixed to the people's pious nursery-faith. This, this will be no strife of strength with strength. 70 That feared I not. I brave each combatant, Whom I can look on, fixing eye to eye, Who full himself of courage kindles courage In me too. 'Tis a foe invisible, The which I fear—a fearful enemy, 75 Which in the human heart opposes me, By its coward fear alone made fearful to me. Not that, which full ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the confirmer of mutual esteem and shame. Every man put on a crown, when the band of flute-players gave the signal for attack; all the shields of the line glittered with their high polish, and mingled their splendour with the dark red of the purple mantles, which were meant both to adorn the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the wounded; to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to the most heroic valour. The conduct of the Spartans in battle denotes a high and noble disposition, which rejected all the extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy ceased when the victory ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... be noted in candour that Law finds its way to the 'Cheese' as well as Literature; but the Law is, as a rule, of the non-combatant and, consequently, harmless order. Literary men who have been called to the bar, but do not practise; briefless young barristers, who do not object to mingling with newspaper men; with a sprinkling of retired solicitors ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... there engaged in building a wall across the neck of land from sea to sea. The fleet lay off Salamis, where it was detained by the entreaties of the Athenians, who had placed in that island the greater part of the non-combatant population; but the inclination was strong on the part of many to withdraw westward and fight the next battle, if a battle must be fought, in the vicinity of the land force, which would be a protection in case of defeat. Could Xerxes have had patience for a few days, the combined fleet ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... right and left, balancing his blade on his hand, as though about to hurl it at his foe. Andres replied several times to these varied attacks by such rapid and well-directed thrusts, that a less adroit combatant than Juancho would hardly have parried them. It was truly a fine fight, and worthy a circle of spectators learned in the art; but, unfortunately, the windows were all closed, and the street was empty. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... both proof and valiant, And virtuous, a vassal combatant. Upon the way there, he has met Rollant; He'd never seen, yet knew him at a glance, By the proud face and those fine limbs he had, By his regard, and by his contenance; He could not help but he grew faint thereat, He would ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... this is the contempt for physical weakness and for women which marks early society too. The non-combatant population is sure to fare ill during the ages of combat. But these defects, too, are cured or lessened; women have now marvellous means of winning their way in the world; and mind without muscle has far greater force ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... earnestly and cherished carefully, but even, when the cause demands it, championed strenuously. The voices of conflict, the joy of battle, the "garments rolled in blood," the "burning and fuel of fire" have little place in Arnold's poetry. But once at any rate he bursts into a strain so passionate, so combatant, that it is difficult for a disciple to recognize his voice; and then the motive is a summons to a last charge for ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... including a regiment and some sanitary units with the Italian army and the organizations at Murmansk, also including those en route from the States, approximately 2,053,347 men, less our losses. Of this total, there are in France 1,338,169 combatant troops. Forty divisions have arrived, of which the infantry personnel of ten have been used as replacements, leaving 30 divisions now in France organized into three ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... at this time myself a water-drinker, upon trial, by Johnson's recommendation[976]. JOHNSON. 'Boswell is a bolder combatant than Sir Joshua: he argues for wine without the help of wine; but Sir Joshua with it.' SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 'But to please one's company is a strong motive.' JOHNSON. (who, from drinking only water, supposed every body who drank wine to be elevated,) 'I won't argue any more with you, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... safety of the Romish priest and the hidden perils of temptation. She knew that it all meant love. She knew that this man at her side, this accomplished scholar, this practised orator, this great polemical combatant, was striving and striving in vain to tell her that his heart was ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... His mother was Martha Bulloch, a member of an old Southern family, one of her ancestors having been the first Governor of Georgia. During the Civil War, while Mr. Roosevelt was busy raising regiments, supporting the Sanitary Commission, and doing whatever a non-combatant patriot could do to uphold the Union, Mrs. Roosevelt's heart allegiance went with the South, and to the end of her life she was never "reconstructed." But this conflict of loyalties caused no discord in the Roosevelt family ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... [Footnote: The name of a celebrated sweep in Ireland, whose name is applied to the whole.] cried a blackguard, who enjoyed the triumph of his fellow. "Bravo! little fellow," rejoined a genteel person, who rejoiced in some successful hit of the other combatant. There is an inherent love in men to see a fight, which Edward O'Connor shared with inferior