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Tendency   /tˈɛndənsi/   Listen
Tendency

noun
(pl. tendencies)
1.
An attitude of mind especially one that favors one alternative over others.  Synonyms: disposition, inclination.  "A tendency to be too strict"
2.
An inclination to do something.  Synonyms: leaning, propensity.
3.
A characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition toward a certain condition or character or effect.  Synonym: inclination.  "Fabric with a tendency to shrink"
4.
A general direction in which something tends to move.  Synonym: trend.  "The trend of the stock market"



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"Tendency" Quotes from Famous Books



... was a prey to passion and revenge, it was painful to observe the powerful effect upon his features; but when, on the contrary, he was conquered by feelings of tenderness and benevolence (which was the natural tendency of his heart), it was delightful to contemplate his looks. I went to see Lord Byron the day after Lord Falkland's death. He had just seen the inanimate body of the man with whom, a few days before, he had spent such an agreeable time. At intervals, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... subjects, crippled in his resources, and deprived of the support of his Parliament, was totally unable to enforce his rights. Day by day his own position became more precarious; he was accused of a tendency towards Romanism, and upbraided with an undue submission to the principles and feelings of a wife to whom he was tenderly attached, but who was regarded by the sectarians with loathing; while, on the other hand, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... out in a boat with me several times. I have been showing him how to cast a line," said Doctor Prance, who appeared to deprecate a sentimental tendency. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... engaged towards evening when at a turn of the road she was met by a large crowd of rioters, headed by Red Rody, Tom Dalton, and many others in the parish who were remarkable only for a tendency to ruffianism and outrage; for we may remark here, that on occasions such as we are describing, it is generally those who have suffered least, and have but little or nothing to complain of, that lead the misguided and ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... upholder of German methods. One of his complaints against the Italian Positivists is that they only read second-rate works in French or at the most "the dilettante booklets published in such profusion by the Anglo-Saxon press." This tendency towards German thought, especially in philosophy, depends upon the fact of the former undoubted supremacy of Germany in that field, but Croce does not for a moment admit the inferiority of the Neo-Latin races, and adds with homely humour in reference to Germany, that we "must not throw away ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... up more ground and convert it to tillage than all the penal laws for that purpose made and enacted could ever by compulsion effect."[27] In 1650 Lord Monson plowed up 100 acres of Grafton Park, which had formerly been pasture, and there are many other records showing a tendency to convert pasture to arable in the seventeenth century.[28] It is true that men were able to make a profit from agriculture by the end of the sixteenth century. But there is one difficulty which has been overlooked: ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley

... home, and hundreds of their house lots were florally beautiful. If I seem to hurry into a mention of it here it is partly in the notion that such a recital may be my best credentials as the writer of these pages, and partly in the notion that such a concrete example may possibly have a tendency to help on flower-gardening in the country at large and even to aid us in determining what American flower-gardening had ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... were introduced. These consist of hard molded carbon rods in which there is a core of soft carbon. In these are combined the advantages of charcoal and hard carbon and the core in burning away more rapidly has a tendency to hold the arc in the center. Modern carbons for ordinary arc-lamps are generally made of a mixture of retort-carbon, soot, and coal-tar. This paste is forced through dies and the carbons are baked at a fairly high temperature. A variation in the hardness of the carbons may be obtained ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... inflammation or fever, the hollow fibres, or capillaries, as they are called, which form the substance of the lyer, are filled with congested and unassimilated animal fluid, which, from its impurity, gives the lyer a dark colour, and produces a tendency to rapid putrefaction. In a more advanced stage of such disease, serous, and sometimes purulent matter, is formed in the cellular tissues between the muscles of the flesh; and when such is the case, nothing ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... remained in England, Walderhurst had seen him occasionally, and had only remarked and heard unpleasant things of him,—a tendency to selfish bad manners, reckless living, and low flirtation. He once saw him on the top of a bus with his arm round the waist of an awful, giggling shop-girl kind of person, who was adorned with tremendous feathers ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... leathern