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Deterrent   /dɪtˈərrənt/   Listen
Deterrent

noun
1.
Something immaterial that interferes with or delays action or progress.  Synonyms: balk, baulk, check, handicap, hinderance, hindrance, impediment.



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"Deterrent" Quotes from Famous Books



... Grundy, entitled The Degenerates. Mr. Grundy, though an adept of the Scribe school, has done so much strong and original work that I apologize for exhuming a play in which he almost burlesqued his own method; but for that very reason it is difficult to find a more convincing or more deterrent example of misdirected ingenuity. The details of the plot need not be recited. It is sufficient to say that the curtain has not been raised ten minutes before our attention has been drawn to the fact that a certain Lady ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... past been of incalculable advantage in making an appeal to an aboriginal type of mind, since it really requires some sort of material personification, which it can at least visualize, the conception of which serves as an incentive for well-doing, and a deterrent from evil doing. It is therefore infinitely preferable as a working ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... about the jail was in itself a deterrent to mob action. Meyers had brought twenty or more men from camp, armed and alert, who with those already about the building constituted a force to make any crowd of Mexicans, however angry, think twice before seeking to rescue prisoners. But the wish ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... The deterrent was, the giving himself over into the power of other men, and into the power of the mob-spirit of a democratic army. Should he give himself over? Should he make over his own life and body to the control of something ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... this awful fact is deftly obscured behind the deceptive and specious plea for "a dollar of the greatest purchasing power." This is one of those artful expressions that are used by the advocates of the gold standard as a kind of thought-deterrent. It seems so obvious, at the first suggestion, that the best dollar is the dollar that will buy the most, that it is hard for a man to get even a hearing who asserts that, on the contrary, such a dollar is the very worst dollar conceivable. But a moment's ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... cloying is not clear to my mind. They tell me the sugar is needed to preserve the milk. I never could make out that it preserved anything but the sugar. Simply to see the stuff ooze out of the hole in the can is deterrent. It is enough to make one think seriously at times of adding a good milch cow to his already ample trip encumberment, at the certain cost of delaying the march, and the not improbable chance of being taken for an escaped lunatic. Indeed, to the Japanese mind, to be seen solemnly preceding ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will show that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of innocent blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... and the shore presented so many attractions, that the officers kept a strict watch over the men for fear of desertion; but there was something which acted more as a deterrent than anything that the officers could say or do, and that was the report ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to forget their sorrows, to keep the Juggernaut wheel revolving and to supply it with fresh victims to be mangled and crushed into the grave. The lure and the deterrent—love of sensuous pleasure and fear of dissolution—are as deceitful as all the other causes of pain and pleasure in this world of appearance. Schopenhauer puts it tersely thus: "As we are decoyed into life by the utterly illusory impulse to voluptuousness, even so are we held fast therein ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at all, and that is that our present method of administering justice (less the actions of juries than of judges)—the system taken as a whole—offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal. The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the moves are made with a view to checkmating ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... did not all go. Many remained then, only to go later. The prospect of danger, hardship, privation, was the least of the deterrent forces that held them back. To go meant much in most cases. It was to give up cherished plans and ambitions; to abandon their studies and turn aside from the paths that had been marked out for their future lives. Some had just entered that year upon the prescribed ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... his whole scheme. The presence of United States troops, which had been moved north from various military stations to support Gen. Meade in his efforts to prevent another breach of the Neutrality Act, also had a deterrent effect on the Fenians, and ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... assistance. The Boy Scout movement may be extended, or a substitute found for it, but some such organization is needed for the immigrant boy and the native American who is compelled to rely on his own resources. The fear of the law is undoubtedly a deterrent from crime, but it is inferior to the inspiration that comes ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... Our language, to B. L. T., was an honest, living growth: deadwood, whether in thought or in the expression of thought, never got by, but was marked for the burning. The "Cannery," with its numbered shelves and jars, was a deterrent indeed, and anyone who ventured to relieve himself as "Vox Populi" or as a conventional versifier, did ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... but songs of Shy[a]m[a], the dark Mother, would bring tears to his eyes. He felt no call to search for ultimate reality; whatever moved his heart served him for the time as the truth, even obvious coarseness not proving a deterrent. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... why should it be shocking that the female should equal the male in callousness? Why should it be shocking should she even surpass the male? It is quite possible that, since for physiological reasons she is nearer to instinctive motivation than the male, she cannot help being more ruthless once deterrent inhibition has been sloughed. But is she in fact more dangerous, more deadly as a ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... had made the garden their playground, their real nursery; the garden, and on wet days the barn, the hay-lofts, the apple-lofts, any Alsatia beyond the rules, where they could run free and lift their voices. He had never been unkind, but merely neglectful, unsmiling, coldly deterrent, unapproachable. They knew, of course, that he was great, that grown men and women stood in ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... so much?" was their reply. When Egede spoke of spiritual gifts, they asked for good health and blubber: "Our Angekoks give us that." Hell-fire was much in theological evidence in those days, but among the Eskimos it was a failure as a deterrent. They listened to the account of it eagerly and liked the prospect. When at length they became convinced that Egede knew more than their Angekoks, they came to him with the request that he would abolish winter. Very likely they thought that one who had such knowledge ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... isolated innocent infringement, and it offers adequate insulation to users, such as broadcasters and newspaper publishers, who are particularly vulnerable to this type of infringement suit. On the other hand, by establishing a realistic floor for liability, the provision preserves its intended deterrent effect; and it would not allow an infringer to escape simply because the plaintiff failed to disprove ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... about the time that he opened his printing office, whose course it will be interesting to follow. Almost every young man sometimes meets a man of this type and character. He is certain to be found, as are any of the deterrent people in the Pilgrim's Progress. He is the man in whose eyes there is ruin lurking in every form of prosperity, who sees only the dark side of things—to whom, as we now say, everything "is ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... lead him often to immoral conduct, but he is pretty sure to suffer from the condemnation of his fellows. The memory of that penalty in his own case, or the sight of it in the case of others, may be a considerable deterrent; while, on the other hand, the craving for applause and esteem may be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... most fears is being compelled to relinquish his criminal career. The object of punishment for violation of statute law is not vengeance, it is not to inflict injury for injury. Only a few persons now hold to that. They say now that if it does little good to the offender, it is deterrent as to others. Now, is our present system deterrent? The statute law, no doubt, prevents many persons from committing crime, but our method of administering it certainly does not lessen the criminal class, and it does not adequately protect ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the approval of the state. This effect, when it is realized, is to be credited in part to laws which will never be enacted. The merely potential law—that which the people will probably demand if they are greatly provoked, but not otherwise—may be a stronger deterrent than the prospect of more moderate legislation. In general a considerable part of the economic lawmaking of the future will undoubtedly be called out by demands for action that is too violent to be taken ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... population, and with that increase the rapid multiplication of persons desirous and able to enjoy the privileges of social display would seem to be determining factors, with the mounting costliness of the luxury as a deterrent. The last illustration of the operation of the creative impulse based on the growth of wealth and social ambition is found in the building of the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise being purely ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... imbeciles'—that is, persons who from an early age display permanent mental defect, coupled with strong criminal or vicious propensities, on which punishment has little or no deterrent effect." ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... to be shown in the treatment of what is called "crime.'' It is supposed, of course, that the criminal is actuated by calculations of self-interest, and that the fear of punishment, by supplying a contrary motive of self-interest affords the best deterrent, The dog, to gain some private end, Went mad ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... ii. 22. 