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Ill-usage   /ɪl-jˈusədʒ/   Listen
Ill-usage

noun
1.
Cruel or inhumane treatment.  Synonyms: abuse, ill-treatment, maltreatment.






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"Ill-usage" Quotes from Famous Books



... depart from its universal maxims of toleration, liberality, and indifference.... The use of the torture to extort confession.... The choice of women to be the subjects of this torture, when the ill-usage of women was, in like manner, abhorrent to the Roman character" ("Diegesis," ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... again suspiciously. There was the gleaming point of that knife hidden within the soft crumb; and as his mental capacity was nearly as dark as his skin, and his faith in the whites, unfortunately—from the class he had encountered and from whom he had received more than one piece of cruel ill-usage—far from perfect, he saw in imagination that sharp point suddenly thrust right through and into his black flesh as soon as he tried to take the ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... for happier aims. The child of today is often temporarily willful and disobedient, but on the whole he (and more often she) is pathetically patient and long-suffering under all sorts of hardships and injustices, and has no idea of anything like an industrial rebellion. Indeed overwork and ill-usage have upon children the markedly demoralizing effect of cowing them permanently, so that in oppressing a child you do more than deprive him of his childhood, you weaken what ought to be the backbone of his maturity. But improve conditions, whether by law or otherwise, and you will ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... devil, "the slanderer and divider" who divides her from man, and makes her live a life-long tragedy, which goes on in more cottages than in palaces—a vie e part, a vie incomprise—a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary, self-willed, self-conceited martyrdom, instead of being (as God intended) half of the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot which makes this world endurable. Towards making her that, and ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... turn aside from the crowd of the mediaeval city, and look at what the workmen have just laid bare, or what the merchant has just brought from Rome or from Greece. Look at this: it is corroded by oxides, battered by ill-usage, stained with earth: it is not a group, not even a whole statue, it has neither head nor arms remaining; it is a mere broken fragment of antique sculpture,—a naked body with a fold or two of drapery; it is ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... leaves and twigs showed no signs of his teeth—but on the contrary, he had moved forward rapidly, and as if with some special determination. The broken branches which they saw were more likely to have been torn off out of spite at the ill-usage he had received, and the disappointment at not having succeeded in his ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... nervous manner smoothed away, as if rest had come to her at last; and even if the renewed intercourse were only to result in a friendship, there was hope that the troubled spirit had found repose now that misunderstandings were over, and the sore sense of ill-usage appeased. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I found in a ravine some sadly stunted spruces, firs, and larches, not more than three feet high,—melancholy, wind-draggled, frightened-looking shrubs, which had wondrously the air of lifelong ill-usage. The tangled tops were mostly flattened and pressed over to one side, and altogether they seemed so piteous, that one wished to say, "Nobody shall do so to you any more, poor things!" Excepting these, the immediate coast, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... him and tearing his clothes. Fear for herself—fear of his supernatural gifts—were both merged in the stronger feeling of rage; and at last she, assisted by one Stammers, a carpenter, pushed the old man into a brook. He died at Halsted poorhouse from the effects of the ill-usage. Emma Smith and Stammers were sentenced to six months hard labour for their share in this outrage—the judge excusing the leniency of the punishment on the ground of the woman's state of mental excitement, and of the man's having pulled Dummey out of the water when the ducking ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... mistook her dispassionateness for a veil of politeness over a sense of ill-usage. 'I am not altogether to blame,' he said. 'There were two or three reasons for secrecy. One was the recent death of her relative the testator, though that did not apply to you. But remember, Elfride,' he continued in a stiffer tone, 'you had mixed ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... commanding millions to be without one attendant; and it was the ingratitude in his daughters' denying it, more than what he would suffer by the want of it, which pierced this poor king to the heart; insomuch, that with this double ill-usage, and vexation for having so foolishly given away a kingdom, his wits began to be unsettled, and while he said he knew not what, he vowed revenge against those unnatural hags, and to make examples of them that should be a terror ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... as December, 1857, Forbes began to write mysterious letters to Sanborn, Stearns, and others of the circle, in which he complained of ill-usage at the hands of Brown. It appears that Forbes erroneously assumed that the Boston friends were aware of Brown's contract with him and of his plans for the attack upon Virginia; but, since they were entirely ignorant on both points, the correspondence was conducted at cross-purposes for several months. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... in vain that this unhappy creature endeavoured to avert their resentment by submitting to all the ill-usage they chose to put upon her; in vain that she underwent unresistingly the worst usage at the hand of Lady Cromwell, her landlady, who, abusing her with the worst epithets, tore her cap from her head, clipped out some of her hair, and gave it to Mrs. Throgmorton to burn it for a counter-charm. Nay, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... them, some that made a frequent practice of deer stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was persecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a parody upon him; and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in London." Archdeacon Davies of Saperton, Gloucestershire, in the late ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... his cousin Alice had been unable to repress. He had been feeding on his anger, and indulging it, telling himself at one moment that he would let her and her money go from him whither they list,—and making inward threats in the next that the time should come in which he would punish her for this ill-usage. But there was the necessity of resolving what he would say to Mr Scruby. To Mr Scruby was still due some trifle on the cost of the last election; but even if this were paid, Mr Scruby would make no heavy advance towards the expense of the next election. Whoever might ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... of Jesus, when he passed through the midst of the crowd who were already assembled in the front of the house, was that of a victim led to be sacrificed; his countenance was totally changed and disfigured from ill-usage, and his garments stained and torn; but the sight of his sufferings, far from exciting a feeling of compassion in the hard hearted Jews, simply filled them with disgust, and increased their rage. Pity was, indeed, a feeling ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... "Ladies' Entrance," and while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been "put" with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest in him, and with pretended reluctance he gave his promise to wash his face and hands and to call upon her that evening at the theatrical boarding-house ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly with his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later story of his captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... hot weather of the autumn still held; in the same still hour of the afternoon, the hour in which Susannah's baptism had taken place the day before, Angel Halsey, pallid with his yesterday's beating and ill-usage, but steadfast and even joyful of face, walked up to the front door of the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... creatures kindly cared for; yet what a piteous place was their nursery! Some of the recent arrivals looked as if ill-usage had been exhausted upon them before they were brought hither. Blows and drugs and starvation had been tried upon them, but, with the tenacity of infancy, they clung to life. They would not die;—well, then, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... complete failure to secure evidence against Jesus from their false witnesses, and the formulation of a charge of blasphemy in consequence of his answer to the high-priest acknowledging himself to be the Messiah (Mark xiv. 61-64). The early hours before the day were given over to mockery and ill-usage of the captive Jesus. When morning was come, the sanhedrin was convened, and he was condemned to death on the charge of blasphemy (Mark xv. 1; Luke xxii. 66-71), and then was led in bonds to the Roman governor for execution, since the Romans had taken from the sanhedrin the authority to execute ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... provided, however, that slaves, in any event, should be forfeited by all those who had shown themselves unworthy to hold them by neglect or ill-usage; by all public functionaries, or such as had held offices under the government; by ecclesiastics and religious corporations; and lastly,—a sweeping clause,—by all who had taken a criminal part in the feuds ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... During the trip no ill-usage had been offered her, as far as he could see, but upon reaching the village she had been spirited away, and he had not seen ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... fact of the matter is, Gil," he began at last, "as I told you just now, if ever I do marry, mercenary considerations are likely to be at the bottom of the business. I don't mean to say that I would marry a woman I disliked, and take it out of her in ill-usage or neglect. I am not quite such a scoundrel as that. But if I had the luck to meet with a woman I could like, tolerably pretty and agreeable, and all that kind of thing, and weak enough to care for me—a woman ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... to announce the duke's death. The dark news was given by me to the duchess and the princess in Margaret's parlor. These poor women tried to grieve, but they were not hypocrites, and they could not weep. Each had received at Charles's hands only ill-usage and cruelty, and in their hearts they must have ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in London.' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... peculiarly distracting to the comfort-loving temperament of others. The latter are alone suited to endure the crass habits and dull routine of domesticated life. Suppose that an animal which has been captured and half-tamed, received ill-usage from his captors, either as punishment or through mere brutality, and that he rushed indignantly into the forest with his ribs aching from blows and stones. If a comfort-loving animal, he will probably be no gainer by the change, more serious alarms and no less ill-usage awaits him; ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... worked hard, as they worked; and that the outside world was hard to him, as it was to them; and there had been an apparent sincerity of godliness about the man, and a manifest struggle to do his duty in spite of the world's ill-usage, which had won its way even with the rough; so that Mr Crawley's name had stood high with many in his parish, in spite of the unfortunate peculiarity of his disposition. This was the man who was now accused of stealing a cheque for ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... of law, 'any custom or usage to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding.' Among other provisions it was stipulated that wages should no longer be paid to them in liquor or tobacco, and that, in the event of a servant having reasonable ground of complaint against his master for ill-usage, and not being able to bear the expense of a summons, one should be issued to him free of charge. By this ordinance a stop was put, as far as the law could be enforced, to the bondage, other than admitted and legalized slavery, by which through nearly two centuries the Dutch ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... Civilised. The word requires definition. But looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will make him. Herein he is the noblest specimen of humanity that ever walked the earth. Therefore, the white man exterminates his race. But the time will come when by mere force of numbers the black race will predominate, and exterminate the white. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... common people well: they are laborious, grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased. When I or any other governor say to one of the people, 'Brother, this or that must be done,' he crosses his hands on his breast, and says, 'It shall be done;' but he takes particular notice of what I ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... but I should like you to know this, and to remember that I who say it am a man of many faults, but one virtue: never in my life have I broken my word. If I find that my niece has disappeared through any ill-usage of yours, I will risk the few years that may be left to me of life, and I will shoot you like a dog the first time ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... directions, and is in the act of establishing an indisputable claim to gratuitous lodgings for the night, when the entrance of his wife, a wretched, worn-out woman, apparently in the last stage of consumption, whose face bears evident marks of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly equal to the burden—light enough, God knows!—of the thin, sickly child she carries in her arms, turns his cowardly rage in a safer direction. 'Come home, dear,' cries the miserable creature, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... of ill-usage which her husband Shung had cruelly adopted in order to drive Pearl to commit suicide was known to every one, and that she should now appear to wreak vengeance on him was not considered at all wonderful; ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is—it is difficult to begin, is not it? and you know I never was good at expressing myself, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... to bear with your ill-usage, I think proper to be gone from you; however, that you may not want company, I have left you the bear, as the most suitable companion in the world, that could be ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... humble downward. She saw now why the darkness had hung so long over her prayers. Filled with unforgiving bitterness against her mother she had asked God to forgive her, scarcely deeming her fault one to be repented of. A brief struggle against the memory of bitter ill-usage and fierce wrong inflicted by her mother, and Mary drew a deep free breath. Her eyes filled, and meekly folding her hands she ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... he stood in the entrance hall, observing the crowd, indulging his sense of ill-usage at the hands of fate as he saw the officers lingering with many unnecessary touches over the cloaking of their fair partners, and as he caught the answering glances and smiles that rewarded ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... well-meant offers appear to have been mistaken for signs of weakness by the Boer leaders, and encouraged them to harden their hearts. Of the delegates who conveyed the terms to their fellow countrymen two at least were shot, several were condemned to death, and few returned without ill-usage. In no case did they bear back a favourable answer. The only result of the proclamation was to burden the British resources by an enormous crowd of women and children who were kept and fed in refugee camps, while their fathers and husbands ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... swooped vulturelike. Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youth are mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind. It was soon known that Miss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to a skeleton by paternal ill-usage. Romance likes its heroines small. The countryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her to Harry Tatham. What could be more appropriate? Duddon could afford to risk a dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus than the splendid young man ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... forgiveness. The king was so delighted that he pardoned them, and rewarded the old man handsomely, and insisted on his remaining in his palace. The king of the peacocks next did all he could to make up for the ill-usage the king and the prince had suffered. The nurse returned the bushel of golden crowns and Rosetta's fine clothes; and the wedding rejoicings lasted a whole fortnight. So everybody was satisfied, not forgetting Fretillon, who was fed ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... and death by this incident, that the distress of her personal relations with Swithin was the single force in the world which could have coerced her into abandoning to him the interval she would fain have set apart for getting over these new and painful impressions. Self-pity for ill-usage afforded her good reasons for ceasing to love Sir Blount; but he was yet too closely intertwined with her past life to be destructible on ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... proportions. Jonson, in time, tires of Chapman's everlasting envy and misanthropy, and quarrels with him and in turn becomes the object of Chapman's invectives. After Shakespeare's death Jonson made amends for his past ill-usage by defending his memory against Chapman, who, even then, continued to ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... was in London at the close of 1826, "were some which represented one of Bonaparte's attendants at St. Helena, General Gourgaud, as having been guilty of gross unfairness, giving the English Government private information that the Emperor's complaints of ill-usage were utterly unfounded, and yet then and afterwards aiding and assisting the delusion in France as to the harshness of Sir Hudson Lowe's conduct towards his captive. Sir Walter, when using these remarkable documents, guessed that Gourgaud might be inclined to fix a personal quarrel on himself; and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... from Monsieur Guidet, and a couple of hours later the little Frenchman arrived at Grey House in a sorry state of apprehension. The clock!—impossible that he could have failed in any way!