men; and if he had not peeped into the ring, most assuredly Gusty would. What was their astonishment, when they got a glimpse of the pugilists, to perceive Ratty was one ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... to awaken it. And he did succeed in giving to the chaotic times in which he lived that literary direction which we now look back upon as the starting-point of recent German literature. The chief evil that he inflicted was due to the position in which he placed himself as the combatant of the avowed friends of inspiration. He was honest in his love of truth, but he loved the search for it more than the attainment. The key to his whole life may be found in his own words: "If God should hold in his right hand all truth, and in his left the ever-active impulse ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... the President of the Orange Free State, asking him to grant me my liberty on the ground that I was a non-combatant. Yesterday Mr. Steyn courteously sent his private secretary and carriage to the hospital with an intimation that I should be granted an interview. I was accordingly driven down to what I believe was the Stadt House. In ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... "Certainly a non-combatant on this occasion," interrupted the General, raising his plumed hat, and bowing to the party alluded to; "Gentlemen," he pursued, addressing the two officers," I am sorry we do not meet exactly on the terms to which we hare so long been accustomed; ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... fears and honest sense of responsibility led him at last to seek his niece. In doing this he saw Perkins under guard. Hastening to Scoville he demanded, "What does this mean? My overseer is not a combatant, sir." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... emulation, enthusiasm, inclination, the promise of success, administration of camps, fire discipline, the influence of ability and superiority, etc. He shows the tragic depths, so somber below, so luminous above, which appear in the heart of the combatant torn between fear and duty. In the private soldier the sense of duty may spring from blind obedience; in the non-commissioned officer, responsible for his detachment, from devotion to his trade; in the commanding ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... little private in the Devons. It was a tremendous, a profoundly impressive, black snout. His opinions of the directing wisdom at home were unquotable. The platform was a wild confusion of women and children and colored people,—there was even an invalid lady on a stretcher. Every non-combatant who could be got out of Ladysmith was being hustled out that day. Everyone was smarting with the sense of defeat in progress, everyone was disappointed and worried; one got short answers to one's questions. For a time I couldn't even find out ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... Mauesers), the remainder carrying bowie-knives and bamboo lances. The bowie-knife was irresistible by the Spaniards when the native came to close-quarter fighting. The rebels had ample supplies of rice, buffaloes, etc., stolen from the non-combatant natives. To my personal knowledge they had daily communication with Manila, and knew everything that was going on there and the public feeling in the capital. They had failed in the attempt to seize the town of Santa Cruz (La Laguna), where they killed one Spaniard and then retreated. Loyal ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... around him that mist which envelopes every combatant in party warfare, and which at a distance changes or obscures the appearance of a man—Emile de Girardin is an extraordinary thinker, an accurate writer, energetic, logical, skilful, hearty; a journalist in whom, as in all great journalists, can be seen the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... intermittent way for more than three hundred years, during which the city had been in a small way in as close a state of siege, probably, as Troy was for ten years. As to operations in Herzegovina, small bands had been going and coming, concentrating when there was a movement to be made by either combatant, and slipping back across the frontier when they had had a brush, but all ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... Watch!" "The Watch made hast and for the present stopped the disorder, but in his rage and distemper the boatswaine fell a-swearinge Wounds and Hart as if he were not only angry with men but would provoke the high and blessed God." The master of the pinnace, being freed from his fellow-combatant, returned to Basset's house—perhaps to tell his tale of woe, perhaps to get more liquor—and was assailed by the drummer with amazing words of "anger and distemper used by drunken companions;" in ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... the very dangerous nature of the ground where they had met, and feeling no anxiety for a second encounter with a combatant of his weight, in a situation so little desirable, the fiddler would have willingly deferred the settlement of their differences till a more convenient season. He, accordingly, assuming the most submissive aspect in the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... observations of the enemy's weakness and strength of position, without being open to any charge of dishonorable conduct,—if he comes disguised as a soldier of the other side than his own, or if he claims to be a mere civilian or non-combatant, he is held to be a "spy," and as such he is denied a soldier's death, and must yield his life on the gallows as a deceiver ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... observed his advantage. Peters had in his possession a very long and keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talking over this incident, he had never yet seen the time when he was compelled to use an artificial weapon in an encounter with a single combatant; and particularly would he never have used a knife, even though his adversary were a maniac, if a maniac without an artificial weapon. Peters saw that Diregus had found Pym, and, as was also the boatman, he and Pym were, of course, viewing the struggle. I should not, however, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... bother with prisoners who require much care. They were the residue of many who had come and gone in that long monotonous trip. Some had been taken off for the big camps at Wittenberg and Goettingen. As well as he could judge, he had to thank his non-combatant character as well as his youth for the advantages ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... one knew was going. Johnny said to Jane, 'War is beastly, but one's got to be in it.' He took that line, as so many others did. 