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Slur   Listen
noun
Slur  n.  
1.
A mark or stain; hence, a slight reproach or disgrace; a stigma; a reproachful intimation; an innuendo. "Gaining to his name a lasting slur."
2.
A trick played upon a person; an imposition. (R.)
3.
(Mus.) A mark connecting notes that are to be sung to the same syllable, or made in one continued breath of a wind instrument, or with one stroke of a bow; a tie; a sign of legato.
4.
In knitting machines, a contrivance for depressing the sinkers successively by passing over them.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slur" Quotes from Famous Books



... fellow. I have never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have never sought popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have never made speeches either at public dinners or at the funerals of my friends.... In fact, there is no slur on my learned name, and there is no complaint one can make against ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... with reference to church matters in his subsequent volumes. A more creditable explanation of his different tone, which will be presently suggested, is at least as probable. In any case, these two chapters remain the chief slur on his historical impartiality, and it is worth while to examine what his offence ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... any emotion that the slur provoked. He came along to the table and tucked a paper under the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... dotted with marriages worse than a 'Pache outbreak with corpses and burning homes. I ain't any kind of proposition to tie up to a nice girl like you, and I swear by my honor that nothing was further from my thoughts than matrimony—not meanin' any slur on you, for if I'd found you before, I might have been a happy man—Well, here I stand: if you'll marry me, say the word!' By thunder, we gave him a cheer that shook the roof. You can laugh if you like, but ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... Did he mean to cast some slur upon his conduct? He was sorry he could not see the Secretary's face more clearly, and he was anxious also to be gone. But the great man seemed to have ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... this slur on your fair name?" he demanded next, as airily as though he were inquiring if she was worrying about the trimming of a new hat. "My revered aunt has told me all ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... an A B., young Matt concluded he might as well accord himself the respect due him as a ship's officer; so he tacked on the Mister, just to show the Old Man he knew his place. The master noted that; also, the slurring of the sir as only a sailor can slur it. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... know you did," roared out the hook-nosed man, incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on damaging the young man's character for life. "I'm a good mind to call a. constable; we don't take stolen goods here, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... he said with a smile of raillery, for he had long since discovered that she was not without the feminine vanity that commands the centering of all interest in the woman herself and resents any wandering of thought as a slur upon her own ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... men seeing this Have ta'en their cue and think it now their time To slur me with their coward disrespects, Unworthy usages, who, while John lov'd And while one breath'd That thought not much to take the orphan's part, And durst as soon Hold dalliance with the chafed lion's paw, Or play with fire, or utter blasphemy, As ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... imagine, they did not talk of solecisms;[141] and here, at the very headquarters of Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism. The French have adopted the term epicier (grocer), to designate the sort of being whom the Germans designate by the Philistine; but the French term—besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable class, composed of living and susceptible members, while the original Philistines are dead and buried long ago—is really, I think, in itself much less apt and expressive than the German term. Efforts have been made ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... English Parliament; for though the results of that commission thoroughly exculpated Sir James Brooke from any blame, there was never any amende honourable made for subjecting him to such an indignity. It was never understood by the natives as anything but a slur on the Rajah's character, and was a terrible injury to his prestige for a time. Indeed, it was the seed of the Malay plot; and if we had all been killed, our own English Government would have been the remote cause of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... carpeted—thickly carpeted—with pine needles; they lay several inches thick beneath the trunks of the trees; they stretched right up to the edge of the rock. And now, as Garthwaite turned the lantern, they saw that on this soft carpet there was a great slur—the murderer had evidently dragged his victim some yards across the pine needles before depositing him behind the rock. And at the end of this mark there were plain traces of a struggle—the soft, easily yielding stuff was disturbed, kicked about, upheaved, but as Brereton at ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... 