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Irregular   /ɪrˈɛgjələr/   Listen
Irregular

adjective
1.
Contrary to rule or accepted order or general practice.
2.
Not occurring at expected times.  Synonym: unpredictable.
3.
(used of the military) not belonging to or engaged in by regular army forces.  "Irregular warfare"
4.
(of solids) not having clear dimensions that can be measured; volume must be determined with the principle of liquid displacement.
5.
Falling below the manufacturer's standard.
6.
Deviating from normal expectations; somewhat odd, strange, or abnormal.  Synonym: atypical.  "Atypical clinical findings" , "Atypical pneumonia" , "Highly irregular behavior"
7.
Lacking continuity or regularity.  Synonym: temporary.  "Employed on a temporary basis"
8.
(of a surface or shape); not level or flat or symmetrical.
9.
Independent in behavior or thought.  Synonyms: maverick, unorthodox.  "Maverick politicians"



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"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books



... over a century in the possession of the noble House of Chalons, was shortly to pass into that of Nassau, and to furnish the title of William the Silent, the future deliverer of Holland. The other and larger one was the Comtat Venaissin, a fief directly dependent upon the Pope. Of irregular shape, and touching the Rhone both above and below Orange, the Comtat Venaissin nearly enclosed the diminutive principality in its folds. Its capital, Avignon, having forfeited the distinction enjoyed in the fourteenth century as ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... written by the late Dr. Richard Lydekker, an excellent description: —This species congregates in large flocks, many pairs incubating their eggs under the same roof, which is composed of cartloads of grass piled on a branch of some camel- thorn tree in one enormous mass of an irregular umbrella shape, looking like a miniature haystack and almost solid, but with the under surface (which is nearly flat) honeycombed all over with little cavities, which serve not only as places for incubation, but also as a refuge against rain ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... people, creating privileges and monopolies, erecting about themselves barriers of exclusion, national custom, and personal conduct, which have been rigorously maintained for centuries. They have levied irregular and hurtful taxes without the consent of the people, and have restricted foreign trade to treaty ports. They have placed the likin embargo on merchandise, obstructed internal commerce, retarded the creation of industrial enterprises, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... were therefore gathered together from the various houses in which they had been confined, and were brought to a large hall in the Hotel de Ville, capable of containing from four to five hundred persons, and which was soon full. An irregular tribunal arrogating to itself powers of life and death was formed, and a clerk was appointed to register its decrees. A list of all the prisoners was given him, a cross placed before a name indicating that its bearer ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Turks, finding their own troops not well adapted to the irregular and desperate kind of warfare waged by the Uzcoques, and also unable to compete with them in the rapidity of their movements, formed a corps expressly for the pursuit of the freebooters, which was composed of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... and servant girls also prefer the city. They dislike the long irregular hours of the country; they prefer to work where the hours are regular, where they do not come into such close touch with the soil, and where they do not have to battle with the elements. In the city they work under shelter and in accordance ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... "When fortune with proud right hand plies her changes and ebbs and flows like foaming Euripus." Euripus was proverbial for irregular tides. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... regimental colours for the battalions of the Division. This appeal was promptly met, to Redmond's great delight—delight which was soon changed into vexation, for the War Office stepped in, declared the proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any temporary battalion. General Parsons was obliged to publish an explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far to confirm the impression that the War Office, with all its preoccupations, had time to ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... fat, coarse-looking man with little pig-like eyes and scanty tufts of black beard and whiskers growing in irregular patches on his cheeks and chin, like clumps of gorse on clayey banks. He was dressed—in a manner—in an ill-fitting black cloth suit imported from Sydney. His hair was very black and shiny, plastered down over his temples and beautifully parted ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke

... Mrs. Hastings rustled away for her bonnet. Miss Holland sat where the afternoon light, falling through the corner window, smote her hair to a glory of pale colour, and St. George's eyes wandered to the glass through which the sun fell. It was a thin pane of irregular pieces set in a design of quaint, meaningless characters, in the centre of which was the figure of a sphinx, crucified upon an upright cross and surrounded by a border of coiled asps with winged heads. The window glittered ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... nor any one in England saw the like before." Wood tells us that Baltzar "was buried in the cloister belonging to St. Peter's Church in Westminster." The emoluments attached to the Royal band, according to Samuel Pepys, appear to have been somewhat irregular. In the Diary, December 19, 1666, we read: "Talked of the King's family with Mr. Kingston, the organist. He says many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behindhand for their wages; nay, Evens, the famous ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... were exhorted to reserve their fire; and they bore that of the enemy's light troops in front (which was galling though irregular) with the utmost patience and good order, waiting for the main body of the enemy which fast advanced upon them. At forty yards distance our troops gave their fire, which took place in its full extent, and made a terrible havoc among the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... there, scattered among the military and Bob's irregular troops, were black uniformed policemen, rosy-faced young men, fresh from a healthy life among the cattle ranches of Roscommon, drafted to their own immense bewilderment into this strange city of Belfast, where no one regarded them with any reverence, or treated ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... subsistence, and at the same time diminish the number of recruits and conscripts he received; the valley district while under his control not only supplying Lee with an abundance of food, but also furnishing him many men for his regular and irregular forces. Grant's instructions to destroy the valley began with the letter of August 5 to Hunter, which was turned over to me, and this was followed at intervals by more specific directions, all showing the earnestness of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... have for the last twenty years been prosecuting in Algerine Africa, here shine resplendent; for Vernet has painted, by Louis-Philippe's order, and at France's cost, a succession of battle-pieces, wherein French numbers and science are seen prevailing over Arab barbarism and irregular valour, in combats whereof the very names have been wisely forgotten by mankind, though they occurred but yesterday. One of these is much the largest painting I ever saw, and is probably the largest in the world, and it seems to have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various