'Juke's going,' he said. 'As a combatant, I mean, not a padre. He thinks the war could have been prevented with a little intelligence; so it could, I dare say; but as there wasn't a little intelligence and it wasn't prevented, he's going in. He says it will be useful ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... so far as you could perceive; you wondered what had excited his belligerent spirit; but he saw at a very great distance that which you could not see; he heard a voice you could not hear, giving occasion to this show of prowess. That fearful combatant on the highway, dear madam, is the North, and you are the distant foe. You may affect to smile, perhaps, at the valorous attitudes, the show of mettle in the bull, but you have no idea, as I had the honor to say before, how sturdy is our hatred ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... talk, do you, eh? Want to know what I do with my spare time? All right, son; just jump over that gang of pouch-robbers and come on inside. Here you——" this to the still combatant orderlies, at the same time throwing an armfull of mail and papers at them—"here's all the stuff for your outfits to-day. Divvy up among yourselves, and ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... women, children, sick and aged persons within a period of even five days. People of this description cannot be moved as easily as armies; and hence, when the morning of the fifth day dawned, fully one-half of the non-combatant population was still ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... to every one according as God shall enable thee. Bear the infirmities of all, as a perfect combatant; where the labour is great, the gain is ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... let-alone attitude indefinitely but for a growing sense of the total depravity of vegetable sins and a realization of his miserable insufficiency as a combatant. Naturally, in looking about him for assistance he thought of her who should be his help-meet, and mentally began to question her continual absence from home. This evening he was feeling a little more tired than ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... actually a non-combatant, Sis, but I've lost my nerve, and what I have left is frayed to a frazzle. I've just got to do nothing but look handsome for ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... from the author, it was a most learned, most careful composition; and in its form, I should say, polemical. So happily at least did he follow the logical method of the Roman Schools, that Father Perrone in his Treatise on dogmatic theology, recognized in him a combatant of the true cast, and saluted him as a foe worthy of being vanquished. Other soldiers in that field he seems to have thought little better than the Lanzknechts of the middle ages, and, I dare say, with very good reason. When I knew that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... proceed according to his custom, he did not enter into the matter, he exhibited no warrant of arrest. In his eyes, Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be laid hands upon, a wrestler in the dark whom he had had in his grasp for the last five years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning, but an end. He confined himself to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Each combatant took a knife, examined it critically near the candle and tested the strength of the blade and handle across his lifted knee. Their persons were then searched in turn, each by the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... Reine des Iles Fortunees, where the bland naivete of the pedantry would almost disarm the present members of that Critical Regiment, of which the Abbe, in his turn, was not so much a chaplain as a most combatant officer. The very title goes on to neutralise its attractiveness by explaining—with that benignant condescension which is natural to at least some of its author's class—that it "contains the Moral Philosophy of the Stoics ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... monsieur, that the law will hardly regard a fencing-master who kills his opponent as an ordinary combatant, particularly if it can be shown that the fencing-master himself provoked ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... leaving Nicomedea the emperor held a gladiatorial contest there in honor of his birthday, for not even on that day did he refrain from slaughter. Here it is said that a combatant, being defeated, begged for his life, whereupon Antoninus said: "Go and ask your adversary. I am not empowered to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... the first touch of them, travelling down blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they had rushed on each other in the little garden behind ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... last few weeks, a new combatant has entered the lists, one who occupies a place quite apart in the sacred hierarchy of duty and honour and in the moral history of this war. I speak of Italy; and I pay her the tribute of homage which is her due