76 (Paullus) tantum in aerarium pecuniae invexit, ut unius imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. A deterrent to luxury could still have been created by imposing heavy harbour-dues on articles of value; but this would have required legislation. Nothing is known about the Republican tariff at Italian ports. The percentage may have been uniform for ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... do harm. But it is a mistake to imagine that social damnation is an incentive to Thrift. It operates least where its force ought to be most felt. There is no fear that any Scheme that we can devise will appreciably diminish the deterrent influences which dispose a man to save. But it is idle wasting time upon a plea that is only brought forward as an excuse for inaction. Thrift is a great virtue, the inculcation of which must be constantly kept in view by all those who are attempting to "educate ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... fourth reason why the classification of languages has generally proved a fruitless undertaking. It is probably the most powerful deterrent of all to clear thinking. This is the evolutionary prejudice which instilled itself into the social sciences towards the middle of the last century and which is only now beginning to abate its tyrannical hold on our mind. Intermingled with this scientific prejudice and largely anticipating it ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... this terrible lesson on the horrors of the sea did not act as a deterrent; it was as unsuccessful as the effort of the old lady in one of his stories: "An old lady I once knew tried to check the military ardour of a little boy by showing him a picture of a battlefield, and describing some ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... relevant circumstances were available about the ante-natal period or the mother's condition would be noted (but who would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such a month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a deterrent). Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the assumption of breast-feeding—provision of columns for the various incidents of it—weight before and after feeding, etc., would ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... Christians—then aided by Syrian troops—and its Muslims and their Palestinian allies. The cease-fire established in October 1976 between the domestic political groups generally held for about six years, despite occasional fighting. Syrian troops constituted as the Arab Deterrent Force by the Arab League have remained in Lebanon. Syria's move toward supporting the Lebanese Muslims and the Palestinians and Israel's growing support for Lebanese Christians brought the two sides into rough equilibrium, but no progress was made toward national reconciliation or ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... years' residence in Scotland; but it is equally clear that next to none of it came through the regular channels of academic education. Indeed, the influence of the Edinburgh professoriate appears to have been mainly negative, and in some cases deterrent; creating in his mind, not only a very low estimate of the value of lectures, but an antipathy to the subjects which had been the occasion of the boredom inflicted upon him by their instrumentality. With the exception of Hope, the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes. She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts, scornful of roundabout methods, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... were even serious difficulties—of visiting places where there was neither provision nor protection made for the stranger, always acted upon him not as deterrent but incentive: he liked something to overcome, and found the safe, comfortable, convenient resting-places as uncongenial to his nature as they were unproductive for the purposes of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... worked his way upwards. The fact that in a fencing bout he had partially lost his sight, through the button of his father's foil dropping off, whereupon he received the point in his eye, was not the slightest deterrent. He regarded it merely as an annoying, though not a very important, incident. Being satisfied that the Almighty had only given us two eyes as a measure of precaution, to provide against such vexatious little accidents as he had experienced, he went on working ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Constance. And it frightened them equally. Sophia, staring at the text, "Thou God seest me," framed in straw over the chest of drawers, did not stir. She was defeated, and so profoundly moved in her defeat that she did not even reflect upon the obvious inefficacy of illuminated texts as a deterrent from evil-doing. Not that she eared a fig for the fragment of Mr. Povey! It was the moral aspect of the affair, and the astounding, inexplicable development in Constance's character, that staggered her into silent ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... injustice. The execution of Hokwan restored some of his ill-gotten wealth to the state, and served as a warning to other officials; but as none could hope to enjoy his opportunities, it did not act as a serious deterrent upon the mass of the Chinese civil service. If arraigned, they might have justified their conduct by the example of their sovereign, who, instead of devoting the millions of Hokwan to the necessities of the state, employed them on his ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... Dr. Rankin, beating the table, "that's just what I've been trying to tell you. You ought not to care so much for punishing as for deterring. Don't you know that it's a commonplace that it isn't the terrifying quality of the penalty that acts as a deterrent to crime, but it's the certainty of the penalty! If a horse thief knows that there's merely a chance the community will get mad enough to hang him, he'll take that chance in hopes this may not be the time. If, on the other ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... had decided that he ought to, that he would, that he must be persuaded to; and the incessant imperceptible pressure of encouragement—the assumption of those about him that because it would be good for him to write he must naturally be able to—acted on his restive nerves as a stronger deterrent than disapproval. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... entries in her journal was to the effect that, according to Major B——, it was the custom on many plantations to shoot a slave every year, on the ground that such a sacrifice was generally salutary; that it was an expiation of past derelictions and a deterrent from repetition. And she ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... the very thing which serves as a deterrent, rather than an incentive. If machines can be handled in such a remarkable manner, they must be, indeed, perfect! Nothing more is needed! They must represent the highest ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... identical occurrence took place at Kotaghery, with exactly similar results, but without the punishment entailed having any deterrent effect. They pleaded "justification," as witchcraft had been practiced on them. But our Government ignores all occult dealings and will not believe in the dread power in the land. They deal very differently with these matters in Russia, where, in a recent trial of a similar nature, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... were prepared to submit themselves to the law, we should have been disposed to deal with them in the most indulgent manner; but as we understood that they did not intend this, we have meted out to them such a punishment as we hope, when undergone, will have a deterrent effect upon them, and may prevent other people offending in like manner. We have nothing to do with what may happen after the defendants obtain a judgment in their favor, if they do so, or after the sentence is carried out, if they do not. Our sentence is passed, and ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... that is connected with birth. He deprecates mechanical, systematic, and consecutive instruction in the mere facts of sex hygiene, for even the fullest knowledge on this subject is known to have very little deterrent effect in the temptations of life. He would rather aim at creating the right atmosphere in a school, such as would make any coarse or unworthy mention of any of these matters in the hearing of a child appear more or less repulsive, and would in ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... present time, but little seems to have been done for the Gipsies. With Crabb died all real interest in the welfare of these poor unfortunate people. The difficulties he had encountered seemed to have had a deterrent effect upon others. Missionary zeal, without moral force of law and the schoolmaster, will accomplish but little for the Gipsies at our doors; and it may be said with special emphasis as regards the improvement ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... being permitted to pass out of the galley only one at a time. Cross's burly form, drawn cutlass and conspicuously displayed pistol, supported by the appearance of the barque's crew in his immediate background, proving an effectual deterrent to any attempt on the part of the privateersmen to make a rush for freedom, and in something like a couple of hours from the time of her capture, the Aurora, was once more in the undisputed possession of ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... had got what she wanted without that. I had been sure that if she hadn't got it she wouldn't have been restrained from the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections, more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my case had served as a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over me a wave of anguish—a poignant sense ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... of strangling herself. This book so inflamed a naturally ardent imagination, that I was with difficulty dissuaded from entering the arena as a circus manager. Considerations of age or sex had no weight with me, and lack of capital eventually proved the deterrent force. On the shelf above were "Kenilworth," "The Lady of the Lake," and half of "Rob Roy." I have always hesitated to read the other half, for fear that it should not end precisely as I made it ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Government, in order that any measures deemed necessary might be taken. Meanwhile he patiently persisted in turning away all vessels, not British built, which he encountered, confining himself for the time to this merely passive prevention; but finding at last that this was not a sufficient deterrent, he gave notice that after the 1st of May, 1785, he would seize all American vessels trading to the islands, "let them be registered by whom they might." Accordingly, on the 2d of May he arrested an American-built schooner, owned in Philadelphia and manned entirely by Americans, but having ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... as it existed a quarter of a century or more ago, was extremely severe and indeed to our mind quite repellent. In those days—and no doubt they are so even yet in many places—the conditions were too often forbidding and deterrent. Otherwise how can we explain the very general tendency among the younger people to move from the country ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... in punishing, aim at the prevention of crime? Are punishments to be "deterrent"? Under this head we must consider, not merely the criminal himself, but also those who are in more or less danger of becoming criminals, though they have, as yet, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... unconstitutional abridgment of the addressee's First Amendment rights. The addressee carries an affirmative obligation which we do not think the Government may impose on him. This requirement is almost certain to have a deterrent effect, especially as respects those who have sensitive positions. ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... has helped France to be what she is; and next, perhaps, one of its corollaries, expression. The French are the first to laugh at themselves for running to words: they seem to regard their gift for expression as a weakness, a possible deterrent to action. The last year has not confirmed that view. It has rather shown that eloquence is a supplementary weapon. By "eloquence" I naturally do not mean public speaking, nor yet the rhetorical writing too often associated with the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... regarded as a mineral resource in so far as it is utilized as a commodity for drinking, washing, power, irrigation, and other industrial uses. For purposes of navigation and drainage, or as a deterrent in excavation, it would probably not be so classed. While it is not easy to define the limits of water's use as a mineral resource, it is clear that even with a narrow interpretation the total tonnage extracted from ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic modes ... conflict with the progress ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... adhesion to the principle of equal partnership for Indian and European in the British Empire; (2) to express regret that martial law in the Punjab violated this fundamental principle; (3) to administer deterrent punishment to officers guilty of an improper exercise of their powers including the withdrawal of their pensions; (4) to assure itself that adequate compensation is awarded to those who lost their relatives at the Jallianwala Bagh and elsewhere. The speaker moved his Resolution with ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... the case of the workingman attracted by the socialist ideal. The Nihilism of Socialism has no deterrent terrors for him, for, as Karl Marx said long ago, "he has nothing to lose but his chains, and a whole world to gain." He has long since lost all interest in religion; the factory by enlisting his wife and children as workers has already destroyed his home; and to him the ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... to turn away. The address had flashed upon me before I thought of any thing, and while Mrs. Busk held it up to me. And now that address was staring at me, like a contemptuous challenge, while the seal, the symbol of private rights and deterrent honor, lay undermost. The letter was directed to "H. W. C., Post-office, Newport, Sussex." The writing was in round hand, and clear, so as not to demand any scrutiny, and to seem like that of a lawyer's clerk, and the envelope was ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... and of course Bloom comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those jewies does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't know what all deterrent effect and so forth and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... up my mind to recall myself to her it was present to me that she might ask me to lend her money. More than anything else, however, at this time of day, I was sorry for her, so that such an idea didn't operate as a deterrent. ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James

... courage exhibited. At the same time, a realization of the seriousness of war on the part of all men, because they knew before this war began the punishing effect of rifle or machine-gun and artillery fire, is a powerful deterrent to making war in any ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... thrushes. "A poacher," my host said, shrugging his shoulders. "Mais que voulez-vous; il y en a tant." Poaching is carried on so largely that very little game is to be had; the severe penalties inflicted by the law having little deterrent effect. ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Hrad[vs]any relics. The little church was dedicated to Cosmas (not the chronicler) and Damian, saints of the third and fourth centuries. It is not known why these gentlemen clubbed together to have a day to themselves, but this need not act as deterrent to anyone who wishes to observe their day. Wherever pilgrims visit, there you will find settlements growing up, beginning with booths and shanties of those who sell appropriate commodities, candles, wreaths and such-like. The traffic in these ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... was a boy or girl who was worried over, who was not annoyed, fretted, injured, and cursed by it, instead of being benefited. The benefit received from the love of the parent was in spite of the worry, and not because of it. Worry is a hindrance, a deterrent, a restraint; it is always putting a curbing hand upon the natural exuberance and enthusiasm of youth. It says, "Don't, don't," with such fierce persistence, that it kills initiative, destroys endeavor, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... seems to prove him unfitted for free life in the world, consider him carefully, and condemn him, and remove him from being. All such killing will be done with an opiate, for death is too grave a thing to be made painful or dreadful, and used as a deterrent from crime. If deterrent punishments are used at all in the code of the future, the deterrent will neither be death, nor mutilation of the body, nor mutilation of the life by imprisonment, nor any horrible things like ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... Where a fungous disease is attacking the leaves, fruit, or twigs, spraying with Bordeaux mixture may prove effective. The application of Bordeaux mixture is deterrent rather than remedial, and should therefore be made immediately before the disease appears. The nature of the disease and the time of treatment can be determined without cost, by submitting specimens ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... author of A Midsummer's Dream wrote a number of other plays of considerable merit. This I challenge, the more especially as those who swear by Mr. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE candidly admit that his name is a deterrent rather than an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various

