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Groundwork   Listen
noun
Groundwork  n.  That which forms the foundation or support of anything; the basis; the essential or fundamental part; first principle; as, development of a convenient DNA sequencing technique layed the groundwork for many of the subsequent advances in molecular genetics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Groundwork" Quotes from Famous Books



... mythological in the history of AEsculapius, there is a groundwork of facts. Splendid temples were built to him in lovely and healthy places, usually on a hill or near a spring; they were visited by the sick, and the priests of the temples not only attended to the worship of AEsculapius, but took pains to acquire knowledge of the healing ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... its own cost of production. This is the central idea of the famous and much-misunderstood Marxian theory of surplus-value, by which the method of capitalism, the exploitation of the wage-workers, and the resulting class antagonisms of the system are explained. This theory becomes the groundwork of all the social theories and movements protesting against and seeking to end the exploitation of the laboring masses. To understand it is, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... You may well say we must be sorry for it, having so lately seen it in all its gay spring beauty—and though no doubt the surface, which is all we saw of its inhabitants, is better than the groundwork, how much of good and great it contains! How the best Frenchmen everywhere, and the best Parisians in particular, must grieve over the deep corruption which has done much to bring their country to its present dreary prospects. I did not mean that any mediation or interference ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... Montalban and his companions, with the twelve peers of France, and Turpin, the historian. These gentlemen we will condemn only to perpetual exile, as they contain something of the famous Bojardo's invention, whence the Christian poet Ariosto borrowed the groundwork of his ingenious compositions; to whom I should pay little regard if he had not written in his own language [Italian]."—Cervantes, Don Quixote, I. i. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... end experience will inevitably teach us that the laws for a wise and noble life have a foundation infinitely deeper than the fiat of any being, God or man, even in the groundwork of ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... mine,' he said, aloud, 'I think if Lady Jocelyn does wish Miss Bonner to learn Latin thoroughly, he would do very well for the groundwork and would be glad of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... picture of a time gone by," we are bound to consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... daily fact. It was one of the loveliest of lovely spring mornings—the sky was clear as a pale, polished sapphire, and every little bib of delicate carving and sculpture on the Dom stood out from its groundwork with microscopically beautiful distinctness. And as his gaze rested on the perfect fairness of the day, a strange and sudden sense of rapturous anticipation possessed his mind,—he felt as one prepared for some high and exquisite happiness,—some ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... essence of English conversational style. His works consist only of morceaux—of brilliant passages. I wonder that Goldsmith, who ought to have known better, should call him "a dull fellow." His wit is poignant, though artificial; and his characters (though the groundwork of some of them had been laid before) have yet invaluable original differences; and the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them;—Yorick, Dr. Slop, Mr. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... overlying ossification of the skull showed itself in the development of all Vertebrates. Duges, in his Recherches sur l'osteologie et la myologie des Batraciens (1834), distinguished between such bones as are formed by direct ossification of the cartilaginous groundwork of the skull, and such as are developed in the periosteal ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... "is he amiable?" Undoubtedly they still wear swords, and are brave through pride and tradition, and they know how to die, especially in duels and according to form. But worldly traits have hidden the ancient military groundwork; at the end of the eighteenth century their genius is to be wellbred and their employment consists in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... all the psychologic subtlety of the portrait the groundwork of spiritual romance subsists. The militant saint of legend reappears, in the mould and garb of the modern world, subject to all its hampering conditions, and compelled to make his way over the corpses, not of lions and dragons only, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... the mind was busied elsewhere. Whole populations adopted this first essay of an art thereafter to be used by Loyola in his attempt to govern the world, an art of which his Exercises furnish the ingenious groundwork. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... British Museum (plate 76). In this may be seen most of the characteristics of this work in the thirteenth century; such as the angels with peacock feather wings, moulded by hot irons; the features of all the figures similarly manipulated; the beautiful gold groundwork, which in this instance is covered with double-headed eagles; and lastly, the fashion of the beard on the face of our Lord and of all the men delineated—the upper lip and round the mouth being invariably shaven; whereas, in Continental work, the beard is allowed to grow into the moustache, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... of Wurtzburg formed the plan of the Catholic union, which was distinguished from the evangelical by the title of the League. The objects agreed upon were nearly the same as those which constituted the groundwork of the Union. Bishops formed its principal members, and at its head was placed Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. As the only influential secular member of the confederacy, he was entrusted with far more extensive powers than the Protestants had committed to their chief. In addition to the duke's being ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the silent figure, Philip Dru felt something of regret himself, for he now knew the groundwork of the man, and he was sure that under other conditions, a career could have been wrought more splendid than that of ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... affect ideas, conceptions, and beliefs. The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought. The reason these great events are so rare is that there is nothing so stable in a race as the inherited groundwork ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... proud, more satisfied with myself than on that evening when, the last hook fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the cheval glass. I was a dream. I say it who should not; but I am not the only one who said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with gold braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and where there was no more possible room for gold braid there hung gold cords, and tassels, and straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... instinct necessary to the absolute unison of a pair. Thus, though he might never love a woman of the island race, for lack in her of the desired refinement, he could not love long a kimberlin—a woman other than of the island race, for her lack of this groundwork of character. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power. The respect which the translators felt for the original prevented them from adding any of the hideous decorations then in fashion. The groundwork of the version, indeed, was of an earlier age. The familiarity with which the Puritans, on almost every occasion, used the Scriptural phrases was no doubt very ridiculous; but it produced good effects. It was a cant; but it drove out a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate philological groundwork which we require them to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be able, it may be ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... at once the most ancient and the most modern of the languages which constitute the Slavonic group. In its groundwork it presents the nearest approach to the old ecclesiastical Slavonic, the liturgical language common to all the Orthodox Slavs, but it has undergone more important modifications than any of the sister dialects in the simplification of its grammatical forms; and the analytical character of its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... anxious lookout below for fear of dangers which might loom up from the bottom, always with an anxious lookout starboard for fear of running against the foundations of Greenland, always with an anxious lookout to port for fear of striking the groundwork of the unknown land to the west, and always keeping a lookout in every direction for whatever revelation these unknown waters might choose to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... dream. Devoid as it was of regular beauty, the face beneath, with its clear blue eyes, red lips, and pure complexion, the pink and white that reminds one of a sweet-pea or ocean-shell, had struck me as very lovely from the first; nothing to support this groundwork of excellence had I discovered, however, either in the form of the head, which was ignoble, or the expression of the face, which was both timid and defiant, or the tones of the voice, which were shrill and harsh by turns—yet, as my fellow-voyager ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... and it is true that no government would submit to a demand for adventitious damages so long as it could prevent this; but it was a far-reaching exposure of an unprincipled foreign policy, and this speech formed the groundwork for the Treaty of Washington and the Geneva arbitration. It was a more important case than the settlement of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... of considerable moment that this question should be fully discussed in order to be finally determined. The groundwork is physiological, the superstructure involves some moral considerations: and the conclusions will have an extensive influence on the system of education that ought to be adopted. If the perceptions of the eye, and its associated phantasms, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... Whigs less aristocratic than the Tories? Not at all. In tendency by principle they are the same. The real difference is not in the creed, in the groundwork, but in certain points ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... William was a strait one. Henry might fairly look on him as a traitor, and it was the general belief that he paid for his treason with his eyes. Here we may perhaps see the groundwork for the foolish story that Duke Robert's fate was equally hard. But Henry was far too wise to commit so useless a crime. The captive Duke spent the remaining twenty-eight years of his life in this castle, and that, treated with all honour, but kept under such restraint as was needful, specially ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... picture, pattern within pattern, of the life of all things: flowers blowing, trees waving, men and women moving and speaking in densest crowds among the flaming rocks of hell, the steps of purgatory, the planispheres of heaven's stars making the groundwork of that wondrous tapestry. But it is better to read Dante than to read about Dante, so I let ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... language and form, they seem always to have been regarded with a kind of pious reverence, and appear to have been altered as little as possible. Most of their allusions are, for that reason, unintelligible at the present day. That their groundwork is derived from the age of paganism, is evident from the frequent invocations of heathen deities, and from various allusions ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... often been called a garden of wild-flowers. Just now poppy and aster, gladiolus and thistle, embroider it with patterns infinite and intricate beyond the power of art. They have already mown the hay in part; and the billowy tracts of greyish green, where no flowers are now in bloom, supply a restful groundwork to those brilliant patches of diapered fioriture. These are like praying-carpets spread for devotees upon the pavement of a mosque whose roof is heaven. In the level light the scythes of the mowers ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... of each number is a katipo's web, suggestive of the reticulation of telegraph wires, concerning which page 3 of the first number says: "The Katipo spider and web extends its threads as a groundwork for unity ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... by Rev. Selwyn Image. Representing Venus and Proserpine. To be worked in outline on linen, as No. 1, or in coloured silks on a groundwork of satin ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... keep it together, it must in the end fall. The architecture within is exquisitely beautiful. The stone both of the roof and walls is sculptured with leaves and flowers, so delicately wrought that I could have admired them for hours, and the whole of their groundwork is stained by time with the softest colours. Some of those leaves and flowers were tinged perfectly green, and at one part the effect was most exquisite: three or four leaves of a small fern, resembling that which we call adder's ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... condition of ticquers is especially characterized by the imperfection or weakness of volition, by a certain degree of mental instability and lack of inhibitory control of the desires, tendencies, activities and motor expressions of the individual, this defect laying the groundwork for the impulsions and obsessions, as also for hysterical, so-called neurasthenic, hypochondriacal, depressive and so-called dementia praecox reactions. The tic movement is the symbol of the psychic defect ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... period not far back, when several inquiring minds, chiefly Germans, endeavoured to clear up the misconception, and to give the ancients their due, without being insensible to the merits of the moderns, although of a totally different kind. The apparent contradiction did not intimidate them. The groundwork of human nature is no doubt everywhere the same; but in all our investigations, we may observe that, throughout the whole range of nature, there is no elementary power so simple, but that it is capable of dividing and diverging into opposite directions. The whole ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... It is evident that his family think a good deal of this young lordling, and I must take care to keep in his good graces. He is fond of flattery, though it doesn't do to lay it on too thick, but his sisters and mother will be well pleased to hear his praises sung, and as I have a fair groundwork to go upon, I may praise him to the skies behind his back; he is sure to hear what I say of him, and will be more pleased than if I flattered him to his face. I shall thus get into the good graces of the ladies, who may induce the marquis to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... a text-book of six hundred pages which is used in the largest universities as a groundwork of political economy. This remarkable sentence strikes the eye: "The motives to business activity are too familiar to require analysis." But some sense that perhaps the "economic man" is not a self-evident creature seems to have touched our author. So we are treated ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... wit, the truth, the vigour, or the learning which characterizes them; but he is seldom found, in Tristram Shandy, at any rate, to have transferred them to his own pages out of a mere indolent inclination to save himself the trouble of composition. He takes them less as substitutes than as groundwork for his own invention—as so much material for his own inventive powers to work upon; and those powers do generally work upon them with conspicuous skill of elaboration. The series of cuttings, for instance, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... foreign affairs, has been, after mature deliberation, finally disavowed by that Government as inconsistent with the powers and instructions given to their minister who negotiated it. This disavowal was entirely