and which I well know that you ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... the Latines the word Campus came to mean any open and level space; but among the Sicilians the true meaning was in some degree preserved. [Greek: Kampos—Ippodromos, Sikuloi.] Hesychius. It was properly a place of exercise in general, and not confined to races. Hence a combatant was styled [772]Campio, and the chief persons, who presided, [773]Campigeni. The exercise itself was by the Greeks styled [Greek: agon, aethlos, hamilla]; all Amonian terms, taken from the titles of the Deity, in whose honour the games were instituted. These temples partly from their ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... conqueror's feats were the theme of romance and song. The stands overlooking the ground, of course, were varied in the shapes of towers, terraces, galleries, and pensile gardens, magnificently decorated with tapestry, pavilions, and banners. Every combatant proclaimed the name of the lady whose servant d'amour he was. He was wont to look up to the stand, and strengthen his courage by the sight of the bright eyes that were raining their influence on him from above. The knights also carried FAVORS, consisting of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... his helmet. Alexander immediately thrust his antagonist through the body. At the same moment, another horseman, on another side, had his sword raised, and would have killed Alexander before he could have turned to defend himself, had no help intervened; but just at this instant a third combatant, one of Alexander's friends, seeing the danger, brought down so terrible a blow upon the shoulder of this second assailant as to separate his ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... retreat, but never once, since the establishment of the present trench swathe, have the lines of either combatant been pushed clear out of the normal zone of hostilities. The fierce, invisible combats are limited to the first-line positions, averaging a mile each way behind No Man's Land. This stationary character has made the war a daily battle; ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... through before they could think the fulness of his present thoughts, and so he tempered his disappointment. They were a gallant group, he felt. He had to thank Ella and good fortune that so they were. There was Clementina with her odd quick combatant sharpness, a harder being than Eleanor, but nevertheless a fine-spirited and even more independent. There was Miriam, indefatigably kind. Phoebe too had a real passion of the intellect and Daphne an innate disposition to service. But it was strange how they had taken his proclamation ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... perhaps combatant rashness, or possibly a premeditated attempt to force the listeners to reveal their actual sentiments. If he wished to get at the truth, he was successful, for several men began to speak at once, and while disjointed words interloped ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... memories crowd into our minds, when we find ourselves in a Malay bull-ring, and we should be more than human if we felt any keen sympathy for the combatant buffaloes. We are apt to experience also an intense sense of relief at the thought that the brutes are about to fight one another, and will be too busy to waste any of their energies in persecuting the European spectators, with the amiable intention of putting them to the shame of open ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... was so full a House—the gallery full to the top—I was there all the day; when lo! a political fit of the gout seized the great combatant—he entered not the lists. Beckford got up and begged the House, as he saw not his right honourable friend there, to put off the debate—it could not be done: so Beckford rose up and made a most long, passionate, incoherent ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... Valley army. The mistakes which occurred at Gaines' Mill, and Jackson's ignorance of the movements and progress of his troops, were in great part due to his lack of staff officers. A most important message, writes Dr. Dabney, involving tactical knowledge, was carried by a non-combatant.) "Unconscious," says Dabney, "that his veteran brigades were but now reaching the ridge of battle, he supposed that all his strength had been put forth, and (what had never happened before) the enemy was not crushed."* (*Dabney, volume 2, page 194.) ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... upon regaining his feet he found the voice of duty silent within him as to the necessity of any further action such as might expose him to more serious disabilities. With the spirit of the professional combatant, he rather admired the prowess of their adversary, and certainly bore him no ill-will because ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... being a non-combatant and a foreigner with a passport, and, furthermore, an accredited newspaper correspondent, he had nothing to fear except, perhaps, a tedious detention and a long-winded explanation. But it was not that. He had promised to ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... younger combatant gave up the fight. But as he turned, instead of merely crawling away defeated, he made a sudden convulsive sprawl which the older bull was not expecting, and dug his teeth into the cow who had given rise to all the trouble, and lifted her bodily. The old beachmaster, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... to Sorel, and was literally hacked to pieces, when he tried to escape from a caleche in which he was being conveyed to St. Charles. An equally unhappy incident was the cold-blooded execution, after a mock trial, of one Chartrand, a harmless non-combatant who was accused, without a tittle of evidence, of being a spy. The temper of the country can be gauged by the fact that when it was attempted, some time later, to convict the murderers on clear evidence, it was impossible to obtain a verdict. ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... the system in attending some of the worst cases of gangrene. It disabled him for six months. He returned to the hospitals towards the beginning of 1865, and obtained also a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. It should be added that, though he never actually joined the army as a combatant, he made a point of putting down his name on the enrolment- lists for the draft, to take his chance as it might happen for serving the country in arms. The reward of his devotedness came at the end of June 1865, in the form of ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... that went up from America was one of anguish, but still more one of rage. This attack upon non-combatant travelers, citizens of a neutral state, had been callously premeditated and ruthlessly executed in cold blood. The German Government had given frigid warning, in a newspaper advertisement, of its intention to affront the custom of nations and the laws of humanity. A wave of the bitterest anti-German ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... who receives this side-cut, was himself an anxious combatant of Collins, in his "Reflections on an Anonymous Pamphlet, entitled, 'A Defence ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... but three of the original combatant officers still on the strength of the Battalion were seconded for service elsewhere. "The old order changeth, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... you will find," Pamela replied, "that international law prevents any neutral country from supplying either combatant with munitions. If one country can fetch the things and the other can't, that is the misfortune of the country that can't. For one moment look at the matter from England's point of view. She has built up a mighty navy to keep ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... seeded flowers in the hedgerows, rippling under the tarpaulin covers of the stacks so that they seemed to be drawing deep breaths, twisting the golden straws upon the cobbled yard until they seemed to be playing together—playing mad games of wrestling, each slim golden combatant writhing from beneath his fellow at the last moment of contact. The wind lifted also the collar of Jim's tunic, making it flap about his rosy cheeks, and it sent streaming out the black silk tie that his mother had knotted ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... The shout of "Indians" from Bryan's lips, the sight of scurry on the ridge ahead brought the engineer and aide-de-camp springing out, rifle in hand, to take their manly part in the coming fray. It should have brought Major Burleigh too, but that appropriately named non-combatant never showed outside. An instant more and to the sound of rising thunder, before the astonished eyes of the cavalry line there burst into view, full tear for safety, the uncouth, yet marvelously swift-running leaders of the little herd. The whole dozen came flying ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... kept a prisoner all through the war, so he never got no enjoyment out of his life, never seeing a bit of real fighting—just marching and drilling and prison. So that, as he said, he might just as well never 'a' run away,—seeing he had to bide a non-combatant, which is the same as Quaker, ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull

... service on deck, and I respect your feeling in offering to be there," he answered; "but you are a non-combatant. You have nothing to gain by exposing your life. You will therefore oblige me by performing the far more painful task of assisting ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... the successful combatant was, however, soon to be accomplished; for he was shortly after found drowned in a butt of water, from which he had once or twice been extricated before, having summoned a deliverer to his assistance by cries that told he was in distress. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... four P. M. It has never been known how many were massacred. Some said twenty-five hundred, some made it five hundred, and almost every person killed was, not a Red combatant, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... daresay you will get a satisfactory test of your nerves before long. But courage is a comparative thing, depending very much upon circumstances. I, for example, am a non-combatant, and though I have little dread of infectious diseases, which many heroes would shrink from risking contact with, I hold all lethal weapons in strong dislike. And yet, if there were a barrel of beer in front, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... a strange mode of honouring a man's memory who had himself been slaughtered by a cannon. Only the smoke, that, after rolling in at the port-holes, rapidly drifted away to leeward, and was lost to view, seemed truly emblematical touching the personage thus honoured, since that great non-combatant, the Bible, assures us that our life is but a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... fierce combat was the consequence. Dogs and wolves do not fight in silence, and loud were the growls and yells on this occasion. In vain did le Bourdon endeavor to drag his mastiff off; the animal was on the high-road to victory, when it is ever hard to arrest the steps of the combatant. Almost as a matter of course, some of the chiefs rushed toward the spot, when the presence of the two spectators first became known to them. At the next moment the wolf lay dead at the feet of Hive; and the parties stood gazing at ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... sympathies of both sides and gave them a practical purpose. England and France were now arrayed against each other, and Americans, though their Government remained neutral, arrayed themselves openly as