... blanket on frosty nights. Evidently the spirit of Valley Forge had not been lost. Five times the number could have been secured, he said, to preserve the peace of the country. He also hazarded a prediction that the failure of the insurrection would have a deterrent effect on the political clubs, which he blamed almost entirely for the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... punishment for criminals he would similarly devote his efforts not to the abrogation of punishments, but to the relinquishment of any that are not reformatory, or really deterrent. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... leisure. This was very well so far, for furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a food as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not accustomed to it, the grains of wheat swollen as large as lemon-pips, which floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... in the early history of the Union, and later the experience of the Union with the death and disability benefit, had made the membership reluctant to sanction the establishment of any new benefit. A further deterrent influence was the almost total failure of sick benefits operated by the ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... highway robbery, burglary, murder, and rape, there was a curious effect on both sides the color-line: the Negroes refused to believe the evidence of white witnesses or the fairness of white juries, so that the greatest deterrent to crime, the public opinion of one's own social caste, was lost, and the criminal was looked upon as crucified rather than hanged. On the other hand, the whites, used to being careless as to the guilt or innocence of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... made acquaintance with the titular hero in the pages of "Vingt Ans Apres," perhaps the name may act as a deterrent. A man might well stand back if he supposed he were to follow, for six volumes, so well-conducted, so fine-spoken, and withal so dreary a cavalier as Bragelonne. But the fear is idle. I may be said to have passed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... indeed; but whatever deterrent effect the fatal issue of this affair, as of many similar ones, may have had upon the sailor's use of lethal weapons when attacked by the gang, that effect was largely, if not altogether, neutralised ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... real chastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... by formal obstacles. It builds, destroys, and rebuilds. It may take a million years to fashion a useful organ. Slowness is no deterrent. The powers that shaped the genius of Michelangelo and Shakespeare out of the rude brain of savage man needed time, but the achievement was worthy of the labour. To-day there are signs and portents that psychic faculties once possessed by the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... souls; to recall them to the way of salvation, and to assign salutary penance to those who sought it, like a father-confessor with his penitent. Its sentences, therefore, were not like those of an earthly judge, the retaliation of society on the wrongdoer, or deterrent examples to prevent the spread of crime; they were simply imposed for the benefit of the erring soul, to wash away its sin. The Inquisitors themselves habitually speak of their ministrations ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... Bishop's mouth, and twinkled in his eyes—"incidentally, my daughter, you will work off a certain stiffness from which you must be suffering, after the unwonted exercise. Ah me!" said the Bishop, "that is ever the Divine method. Punishments should be remedial, as well as deterrent. There is much stiffness of mind of which we must be rid before we can stoop to the portal of God's 'whosoever' and, passing through the narrow gate, enter the Kingdom ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... caused by the formidable revolt of Roldan. But as the habit of disorder was threatening to become chronic, he wisely took another way with the sedition of Mujica, maintaining order by a resort to prompt and vigorous action, and making a salutary example which was calculated to be deterrent in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... the clear and obvious index to pitch supplied by the old system. Old Rameau pointed this out to Rousseau when the scheme was laid before him, and Rousseau admitted that the objection was decisive,[330] though his admission was not practically deterrent. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... party called Yozcolos, doubtless after their leader, attacked the neophytes guarding the Santa Clara wheat-fields, killing one of them. The attackers were pursued, and their leader slain, and the placing of his head on a pole seemed to act as a deterrent of ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... to her a sonnet-sequence which I had originally plagiarized from the French of Theodore Passerat in honour of Stella. I loathed sending Stella's verses to anyone else, somehow; but, after all, my one deterrent was merely a romantic notion; and there was not time to compose a new set. Moreover, "your eyes are blue, your speech is gracious, but you are not she; and I am older,—and changed how utterly!—I am no longer I, you ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... of flogging," he argues, undeniably answers in these cases, both as a sharp and effectual punishment, and also as a deterrent from future misdoing. "To us it appears an obvious certainty, that whatever punishment is believed to be righteous—whether the whipping of a child, the shooting of a soldier, the constraint of the treadmill, or whatever else—is wholly free from the least tendency to brutalize the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Babel over again. The riff-raff of sixteen nations had followed Napoleon to Moscow—to rob. Half a dozen different tongues were spoken in one army corps. There remained no national pride to act as a deterrent. No man cared what he did. The blame would ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... man meets on the land surface of the earth. To the spread of population they offer a resistance which long serves to exclude settlers. The