unexpected, as the liberal principles embodied in the convention, and which form the groundwork of the objections to it, were perfectly satisfactory to the Belgian representative, and were supposed to be not only within the powers granted, but expressly conformable to the instructions given to him. An offer, not yet accepted, has been made by Belgium ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... passages, corresponding in many particulars with such striking accuracy, offered an excellent groundwork for a political play, and the "Duke of Guise" was composed accordingly; Dryden making use of the scenes which he had formerly written on the subject, and Lee contributing the remainder, which he ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... good-humored, humane old bachelor; remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... well handled, on the old familiar lines, and supplies the groundwork of an eminently readable story, peopled by many life-like "humours" and an attractive, spirited heroine. The adventures of Valerie are various and well-sustained; her bearing throughout secures the reader's sympathy, and he is conscious ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... be of suggestive value as well as of interest to point out that in olden times the scenario was the only part of the play the playwright wrote. The groundwork of the plot was fixed beyond change, and then the actors were permitted to do as they pleased within these limits. Even today, in the construction of hurried entertainments for club nights at the various actors' club-houses, often only ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... forego HIS special desires; and this latter proceeding by the way, when it is done without the sanction of the most powerful part of society, is called THEFT; though on the big scale and duly sanctioned by artificial laws, it is, as we have seen, the groundwork of our present system. Once more, that system refuses permission to people to produce unless under artificial restrictions; under Socialism, every one who could produce would be free to produce, so that the price of an article would be just the cost ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... industry and devotion. During the war he was employed under the Directorate of Military Aeronautics, and in 1916 was made Director of Aircraft Equipment, with the rank of brigadier-general. He wore himself out in the service of the country, and died in May 1918. These three men laid the groundwork of the plans which were approved ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... Rome than the epoch from the institution of the republic to the subjugation of Italy. That epoch laid the foundations of the commonwealth both within and without; it created a united Italy; it gave birth to the traditional groundwork of the national law and of the national history; it originated the -pilum- and the maniple, the construction of roads and of aqueducts, the farming of estates and the monetary system; it moulded the she-wolf of the Capitol and designed the Ficoroni casket. But the individuals, who contributed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... foundation, advances step by step into the more complicated matters and minor details. The beginner eager to take up the actual work of cookery may feel that too much attention is given to preliminaries. However, these are extremely essential, for they are the groundwork on which the actual cooking of food depends; indeed, without a knowledge of them, very little concerning cookery in its various phases ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... Bad Angel, an antagonism so inveterate that even if the temporary object of their struggle were removed, the strife would still break out again from the sheer viciousness of the Vices. This instinctive hostility between Virtues and Vices supplies the groundwork of the Interludes. They dismiss Humankind from the stage. He was always a weak, oscillating sort of creature. Sound, forceful Abstractions and Types were wanted, which could be worked up into thoroughgoing rascals or heroes, rascality ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... the groundwork of human savagism. To retrace its history would be to reproduce almost entire the history of all nations—Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Franks, Huns, Turks, Arabs, Moguls, Tartars—without ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... once to hate idolatry, music, crosses, masses, nuns, priests, bishops, and cardinals. The "humanities," the Shorter Catechism, the Confession of Faith, and "The whole Duty of Man," would, in his opinion, be the books to lay the groundwork in the child's mind of a Christian character of the ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... scholar,—that is to say, I read and enjoy the Latin classics, and could probably make myself understood in Latin prose. But the knowledge which I have, I have acquired since I left school,—no doubt aided much by that groundwork of the language which will in the process of years make its way slowly, even through the skin. There were twelve years of tuition in which I do not remember that I ever knew a lesson! When I left Harrow I was nearly at the top of the school, being a monitor, and, I think, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... Romans that we can scarcely see any trace of their existence except in certain relics which have been borrowed from true poetry and converted into the half fabulous history of the infant ages of Rome. That the Romans, as a people, had no great national drama, and that their poems never became the groundwork of a later polished literature was due to the incorporation of foreigners into their nation who took little interest in the traditions of their earlier achievements. Father Ennius (239-169 B.C.), as Horace calls him, was the true founder of Latin poetry. He enriched the Latin ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... — N. substantiality, hypostasis; person, being, thing, object, article, item; something, a being, an existence; creature, body, substance, flesh and blood, stuff, substratum; matter &c 316; corporeity^, element, essential nature, groundwork, materiality, substantialness, vital part. [Totality of existences], world &c 318; plenum. Adj. substantive, substantial; hypostatic; personal, bodily, tangible &c (material) 316; corporeal. Adv. substantially ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... zooelogical work, however, related to the group of back-boned animals. These, by their natural affinities and anatomical structure, are more closely related to man, and, as Huxley began his scientific work as a medical student, the groundwork of all his knowledge was study of the anatomy and physiology of man. Moreover, throughout the greater part of his working life, he had more to do with the extinct forms of life. The vertebrate animals, from the great facility for ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible tragedy, the Promos and Cassandra of George Whetstone, is supposed, from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... put upon my finger a magnificent diamond ring very unexpectedly when I was leaving my native shore, as a mark of gratitude for a disinterested act on my part towards him long, long ago, which he considered had been the groundwork of his fortune:) also some tobacco to pack in them, to prevent them spoiling. Then saw over the Custom-house, which is a very fine building; and the Exchange. Business is not done here as it is in London. Mr. Vyse, Mr. Palin, and I then visited the Tombs. Prisoners do not remain here long. If ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore

... the benefit which all orders of society, and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying influence of civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... who ere thou art that thus dost strive With fierce assault my groundwork to subvert, And boldly dost into Gods secrets dive, Base fear my manly face note make m' avert. In that odde question which thou first didst stert, I'll plainly prove thine incapacitie, And force thy feeble feet back to revert, That ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... oil paint. In the early sixteenth century the Venetians copied the Eastern custom of sinking panels in their book covers, and painted coats of arms on these sunk portions very successfully. The groundwork of the shield itself was usually raised a little, either by something under the leather, or by some ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... of reflection. In fact, a single seriously expressed doubt as to the safety of the investment he was about making, coming from a man like Mr. Page, would have effectually prevented its being made, for Jordan would not have rested until he understood the very nature and groundwork of the objection. He would then have seen a new statement of figures, heard a new relation of facts and probabilities, and learned that Barnaby was selling at the suggestion of Mr. Page, after being fully convinced of the folly of ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur

... the leading periodicals of the day; while they were more than once quoted by Sir Walter Scott, who characterised the whole as an elegant work. In the production of these tales, Mr Roby's practice was to make himself master of the historical groundwork of the story, and as far as possible of the manners and customs of the period, and then to commence composition, with Fosbroke's Encyclopedia of Antiquities at hand, for accuracy of costume, &c. He always gave the credit of his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... be proved that there is some radical error in the reasoning whereby I have endeavoured to show that natural causes not only may, but must, have produced existing order. The overthrow is complete, because the very groundwork of the argument in question is knocked away; a third possibility, of the nature of a necessity, is introduced, and therefore the alternative is no longer between Intelligence and Fortuity, but between Intelligence and Natural Causation. Whereas the overwhelming ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... praised upon this Account, than because he has a regular Pulse or a good Digestion. This Good-Nature however in the Constitution, which Mr. Dryden somewhere calls a Milkiness of Blood, [1] is an admirable Groundwork for the other. In order therefore to try our Good-Nature, whether it arises from the Body or the Mind, whether it be founded in the Animal or Rational Part of our Nature; in a word, whether it be such as is entituled ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... acquainted with the use of letters, they feel the want of some resource which in peace may amuse their leisure, and in war may stimulate their courage. This is supplied to them by the invention of ballads; which form the groundwork of all historical knowledge, and which, in one shape or another, are found among some of the rudest tribes of the earth. They are for the most part sung by a class of men whose particular business it is thus to preserve the stock of traditions. Indeed, so natural is this curiosity ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... moving toward lower levels of taxation we must thoroughly revise our whole tax system. The groundwork for this revision has already been laid by the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, in close consultation with the Department of the Treasury. We should now remove the more glaring ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... others, for the very kind of double-dealing which he relates coolly of himself in the next page. Had he gone backwards, he might have given half a dozen volumes of his own life, with similar anecdotes and variations. I am most surprised, that when self-love is the whole groundwork of the performance, there should be little or no attempt at shining as an author, though he was one. As he had so much wit too, I am amazed that not a feature of it appears. The discussion in the appendix, on the late Prince's question for increase of allowance, is the only ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... perseverance and accuracy of the Man, who writes so passionately! In a letter of about 1845 or 6 he says he has burned at least six attempts at Cromwell's Life: and finally falls back on sorting and elucidating the Letters, as a sure Groundwork. . ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... Chaucer seems to have followed an old French story, which also formed the groundwork of the first story in the eighth day of ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... at a street corner. Number one is a shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide the prison cut of his hair. His hands are in his pockets. He puts them there when they ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... a mental tapestry, into which she had woven exquisite shades of thought, and curious and quaint devices and rich, glowing imagery that necked the groundwork with ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... pursuits are the natural groundwork of friendship. Real friendship is of slow growth, and never thrives, unless ingrafted upon a stock of ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... novel of "The Pilot," he had put the character of Paul Jones too high. He thought that the hero had been credited in that work with loftier motives than those by which he was actually animated. Feelings such as these formed the groundwork of his character, and made him intolerant of the devious ways of many who were satisfied with conforming to a lower code of morality. There was a royalty in his nature that disdained even the semblance of deceit. With other authors one feels that the man is inferior to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.)—the most artificial and 'conceited' in the collection—the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name of 'Will,' and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in form of the proper name with the common noun 'will.' This word connoted in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, of most of which it has long since ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... the work of the true critic must sometimes be to condemn, and, as far as his strength can reach, utterly to destroy the false,—scorching and withering its seeming beauty, till it is reduced to its essence and original groundwork of dust and ashes. It is only, however, when it wears the form of beauty which is the garment of truth, and so, like the Erl-maidens, has power to bewitch, that it is worth the notice and attack of the critic. Many forms of error, perhaps most, are better ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... the circle of the hills, although these secret treasures are neglected by the laziness, or concealed by the prudence, of the Mingrelians. The waters, impregnated with particles of gold, are carefully strained through sheep-skins or fleeces; but this expedient, the groundwork perhaps of a marvellous fable, affords a faint image of the wealth extracted from a virgin earth by the power and industry of ancient kings. Their silver palaces and golden chambers surpass our belief; but the fame of their riches is said ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... circle with which that useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains, and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a groundwork, giving to inferior instruments—nay, even to temporary contrivances, and to the observations of a few weeks or days—all the precision attained originally at the cost of so much time, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... should regard them as proofs of his activity in the years immediately preceding; such at least is the case in similar works. In these compositions the artist has already attained great and peculiar excellence, but in these, as might be expected from the subject, the fantastic element forms the groundwork of the whole. These mystical subjects are conceived in a singularly poetical spirit; the wonderful and monstrous meet us in living bodily forms. Some of them exhibit a power of representation to the eye, and a grandeur of conception ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... Now and then his conversation was brightened by brief and sudden gleams of genuine humour, but these gleams were rare. He had seen too much of human misery to be habitually jocose, and his whole nature was underlain by a groundwork of melancholy. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... beggar whose tongue (as he says) was cut out by the Turks, or to affect deafness or blindness, or any other infirmity of the organs. But though the embroidery of his conversation was different, the groundwork was the same, and the high-flown and ornate compliments with which the gallant knight of the sixteenth century inter-larded his conversation, were as much the offspring of egotism and self-conceit, as the jargon of the coxcombs ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... hero's activities at the Kentfield Military Academy. This was a well-known school, at the head of which was Colonel Masterly. Major Henry Rockford was the commandant, and the institution turned out many first-class young men, with a groundwork of military training. The school was under the supervision of officers from the regular army, the resident one ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... and I have just concluded on this vellum the ode that is to introduce it at my table. The analysation will be my next labour. It will take the form of a treatise, in which, making the experience of past years the groundwork of prophecy for the future, I shall show the precise number of additional dissensions, controversies, and quarrels that will be required to enable the new priesthood to be themselves the destroyers of their own worship. I shall ascertain ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... Austria), with statistical calculations and charts of the largest vaulted bridges ever built, and photographic views of the working in the Karawanken and Wocheiner tunnels. Among the other exhibits in this department may be mentioned a model of the groundwork of the Austrian State railways for express trains, photos of the imperial court train and of the newest locomotives and passenger carriages of the Austrian State railways, as well as plans for iron bridges, groundwork, locomotives, and passenger carriages ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... funds for the purpose, has the duty before him of forming a Public Library, sets forward on a pleasant task. He has the catalogues of all kinds of libraries to guide him, and he will be able to purchase the groundwork of his library at a very cheap rate, for probably at no time could sets of standard books be bought at so low a price as now. Many books that are not wanted by private persons are indispensable for a Public Library, and there being ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... place as a brother by blood, form a group which is quite unlike a union of four or five men, none of whom is bound by any tie of blood to any of the others. In the latter kind of union the notion of kindred does not come in at all. In the former kind the notion of kindred is the groundwork of every thing; it determines the character of every relation and every action, even though the kindred between some members of the society and others may be owing to a legal fiction and not to natural descent. All that we know of the growth of tribes, races, nations, leads us to believe that ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... benevolent West Indian merchant, read before the Royal Society his paper proving the animal nature of corals, and followed it up the year after by that "Essay toward a Natural History of the Corallines, and other like Marine Productions of the British Coasts," which forms the groundwork of all our knowledge on the subject to this day. The chapter in Dr. G. Johnston's "British Zoophytes," p. 407, or the excellent little RESUME thereof in Dr. Landsborough's book on the same subject, is really a saddening ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... by everybody else. "It will come sooner than we think," she would observe darkly; a mathematical expert of exceptionally high powers would have been puzzled to work out the approximate date from the slender and confusing groundwork ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious—but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. To verify ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the work I had some advantages. My father's training, as I have said, was practical, the course at the commercial college had taught me the rudiments of business, and I thus had a groundwork to build upon. I was fortunate, also, in working under the supervision of the bookkeeper, who was a fine disciplinarian, and well disposed ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... over, with an engraving tool which cuts out a small channel in the wax, down to, but not into, the surface of the copper plate. The bottoms of these channels will eventually form the surface of the relief lines in the resultant electrotype plate, but now appear as dark lines against the whitish groundwork of the wax. ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... ill-grounded; and he proved to demonstration that the negroes, if free, would work more cheerfully than while enslaved. He moved that the resolution be rejected. He was supported by Mr. Halcomb and Buford Howick, the latter of whom said that it was not necessary as a groundwork for future proceedings; and that, on the other hand, if the house agreed to it, they would pledge themselves to a system of apprenticeship of which they did not yet know the full effect. This was dealing rather hardly by the house; government should avoid calling upon the house, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... ceased to criminate the patricians to the people, his colleague by no means interfering, because he himself also was a plebeian; (the scanty distribution of the land among the commons in the Latin and Falernian territory afforded the groundwork of the criminations;) and when the senate, wishing to put an end to the administration of the consuls, ordered a dictator to be nominated against the Latins, who were again in arms, AEmilius, to whom the fasces then belonged, nominated his colleague dictator; by him Junius ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... departments to which the vast building of the College of Sages was appropriated, that which interested me most was devoted to the archaeology of the Vril-ya, and comprised a very ancient collection of portraits. In these the pigments and groundwork employed were of so durable a nature that even pictures said to be executed at dates as remote as those in the earliest annals of the Chinese, retained much freshness of colour. In examining this collection, two things especially struck me:—first, that the pictures said to be between ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... which might as well and easily be applied to each individual; and when we come to apply it in that manner it is much more easy to understand its bearing. Herbert Spencer, in defining what he means by culture, says: "It means the knowledge of one thing thoroughly and a knowledge of the groundwork of all other branches of human knowledge." He claimed that we can only understand one thing thoroughly; but that we could and ought to understand the general outline of all other things which are studied by mankind. This is somewhat defective, it appears, because it bases culture entirely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... miracles of Rahere, the founder, which was written in Latin by one of the Canons soon after Rahere's death in the reign of Henry II. An illuminated copy of this work, made at the end of the fourteenth century, is preserved in the British Museum, with an English translation, which forms the groundwork of all subsequent histories.[1] ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... constitutes the framework of another famous Oriental collection, the Cukasaptati (from cuka, a parrot, and saptati, seventy, The Seventy Tales of a Parrot), better known by its Persian and Turkish name, Tuti-Nameh, Tales of a Parrot.[32] The frame, or groundwork, of the various Oriental versions is substantially the same. A husband is obliged to leave home on business, and while he is absent his wife engages in a love affair with a stranger. A parrot, which the husband has left behind, prevents the wife meeting her lover by ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... corner. The corner—the big one, is further along, and then there's the hill and the hot sun on the dusty road. You'll need your sporting instincts. But you've got them. So had St. Paul and those others who furnished the groundwork for that oft-mentioned Roman holiday. That's religion, as I see it. That's what they did; pushed on—faced things down—went out smiling—"gentlemen unafraid." It's like swimming—you can't go under if you make the least effort. That's the law—of physics and, therefore, of God. ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... by the method employed by the Venetian and Florentine craftsmen, the gold leaf being laid on a red preparation, and then the chief portions highly burnished. There are in the South Kensington Museum several specimens of such work, and now that time and wear have caused this red groundwork to shew through the faded gold, the harmony of color is ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... the airs of a woman of the world. 'Why, certainly, my dear,' I answered, as if I always expected to find bicycles showered upon me. 'It's a mutual arrangement. Benefits him; benefits you. Reciprocity is the groundwork of business. He gets the advertisement; you get the amusement. It's a form of handbill. Like the ladies who exhibit their back hair, don't you know, in that ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... four or five most memorable administrations of the century, the great conservative government of Sir Robert Peel was undoubtedly one. It laid the groundwork of our solid commercial policy, it established our railway system, it settled the currency, and, by no means least, it gave us a good national character in Europe as lovers of moderation, equity, and peace. Little as most members of the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... must have its Fable, which must be the groundwork of the whole design, but it must not be perplext with sudden and unlookt for changes, as in Marinus's Adonis: for that, tho the Fable be of a Shepherd, yet by reason of the strange Bombast under Plots, and wonderful occurences, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... Madame F., doubtlessly in consequence of feeling that her best efforts are not appreciated by the audience. We are not an ardent admirer of that lady's style: she has evidently studied to surmount difficulties, without sufficiently paying attention to the groundwork of singing; she fills you with admiration at the execution of a tremendous passage, and then disappoints you by singing a few sustained notes in a tremulous, uncertain manner. In making the above observations on ballads, let us not be supposed to throw discredit upon that style of composition. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... children. There is an odd mixture of eccentricity and good sense in all the opinions of my worthy host. His mind is like modern Gothic, where plain brick-work is set off with pointed arches and plain tracery. Though the main groundwork of his opinions is correct, yet he has a thousand little notions, picked up from old books, which stand out whimsically on ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... anthropomorphized Odin. With a view of giving a pretty complete outline of the founder of the Teutonic race we have in our notes given all the Heimskringla sketch of the Black Sea Odin. We have done this, not only on account of the material it furnishes as the groundwork of a Teutonic epic, which we trust the muses will ere long direct some one to write, but also on account of the vivid picture it gives of Teutonic life as shaped and controlled by the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... border round a square shape, at each corner there comes an open space that requires a filling. Fig. 119 shows two wheels that are commonly used to ornament such places. The square in the first one has a preliminary groundwork of threads thrown across from corner to corner and from side to side, all meeting and crossing in the centre. The working thread is brought through at this point and the wheel commenced by taking a ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... been much interrupted by travel, and now that they were home again his father began to give him regular instruction in counterpoint as a solid groundwork for future composition. There were many little breaks in these studies, however, and one which afforded Wolfgang immense delight whenever it came round was to visit the monastery of Seeon, with the monks of which he was on a footing of firm friendship. For one of the priests, known as Father Johannes, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... the laws of his order, Ambrosio's bosom became the Theatre of a thousand contending passions. At length his attachment to the feigned Rosario, aided by the natural warmth of his temperament, seemed likely to obtain the victory: The success was assured, when that presumption which formed the groundwork of his character came to Matilda's assistance. The Monk reflected that to vanquish temptation was an infinitely greater merit than to avoid it: He thought that He ought rather to rejoice in the opportunity given him of proving the firmness of his ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... he, "is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I, for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge myself the chiefest ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... retains the lozenge form, though in a different arrangement, and the introduction of the blue border is adapted after patterns observed among their white neighbors. In the former is presented also what the Ojibwa term the groundwork or type of their original style of ornamentation, i.e., wavy or gently zigzag lines. Later art work consists chiefly of curved lines, and this has gradually become modified through instruction from the Catholic sisters at various early mission ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... The groundwork of much of the French civil jurisprudence is arbitration, particularly in those trifling processes which originate in a spirit of litigation; and it is not easy for a man here, however well disposed, to spend twenty pounds in a contest about as many pence, or to ruin himself in order to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... remarkable in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. This circumstance, added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship: I have never believed it to be necessary, and when I heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness of heart and the respect and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... the Congo on the British and African S.S. M'poso gave time for the groundwork of Coast language and Coast thought (which are like unto nothing else on this planet) to soak into his system. The steamer progressed slowly. She went up rivers protected by dangerous bars; she anchored ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... palaces bears no comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung.... The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached"—for you must not forget that it is upon the roof of the mine that the impressions of the plants which have been turned into coal are found, not upon the coal itself, though even there they may ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... sixty-four books, nearly all of them in English, some of them written by Caxton himself. One of the most important of them was Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur, the storehouse from which Tennyson drew the stories which form the groundwork of his Idylls of ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... personal solicitations Churchill remained true to Protestantism. But he knew James too well to count on further favour after a formal refusal to abandon his faith. Luckily for him he had now found a new groundwork for his fortunes in the growing influence of his wife over the king's second daughter, Anne; and at the crisis of the Revolution the adhesion of Anne to the cause of Protestantism was of the highest value. No sentiment of gratitude to his older patron hindered Churchill from corresponding ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... streams, in bends and curves, formed the outline of the design, and the shapes they enclosed were filled with plants of every size, form, and color; beautiful plats of fresh green turf everywhere represented the groundwork of the pattern, and flower-beds and clumps of shrubs stood out from them