'arrange with him—this gentleman here—for sending him some money to-morrow.' She said it with a slur of the word gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis, and walked slowly on. The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they Moved away. He could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... or two after the servants all left I was again sent for to see Sir Percival. The undeserved slur which he had cast on my management of the household did not, I am happy to say, prevent me from returning good for evil to the best of my ability, by complying with his request as readily and respectfully as ever. It cost me a struggle ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... must bend that neck which refuses obedience to the canons. He must be restrained, who does an injury to the whole Church; who is proud in heart; who has a greed after a name given to none other; who by such a singular name throws a slur upon your empire also in ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... Jimmy Yaeki Muggie, a pleasant-voiced lad, who always wore in his face the slur of conscious shame of birth, died apparently from heart failure, an after-effect of rheumatic fever. Tom and Nelly mourned deeply and wrathfully. Smarting under the rod of fate, they sought with indignant mien counsel upon the cause ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... endings. 'A-n-d' spells 'and.' You pronounce it 'an'.' 'I-n-g' spells 'ing.' Sometimes you pronounce it 'ing' and sometimes you leave off the 'g.' And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. 'T-h-e-m' spells 'them.' You pronounce it—oh, well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the grammar. I'll get one and show ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... roisterer at some banquet, flown with wine, Shouted "Thou art not true son of thy sire." It irked me, but I stomached for the nonce The insult; on the morrow I sought out My mother and my sire and questioned them. They were indignant at the random slur Cast on my parentage and did their best To comfort me, but still the venomed barb Rankled, for still the scandal spread and grew. So privily without their leave I went To Delphi, and Apollo sent me back Baulked of the knowledge that I came to seek. But other grievous ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... that, so far as Elissa was concerned, these charges were utterly untrue. None could throw a slur upon her, and as for these rare human sacrifices, she loathed the very name of them, nor, unless forced to it, would she have been present had she guessed that ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... Professor Girdelstone and his colleague soon came to a conclusion. They decided that there could be no doubt as to the authenticity of the Aulus Gellius. In portions it was true that between the lines other characters were partly legible; but this threw no slur on the MS. itself. Of the commentary on the book of Jasher, it will be remembered, they gave no decisive opinion, and it is still an open question. They expressed their belief that the Aulus Gellius was alone worth the price asked by Dr. Groschen. It only remained now for the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... to the time of my second refer, And spell that backward, my third behold— A hero of monstrous strength. They aver He held up a temple its fall to defer, And ate forty pounds (but I hope 'tis a slur) Every day for his food, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... certain wryness in the young man's smile, for though Hawtrey had cast no particular slur upon the family's credit he had signally failed to enhance it, and he was quite aware that his English relatives did not greatly desire his presence in ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... a character that closed the doors of all his family against him, my lady (then just married) taking the lead, and declaring (with Sir John's approval, of course) that her brother should never enter any house of hers. There was more than one slur on the Colonel that made people shy of him; but the blot of the Diamond is ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... more ennobling biographical art, having the same general objects as heretofore, but with a more express view to the benefit of the reader. Looking even at those memoirs which, like Hayley's of Cowper, have been checked by pathetic circumstances from fixing any slur or irreverential scandal upon their subject, we still see a great fault in the mass of biographic records; and what is it? It is—that, even where no disposition is manifested to copy either the eloge or the libellous ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... of the navy for Admiral Keppel crowns him with glory, and the indignation of and the indignation of mankind, and the execration of Sir Hugh, add to the triumph. Indeed, I still think Lady A.'s fears may be well founded: some slur may be Procured on her son; and his own bad nerves, and worse constitution, may not be able ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... bill, and I promise you there were very few bad debts. On the contrary, gentlemen were grateful to us for our forbearance, and our character for honour stood unimpeached. In latter times, a vulgar national prejudice has chosen to cast a slur upon the character of men of honour engaged in the profession of play; but I speak of the good old days of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the shameful revolution, which served them right) brought discredit upon our order. They cry ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... I had long suspected Tompkins of entertaining a sneaking admiration for Edith, and resolved to tell her of this slur at the first opportunity. I didn't have a chance to answer him; a dozen men rushed into the room, threw their hats and coats on the bed and rushed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... said a young man whose voice affected to slur his r's after the fashion of the day, and who probably assumed to lead the conversation at the table d'hote, on ordinary occasions, "you know the Companions of Jehu know ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... slur his work, as has been often said, we have the best of all evidence—his own word. 'I have, indeed,' he writes (Works, v. 152), 'disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... by an E flat in a half note, form a text, as of Fate knocking at the door, which, when developed, leads to tremendous conflict ending in victory. Those notes that repeat and modify the motive and are combined under one slur constitute the phrase, which is similar to a clause in a sentence of words. A period, or sentence, in music, comprises a musical idea, complete in itself, though of a nature to produce, when united with other ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... talking much as he went of the quaintness and prettiness of the suburban houses. Philip thought them pretty, too (or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where the quaintness came in. Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on so respectable a neighbourhood: for to be quaint is to be picturesque, and to be picturesque is to be old-fashioned. But the stranger's voice and manner were so pleasant, almost so ingratiating, that Philip did not care to differ from him on the abstract question of a qualifying epithet. After ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... was never to acknowledge this compact, or to cast any slur upon the father whose reasons for this apparently unnatural conduct were quite disconnected with any fault of his or any desire to punish ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... and starts, and as it were, in clusters. To some extent this may be because they draw one another by links more or less subtle. But there is more in it than that. It happens so. Life is an intermittent fever. Now all narrators, whether of history or fiction, are compelled to slur these barren portions of time or else line trunks. The practice, however, tends to give the unguarded reader a wrong arithmetical impression, which there is a particular reason for avoiding in these pages as far as possible. I invite ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... catalectic or not, as need was, of anacrusis and the rest. As is natural to a novice, he rather exaggerates his liberties, especially in the cases where the internal rhyme seduces him. It is necessary not merely to slur, but to gabble, in order to get some of these into proper rhythm, while in other places the mistake is made of using so many anapaests that the metre becomes, not as it should be, iambic, with anapaests for variation, but anapaestic without even a single iamb. But these are 'sma' sums, sma' sums,' ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... of my mother's brother." The man spoke, like Raleigh, in a Devon accent, with the creamy slur in the voice and the sing-song fall ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... help of boards found the Student bending over the servants as they performed their reluctant task, and rating them with a raised and harsh voice for the hastiness with which he accused them of seeking to slur it over. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... involving much that the mind is wont to slur over in natural scruple. Mallard was no slave to the imbecile convention which supposes a young girl sexless in her understanding; he could not, in conformity with the school of hypocritic idealism, regard Cecily as a child of woman's growth. No. She had the fruits of a modern ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... expressive of their views as to Dandy's rights; but the letter was so pointed a protest against their seizing a regimental horse for quasi-quartermaster's purposes, and so deep a sarcasm on infantry horsemanship, that it came back with a stinging reprimand. Even Warner felt it a slur. Then Blake tried another: setting forth that as neither the commanding officer nor the quartermaster had been in saddle since the war of the Rebellion,—if they had then, the latter being a promotion from the ranks,—they could not be expected ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... pass over, pas by; let pass; blink; wink at, connive at; gloss over; take no note of, take no thought of, take no account of, take no notice of; pay no regard to; laisser aller [Fr.]. scamp; trifle, fribble^; do by halves; cut; slight &c (despise) 930; play with, trifle with; slur, skim, skim the surface; effleurer [Fr.]; take a cursory view of &c 457. slur over, skip over, jump over, slip over; pretermit^, miss, skip, jump, omit, give the go-by to, push aside, pigeonhole, shelve, sink; table [Parl.]; ignore, shut one's eyes to, refuse to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... to say that, were the same thing to occur again, I fear I should act in the same way. I think my primary object in giving Rosalind money to go home this morning was to save the college from any open slur ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... However, this slur did not deter Jordan in his determination to go higher, for at the battle of Manila he was a gunner's mate of the first class, and his record was so conspicuous that it could not go unnoticed by ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... liberty of his country, which was governed by a common-wealth: so that there lies no parallel betwixt his cause and Mr Hunt's, except in the bare notion of a common-wealth, as it is opposed to monarchy; and that's the thing he would obliquely slur upon us. Yet on these premises, he is for ordering my lord chief justice to grant out warrants against all those who have applauded the "Duke of Guise;" as if they committed a riot when they clapped. I suppose they paid for their places, as well as he and his party did, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)—my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... said about the resemblance of some people to cucumbers. Why is celery more aristocratic than potato? Is "them" the right word in the sentence: "I do not pull them up"? Explain what is meant by the paragraph on salads. Why is the tomato a "parvenu"? Does the author wish to cast a slur on the Darwinian theory? Is it true that moral character is influenced by what one eats? What is the catechism? What do you think of the author's theories about scarecrows? About "saving men from any particular vice"? Why does raising one's own vegetables make one feel ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... as I forced myself to advance; but my wits took new life from the crisis, and in a flash I saw how to turn my weakness into account. I made a false step on my way to the door; when I reached it I leant heavily against the jam, and I said with a slur that