knapsack, and inside of this I fastened my little machine, with a screw so arranged that it could be worked from the outside. Strapping this firmly to my shoulders, my wife gently turned the screw at the back until the upward tendency of the knapsack began to lift and sustain me. When I felt myself so gently supported and upheld that I seemed to weigh about thirty or forty pounds, I would set out for a walk. The knapsack did not raise me from ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... more glaringly displayed. The appeal about to be hazarded on behalf of Mrs. Piozzi, will involve little or no risk of this kind. Her ill-wishers made the most of the event which so injuriously affected her reputation at the time of its occurrence; and the marked tendency of every additional disclosure of the circumstances has been to elevate her. No candid person will read her Autobiography, or her Letters, without arriving at the conclusion that her long life was morally, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... not herself reflected upon this phase of the matter, that her half a dozen years' residence in Europe had softened and broadened her views. In the present age of the world there is no method possible by which one can resist the whole tendency of modern thought and prevent himself from moving forward with it, unless it be active and violent controversy. No man can be a fanatic without opposition, either real or vividly fancied, upon which to stay his resolution, and it is equally difficult to maintain a stand at any given point of faith ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... features of modern educational practice in progressive nations are better understood if viewed in the light of their proper historical setting. Standing as we are to-day on the threshold of a new era, and with a strong tendency manifest to look only to the future and to ignore the past, the need for sound educational perspective on the part of the leaders in both school and state is ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... dedicated a beautiful lyric. It derives its pathetic name from the sweet sad murmur of its pearly drops as they fall upon the marble basin. The sombre and mysterious aspect of the hall stimulates the tendency in the mind of the visitor to forget reality for the dreams of the imagination. The foot falls noiselessly upon soft Egyptian mats: the walls are blazoned with sentences from the Koran, written in gold on a black ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... individuals whether to adopt its practice or not; and the fourth, since 1856, when its acceptance was inculcated as essential to happiness in this world and salvation in the next. It was the inevitable tendency of Mormonism, like every other religious delusion, from the advent of John of Leyden to that of the Spiritualists, to disturb the natural relation of the sexes under the Christian dispensation. The mystery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... didn't think George ought to do anything that would have a tendency to make him sleepier than he always was, as it might be dangerous. He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in each day, summer and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... no other reason." She put her hand on the arm of her companion and the lights suddenly became misty, for he was of an apoplectic tendency. They talked of music, of the opera in Vienna and Prague. She was born in Bavaria, not more than a day's ride from Marienbad. You could almost see her country from the top of the Podhornberg, in the direction of the Franconian ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... years, to be first ready for my appointments, and to reserve other work for the interval of waiting after I am ready. It is surprising how often I find not a moment left for waiting. Still, I feel the old tendency to procrastinate, and I am obliged steadfastly to resist it. 'Delays are dangerous,' as our old writing-copies used to run; the sentiment is hackneyed, but oh, how true! George says he owes you ten thousand thanks for your faithful counsel, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... revetting some secondary support is required. This is usually furnished by sinking stakes into the bottom of the trench and securing their upper ends to a "dead man"—a stake or log sunk in the ground more than three feet away. The tendency is to sink the dead men too near to the trench, and to attach too many wires to one of them. It is important to sink the stakes at least one foot below the bottom of the trench. By digging holes for them instead of driving them in directly, the sides of the trench need not be ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... feel in any hurry to begin, and he sat down with his legs hanging over the ledge, to give his nerves time to calm down, for there was a strong tendency to throb about his pulses, and he was not sufficiently conversant with the house he lived in, to know that confinement, worry, want of fresh air, and excessive work during the past few days had not given him what the doctors ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... most individual in the point of view of Ibsen in his dramas is his sense of the vast importance trifles, of the natural human tendency to invent or magnify misunderstandings. A misunderstanding is his main lever of the tragic mischief; and