in harmonious mixtures of colors, while the tall and rare trees, of which Hatasu's ships had brought several from Arabia, gave dignity and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti-Lucretius, "quo nomine," says Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige." That this was the case, many expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... physiological life, there appeared signs of sentient life. The preservation of certain of the sense organs, taken together with the collateral evidences of sense action, as early as Cambrian times, furnish the groundwork for a historical study of the progress of sentient life, eventuating in the higher forms of mental life. Here the problems of geology run hand in hand with the problems of psychology. The limitations of the evidence bearing on psychological ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... by the changes or opinions of other people. Miss Prince's acquaintances called her a very set person, and were shy of intruding into her secret fastnesses. There were all the traits of character which are necessary for the groundwork of an enterprising life, but Miss Prince seemed to have neither inherited nor acquired any high aims or any especial and fruitful single-heartedness, so her gifts of persistence and self-confidence ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... pursued Georgiana, "on the composition and the elements of that sort of nature? I have tried to think the best of it. It seems to me still no, not contemptible at all—but selfishness is the groundwork of it; a brilliant selfishness, I admit. I see that it shows its best feature, but is it the nobler for that? I think, and I must think, that excellence is a point to be reached only by unselfishness, and that usefulness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to foreign nations, the groundwork of my policy will be justice on our part to all, submitting to injustice from none. While I shall sedulously cultivate the relations of peace and amity with one and all, it will be my most imperative ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... our conception of an aetherial atom in the rough, based not upon any imaginative hypothesis, but rather upon that strict conformity to observation and experience, which is the very groundwork of ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... willing to follow me in an attempt to reveal the speculative groundwork of this theory of fits, the intellectual discipline will, I think, repay you for the necessary effort of attention. Newton was chary of stating what he considered to be the cause of the fits, but there can hardly be a doubt that his ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... Spaniard, that despotic stroke of the brush which seems to draw the color in the groundwork of the picture, to make it stand out in almost solid lights, his absolute absence of abstract intentions and his newness which affects entirely to ignore the past, all in that formula of art, suited Maitland's temperament. To him, too, he owed his masterpiece, the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... the wax takes all shapes, and yet is wax still at the bottom; the [Greek: spokeimenon] still is wax; so the soul transported in so many several passions of joy, fear, hope, sorrow, anger, and the rest, has for its general groundwork of all this, Love." (Henry More, quoted in Carey's Dante, Purgatorio, c. xviii.) Hence, says Carey, Love does not figure in Collins's Ode ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... was put up, the horses placed in a stable, and the coachman shut up in a parlor, where they gave him drink, and placed a purse in his hand. Bottles of wine and louis d'or form the groundwork of this hind of politics. The coachman drank and then went to sleep. The door of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... original language is notably affected, though in different degrees, by its contact with the more cultivated languages into the use of which the nomads have been forced. German in one case and Spanish in the other have so modified the Romany groundwork that it would not be possible for a gipsy from the Black Forest to converse with one of his Andalusian brothers, although a few sentences on each side would suffice to convince them that each was speaking a dialect of the same language. Certain ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... we lay no groundwork sooner than that? Sometime in the foreseeable future, at least! Take it up with Propaganda, Blauvelt! It seems to me that the briefing mentioned an indigenous race on ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe

... of flowers learns a good many things by the way; at the very outset, that drawing accurate and clear must be the groundwork of any painting worthy the name. Both in the use of pencil and brush there must be a degree of painstaking observation, wholesome as a discipline and delightful in its harvests. How many of us, unused to the task of careful observation, can tell the number of the musk-mallow's ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... out one foot apart. By following this plan sufficient supplies for a small household may be obtained from one annual sowing made in April. It should not be overlooked that Parsley is indispensable to exhibitors of vegetables, especially as a groundwork for collections, and due allowance for such calls must be made in fixing the number and extent of the sowings. When the plant pushes for seed it becomes useless, and had best be got rid of; but by planting at various times in different places a sufficiency may be expected ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... us leave to take breath for a short time among the fashionable world of Paris, where we are but just arrived. Allow us to prepare at our leisure the groundwork of our novel, and do not hurry on ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... though the work had been done by the members themselves, in hours after mill duties were over. The color mixer had supplied the material with which the once ugly white walls were tinted; and upon the soft-hued groundwork there had been stencilled a delicate conventional design. At one end of the large room designated the "reading room" a scroll bore the legend which old Adam Burns had given Amy as a "rule of life": "Simplicity, Sincerity, Sympathy," and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... Eunice upon being assigned to membership in the Negro race are by no means overdrawn. The refined, cultured and most highly respected young woman whose actual experiences form the groundwork of that part of the story was not only thus accosted and insulted by a white man of the order indicated, but was actually beaten in a most brutal manner and fined fifteen dollars ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... the groundwork of one of the ballads which I have made the harbinger of doom to the house of Rookwood, is ascribed, by popular superstition, to a family resident in Sussex; upon whose estate the fatal tree—a gigantic lime, with ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Christianity has been occupied two thousand years in putting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, and in organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possible with crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent. The leaven has worked into human nature and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... accordingly must organize itself for defense and repel her enemies just as the earldoms and duchies of the crusading centuries had done. And that is just what the colony did, with the seigneurial system as the groundwork of defensive strength. Under stress of the new environment, which was not wholly unlike that of the former feudal days, the military aspects of the system revived and the personal bond regained much of its ancient vigor. The sordid phases of seigneurialism dropped ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... NET GROUNDWORK STITCH.—This stitch is also represented at No. 21, on page 13, but the method of making the knot is here illustrated. It is used for ground-work where Brussels net is not imitated, and is very effective wherever it is used. It is begun in the corner or crosswise ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.