... credit; moreover, they were only "petticoats." But he felt that he was lucky to be there, where there were curious things which were useful to play with—Chinese cups and saucers, and weapons from the South Sea Islands. Manna had a necklace of white teeth, sharp and irregular, strung together in a haphazard way, which she maintained were human teeth, and she had the courage to wear them round her bare neck. And the garden was full of wonderful plants; there were maize, and tobacco, and all sorts ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... quitted, as the remaining distance to Hollow's Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick, lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark; not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... treatment of the same image: "For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back by the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... the asteroids, this was originally jagged and irregular. Martian engineers in fitting it artificially to support life, had roughed it into a sphere and pulverized quantities of the rock into soil. Here, at the apex, was a ring of rough naked hills enclosing a pit ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman

... already been a talk of forming the unattached officers and civilians into a sort of irregular cavalry, so I should think that you will get leave; but it will be a hazardous business to make your way eighty miles through the country, especially as the mutineers are marching in all directions ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... thirty years of age, and about five feet three inches high; his face was of the colour of pepper, and nearly as rugged as a nutmeg grater; his hair was black; with his eyes he squinted, and grinned with his lips, which were very much apart, disclosing two very irregular rows of teeth; he was dressed in the true Levitical fashion, in a suit of spotless black, and a neckerchief ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... been severely censured for this occurrence, and not without reason. Nothing is more certain, of course, than that he did not order it. It seems to have been the work of the loyalist volunteers, who had without doubt suffered much at the hands of the rebels. 'The irregular troops employed,' wrote one of the British officers, 'were not to be controlled, and were in every case, I believe, the instrument of the infliction.' Far too much burning and pillaging went on, indeed, in the wake of the rebellion. 'You know,' ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles

... carrying camel and had made an excellent saddle so that she could sleep in it lying down; nevertheless the desert air, which she breathed day and night, mainly gave her strength to endure the hardships and irregular hours. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... style: the body of the church is low,—so low, that the nearly flat leaden roof would be visible from the churchyard, were it not for the carved parapet with which it is surrounded. It is cruciform, though the transepts are irregular, one being larger than the other; and the tower is much too high in proportion to the church. But the colour of the building is perfect; it is that rich yellow gray which one finds nowhere but in the south and west of England, and which is so strong ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... opinion knew little of this change. An interesting, if somewhat irrational and irregular plan to thwart Southern ship-building operations, had been taken up by the United States Navy Department. This was to buy the Rams outright by the offer of such a price as, it was thought, would be so tempting ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... Philopoemen pointed this out to them, and persuaded them to adopt the heavy shield and pike in place of their light arms, to accoutre themselves with helmet, corslet, and greaves, and to endeavour to move in a steady unbroken mass instead of in a loose irregular skirmishing order. When he had induced them to put on complete armour he raised their spirit by telling them that they would be unconquerable, while he also effected a most wholesome change in their luxurious habits of life. It was impossible entirely to do ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... region of the sky. Low down, towards the south is seen the small constellation Corvus, recognised by its irregular quadrilateral of stars. Of the two upper stars, the left-hand one is Algorab, a wide double, the components placed as in Plate 3, 23".5 apart, the larger of magnitude 3, the smaller 8-1/2, the colours ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... of this old quarter presented a curious conglomeration of the architectural monstrosities of seven centuries. It was a fantastic tumult of irregular shapes that only took the semblance of human design upon being considered in detail. As a whole they seemed the result of a great upheaval of nature—the work of some powerful demon—rather than that of human architectural ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... idea, and he half forgot the weird mystery gathering about him. He stepped nearer the sphere. It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular bluish areas would be seas; the green and the brown spaces land. In some parts, the surface appeared mistily ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson

... entered the beautiful bay, everything struck us as strange and picturesque. The soldiers of the garrison, the prison built by General Tacon, the irregular houses with their fronts painted red or pale blue, and with the cool but uninhabited look produced by the absence of glass windows; the merchant ships and large men-of-war; vessels from every port in the commercial world, the little boats ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... you an apology, but you know I am a poor correspondent at best, and of late business has called me here and there until I scarcely knew one day where I would be the next; consequently I have received my mail irregularly and have been irregular myself in writing." ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... the very picture of an old-fashioned English dairy— green-shadowy, dark, dank, and cool—floored with great irregular slabs, mostly of green serpentine, polished into smooth hollows by the feet of generations of mistresses and dairy-maids. Its only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy, which stood open, and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... the table-drawer a thin copy-book, about ten pages in length, no more, and offered it to Aratoff. The latter grasped it eagerly, recognised the irregular, bold handwriting,—the handwriting of that anonymous letter,—opened it at random, and began ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... who had been at work all this while apparently for nothing. Then all at once there was a loud cheer, for the shoal, a very large one, suddenly appeared at the top again, fretting the water as the fish swam here and there, shut-up as they were in an irregular circle about two hundred yards across, and hopelessly entangled, for if there had been a loophole of escape they would ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... which showed one conscious of authority, and potent in will; and the wave of his hand to the knight was the gesture of a prince on his throne. Nor, indeed, was that brave and ill-fated chief without some irregular gleams of mental cultivation, which under happier auspices, might have centred into steadfast light. Though the learning which had once existed in Wales (the last legacy of Rome) had long since expired in broil ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... air