he has studied and diagnosed this unconscious agent of destiny more minutely and persistently than any other dramatist. He found it in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... lack of judgment misled the various pot-boiler writers to attack the new tendency with the most repulsive arguments. One leading paper of those days wrote of Hauptmann as an individual of a pronounced criminal physiognomy, of whom one could expect nothing else ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... the Manson Chiverses of University Place), but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long Island ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry—with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson, who, as everybody ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... work somewhat awkwardly, yet with a fervor prophetic of settled wisdom and eloquence. The youth is almost too much in earnest. He aims at nothing less than all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. Perchance the end of all this is that he may discover his own proper work and tendency, and learn to know himself from the revelations of his own nature in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... outcome of the following facts: Mr. Gerard, on account of his anti-German tendency, was not popular in Berlin. He regarded it as a personal slight that the most important negotiations should have been carried on partly in Washington, and partly by Colonel House in Berlin. The Ambassador wanted therefore, to use the opportunity of the Sussex incident to ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... minority remained at home on the feast-days. Even the lowest class of the population—elsewhere, from ignorance and prejudice, the stronghold of the papal religion—here seemed to share in the universal tendency, and, unfortunately, as a local chronicler, to whom we are indebted for these particulars, informs us, took no better way of testifying its devotion than by "mutilating sepulchral monuments, unearthing the dead, and committing a thousand ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... a definite object in view, no boys ever were happier, nor more profitably employed, considering the influence upon their characters and future accomplishments. How true it is that they who possess worthy hobbies, especially those governed by the desire for construction and the inventive tendency, are getting altogether the most out of life and are giving the ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... Generally (for they had not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. Humorists, for they were of all descriptions; and, not having been brought together in early life (which has a tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they formed a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... our host and hostess full of quiet cordiality, to which their homeliness lent an additional charm. The relation of host and guest is weakened by every addition to a company, and in a large assembly all but disappears. Indeed, the tendency of the present age is to blot from the story of every-day life all reminders of the ordinary human relations, as commonplace and insignificant, and to mingle all society in one concourse of atoms, in which ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... is this all. From many worlds and earths there is flowing constantly to this planet new, strange, wonderful beings. Here is a cosmos of races, tastes, nationalities, destinies, civilizations, and instincts, from whose amalgamated and fused vortices of tendency this marvellous life ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... to the Dutch in its own borders to require the Dutch to do justice to the British within the borders of the Republic was unassailable. We have noticed before how in the year 1897 the different sections of the British population were manifesting a tendency to draw closer together. After the Graaf Reinet speech this movement rapidly developed into a general determination to challenge the long domination of the Bond. It had been recognised for some time past that the recent and considerable growth ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... tendency created an embarrassment to Union commanders. A few days after General Butler assumed command of the Union troops at Fortress Monroe, the agent of a rebel master who had fled from the neighborhood came to demand, under the provisions of the fugitive-slave law, three field ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... romantic, and the natural tendency had been fed and nourished by indiscriminate reading. The Waddy Public Library, in point of fact, was largely responsible for many of the minor worries and big troubles Dick had been instrumental in visiting on the township. The 'lib'ry' ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... course of time the general doctrine was developed which made the gods, on the whole, favorably inclined towards man, while the evil was ascribed to the demons[1246]—as occupying the lower rank of divine beings—we note the tendency also to ascribe the ills that humanity is heir to, to the forces that dwell under the earth,—to Nergal and Allatu and to those who did their bidding. Probably, Lakhmu and Lakhamu were also regarded, at least by the theologians, as part of Allatu's court, just as Alala and Belili[1247] ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... remarkable natural family, it is singular that so few of the order should have been discovered: a fact in the history of the Australian vegetation, which (upon contemplating the natural economy of many other genera of plants) can only be considered as accounted for, by the great tendency to drought of at least ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... mighty swarm of electrons we call the Earth is a tendency to order, organisation, and system. The myriad millions of ultimate particles in their all-togetherness and from their interaction upon one another become possessed of an imperative urge towards excellence. The electrons group themselves into atoms; the atoms clump ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... the dream-flowers, and push the dream-children aside, and then say, in their loud, harsh voices—not soft and singable like the dream-voices—"You must not tell such naughty stories, Miss Annie; you give me the shivers, and your mamma will be very vexed with you." But this tendency in me was too strong to be stifled, and it found its food in the fairy tales I loved, and in the religious allegories that I found yet more entrancing. How or when I learned to read, I do not know, for I cannot remember the time when a book was not a delight. At five years ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... Write! A sudden light flashed upon him. To write was the very thing he had made up his mind to do that day. He had made up his mind irrevocably to that step and then had forgotten all about it. That incorrigible tendency to escape from the grip of the situation was fraught with serious danger. He was ready to despise himself for it. What was it? Levity, or deep-seated ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... parted company to carry these arrangements into effect, the first result of which was that everybody looked more cheerful than they had been since the completion of the house, after finishing which some dulness and lassitude had been observable in the men, coupled with a tendency to idle ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... prey. For now, in this crisis of action, doubts assailed her. She remembered that she had never read the book, though she had heard much of it from Berrand. He was imaginative and essentially mischievous. Perhaps he had exaggerated its tendency, drawn too lurid a picture of its horrible power. Catherine turned a page or two and glanced at the clear, even ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... this, the Composers in Vogue were Scarlatti, Bononcini, Gasparini, Mancini, &c. The last and modern Stile has pretty well spread itself all over Italy, and begins to have a great Tendency to the same beyond the ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi

... School. In like manner it is interesting and sometimes illumining to know the literary school or tendency to which a writer belongs. Every author has his limitations and idiosyncrasies. First of all, he may be a writer of prose alone or of poetry alone. In prose he may confine himself to a single department, as fiction or history; or in poetry he may be chiefly lyric, didactic, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... in the first Bulletin dealt with the "Fire Question," and all through the successive issues runs a series of significant items on the same subject. Many of them are aimed at gas, and there are several grim summaries of death and fires due to gas-leaks or explosions. A tendency existed at the time to assume that electricity was altogether safe, while its opponents, predicating their attacks on arc-lighting casualties, insisted it was most dangerous. Edison's problem in educating the public was rather difficult, for ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... enhance one's obligation* to tell the truth, or to fulfil his promise. This obligation is entire and perfect in all cases, on the ground of intrinsic fitness, and of the known will and command of God. But the tendency of oaths is to establish in the minds of men two classes of assertions and promises, one more sacred than the other. He who is required under the solemn sanction of an oath merely to tell the truth or to make a promise in good faith, arrives ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... seldom trampled on a prostrate enemy, and he seems to promise, that on the payment of a tribute, the least guilty of his unbelieving subjects might be indulged in their worship, or at least in their imperfect faith" (Vol. V, p. 129), and this, of course, would be the natural tendency of his followers. The Armenian and the Greek churches survived, and still exist in that portion of the world, but they have indeed been greviously tormented. "The proud Moslem, glorying in his prophet and religion, has heaped every possible insult and injury upon the Christians," ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... To their Sunday School I am indebted for almost all the education my youthful years were blessed with. Towards some of them I was taught in infancy to look up with reverence and esteem; and the recollection of their Christian virtues proves to me that whatever tendency Calvinism may have to relax the ties of moral obligation, the argument cannot be drawn from the lives of many of its professors. With many Clergymen who take Calvinism for their creed, I have still the happiness ...