... Ailuropus is remarkable: it is white with the exception of the circumferences of the eyes, the ears, the shoulders, and the lower part of the neck which are entirely black. These stand out clearly on a groundwork of slightly yellowish-white; the spots round the eyes are circular, and give a strange aspect to the animal; those on the shoulders represent a sort of band placed transversely across the withers, widening as they descend downwards to lower limbs. The hinder limbs are ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... reproduced in Mimeta virescens, the chief want of exact imitation being that the throat and breast of the Tropidorhynchus has a very scaly appearance, being covered with rigid pointed feathers which are not imitated in the Mimeta, although there are signs of faint dusky spots which may easily furnish the groundwork of a more exact imitation by the continued survival of favourable variations in the same direction. There is also a large knob at the base of the bill of the Tropidorhynchus which is not at all ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... is time that I took my stand. It seems to me that the principles upon which the soldiers of Cromwell fought, were the principles which animated the Israelites of old. Exodus, Judges, and Kings were the groundwork of their religion, not the Gospels. It has gradually been borne upon me that such is not the religion of the New Testament, and, while I seek in no way to dispute your right to think as you choose, I say the time has come when I and my wife will act ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... pregnancy; he would have shared with other males the privileges of sexual intercourse, and he would therefore not be so closely in companionship with the women of the local groups as the friendly animal, plant, or tree who did so much for the mothers. There would thus be formed the groundwork for the fashioning of that most incredible of all beliefs, well founded, as Mr. Hartland has proved both from tradition and belief,[365] that the human father was not father, and that other agencies were responsible ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... comely. All the courtiers in the banqueting-hall raved about Phorenice's face and the other beauties of her body and limbs, and though not given to appreciation in these matters, I could not but see that here at least they had a groundwork for their admiration, for surely the Gods have never favoured mortal woman more highly. Yet lovely though she might be, for myself I preferred to look upon Ylga, the girl, who, because of her rank, was privileged to sit on the divan behind us as immediate attendant. There was an ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... enterprise will not construct it. Commerce, trade, and, above all, the efforts to bring a people widely separated into a community of interest are always benefited by a rapid intercommunication. Education, the groundwork of republican institutions, is encouraged by increasing the facilities to gather speedy news from all parts of the country. The desire to reap the benefit of such improvements will stimulate education. I refer you to the report of the Postmaster-General ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... had little leisure to pursue the philosophic studies commenced at Oxford; but they took deep and permanent hold on his mind, and formed in fact the groundwork of his great practical ability. This is well ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... we note by the cuckoo and the swallow and the oak leaves; but till the butterfly and the bee—one with its colour, and one with its hum—fill out the fields, the picture is but an outline sketch. The insects are the details that make the groundwork of a summer day. Till the humble-bees are working at the clover it is too silent; so I think we may begin our almanack with the house-fly and the moth and the spider and the ant on the cucumber frame, and so on, till, finally, the catalogue culminates with the great yellow wasp. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... judgment. How far they may coincide with those advanced by others I cannot say, and have not been careful to inquire. The mere fact of coincidence or of dissent on such a question is of less importance than the principle accepted by either student as the groundwork of his theory, the mainstay of his opinion. It is no part of my project or my hope to establish the actual date of any among the various plays, or to determine point by point the lineal order of their succession. I have examined no table or catalogue of recent ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... as the groundwork of civilisation. So long as there is a firm and artificial track under his feet the traveller may be said to be in contact with city and town, no matter how far they may be distant. A yard or two outside the railway in America the primeval forest ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... religiosum would be a proper translation. It is grown in various parts of India, but generally rather for ornament than use. It is stated, however, to be specially used for the manufacture of turbans, and for the Brahmanical thread, and probably afforded the groundwork of the story told by Philostratus of the wild cotton which was used only for the sacred vestments of the Brahmans, and refused to lend itself to other uses. One of Royle's authorities (Mr. Vaupell) mentions that it was grown near ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Indians." And thus it opened the way for future settlers. It is not claiming too much to say these northern Englishmen were a superior class of men. Industrious, hardy, resourceful and God-fearing, they were made of the right material to form the groundwork of prosperous communities, and wherever this element predominated it was a guarantee that justice and order would be maintained. They were not all saints— perhaps none of them were—but there was a homely honesty and a fixedness of principle about the majority of them that "made for righteousness" ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman

... to this love of the material is the sense of the beautiful. "Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing," says Santayana. Pleasures of the eye and ear, of the imagination and memory, are those most easily objectified, and form the groundwork on which all higher beauty rests. The green of the spring, the odor of Red Riding Hood's flowers, the splendor of the Prince's ball in Cinderella—these when perceived distinctly are intelligible, and when perceived delightfully are beautiful. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... gradually departing from its original Teutonic character and deviating towards a Gallic structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavor to recall it, by making our ancient volumes the groundwork of style, admitting among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... richness and variety of the scene. Every turn of the silent streets brought me in view of some gilded pile of cupolas, standing in glowing relief against the sky. Churches of strange Asiatic form, the domes richly and fancifully colored; golden stars glittering upon a groundwork of blue, green, or yellow; shrines with burning tapers over the massive doors and gateways, were scattered in every direction in the most beautiful profusion. Sometimes I saw a solitary beggar kneeling ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne



Words linked to "Groundwork" :   foot, understructure, raft foundation, substructure, structure, fundament, cornerstone, foundation, preparation, construction, explanation, readying



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