and glow out more richly from the sweet disturbance. It was a glorious afternoon, the lawns were as green as an English meadow, and my observation of beautiful things has no higher comparison. All the irregular hills, ravines, and rocky projections were so broken up with trailing vines and sweet masses of spring-flowers, that every corner and nook your eye turned upon, was ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... Her skin was singularly white, but there was a healthy glow of colour in her cheeks; while her large, grey eyes, shaded by long lashes, were full of life and brightness. As to her features, they were perhaps a trifle irregular, and her elder sisters were supposed to eclipse her altogether; but to my mind she was far the most taking of ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... irregular efforts and produced a forced smartness that, like a cheap dye, refused to stand sunshine. He acquired a sort of parsimony also, in which acquisition he was helped by one or two phases of absolute impecuniosity. But he was hopeless in competition against the naturally gifted, the born hustlers, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... room and went up-stairs. After a short time she returned and held out a stout thread upon which were strung small, irregular scraps of dress material. "This is my dress bundle. My mother started it for me when I was a baby and kept it up till I was big enough to do it myself. Every time I got a new dress a little patch of the goods was threaded on ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... ruled surface of the sheet by the automatic registering-needle was irregular, showing the ups and downs of the current, rising sharply from sundown and gradually declining after nine o'clock, as the lights went out. Somewhere between eleven and twelve o'clock, however, the irregular fall of the curve was broken by a ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... this occupation there was a testy rap at the door, and Mrs. Driver appeared. She eyed my manoeuvres with the rejection form with a severe frown. After a preliminary sniff she embarked upon a rapid lecture on what she called my irregular and untidy habits. I had turned her second-floor back, she declared, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... of this evergreen grove, was a building of hard, dark red bricks, and so irregular in construction as to defy all description; it had so many gable ends, tall chimneys, little dormer windows and latticed windows, as to confuse the spectator; and so many great doors, each with its own portico, as to make a strange visitor utterly uncertain ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... his musical instincts drove him to the organ, and we find him playing for occasional services at Eastham Parish Church at the age of nine. After his father's death, when he was about fourteen, he spent a couple of years in irregular attendance at school, and at the time of his confirmation was persuaded that by superhuman effort of will his physical disabilities might be disregarded and a life of some value be worked out. Then began the desperate struggle that ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... such a question," she said. "You shouldn't ask a woman whether she doesn't want to know you. It would be irregular enough, under the circumstances, to say that ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... case of the garden of old, even she was a long time discovering any design in the confusing blur of their outlines. Perhaps it was because each day was like a bit of glass in a child's kaleidoscope, an episode in itself, ugly, irregular and meaningless, until Felicia's rage against life tumbled each piece into position and let them all reflect in quaint order against the clear sweet mirrors of her faith and hope ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... custom of the Scargate race, whence also his surname (if such it were) arose. For of old time and in outlandish parts a finer humanity prevailed, and a richer practical wisdom upon certain questions. Irregular offsets of the stock, instead of being cast upon the world as waifs and strays, were allowed a place in the kitchen-garden or stable-yard, and flourished there without disgrace, while useful and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... the river; so that they are not at right angles to each other, as might have been expected, though as much regularity as possible has been observed. The most central spot is the Admiralty Square, a vast, irregular, open space, with the river on one side of it; and near the river stands, on a vast block of granite, a colossal equestrian statue of Peter the Great, with his arm stretched out in an attitude of command. Forming the different sides of this vast open space ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... was an extremely vague agreement with the French, an unsigned agreement entered into in haste by representatives on our side of little authority, under which we were supposed to provide all sorts of things for the Hellenes. But the whole business was extremely irregular and it was in a state of hopeless confusion—it will be referred to again in a later chapter. In the War Office alone, several departments and branches were concerned, including my own up to a certain point. The Ministries of Munitions and Shipping were in the affair as well, together ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... day, much of the way had of necessity been made slowly. Wherever the dusty, irregular roads had permitted greater speed, the swarthy Mexican who had served Senor Montez as chauffeur on the trip had opened wide on the speed. At the end of their long automobile ride Tom and Harry fairly ached from the jolting they ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... those days was known in the town as an irregular, eccentric spirit, rather hopeless for any practical purpose. He could make a good lead-pencil but having mastered the art he dropped it, preferring to lead a vagabond life, loitering on the river and in the woods, rather to the disquietude ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... of them a little pale; the meanest, raggedest, and most insignificant not unimpressive in the deep and solemn silence with which they stood, their eyes fastened on the Colonel, waiting for him to speak. He stepped out in front of them, slowly ran his eye along the irregular line, up and down, taking in every man in his glance, resting on some longer than on others, the older men, then dropped them to the ground, and then suddenly, as if with an effort, began to speak. ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... the shops, and the exteriors of a few buildings. The tower of a very beautiful old church lifted its head above the mass of house-roofs as they drew near the place; in the town the streets were irregular and narrow and of ancient fashion in great part. Here however the gloom of the day was much lost. What light there was, was broken and shadowed by many a jutting out stone in the old mason-work, many, many a recess and projecting house-front ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... had not anticipated or provided for such a contingency. Meanwhile, our adversaries proved themselves fully alive to the advantage which our situation afforded them, and fully prepared to make the most of it, for they kept up a brisk though irregular fire of musketry upon us from which we soon began to suffer rather severely, two of my men being hit within the space of as many minutes, while sharp cries of pain to our right and left told us that the occupants ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... have learned that I am a man of large and liberal views in my profession, and of a very justifiable ambition. The idea has often occurred to me of combining in one establishment all the various modes of practice which are known as irregular. This, as will be understood, is really only a wider application of the idea which prompted me to unite in my own business homeopathy and the practice of medicine. I proposed to my partner, accordingly, to combine with our present business that of spiritualism, which I knew had ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell

... leaves from the hedges and strewed them upon the ground; sometimes she stopped suddenly, then rushed forward with impetuosity, then again stood still, and gazed upon the clear blue heaven. Sometimes her beautiful bosom was heaved with quick and irregular motion, and sometimes a half- suppressed sigh escaped from her ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... Axe grooved in the middle, irregular in shape, and much chipped off at the lower edge and rounded off at ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... circumstances, that the less I say about it, the fewer mistakes I shall make. We stood out to sea, under close-reefed top-sails and courses, till eleven o'clock at night; when we wore and stood to the northward, having a very high and irregular sea. At five o'clock next morning, the gale abated, and we bore up for the land; at eight o'clock, the West Cape bore E. by N. 1/2 N., for which we steered, and entered Dusky Bay about noon. In the entrance of it, we found 44 fathoms water, a sandy bottom, the West Cape bearing S.S.E., and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... since August, 1812, when the Orders in Council were known to have been repealed. The commissioners were indeed to do their best to obtain from the British Government the demanded concessions, not in the matter of impressment only, but on the whole subject of irregular blockades, which underlay the Orders in Council, as well as on other maritime questions in dispute; but in pressing such demands they were under orders to fall back before resistance. From the opening of the colloquy they were ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... apparently at random: here and there was an arm of a canal, all but dried up, or a muddy pool where the cattle came to drink, and from which the women fetched the water for their households; then followed an open space of irregular shape, shaded by acacias or sycamores, where the country-folk of the suburbs held their market on certain days, twice or thrice a month; then came waste ground covered with filth and refuse, over which the dogs of the neighbourhood fought with hawks and vultures. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... sides; lay them on wires till cold and set; cut up into bars the required size. The knife for cutting bars of cream should be good, having a thin polished blade with a good edge. An old worn-out thing breaks the cream and makes it irregular. ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company

... remarkable for beauty; indeed, they were below the average, with one or two exceptions; they had dark hair, neatly and classically arranged, dark eyes, but sallow complexions and irregular features. The only thing to strike a passer-by was an acuteness and intelligence of countenance, which has often been noticed in ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... instruction and waggery is commented upon, imitation is discouraged, and the work is held up as a test, through appreciation or failure to appreciate, of a reader's ability to follow another's feelings, to understand far-away hints and allusions, to follow the tracks of an irregular and errant wit. ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... chosen for the battle was an irregular slope between the forest of Cressy and the river Maie near the little village of Canchy. The slope looked towards the south and east, from which quarters the enemy was expected to arrive, and some slight defences were added to the ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... of sacrificial pyres. The dome of the Invalides was flaring with such brilliancy that you instinctively feared lest it should suddenly topple down and scatter burning flakes over the neighborhood. Beyond the irregular towers of Saint-Sulpice, the Pantheon stood out against the sky in dull splendor, like some royal palace of conflagration reduced to embers. Then, as the sun declined, the pyre-like edifices gradually set the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... me, here, it is motionless and silent. But if I should walk up into State Street and say so, my truth, like many others, when uprooted from among their circumstances, would turn into a disagreeable lie. Sharp points rise above the irregular profile of the line of roofs. Some are church spires, and some are masts,—mixed at the rate of about one church and a half to a schooner. I smell the clear earthy smell of the pure gray sand, and the fresh, cool smell of the pure water. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... above the level of the sea, it stands midway between two grand mountain ranges, the Limbara stretching the bold outlines of its massive forms in a course south of the town, its summit rising to 4396 feet; and, to the north-east, a chain not quite so elevated, but of an equally wild and irregular formation, and presenting to the eye, when viewed from Tempio, even a more rugged and serrated ridge. The defiles of this chain we passed in approaching Tempio; those of the Limbara were to be ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... convulsive strokes, to seek to gesticulate and dance and leap. And Berlioz possessed this elemental feeling for rhythm. Schumann was convinced on hearing the "Symphonie Fantastique" that in Berlioz music was returning to its beginnings, to the state where rhythm was unconstrained and irregular, and that in a short while it would overthrow the laws which had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... are pine-grosbeaks, and are somewhat irregular winter visitors from the far north. Only when the cold is most severe, and the snow lies deep about Hudson Bay, do they leave their nesting places to spend a few weeks in bleak New England as a winter resort. Their stay ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... infinite misery of the passage. At last he drew near the caravanserai where he had been directed to obtain a change of horses. It stood midway in the distance that he had to traverse, and almost alone when the face of the country changed, and was more full of color, and more broken into rocky and irregular surfaces. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... I venture to think all Scotland errs. Many houses throughout the country, built roughly with a rude and irregular but solid mason-work, were made points of light in the landscape by these washes of colour which poor dwellings retain. There is a yellow which I remember on many old houses in which the stains of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... Orbis Vestitus; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... of the country, which is sterile and uninviting to the last degree. The town, however, from its cheerful white appearance, contrasted with the dreary brownness of the back ground, makes not an unpleasing coup d'oeil. It is neither irregular in its plan, nor despicable in its style of building; and the churches and religious houses are numerous, sumptuous, and ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench

... that will refresh your memory." He unfolded it and laid it across their knees; it was frayed with wear along the folds, and had been heavily marked and dotted with red and blue pencillings. "My millions are in this large irregular section," he continued. "It's the anklebone and instep of Italy's boot; this sizable province called Basilicata, east of Salerno, north of Calabria. And I'll not hang fire on the point, Lindley. What I've got ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... upon the Koran fidelity and allegiance if I would pardon him; and he would at once prove his sincerity by raising an irregular corps. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... the bustle of getting into the new house began. The furniture arrived in irregular batches. Some of it came and some of it did not come. When a box was opened there was nothing that was wanted in it, only things that did not go together, and mamma was worried, and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... been driven to the south. Like them, they were slothful and effete. Their training was imperfect; their discipline was lax; their courage was low. Nor was even this all the weakness and peril of their position; for while the regular troops were thus demoralised, there existed a powerful local irregular force of Bazingers (Soudanese riflemen), as well armed as the soldiers, more numerous, more courageous, and who regarded the alien garrisons with fear that continually diminished and hate that continually grew. And behind regulars and irregulars alike ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... enjoy it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... had left the ship and had gone up into the interior. He had, he told her, mentioned the boy's silence to Kate in a casual way, watching the effect the news produced upon her—but after the remark that the mails were always irregular from those far-away countries, she had turned the conversation into other channels, she having caught sight of Willits, who had just dismounted from ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... were gathered under the corridor, some sipping mate, others sucking grapes; and when we came on the scene a young lady was just finishing a song she was singing. I at once singled out General Santa Coloma, sitting by the young lady with the guitar—a tall, imposing man, with somewhat irregular features, and a bronzed, weather-beaten face. He was booted and spurred, and over his uniform wore a white silk poncho with purple fringe. I judged from his countenance that he was not a stern or truculent man, as one expects a Caudillo—a leader of men—in the Banda Oriental ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... modification would, also, serve for the same general purpose: as Mr. Wallace has remarked, "If a lens has too short or too long a focus, it may be amended either by an alteration of curvature, or an alteration of density; if the curvature be irregular, and the rays do not converge to a point, then any increased regularity of curvature will be an improvement. So the contraction of the iris and the muscular movements of the eye are neither of them essential to vision, but only improvements which might ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... later they turned from the country road and followed a narrower path that was bordered on one side by green fields and on the other by a strip of woods, an irregular arm reaching out from Amanda's moccasin haunt. The road led up-hill at a sharp angle, so that when the traveler reached the top, panting and tired, there stretched before him in delightful panorama a view of Lancaster County ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... storage of water, which is led by a system of canals and ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles of land which may be made available for agriculture by irrigation. Perhaps in the future the valley of the lower Colorado may become as productive as that ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... years old then, and was allowed to stay up ever so late after supper to watch the torchlight parade. I recollect being rather pleasantly scared by the yells of all those marching people and by the glistening of their faces as the irregular flaring torches heaved by; and I recollect how delightfully the cold night air was flavored with kerosene. In any event, it was on this generally festive November night that my father again took too much to drink, and, coming home toward morning, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... of the Transept is a small colonnade, the arches of which are irregular, those opposite the lower windows being higher than the others to allow free passage to the light. At the north-east corner is a doorway communicating with a staircase leading to the upper parts of the church. In the year 1699 the fall of a portion of the north-west corner ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... truth I am weary of giving useless pain. Yesterday I should have been incapable of writing you this scrawl, and to-morrow I may be as bad. "'Sinking, sinking, sinking!' I feel that I am 'sinking'." My medical attendant says that it is irregular gout, with nephritic symptoms. 'Gout', in a young man of twenty-nine!! Swollen knees, and knotty fingers, a loathing stomach, and a dizzy head. Trust me, friend, I am at times an object of moral disgust to my own mind! But that this long illness has impoverished me, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... would be irregular, or perhaps I should say exceptional," said another voice; "the regulations cannot provide ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... about sixty-five years of age, a coarse, strong, big-boned man, with large irregular features; he has a haughty supercilious look, a swaggering gait, and a person not at all bespeaking one's favour in behalf of his mind; and his mind, as you shall hear by and bye, not clearing up those prepossessions in his disfavour, with which his person and features ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... used by the natives of the Marshall Islands, the following curiously irregular sequence also contains a single ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... a rude place to which they were come. But, after life in the [150] monastery, the severe discipline of which the Prior himself had done much to restore, there was luxury in the free, self-chosen hours, the irregular fare, in doing pretty much as one pleased, in the sweet novelties of the country; to the boy Hyacinth especially, who forgot himself, or rather found his true self for the first time. Girding up his heavy frock, which he laid aside erelong altogether to go in his coarse linen smock only, he seemed ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... capture of Louisbourg itself. The colonial troops had been so often reminded of their inferiority to regular troops as fighting forces that, with provincial docility, they had almost come to accept the estimate. It was well enough for them to fight irregular French and Indian bands, but to attack a fortress defended by a French garrison was something that only a few bold spirits among them could imagine. Such a spirit, however, was William Vaughan, a Maine trader, deeply involved in the fishing industry and confronted ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... a long, rambling, irregular structure, of no known order of architecture, bearing some resemblance to a factory. The ornament of architecture Mr. Smith did not regard. He was strictly of a utilitarian cast of mind. So long as the institute, as he often called it, afforded room for the school and scholars he did ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... Boer reinforcements, and that was effected by an advance. Up to that point everything seemed to be going in our favour. When there was daylight enough for gunners to see clearly, the 42nd Battery, posted at the eastern end of a green kopje that forms an irregular spur of Rietfontein Hill, but at a much lower elevation, opened fire on that ridge where the Boers ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... a mile of the town. They extend westward for twelve miles, lying in