partisans of either combatant. The division followed almost exactly the lines of the earlier quarrel which had begun to appear as the true meaning of Hamilton's policy discovered itself. The Hamiltonians were for England. The ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... introduced among civilised nations by the barbarous Huns and Longobards. He likewise pretended to ridicule the use of firearms, which confounded all the distinctions of skill and address, and deprived a combatant of the opportunity of signalizing ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... being put in a prison and left to die of fever, as Govin was cut down, as Delgardo died in prison, as Melton is lying in prison now, where he will continue to lie until we have a Secretary of State who recognizes the rights of the correspondent as a non-combatant, or at ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... Cape St. Vincent, Cape Spartel, Tarifa, Trafalgar—all spirit-stirring sounds, are within our ken, and recognised with enthusiasm both by the old sailors whose memory can reinvest them with their terrors, and by the naval neophytes who hope to emulate the deeds of their fathers. Even a non-combatant like myself feels his heart beat faster and fuller, though it is only with the feeling of the unworthy boast of the substance in the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... When, after the battle of Salamis, the Athenians assembled to award the prizes for courage, after the ballots had been collected, it was found that each combatant had one vote for the first prize, and Themistocles all the votes for the second. The people of Minerva were crowned by their own hands. Truly heroic souls! all were worthy of the olive-branch, since all had ventured ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Heroes, &c.] The young Spaniards signalize their valour before the Spanish ladies at bull feasts, which often prove very hazardous, and sometimes fatal to them. It is performed by attacking of a wild bull, kept on purpose, and let loose at the combatant; and he that kills most, carries the laurel, and dwells highest ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... Suebian canton which oppressed the Ubii—presumably the same which subsequently appears under the name of the Chatti—caused the districts immediately adjoining the Ubian territory to be evacuated and the non-combatant portion of the people to be placed in safety, while all the men capable of arms were directed to assemble at the centre of the canton. The Roman general had neither occasion nor desire to accept this challenge; his object—partly to reconnoitre, partly to produce an impressive ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... wife with complacent importance, for she knew all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a retiarius or netter; he is armed only, you see, with a three-pronged spear like a trident, and a net; he wears no armor, only the fillet and the tunic. He is a mighty man, and is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set gladiator, with the round shield and drawn sword but without body armor; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... would be with the same unrelenting ferocity as before. The episode that had just taken place would be as though it had never been. How strange that such an encounter did take place sooner than either white or red combatant dreamed! ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... it that attracted me so powerfully from the beginning? At first, as you know, the hope of making him a combatant for the possessions which I have learned through you to regard as the highest and most sacred. Then, when love came, when a new power, heretofore unknown, awoke within me and—everything must be told—I longed for his wooing and his embrace, I also felt that our union could take ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... surprise to make some show of fighting back. Confused sounds of scuffling and hard breathing became audible, with a thump or two deadened by the rug; but more than that, nothing—never a word from either combatant. There was something uncanny in the silence ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... an armoured train before. Only let me see—hear some of the fun I mean, and I'll be grateful. I go at my own risk as a non-combatant." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... edges and in steadily dwindling trees. The latter have sent their stoutest champions to the front, or produced, as by a final effort, some giants for the line of battle. And that line, with its sentinels, is so marked that one can stand with a foot on the territory of each combatant, or, as scientists call them, the Arctic Region and ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... attest. But these were few, and soon went down. The extinction of the tribes west and south of the Rio Grande and the Humboldt cannot be many years postponed. The red rover of that region will disappear as a combatant in the same way, and before the same weapon, as his brother nomad of Algeria, the earliest victim of the conoidal bullet. The spherical ball has done its appointed part in disposing of the aborigines east of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... my friend, they do general utility work—often in their own boats. This is a waste of good material. Nobody wants amateur navigators—the traffic lanes are none too wide as it is. But these gentlemen ought to be distributed among the Trawler Fleet as strictly combatant officers. A trawler skipper may be an excellent seaman, but slow with a submarine shelling and diving, or in cutting out enemy trawlers. The young ones who can master Q.F. gun work in a very short time would—though there might be friction, a court-martial or two, and probably ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... which I did not take the trouble to dissimulate, that