difficulty of making roads up steep, rocky slopes and through the forests usually covering their rain-drenched sides, is deterrent enough; but in addition to this, general infertility, paucity of arable land, harsh climatic conditions, and the practical lack of communication with the outside world offer scant basis for subsistence. Hence, as a rule, only when pressure of population in the lowlands becomes too great under prevailing ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... to the celebrated Fall Portage. It is short but deterrent. The height and ruggedness of the rocks over which cargo and boats have to be dragged are unusually forbidding. The only consolation to the contemplative soul, who does not have to portage, is that "The stream is turbulent and unfriendly in the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... seldom shrank from looking even an unwelcome truth squarely in the face. That Clarence Weston was probably shoveling railroad gravel did not count with her, but she was reasonably sure that the fact that she was a young woman with extensive possessions would have a deterrent effect on him. She once or twice had felt a curious compelling tenderness for him when in his presence, but reflection had come later, and she could not be sure that she loved him well enough to marry him, should he offer her the opportunity. During ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... to which the artisan and the urban laboring classes are exposed may not very seriously decrease the amount of savings; but in its cumulative action, through raising the standard of decent expenditure, its deterrent effect on the tendency to save ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... benefit of the terror that comes with the certainty of punishment that could prevent crime. I can see no basis in logic or experience for this suggestion. It is based on the theory that punishment is not only a deterrent to crime, but the main deterrent. It comes from the idea that the criminal is distinct from the rest of mankind, that vengeance should be sure and speedy and that then crime would be prevented. If this were true ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... absurd logical twist in his view of things. In the first place he was not to judge at all; and in the second he was to judge strictly on Gordon's behalf. This latter clause always served as a justification when the former had failed to serve as a deterrent. When Bernard reproached himself for thinking too much of the girl, he drew comfort from the reflection that he was not thinking well. To let it gradually filter into one's mind, through a superficial complexity of more reverent ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... the Anglo-Saxon—I, who am a Celt, admit it—is for the orderly administration of the law, and much of the evil noted comes from the introduction within our borders {246} of an imperfectly assimilated foreign element which cherishes different views on the subject. Another deterrent cause is a cool common sense which has recognized the futility of trying to settle with blade or bullet differences which belong to the courts; to this may be added a keen sense of humor which has seen the absurdity and laughed ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... lacked a proper deference, and the Queen's manner of receiving him a proper circumspection. Therefore the King's long face became longer, his gloomy eyes gloomier, as he looked on. Far, however, from acting as a deterrent, the royal scowl was mere incense to the vanity of Buckingham, a spur to goad him ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... from Tientsin, accompanied by a suitable Chinese escort, and by its demonstration of the readiness and ability of our Government to protect its citizens will act, it is believed, as a most influential deterrent ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... exemption—but because pressure had been exerted by the senate. The reason for this was that one Gaius Cornelius, while tribune, undertook to lay very severe penalties upon such unions, and the populace sided with him. The senate, being aware that an excessive punishment threatened has some deterrent force, but that men are then not easily found to accuse or condemn the guilty, since the latter will be in desperate danger, whereas moderation stimulates many to accusations and does not divert condemnations, was desirous of remodeling his proposition somehow, and bade ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... another mode of reaction of the violent, instinctive, and attractive type. The feud was originally of defensive value to the individual and to the tribe, since in the absence of criminal law the feeling that retaliation would follow was a deterrent from acts of aggression. But it was an expensive method of obtaining order in early society, since response to stimulus reinstated the stimulus, and every death called for another death; so, finally, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... some crews the title Captain did not convey autocratic power nor dictatorial prerogatives, his power to command absolutely being confined only to times of combat. A usurpation of power frequently brought death as a deterrent to any aspiring successor. In those cases where the captain was not recognized as the sole ruler, each man had a vote in affairs of moment, and had an undivided interest and title ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... until she reaches and reveals their absolute inmost truth. This objective scientific method has a tendency to become sternly judicial, and in extreme cases she even seems to be using her weak or imperfect characters as deterrent examples. Inevitably, with her disposition, the scientific tendency grew upon her. Beginning with 'Middlemarch' (1872), which is perhaps her masterpiece, it seems to some critics decidedly too preponderant, giving