two groups, separated by a fine salt-water fiord known as Somes Sound. The park's boundary is exceedingly irregular, with deep indentations of private property. It is enclosed, along the shore, by an excellent automobile road; roads also cross it on both sides ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... the plain of Liguania covered with plantations, and dotted with white farm-houses quivering in the beams of a tropical sun. Beyond it rose the magnificent amphitheatre of the Blue Mountains, one piled upon another, reaching to the clouds, and intersected by numerous deep, irregular valleys; one of their spurs, with Rock Fort at its base, appearing directly over the ship's port-quarter; while before the beam was seen, at the end of a narrow spit of sand, Fort Augusta, its guns ready to sweep to destruction any hostile ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... that would have killed a creature so retentive of life as a snake; and I still expected to see the reptile make its escape. Not so, however. It made no effort to move from the spot, but lay stretched out in loose irregular folds, without any perceptible motion beyond a slight quivering of the body. In less than two minutes after, this motion ceased and the snake had all the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... for a larger one. Jumping into it, he lashed the horses, who went at a furious pace down the street, proving their powers, but, alas, scattering the half packed contents of the waggon—rugs, cushions, blankets, tin kettles, and pails—at irregular intervals over the road. In half an hour a larger vehicle was brought, and we hastily repacked, receiving contributions of our property from every one who passed while the operation was going on, so that it was late in ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... quarrel, lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very different reasons. Lord Tyrconnel charged Savage with the most licentious behaviour, introducing company into his house, and practising with them the most irregular frolics, and committing all the outrages of drunkenness. Lord Tyrconnel farther alledged against Savage, that the books of which he himself had made him a present, were sold or pawned by him, so that he had often the mortification ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... be upsetting," reflected she; and she laid it aside, glancing now and then at the bold, nervous, irregular hand and speculating about the contents and about ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... endeavouring to make off under their sprit-sails. Seven of these were taken possession of; one, Le Vengeur, sank before the whole of her crew could be taken out, not more than 280 being saved. A distant and irregular firing was continued at intervals between the fugitive and British ships till about four in the afternoon, when the French admiral, having collected most of his remaining ships, steered off to the eastward. The Queen Charlotte had lost both her topmasts, the Marlborough and Defence ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... put my thoughts into words. We had seen a new continent born; on the gray surface of Hydrot there was now a great irregular black blotch from which mounted three waving pillars of smoke and steam. Around the shores of the new continent the waters raged, white and angry, and little threads of white crawled outward from those shores—the crests of ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... eastward through Colorado to the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Gulf of Mexico. Between the two areas thus roughly defined is a tract of country about 300 to 400 miles wide, which contains some normal birds of each type, but chiefly birds exhibiting irregular mixtures of the characters of both. Bateson remarks that some naturalists may be disposed once more to appeal to our ignorance, and suggest that if we only knew more we should find that the yellow quills, the black 'moustache,' and the red nuchal crescent specially ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be bad for his crazed mind; whilst rest, regularity, and moderate exercise would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken intellect made well ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in a dream, following the winding and zigzagging passages, and speaking more and more seldom, till at last they found themselves in a place which they certainly had not seen before, for the mine suddenly opened out into a wide irregular hall, supported here and there by rugged pillars left by the miners; and now confusion grew doubly confused, for, as they went slowly around over the rugged, well-worn floor, and in and out among the pillars, they could dimly see that passages and ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... words always form their plurals in an irregular way; as, man, men; ox, oxen; goose, geese; woman, women; foot, feet; mouse, mice; child, children; tooth, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... issued another thanksgiving proclamation, designating the last Thursday in November. Previous to that time, certain states, and not a few individuals, were in the habit of observing a thanksgiving day in November. Indeed the custom, in a desultory way, dates back to Plymouth Colony. But these irregular and uncertain observances never took on the semblance of a national holiday. That dates from the proclamation issued October 3d, 1863. From that day to this, every President has every year ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... closed, the site of the cabin, work on which was to begin the next day, had been selected on the long irregular mound close to the river, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... by a man of Mr. Hamilton's knowledge; for it can be easily set aside; or rather, it need not be regarded, because there is nothing suspicious about it. For the spelling of the seventeenth century, like its syntax and its pronunciation, was irregular; and the fatal error of those who attempt to imitate it is that they always use double consonants, superfluous final e-s, and ie for y. And even supposing that these pencilled words and the words in ink were written by the same ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... the King's love for old Maintenon. In the first place, when she wished to have her near her children, she shut her ears to the stories which were told of the irregular life which the hussy had been leading; she made everybody who spoke to the King about her, praise her; her virtue and piety were cried up until the King was made to think that all he had heard of her light conduct were lies, and in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... and was toying with an enormous green mamba—one of the most deadly of South African snakes—that lay coiled between his legs with its cruel, vindictive eyes fixed immovably upon the visitor. Beside Sekosini stood Ingona, apparently impassive, but his quick, irregular breathing betrayed the fact that he was labouring under a considerable amount of excitement. As for the witch doctor, his face wore a smile of concentrated malice, as though he anticipated something in the nature of a conflict with ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... at the present time, thoroughly unpopular.... Considering that they are getting exactly what they were asking for, these Germans are really remarkably annoyed.... Well, I had to get the American consul to advance me money, and I've done more waiting about and irregular fasting and travelling on an empty stomach and viewing the world, so far as it was permitted, from railway sidings—for usually they made us pull the blinds down when anything important was on the track—than any cow that ever came to Chicago.... I was handed as freight—low ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... relieved by glowing port-holes, while across the water came the hoarse calls of the boatmen, the sound of oars, music, and the light laughter of women. Far down the harbour, near the Castello, a steamer's winches rattled and roared in irregular gusts of noise. By the Custom House a steam yacht, gleaming ghostly white in the darkness, lay at rest. And so, as the boat slipped through the buoys, and the molten silver dripped from the oars, I thought of you, my friend at home, and of my promise that I ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... phrases the pupil should be able to see the metrical divisions which underlie the form of the piece. He should be able to tell whether the composition is one of eight-measure sections or four-measure sections, or whether the sections are irregular. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... bearing upon each corner, carved in dark grey stone, Siva's recumbent bull. Here millet fields, with hedges of blue aloe or euphorbias like seven-branched candlesticks, announced a place of habitation; soon the village itself appeared, a long irregular line of white-walled houses roofed with thatch or tile, and here and there greater dwellings with carved balconies and barred verandahs, behind which impassive white-robed figures sat and seemed to ponder upon life. On the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... You air that serves me with breath to speak! You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape! You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides! I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... call my irregular warfare, certainly,' Captain Sarrasin answered. 'When first we married I was in the British service, sir; and of course they wouldn't allow anything of the kind there. But after that I gave up the English army—there wasn't much chance of any real fighting going on—and I served in all sorts ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... so as to get behind the right of the sepoys, while Eyre's artillery, stationed in the road, raked with fire the centre and the left. The enemy wavered and showed signs of giving way, but one gun manned by Oude artillerymen remained steady. Then young Johnson, who led the Irregular Horse, dashed along the road for half a mile, followed by a dozen of his men, killed the gunners and threw the gun into the ditch. When he returned to his post the enemy was flying to the Charbagh bridge across the canal, with our ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... to the bedside, felt of the sleeper's pulse, listened attentively to her deep, irregular breathing, and then ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... whizzed overhead—sometimes crying, like an echo, in the far distance, sometimes screaming with the rage of a hurt animal close at hand. Groups of soldiers ran swiftly past me, quite silent, their heads bent. Somewhere on the high road I could hear motor-cars spluttering and humming. At irregular intervals Red Cross men would arrive with wounded, would ask in a whisper that was inhuman and isolating whether there were room on my carts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... production which we shall present in our present bundle of samples, selected from Pushkin's lyrics, is the irregular ode entitled Andre Chenier. This composition is founded upon one of the most well-known and tragic episodes of the first French Revolution: the execution of the young and gifted poet whose name forms the title of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... which as we approach the mountains are covered with dense forest, stagnant morasses, and trim tea-gardens, we one morning awake to find that over the horizon to the north hangs a long cloud-like strip, white suffused with pink—level on its lower edge but with the upper edge irregular in outline. No one who had not seen snow mountains before would suppose for a moment that that strip could be a line of mountain summits. For there is not a trace of any connection with the earth. Between it and the earth is nothing but blue haze. And it is so high ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... come on deck and see the finest sight that we had ever seen. "Where away, Doctor?''[1] asked the first man who was up. "On the larboard bow.'' And there lay, floating in the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its centre of a deep indigo color. This was an iceberg, and of the largest size, as one of our men said who had been in the Northern Ocean. As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... it seemed with a stick, or possibly with a very badly fashioned quill-pen. There was very little writing upon it, and this of the raggedest sort. To their intense disappointment it bore no name to tell where in the seven seas it might be. That the chart was of some coast was certain. A deep, irregular bay occupied the central part of the sheet. Two long promontories jutting from east and west nearly closed the seaward or southern end. The single word "Watter" was written beside a dot high up on the paper and a little northeast of the bay. An anchor, roughly drawn near the northern ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... triangles and arrive at our conclusion after a calculation of the probable error of our measurements. The appeal to authorities does not interest us; that measurements are always more or less inaccurate, and that all actual triangles are more or less irregular, we freely admit, but we do not regard such facts as significant. We use a single triangle as an illustration, and from what is given in, or along with, that individual instance, we deduce certain consequences in which we have the highest confidence. Here we ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... George William Curtis, and his friends, opposing the return of Mr. Blaine. From 1885 to the date of his death, he added little to the volume of his literary work. He spent part of his time in England, and part in the United States. A poem, a brief paper, or an address or two, came from his pen, at irregular intervals. He edited a complete edition of his writings in ten volumes, and left behind him an unfinished biography of Hawthorne, which he was preparing for the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... and became frequent about the End of July, and continued so till the Army went into Winter-Quarters; and through the Winter, many of those, who had this Disorder in Autumn, relapsed, upon returning to their Duty; or by drinking too freely of spirituous Liquors, and being irregular ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... the cabin and heard young A-'s schemes for the future. His highest picture is a commission in the Prince of Vizianagram's irregular horse. His eldest brother is tutor to his Highness's children, and grand vizier, and magistrate, and on his Highness's household staff, and seems to be one of those Scotch adventurers one meets with and hears of in queer berths - raising cavalry, building palaces, and using some petty Eastern ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stooping and rising, and letting the water, as it ran swiftly, send a curious cold thrill all over me. And then, as I began cautiously to wade about, panting, and with my breath coming in an irregular manner, there was a very pleasurable sensation in it all. First I began to notice how firm and close and heavy the water felt, and how it pressed against me. Then I began to think of how hard it was ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... here and there along the wall, and the picturesque courtyard, with its irregular balconies and stairways, seemed, in the flickering light, more spacious than was ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... of the fissure, it resembles an immense walled alley, high