I felt unwell. I had certainly been flushed with wine when I left Rattray; it would be no bad thing for him to hear that I had arrived quite tipsy at the cottage; should he discover I had been near an hour on the way, here was my ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... that work may well be the despair of Macaulay's biographer. It would be inexcusable to slur over what in many important respects was the most honourable chapter of his life; while, on the other hand, the task of interesting Englishmen in the details of Indian administration is an undertaking which has baffled ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... petitions for the welfare of Grannie and father and brother Tom, and for a time, with the perfunctoriness of childhood, which attaches more weight to the act than to the meaning of it, she allowed that to pass with a stickle and a slur. But very soon brother Tom was ruthlessly dropped out of the ritual, and neither threats nor persuasion could induce her ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... of sovereigns on the spot to a common fund to be raised for the purpose. "I don't know what is to be done with a country like this," said Captain Glomax, who, as an itinerant, was not averse to cast a slur upon the land ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... in denying his connection with P. J. Sheridan, Sir Charles Lewis reappeared on the scene, and, with protest of his desire that the Irish leader should have the earliest opportunity of clearing his character from the slur cast upon it, moved that the printers of the Times be brought to the Bar on a charge of breach of privilege. Mr. W. H. Smith, then fresh to the leadership, did his best to shake off this inconvenient counsellor. Sir Charles's proposal was burked; but he had laid ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... apples, honey of wild bees And after them of eggs a clutch, Haws, berries of the juniper; Who, King, could cast a slur on such? ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... has ever been on earth." History is a perpetual revelation of God's will and justice, and the stars in their courses are a perpetual miracle, is his refrain. This is not what Orthodoxy means, and no one was more intolerant than Carlyle of all shifts and devices to slur the difference between "Yes" and "No." But having decided that his own "Exodus from Houndsditch" might only open the way to the wilderness, he would allow no one else to take in hand his uncompleted task; and disliked ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... I tell, Arthur, any more than you? Mr. Dodd evidently thought that some slur was meant on the purity of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... George. She will also have told you that I am rich; this being so, I should have brought him much more, if I had known that there was any such person. You have other children; if you leave him anything, you will be taking it away from your own flesh and blood; if you leave him nothing, it will be a slur upon him. I must therefore send you enough gold, to provide for George as your other children will be provided for; you can settle it upon him at once, and make it clear that the settlement is instead of provision for him by will. The difficulty is in the getting the gold into ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... moment, then he handed over the gun and picked up the pheasant and began on Borlase most forcible. He pleaded their future relationship, the disgrace, the slur on his character and the shame to his girl; and Samuel listened very patient and granted 'twas a melancholy and most misfortunate affair; but he didn't see no way ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... apologizing to Irene Howard! Irene had been as much in the wrong as she had been; and she had told such mean, distorted versions of their quarrel everywhere, posing as a puzzled, injured martyr. Rilla could never bring herself to tell her side of it. The fact that a slur at Walter was mixed up in it tied her tongue. So most people believed that Irene had been badly used, except a few girls who had never liked her and sided with Rilla. And yet—the concert over which she had worked so hard was going to be a failure. Mrs. Channing's ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... harmful and noxious. What one desires to see in the lives of others is some sort of transformation, some evidence of patient struggling with faults, some hint of failings triumphed over, some gain of generosity and endurance and courage. To slur over the faults and failings of the great is not only inartistic: it is also faint-hearted and unjust. It alienates sympathy. It substitutes unreal adoration for wholesome admiration; it afflicts the reader, conscious of frailty ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... "No one," he said, "deplores the calamity more than Senator Conkling and myself. These reports are so base and so unfounded that I cannot believe they will be credited. They do not affect Senator Conkling and myself as much as they do the entire country. They are a slur upon our institutions, an attack upon the integrity of republican government. Good God! if such a thing were possible, then liberty is impossible. Such a calamity as this should be treated as national, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... behind in the Gazette as well. That wound, therefore, seemed at first to go against him, but he bandaged it, and plastered it, and hoped for better luck. And his third wound truly was a blessed one, a slight one, and taken in the proper course of things, without a slur upon any of his comrades. This set him up again with advancement and appointment, and enabled him to marry and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... attendants; but the age, though luxurious, was not drunken, and the sober habits of the Norman had happily prevailed over the license of those Saxon banquets where no guest might walk from the table without a slur upon his host. Honor and hardihood go ill with a shaking hand or a ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Request, so pathetic, playful and persuasive is it. It is in E minor and has a plaintive, appealing quality. The G major part is very pretty. In the last lines the passion mounts, but is never shrill. Kullak notes that in the fifth and sixth bars there is no slur in certain editions. Klindworth employs it, but marks the B sforzando. A slur on two notes of the same pitch with Chopin does not always mean a tie. The A flat Mazurka, No. 3, is pessimistic, threatening and irritable. Though in the key of E major the trio displays a relentless sort of humor. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... not mention this, my lord," said the counsel, "had not a certain magistrate, in another place, at an earlier stage of this inquiry, used language—in my humble opinion harsh and unwarranted— calculated to cast a slur on that gentleman's character, if not to interfere seriously with his future prospects. I merely wish to say, my lord, that my clients, and those of us who have gone fully into the case, and may be expected to know as much about it even as a north- country magistrate, are ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... himself being in the Dragoon Guards, was of much the same order, a black hunter with racing blood in him, loins and withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his 'scutcheon on the distaff side from a plebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain in his otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given him her massive shoulders, so that he was in some sense a gainer by her after all. Wild Geranium was a beautiful ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... infallible bringer-home of excellent reports, and a regular taker of prizes, became gradually less satisfactory in the house. He was 'kept in' occasionally, and although his father pretended to hold that to be kept in was to slur the honour of a spotless family, Cyril continued to be kept in; a hardened sinner, lost to shame. But this was not the worst. The worst undoubtedly was that Cyril was 'getting rough.' No definite accusation ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... she?" with an emphasis on that feminine, personal pronoun which was all the bitterer slur on the rest of womankind in that neighborhood, that he was so unconscious of the reflection it conveyed. The cook and the stable-boy also came running to the kitchen door, on hearing the hostler's exclamation; and they, too, stood gazing at the unconscious ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... is to feel obliged to be the usher of ill company, I must now introduce to the fastidious public a brace of characters any thing but reputable. It were possible indeed to slur them over with a word; but I have deeper ends in view for a glance so superficial: we may learn a lesson in charity, we may gain some schooling of the heart, even from ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... want to get hold of little stories of heroism, and so forth, and to write them up in a bright way to make good reading for Mary Ann in the kitchen, and the Man in the Street." The quiet passion with which those words were resented by us, the quick repudiation of this slur upon our purpose by a charming man perfectly ignorant at that time of the new psychology of nations in a war which was no longer a professional adventure, surprised him. We took occasion to point out to him that the British Empire, which had sent its men into this ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... not? Streckmann has cast a slur upon her conduct and old Bernd won't suffer that! 'Tis folly, to be sure, to bring suit in such a matter.—Because it is the woman who has to bear the brunt ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... ages, independently of the strong and convincing claims which Catholicity offers to all? This is said without in the least attributing the fault to sound philosophy, without casting the slightest slur on those truly great and illustrious men who have widened the limits of the human intellect, and deserved well of mankind by the solid truths they have opened up in their works for the benefit and instruction of minds less gifted than ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... neither Ernest nor Carol were allowed to do much showing of their faces out of doors after dark unless they had some business, their parents being firm in the belief that thirteen and fourteen year old boys should be at home after night. But this slur on their courage was ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... of them have been now some days aboard—no drink allowed them save the regular ration, with plenty of everything else. Kind treatment from captain and mate, and still they appear scowling and discontented, as if the slightest slur—an angry word, even a look—would make mutiny ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... murdered sixteen officers, six of them young lads who had just arrived, and all Europeans who came their way. Happily families were in the Fort, to which they had betaken themselves in opposition to the affectionate remonstrances of the native officers, who said it was a slur on their fidelity! The Sepoys plundered the Treasury; and it is said many of them were afterwards murdered by the villagers on account of the money ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... Page upon page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that theism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox point of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures are toto genere distinct in the scholastic theology, they have absolutely nothing ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... I suppose we have no right to judge,' said Mr. Dutton, somewhat tremulously. 