— Gwaith Alun • Alun

... diathesis[obs3]. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c. (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c. (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c. (tendency) 176[obs3]; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c. adj. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical[obs3]; fundamental, normal; implanted, inherent, essential, natural; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... ground and advanced to meet them. In spite of weighted boots, which we had taken the precaution to wear, we had some difficulty in walking properly; the gravitation being so much less than on the earth we had an irresistible tendency to lift our feet much too high at ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... communion with our soul. At the worst, we are so fallen and passive that we may say shortly we have none. An arctic torpor seizes upon men. Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; consciousness becomes engrossed among the reflex and mechanical parts of life; and soon loses both the will and power to look higher considerations in the face. This is ruin; this is the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... there were two different sections of society; first there were those who had been introduced into the church through Judaism, and afterwards those who had been converted from different forms of heathenism. Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of Judaism highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those who led a single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those converts therefore, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... feeding the bird, goes eagerly for a gun, in order that he may shoot it, the boy will sympathize in that desire, and growing up under such an influence, there will be gradually formed within him, through the mysterious tendency of the youthful heart to vibrate in unison with hearts that are near, a disposition to kill and destroy all helpless beings that come within his power. There is no need of any formal instruction in either case. Of a thousand children brought up under the former of the above-described ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott

... and omnipotent, materia [25] medica, hygiene, and animal magnetism are impotent; and their only supposed efficacy is in apparently delud- ing reason, denying revelation, and dethroning Deity. The tendency of mental healing is to uplift mankind; but this method perverted, is "Satan let loose." Hence the [30] deep demand for the Science of psychology to meet sin, and uncover it; thus to ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... you that telegram. Mrs. Ellmother refused to inform you of her mistress's serious illness. That circumstance, according to my view of it, laid the responsibility on the doctor's shoulders. The form taken by your aunt's delirium—I mean the apparent tendency of the words that escape her in that state—seems to excite some incomprehensible feeling in the mind of her crabbed servant. She wouldn't even let me go into the bedroom, if she could possibly help it. Did Mrs. Ellmother give you a warm welcome ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... the papers should go in as papers having a tendency to show that Shadrach was an ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various

... which is in keeping with our principle. To take on burdens and cares is to draw upon the vital forces—to leave so much the less to cheerfulness and buoyant spirits. The same corporeal framework cannot afford a lavish expenditure in several different ways at one time. Fox had no long-sightedness, no tendency to forecast evils, or to burden himself with possible misfortunes. It is very doubtful if Palmerston could have borne the part of Wellington in the Peninsula; his easy-going temperament would not have submitted itself to all the anxieties and precautions of that vast enterprise. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... ought to be executed as a murderer. But a false prophecy of the King's death is not to be dealt with exactly on the usual principle; because, however idle in itself, the promulgation of such a prediction has, in times such as we are speaking of, a strong tendency to work its completion. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... in this issue is Olive G. Owen's "How Prayest Thou?", a piece of true sentiment and artistic beauty. The only fault is metrical; the use of the word "trial" as a monosyllable. This tendency to slur over words appears to be Miss Owen's one poetical vice, as exemplified in the imperfect rendering of "jewel", "realness", and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... object of the library is understood to be simply the supplying of the wants of the reading public, and the young are considered as a portion of that public, the question is very easily answered by saying, Give them what they call for that is not positively injurious in its tendency. But if we regard the public library as an educational means rather than a mere clubbing arrangement for the economical supply of reading, just as the gas company is for the supply of artificial light, it becomes of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... in our library early this morning by some unknown person, and is in bed with a bad wound on his temple and a tendency to hysteria," McIntyre explained. ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... of such diverse usage that it is difficult to generalize regarding it. The tendency seems at present to be in the direction of using the slur (in instrumental music) as a phrase-mark exclusively, it being understood that unless there is some direction to the contrary, the tones are to be performed ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... ten o'clock we had to fasten our vessels to the rocks. Proceeding onwards, we got towards evening in with the land, and having doubled a point we entered a very large bay named Fuxaa, or Fushaa, three leagues and a half beyond Doroo, the coast between stretching N. and E. with a tendency towards N.W. and S.E. This bay of Fushaa is remarkable by a very high sharp peaked hill, in lat. 20 15' N. In the very mouth of the harbour there are two very low points, lying N. by E. and S. by W. from each other, distant a league and half. As no great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... country? Evidently none. It might have been expected that Miss Jessop, rising to the occasion, would have taught the young man his place, and would perhaps have made some scathing remark about the tendency of Englishmen to interfere in matters that did not concern them. But she did nothing of the kind. She looked down demurely on the deck, with the faint flicker of a smile hovering about her pretty lips, and now and then flashed a quick glance at the serious ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... always, and two or three strong attachments had given to her character the kind of concentration that passes for strength. Yet all of these had been more positive people than herself; and while this had softened the tendency to that querulous exactingness that weak, sweet natures are apt to possess, it had also shaped to certain generous instincts that were quite free from vanity. Her natural kindliness gave her the charm of good-breeding, and this ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... an atmosphere a girl like myself, of serious not to say priggish tendency, did not escape a concerted pressure to push her into the "missionary field." During the four years it was inevitable that every sort of evangelical appeal should have been made to reach the comparatively few "unconverted" girls in the school. We were the subject of prayer ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... to me, being as different, in almost all respects, to what I had been accustomed as it might seem possible for contrariety to make earthly things. Though I had friends in it, and therefore was not solitary, yet its tendency, like that of the noisy and restless sea, was to render me melancholy. Some features which the congregated condition of mankind exhibited penetrated my heart with something like actual dismay. I had seen nothing of the sort, nor yet even so much as a semblance of it, and therefore I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... "renaissance" has grown to cover a vaguer period, and there has been a constant tendency to push the date of its beginning ever backward, as we detect more and more the dimly dawning light amid the darkness of earlier ages. Of late, writers have fallen into the way of calling Dante the "morning star of the Renaissance"; and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... enough to satisfy any Christian; though Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, are still more implacable enemies of the stage. However, we saw the stages for their architecture, where this was curious." His opinion of the evil tendency of stage entertainments continued with ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... Polar sea, and connects with the Ural; and that along the axis of the chain, protuberant masses will emerge above the sea level, constituting an archipelago of islands, from Nova Zembla to the McKenzie; and that these islands, causing an accumulation of ice, and arresting its general tendency to the southward, is the barrier which Sir John Franklin was finally stopped by, in a situation where he could neither advance nor return. With the map before us, and the data afforded by former voyages, and guided by these theoretical ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... street urchin says "boid" for "bird"; the people of Santiago sometimes drop the "r" entirely and say "poque," as the Southern negro in the United States says "fo" for "four"; the peasants of Puerto Plata show a tendency to use the "u" instead of "o" and say "tudu" instead of "todo," like some of the inhabitants of Catalonia in Spain. The Azuans claim to speak the best Spanish of the Republic, but their claim is disputed by ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... ridicule your, to them foreign, ways and manners may excite. I need not tell you to be always straightforward, honest, and true, for of those qualities I think you possess a fair share. Above all things restrain any tendency to use your fists; fighting comes naturally to English boys, but in France it is considered as brutal and degrading—a blow is a deadly insult, and would never ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... of this volume is occupied by a consideration of the relations between Europe and America. Advancing years do not seem to chill Mr. Bancroft's faith in progress, his confidence in democracy, his love of popular institutions, or to check his tendency to throw his speculations into an aphoristic form, and to present his conclusions positively, and with less of qualification and limitation than men of a more cautious temperament would do. So far as literary merit is concerned, the European chapters will be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech and replace it by another. A custom of this sort, it is plain, may easily be a potent agent of change in language; for where it prevails to any considerable extent many words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up. And this tendency has been remarked by observers who have recorded the custom in Australia, America, and elsewhere. For example, with regard to the Australian aborigines it has been noted that "the dialects change with almost every tribe. Some tribes name their children after natural objects; and when the person so ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together—as if they were afraid of being ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... She had expected to see a striking and powerful, if not pleasant face; but the most salient points of his appearance were a tendency to foppishness in dress and rather more than a tendency to a certain veiled insolence of expression and manner. For the rest, he was as swarthy as a mulatto, and, notwithstanding his lameness, as agile as ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... have given an exceptional and unique character to contemporary Germany. It is a case of social psychology of extreme interest. To describe it would require long detail. The combination of the aristocratic and military tendency with the industrial and plutocratic tendency, the tendency of the police spirit, the regularizing spirit of the Kulturstaat with the individual initiative of the capitalist entrepreneur, methodical habits of administration ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... no more than the dullest companions, are always inoffensive. They have both enough of language to be indecent and abusive. And surely if the opinion just above cited be true, we cannot wonder that works so nastily derived should be nasty themselves, or have a tendency ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... 