on one side, and low, broken, and irregular on the other. The main or left side forms a fearful precipice of more than eighty feet, and runs in a direct line toward the mountains, a distance of four or five miles. On the right, toward the plain of Thingvalla, the inferior side forms nearly a parallel line of rifted and irregular ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... it is that you should bring your wild, irregular career to a close; but after to-morrow I shall cease to be ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... figure carved on it. On each side of both stem and stern broad strips of wood rose about four feet, having holes cut in them to shoot arrows through. She had a high sprit-sail made of handkerchiefs and pieces of gunny-cloth or jute, forming irregular stripes, I am told these Indians commonly have pieces of squared timber, not unlike a three-inch plank, high and broad, perforated to shoot arrows through; this is fixed on the bow of the war canoe to serve as ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... Rodney returned to England, having been elected to Parliament. The Seven Years War, which, after two years of irregular hostilities, began formally in 1756, found him still a captain. With its most conspicuous opening incident, the attempted relief of Minorca, and the subsequent trial and execution of the unsuccessful ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... made four miles of his journey when he halted, turned and looked back along the desolate barrens and the irregular edge of the cliffs. Misgivings assailed him. Was Flora safe? What if something should happen—had already happened, perhaps—to stir his treacherous fellows to mutiny again? Any little accident might do it if they knew ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... Mail was annulled as a regular train, and Griscom and Ralph and all other passenger employes placed on the irregular list. One day a man would take out the Mail, the next day he would be running ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman

... Mississippi; the river is here so wide as to give it the appearance of a noble lake; an island, covered with lofty forest trees divides it, and relieves by its broad mass of shadow the uniformity of its waters. The town stretches in a rambling irregular manner along the cliff, from the Wolf River, one of the innumerable tributaries to the Mississippi, to about a mile below it. Half a mile more of the cliff beyond the town is cleared of trees, and ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... attempt to reconcile their differences, which arise from viewing one side of the man's nature and poetry to the exclusion of the other. Before his exile from England, in 1816, the general impression made by Byron is that of a man who leads an irregular life, poses as a romantic hero, makes himself out much worse than he really is, and takes delight in shocking not only the conventions but the ideals of English society. His poetry of this first period is generally, though not always, shallow ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... on edge, but more often by two or three courses of rough oblong blocks. Many of the graves are badly damaged. One of the finest had an outer circle about 27 feet in diameter, and an inner circle 14 feet in diameter. Between these two a third circle, much more irregular and of small stones, could just be distinguished. But in most cases it was impossible to make out clearly more than the one outer circle and the dolmen within it. The dolmen itself consisted of a large slab resting on walls formed ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... efficient corps, in which rode some of the best lances of Peru. His arquebusiers were less numerous, not exceeding a hundred and fifty, indifferently provided with ammunition. The remainder, and much the larger part of Centeno's army, consisted of spearmen, irregular levies hastily drawn together, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... prompt delight. Hubert hesitated, chose the tutor, chose to stay in school with his boy friends, dreaded to be separated from Theodora, and finally decided to remain in the school. Two months later, Theodora was reading the Anabasis, while Hubert was still toiling over the intricacies of the irregular verb. ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... feature of geology. Under Gommecourt and Serre their reserve troops had lurked deep in caves. In the Champagne more striking instances occurred of whole battalions issuing from hidden passages and exits to the fight. The cave below Fosses Farm was about 40 feet below the ground. Of most irregular shape, it branched and twisted into numerous alleys and chambers through the chalk. In it lived representatives of the Artillery, Royal Engineers, New Zealand Tunnellers, the whole of B Company, parts of Headquarters, the ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... whereas the leit-motif is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make a familiar antithesis—the very commonplace of rival methods of art. But the same antithesis exists in less obvious forms. The poets have sought "irregular" metres. Incident hovers, in the very act of choosing its right place, in the most modern of modern portraits. In these we have, if not the Japanese suppression of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration of major emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... cretin seems beyond the reach of human sympathy or aid. In intelligence he is far below the horse, the dog, the monkey, or even the swine; the only instincts of his nature are hunger and lust, and even these are fitful and irregular. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... The rise by this escarpment varies from 3,000 to more than 4,000 feet. The step from the lowlands to the highlands which is here called the Mogollon Escarpment is not a simple line of cliffs, but is a complicated and irregular facade presented to the southwest. Its different portions have been named by the people living below as distinct mountains, as Shiwits Mountains, Mogollon Mountains, Pinal Mountains, Sierra Calitro, etc., but they all rise to the summit of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... diseases in the two sexes according to age.[180] At the age of 20 the incidence of insanity in both sexes is equal; from that age onward the curve in men proceeds in a gradual and equable manner, with only the slightest oscillation, on to old age. But in women the curve is extremely irregular; it remains high during all the years from 20 to 30, instead of falling like the masculine curve; then it falls rapidly to considerably below the masculine curve, rising again considerably above the masculine level during ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... years. The city has had a fortunate immunity from serious fires. We give an illustration of one of the old Coventry streets called Spon Street, with its picturesque houses. These old streets are numerous, tortuous and irregular. One of the richest and most interesting examples of domestic architecture in England is St. Mary's Hall, erected in the time of Henry VI. Its origin is connected with ancient guilds of the city, and in it were stored their books ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield



Words linked to "Irregular" :   sporadic, improper, urban guerrilla, merchandise, product, unsystematic, occasional, unconventional, atypical, imperfect, partizan, unrhythmic, ware, illegal, regular, regularity, rough, unorthodox, unsteady, asymmetrical, randomised, parttime, unnatural, guerilla force, part-time, uneven, crooked, strong, asymmetric, unlawful, randomized, Maquis, abnormal, unsmooth, warrior, casual, unrhythmical, partisan, Maquisard, guerrilla force



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