'Justice is what we have to look to, and to allow Nuttie to be passed over would be permitting a slur to be cast ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this, they would, they think, be confessing that their sons and brothers and fathers had perished miserably in a causeless struggle on which they ought never to have entered, and this, of course, would look like a slur on their memory, and their memory is still, after the lapse of twelve years, very sacred and very dear. I doubt if many people at the North have an adequate notion of the intensity of the emotions with which Southerners look back on the war; and I mean ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous witnesses. Fetyukovitch succeeded in casting a slur on all of them, and dismissing them with a certain derision. The lawyers and experts were lost in admiration, and were only at a loss to understand what good purpose could be served by it, for all, I repeat, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... you like," boasts the New Englander, letting fly a broadside of oaths at the Frenchman's slur. "A hundred men with nine lives, if you ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... Lord Carnarvon sent J. A. Froude to 'stump South Africa' in advocacy of a scheme of federation devised in Downing Street, Sir Charles condemned a mission which seemed to him to cast a slur on the local Colonial governments. In his opinion, this mission helped to create those disturbances which rent South Africa in the succeeding years. On May 27th, 1877, he noted that the Blue Book on the Transvaal, then published, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... took his pipe from between his lips to offer protest against this slur, but changed his mind, and resumed smoking, though ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... be a representative meeting, it's time some reply was made to Maude Helm's insinuations. The main object of Maude's remarks seems to be to cast a slur upon Gipsy Latimer, and to imply that she's taken an unfair advantage in coming to the fore. Every girl in this room knows that Gipsy Latimer refused the Presidency of the Guild, and only accepted the editorship because ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... has much in him of the habits of his grandfather; not one of that purse-proud and haughty kind of men. That is why I have written to him and made the request on your behalf. Were he different to what he really is, not only would he cast a slur upon your honest purpose, honourable brother, but I myself likewise would not have been as prompt ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... nerves of the actors nearly as much as they affect the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a terrible enemy to contend against. I make a point of playing my best to a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing to slur through one's work because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who have come for the fault of those who have not. Still, I repeat it, constant repetition is a dreadful thing. Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... the slur on her husband which the recall involved more acutely than he. Burton, though stung to the quick at the treatment the Foreign Office meted out to him for doing what he conceived to be his duty (and certainly the manner of his recall was ungracious almost to the point of brutality), ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... where people must bring their sins and troubles—a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and love. Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... said, "I am heartily glad he has got off being tried. Even if I had got a free pardon for him, it would have been a serious slur upon him that he had been imprisoned, and would have been awkward for us all in the future. I think, Wilks, I will leave it to you to break it to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... say that the best three-quarters of him was Scotch in that he had a Scotch woman for a wife, and nothing that he had said or could say could be interpreted as casting a slur upon that great and proud and noble race than whom none had taken a larger and more honourable part in the building and the maintaining of the Empire. But to resume. The country was asked for the sake of the alleged economic ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... sir, I can see nobody—do you hear? Nobody. I am particularly engaged with a gentleman from Asia)—My boy, would you give us that little Christmas book (a little Christmas book of Dickens's, Macready, which I'm anxious you should hear); and don't slur it, now, or be too fast, Dickens, please!'—I say, if you was a real gent, something to this effect might happen. I shall be under sailing orders the moment I have finished. And I shall produce myself (please God) in London on the very day you name. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... with great joy and delight, married Swaha in the guise of Siva, and that lady joyfully cohabiting with him, held the semen virile in her hands. And then she thought within herself that those who would observe her in that disguise in the forest, would cast an unmerited slur upon the conduct of those Brahmana ladies in connection with Agni. Therefore, to prevent this, she should assume the disguise of a bird, and in that state she should more easily get ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Voyager discourses on deaths and witchcraft, and, with no intentional slur on the medical profession, on medical methods and burial customs, concluding with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... merely to do this, and demand that an explanation be required from the old man of such a startling coincidence. Convinced that no explanation would hold water, he felt sure that his action would be at once followed by the collapse, if nothing more, of that old image, and the infliction of a nasty slur on old Pillin and his hopeful son. On the other hand, three hundred pounds was money; and, if old Heythorp were to say to him: "What do you want to make this fuss for—here's what I owe you!" could a man of business and the world let his sense of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in for a share of the congratulations. Although the faithful creature had retreated on each occasion of his being attacked, no one thought of casting a slur upon his