104 feet. She had 8 steel decks, a cellular double bottom, 5 1/4 feet through (the inner and outer "skins" so-called), and with bilge keels projecting 2 feet for 300 feet of her length amidships. These latter were intended to lessen the tendency to roll in a sea; they no doubt did so very well, but, as it happened, they proved to be a weakness, for this was the first portion of the ship touched by the iceberg and it has been suggested that the keels were forced inwards ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... conditions of life upon this earth? Is there war or peace in daily life? All living beings require food; they multiply in a geometrical ratio; and so the natural productivity of the soil becomes increasingly inadequate. The tendency to increase in geometrical ratio is true of all life—vegetable, animal and human, but the tendency is checked by various counteracting influences, natural and artificial. A short time ago these checks had so operated to annul the law of increase ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... useless passion, and had striven in vain. He had not, however, yielded for a day to a dreamy melancholy, but, in accordance with his promise "to do his best," had been tireless in mental and physical activity. The tendency to wander somewhat aimlessly had ceased, and he had adopted the plan of studying modern life at the old centres of civilization ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... the Temple produced within Pharisaism a moral reformation which drove the Jew within and thus spiritualised Judaism. For undoubtedly the Pharisee of the Gospels is by no means the Pharisee as we meet him in the Jewish books. There was always a latent power and tendency in Judaism towards inward religion; and it may be that this power was intensified, this tendency encouraged, by the loss of Temple and ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... oldest states in the world I come from, have such faith in its duration, that they are all gradually shaping their institutions so as to melt into ours, and their most thoughtful politicians say that, whether they like it or not, the inevitable tendency of these old states is ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... baronial quarrels were resumed and the northern kingdom, under Bruce, cut itself finally free by the stroke of Bannockburn. Otherwise the reign is a mere interlude, and it is with the succeeding one that we find the new national tendency yet further developed. The great French wars, in which England won so much glory, were opened by Edward III., and grew more and more nationalist. But even to feel the transition of the time we must first realize that ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... auditory nerve. This fact, often repeated, generates a kind of organic predisposition which is confirmed by heredity. If from any cause one of these groups is set in motion, the other groups will have a tendency to vibrate. Therefore, if a singing animal, weary of always repeating the same note, wishes to vary its height, he will naturally choose one of the harmonic sounds of the first. The ultimate origin of the law of melody in organized beings is therefore only the simultaneous harmony, realized ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... philosophy had gradually been eliminating the Neo-Platonic, mystic element, and returning to pure Aristotelianism. In Averroes, who professed to be merely a commentator on Aristotle, this tendency reached its climax; and though he still regarded the pseudo-Aristotelian works as genuine, and did not entirely escape their influence, he is by far the least mystic of Muslim thinkers. The two fundamental doctrines upon which he always insisted, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I—being about an average bull-headed chump—my tendency was to resist? Listen, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... instance; while those of his son, Mr. Mordaunt Littlepage, will be just as fully given in the "Chainbearer," its successor. It is hoped that the connection, which certainly does exist between these three works, will have more tendency to increase the value of each, than to produce the ordinary effect of what are properly called sequels, which are known to lessen the interest a narrative might otherwise have with the reader. Each of these three books has its own hero, its own heroine, and its own—-picture—of manners, complete; ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... thus delivered to soldiers unused to battle was calculated to cause the credulous to think of friends, home—death, and it certainly had no tendency to inspire the untried volunteers with hope and confidence. The speech was, of course, the wild, silly vaporings of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... in the cattle country at that critical moment of transition when the great tracts of land used for grazing were taken up by the incoming homesteaders, with the inevitable result of fierce contest, of passionate emotion on both sides, and of final triumph of the inevitable tendency of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... young, I mean. I had my party when I was eighteen. I remember it just as well." She gave a happy little laugh. "But of course we change with time. My sister says I am developing a dreadful disease. It's a tendency. Did you ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... gospel. It