—there must have been gross and deliberate ill-usage! ... and many more words to the same effect. When he stopped for breath Caw assured him that there was nothing wrong with the clock and mentioned why and by whom the summons had been sent him. Whereupon Monsieur went frantic. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... innocence are charming to contemplate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite of mysterious separation and union, of hope delayed and sickened heart—in the teeth of Vanessa, and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift into such woful pitfalls ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... wife. The panel was discovered about fifty years ago in the market-place of Bruges, where an old woman was using the back of it to skin eels on; but so soundly had the picture been painted that even this ill-usage did not ruin it. The lady was a very plain Flemish woman with no beauty of feature or expression, but John has revealed her character so vividly that to look at her likeness is to know her. It is indeed a long leap from the Richard II. ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... acquitted by a white jury, his white neighbours escorted him home with a band of music. More frequently, unscrupulous employers, especially on the frontiers of civilization, will try to defraud their native workmen, or will provoke them by ill-usage to run away before the day of payment arrives. But there are no lynchings, as in America, and the white judges and magistrates, if not always the juries, administer the law ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... out of your head!' she exclaimed. 'There's no pity, no ill-usage in the case. I wilfully did what I was warned that he would not bear, and there ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... perfidy, when that is called for by the circumstances of the case; and that habitual acts of cruelty to other creatures, will, nine times out of ten, produce, when the power is possessed, cruelty to human beings. The ill-usage of horses, and particularly asses, is a grave and a just charge against this nation. No other nation on earth is guilty of it to the same extent. Not only by blows, but by privation, are we cruel towards these useful, docile, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... gone. I have known of his catching a party that was looking for him. He has told me that he could have killed single men several times, but he would not; he would rather let them get off. He went into the British lines at Savannah, as a deserter, complaining, at the same time, of our ill-usage of him; he was gladly received (they having heard of his character) and caressed by them. He stayed eight days, and after informing himself well of their strength, situation and intentions, he returned to us again; but that game he could not play ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... it, a ferocious Russian mutiny, or uproar from below, which would have ruined everything in few minutes more. (Mannstein, p. 130 (no date, April-May, 1742.) He suffered, with excellent silence, now and afterwards, much ill-usage from above withal;—till Friedrich himself, in the third year hence, was lucky enough to get him as General. Friedrich's Sister Ulrique, the marriage of Princess Ulrique,—that also, as it chanced, had something to do with this Peace of Abo. But we anticipate ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the wisdom of Solomon, he could not help himself in the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told, that it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man's usual practice, he would conclude ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... sympathy with the pleasures and occupations of his class, since the disappearance of George Talboys. Elderly benchers indulged in facetious observations upon the young man's pale face and moody manner. They suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. They told him to be of good cheer, and invited him to supper-parties, at which "lovely woman, with all her faults, God bless her," was drunk by gentlemen who shed tears as they proposed the toast, and were maudlin ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... soldier fell forward gasping, and was carried on half senseless, clutching at the pommel of his saddle. The women began to cry, and the men with muttered curses and clenched hands writhed in that hell of impotent passion, where brutal injustice and ill-usage have to go without check or even remonstrance. Belmont gripped at his hip-pocket for his little revolver, and then remembered that he had already given it to Miss Adams. If his hot hand had clutched it, it would have meant the death ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... adoption of a heroine stained with the vice of intemperance. The theme is unpleasant; the author chose it at her peril. It must be added, however, that Janet Dempster has many provocations. Married to a brutal drunkard, she takes refuge in drink against his ill-usage; and the story deals less with her lapse into disgrace than with her redemption, through the kind offices of the Reverend Edgar Tryan,—by virtue of which, indeed, it takes its place in the clerical series. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... who were also Mohammedans, had lately obtained the mastery over the Arabs, and had secured dominion over the Holy Land. They were fierce warriors, ignorant and cruel, who either put the pilgrims to death or subjected them to torture and ill-usage. In 1095 Pope Urban II. came to Clermont to appeal to the Christians of the West to set out on a Crusade—a war of the Cross—to deliver the Holy City from the infidel. After he had spoken the multitude burst out with the cry, "It is the will of ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... she could like to accompany the Colonel(807) and you to Strawberry Hill and the Vine, the seneschals of those castles will be very proud to see her. I am sorry to be forced to say any thing civil in a letter to you; you deserve nothing but ill-usage for disappointing us so often, but we stay till we have got you into our power, and then—why then, I am afraid we shall still be what I have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole



Words linked to "Ill-usage" :   abuse, persecution, maltreatment, ill-use, inhuman treatment, cruelty, child neglect, mistreatment, child abuse



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