I too was suspiciously connected with these terrible events, though my attitude with regard to them misled him for some time. For I was not by any means prepared to proclaim myself a combatant in the recent fights, and that for reasons quite other than would have seemed valid in the eyes of the law. My friend was therefore encouraged in his delusion by the unpremeditated effect of my attitude. When we met at the house of Princess Caroline of Wittgenstein, to whom I had been introduced ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... was to go back from the war. Here are the words: "It seems quite impossible to return, and I do not think I should try. I would not feel quite comfortable over it. I am cabling to Morrison at Ottawa, that I am available either as combatant or medical if they need me. I do not go to it very light-heartedly, but I think it ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... Lieutenant Hough, were placed in the best directions to give an alarm in case a landing should be attempted. During the night the volunteers and militia had assembled in considerable numbers; and the non-combatant inhabitants had generally removed to the neighboring farm-houses, in the momentary expectation of seeing their abandoned dwellings in flames. It was a night of inexpressible anguish to many a widow and orphan, to many aged and infirm, whose little pittance they were now apparently ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull

... closer organization of groups into what is called team play. Team play bears to the simpler group play which precedes it an analogous relation in some respects to that between modern and primitive warfare. In primitive warfare the action of the participants was homogeneous; that is, each combatant performed the same kind of service as did every other combatant and largely on individual initiative. The "clash of battle and the clang of arms" meant an individual contest for every man engaged. In contrast to this there ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... in more than one point of character and circumstances, to his brother Scotchman, and fast friend till death, the Reverend Dr. Lang, of Sydney; and had he possessed the physical vigour, not to say the stately proportions, of that most combatant of members of the church militant, he might have been his Victorian rival in a far more prosperous and protracted career. In each there was a very combative mind behind the mildest of manner. Besides the pulpit, Lang sought successfully also the Legislature, where, somehow, clergymen ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... horror against each other; they never meet without endeavouring to fight, and to accomplish their mutual destruction. Thus, the chance of combat is equal between them, and fortune will decide to which the empire shall pertain. But if one combatant is older than the rest, she is stronger, and the advantage will be with her. She will destroy her rivals successively as produced. Thus, if the old queen did not leave the hive, when the young ones undergo their last metamorphosis, it could produce no more swarms, ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... equally binding on us all, in the measure of our opportunity and capacity. Our performing the indirect is no excuse for our neglecting the direct. The conversion of the world is our business and not to be handed over to any society or missionary. No Christian can be only and always a non-combatant, without sin and loss. He is bound to take some share in the actual conflict in one or other ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... by Gleim maintain so high a rank among German poems, because they arose with and in the achievements which are their subject; and because, moreover, their felicitous form, just as if a fellow-combatant had produced them in the loftiest moments, makes us feel the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... teach you charity on the spot," cried the goaded Methodist, suddenly catching this exasperating opponent by his shabby coat-collar, and shaking him till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a nine-pin. "You took me for a non-combatant did you?—thought, seedy coward that you are, that you could abuse a Christian with impunity. You find ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... Isaac C. Vail, of the 103rd Ohio Infantry, who died in service. Major George Arnold of the 107th Ohio Infantry, (German,) who fought with great gallantry. Surgeon C. A. Hartman, whose skill as a surgeon was fully equalled by his valor as a soldier, and who, unable to content himself as a non-combatant, engaged in the thickest of the fight at Winchester and was killed in the terrible slaughter the regiment experienced. Captain Wm. C. Bunts, of the 125th Ohio Infantry. Lieutenant Colonel E. A. Scovill, of the 128th Ohio Infantry, rendered important service in charge of the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... Such craft could navigate and remain at sea submerged, could escape control and observation, avoid identification and having their national character established to determine whether they were neutral or belligerent, combatant or noncombatant. The capacity for harm inherent in the nature of such vessels therefore required, in the view of the Allied governments, that they should be excluded from the benefit of rules hitherto recognized by the laws of nations governing the admission of war or merchant vessels to neutral ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... much as he dared. Under the surface the Government did much more. The rapid movement of events once we were declared a combatant would have been impossible otherwise. That rapidity of effective action surprised the world only because it had all been planned before a ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell



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