is an innocent way of obtaining relaxation; and opportunities thus offered the weary clergyman of studying nature in her ever-changing but always restful moods, must indeed be grateful after being for months in daily contact with the world, the flesh, and the devil. The tendency of the present age to liberal ideas permits clergymen in large towns and cities to drive fast horses, and spend an hour of each day at a harmless game of billiards, without giving rise to remarks from his own congregation, but let the overworked rector of a country village seek in his ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... eh?" repeated Murray, flicking his rebellious glass eye, which had a tendency to stare off to one side, "is this a sample of your ore? Well, I will say, it looks promising—would you mind if ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... shall arrest this tendency? Bring back The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack? Harden the softening human heart again To cold indifference to a brother's pain? Ye most unhappy men! who, turned away From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day, Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight time, What mean ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... preferred above them, and what roused enthusiasm was the sight of women upon the stage whose necks were bedizened with diamonds, or processions carrying golden bars in triumph. Ladies of wealth were as much compelled as the men to lead a respectable life. According to a tendency common to all civilizations, public feeling set them up as symbols; they were, by their austere magnificence, to represent both the splendour of wealth and its intangible. The old habits of gallantry had been reformed, Tut fashionable lovers were now secretly replaced by muscular labourers ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... of this distressed and insulted continent, to with hold importations from Great Britain, it seems to be allowed on all sides, has the strongest tendency towards the repeal of the acts of parliament for raising a revenue in America without our consent. It is no wonder then, that it was oppos'd with so much vehemence at first, by the Cabal; who knew full well, that their Places and their Pensions, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... for formal walks, and carried gloves. But though in a sense incompletely developed, he was not incompletely developed in another direction. He was at what is called an awkward age, and both father and mother had detected in him an alarming tendency to enjoy the society of young women—a tendency much stimulated by his unnatural mode of life. Thomas was already a member of the church and was a teacher in the Sunday-school; but his mother was uneasy, for a serious attachment between Thomas and anybody in the ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... In the best nursery rhymes, as in the simpler and more genuine ballads which have so close a connection with them, we find this attraction of the inarticulate—this charm of pure sound, this utilizing of alliteration and rhyme and assonance." Those who have noticed the tendency of children to find vocal pleasure even of a physical or muscular sort in nonsense combinations of sounds, and who also realize their own tendency in this direction, will feel that Professor Saintsbury has hit upon a suggestive ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... be a decided and growing tendency on the part of our countrywomen, to wear the trowsers. If properly done, we certainly can not object. For some time past indications of an invasion, by the ladies, of men's peculiar domain in dress, incited by the strong-minded Miss Webers of the day, have been tangible, but the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... with the individuality, self-reliance, and rapidity of locomotion of the savage is what we should aim at. This will be the tendency of the course indicated, and it is conceived by the writer that an army composed of well-disciplined hunters will be the most efficient of all others against the only enemy we have to encounter within the limits of our ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... There is a growing tendency with our New England people to make rest and recreation matters of considerable importance in themselves. Business is driven at a greater speed than it used to be, and an annual relaxation from business ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... light shaking and darting across the black sky like a gleaming sword; the man on the sidewalk looking backward with a startled glance; the big drops of rain falling sidelong in the wind—these were all reproduced on the canvas. His later pictures were characterized by a cynical tendency, which I observed with regret. It was evident that his sensitive mind had taken impressions from its brief contact with men, which were sadly ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... is even dimly hinted at that human sacrifices might be associated with this already sufficiently hideous cult. I give these facts as they were given to me, and shall not believe them until I am compelled. It has always been the natural tendency in everything which (like the idolatrous practices still existing among the pueblos, of which there is no doubt) we do not positively know, to make bad look worse and good better than it actually is. The prospect of securing a knowledge of it is, however, not very ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... divine inspiration, must be contented to depend upon God's truth, and his holy word, and receive with humble faith the mysteries which are too high for comprehension. Above all, Swift points out, with his usual forcible precision, the mischievous tendency of those investigations which, while they assail one fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, shake and endanger the whole fabric, destroy the settled faith of thousands, pervert and mislead the genius of the learned and acute, destroy and confound ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift



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