canine courage. He had only exhibited a wise discretion: for what chance would he have stood against such a formidable adversary? He had done better, therefore, by taking to his heels; for ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... arriving till midnight. Among the latest, when Dan had lost himself far from Boston in talk with a young lady from Richmond, who spoke with a slur of her vowels that fascinated him, came Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley. He felt himself grow pale and inattentive to his pretty Virginian. That accent of Mrs. Brinkley's recalled him to his history. He hoped that she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... an offender against morality appears to me tantamount to condemning the Alps as obstructions to traffic. A people, at any rate, that glories in the achievements of a Luther has no right to cast a slur upon the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... a trick of fashionable society, a trick as old as the age of Pericles, to disparage liberalism by accusing it of vulgarity; but we regret to find Doctor Holmes falling into line in this particular. He always speaks of Sumner in his letters with something like a slur—not to Motley, for Motley was Sumner's friend, but to others who might be more sympathetic. This did not, however, prevent him from going to Sumner in 1868 to ask a favor for his second son, who wanted to be private secretary to the Senator and learn something of foreign ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... agitation. That is so. I have repeatedly declined to do so; I have declined to attend republican meetings and I have abstained from subscribing to republican funds. I also refused to join the Republican Club formed at Cambridge University, though I am far from wishing to cast a slur on those Liberal politicians—Professor Fawcett and others—who did join it. The view I took was that I had no right to make use of my position as a member of the House of Commons, gained largely by the votes of those who are not even theoretical ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... Canadians, It's 'ard we must confess, To drop our English adjectives And learn to say "I guess," We've chucked the bread and cheese and beer, We learning to eat pie, So please cut out that nasty slur, "No English ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... contact, contiguity, juxtaposition, osculation, tangency; taction, tact, palpation; dash, sprinkling, soupcon, infusion; animadversion, censure, stricture, reflection, slur. Associated words: tactile, tactility, tactual, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the pamphlet bears evidence of Malone's revision.[19] It was necessary, of course, to re-orient the essay, which after the formula of the Gentleman's Magazine was addressed to Mr. Urban. At least one passage, which carried a slur upon publishers, may have been changed to suit Mr. Nichols.[20] But more indicative of his carefulness are his revisions of words and phrases. "The whole fabrick" of Chatterton's poems became "the beautiful fabrick" (p.12). The ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... were continually passing among the spectators, who laughed as they listened to them. And though the Texan could not tell what they said, their laughter "riled" him. He supposed it a slur upon his extraordinary stature, of which he was himself no little proud, while they seemed to regard it sarcastically. Could they have had translated to them the rejoinders that now and then came from his lips, like the rumbling of thunder, they would have felt their sarcasm fully paid ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... the farmhouse. At 4.30 the force, being in a perfectly hopeless position, laid down their arms. Their ammunition was gone, many of their horses had stampeded, and they were hemmed in by very superior numbers, so that no slightest slur can rest upon the survivors for their decision to surrender, though the movements which brought them to such a pass are more open to criticism. They were the vanguard of that considerable body of humiliated and bitter-hearted men who were to assemble at the capital of our brave and crafty enemy. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... thought it best at this stage to transpose the story from the first to the third person. Any narrative, unless it is negative in its material, is hard to give in the first person; for where the narrator has played an active, positive part, he must either curb himself or fall under the slur of braggadocio. Yet, the world wants the details exactly as they happened; hence the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... what it is to be an Uitlander, allowing too for "white flag" episodes and so on, I yet fail to understand this excess of animosity, which goes out of its way even to deny any ability to Boer statesmen and soldiers, regardless of the slur such a denial casts on British arms and statesmanship. After all, we have lost ten thousand or more prisoners to the Boers, and, for my part, the fact that I have never heard a complaint of bad treatment (unnecessarily bad, I mean) from an ex-prisoner, tells more strongly than ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... reason' (as I may tell to you, my 'old school-fellow') to make me wish for this 'fine lady's recovery' and 'health'; and that is, (by some distant intimations,) I have heard from Mr. John Harlowe, that it is 'very likely' (because of the 'slur' she hath received) that she will choose to 'live privately' and 'penitently'—and will probably (when she cometh into her 'estate') keep a 'chaplain' to direct her in her 'devotions' and 'penitence'—If she doth, who can stand a 'better chance' than 'myself'?—And as I find (by 'your' ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson



Words linked to "Slur" :   play, blur, blot, weaken, smear, slur over, spot, fingerprint, obliterate, verbalize, derogation, smirch, smudge, spiel, blemish, mar, inkblot, efface, refer, dim, disparagement, music, denote, fingermark, tie



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