to her ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... added to their anxiety to cut the Spaniard out; for although the prize money would be less than if she had been a richly laden merchantman, the honour and glory was proportionately greater. The undertaking would be a serious one, but the prospect of danger is never deterrent ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... declare that the oath has a direct tendency to create perjury. Anyone, with a true sense of morality will understand the reason of this. Fear is not a moral motive; and when the threatened punishment is very remote or very uncertain, it has next to no deterrent effect. Cupidity is matched against fear, and the odds of the game being in its favor, it wins. But if a moral motive is appealed to, the case is different. Many a man will tell a lie in the witness-box who would scruple to do so "on his honor"; many a man will lie before God who would scruple ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... remained in doubt for nearly fifteen years, for few private suitors invoked it and the Attorneys-General were not hostile to the ordinary practices of business. A great financial depression which appeared in 1893 acted well as a temporary deterrent of trusts. There was a suspicion that the law had been intended not to be enforced, but to act as a popular antidote to the McKinley Tariff Bill which was pending ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... hand, should the child be reasonably in doubt as to the nature of his offence we must spare no trouble in explaining it to him. Punishment will be most effective when the child is convinced that he is rightly convicted. If it is to act as a real deterrent, he must agree to be punished—a frame of mind which, if it can be produced, may be welcomed as a sure sign that training is ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... have invented an ingenious method of circuitously putting down what he thought bad habits, namely, by prohibiting things with an exception, so that the exception should, in the guise of an exemption, really carry out the sting and operate as a deterrent. Thus he forbade a woman to have more than one maid, unless she was drunk; he forbade her to wear jewels or embroidered robes, or go abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... conspicuously in the civil war of the Fronde; and, though so much self-abnegation, courage, constancy, and heroism, well or ill displayed, may obtain some share of pardon for errors it would be wrong to palliate or condone, their example, it is to be hoped, will prove deterrent rather than contagious. La Rochefoucauld—a moralist, though by no means a moral man—who well knew the sex, had seen at work these political women of the time of the Fronde. That opportunity does not appear to have inspired him ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... follow the process of reasoning by which the CHANCELLOR convinced himself that the Excess Profits Tax, which last year he described as a great deterrent to enterprise and industry, only, justifiable as "a temporary measure," should now be not merely continued but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... enduring settlement that will make their recurrence impossible can best be brought about under an authority which the Chinese nation reverences and obeys. While so doing we forego no jot of our undoubted right to exact exemplary and deterrent punishment of the responsible authors and abettors of the criminal acts whereby we and other ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... age, which thought that unemployment was usually a man's own fault, which saw a malingerer in every recipient of relief, which was obsessed by the bad psychology of pains and penalties and looked instinctively for a deterrent as the ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... Lighter-than-air craft, mainly for reasons of cost and vulnerability, did not receive such an impetus from the war as did the aeroplane, but the modern airship has claims for use over distances exceeding 1,000 miles. It can fly by night with even greater ease than by day; fog is no deterrent; engine trouble does not bring it down; and it can take advantage of prevailing winds. It would reduce the sea journey from England to Karachi from 22 to 5 days; from England to Johannesburg from 21 to 7 days; and from England ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... with others from the royal code [7] where applicable; and so I do my best to shape the members of my household into the likeness of just men concerning that which passes through their hands. And now observe—the laws first mentioned act as penalties, deterrent to transgressors only; whereas the royal code aims higher: by it not only is the malefactor punished, but the righteous and just person is rewarded. [8] The result is, that many a man, beholding how the just grow ever ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... those who have dreamed of Anglo-American alliances awake to find themselves deceived by the very intensity of their desires. The bloodship between the nations is itself the surest deterrent of alliance. Just as in the Church marriage between nigh kinsmen is forbidden, so political marriage between the British and American nations can never be. The United States is possessed of a single idea—the consolidation and enrichment of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... that she could know anything of the deterrent force exercised on Swithin by his dead uncle that morning. Yet her manner tallied so curiously well with such knowledge that he was struck by ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Deterrent" :   millstone, preventative, preventive, straitjacket, obstacle, albatross, bind, deterrence, deter, diriment impediment, drag, obstruction, difficulty



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