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Inoperative   Listen
adjective
Inoperative  adj.  Not operative; not active; producing no effects; as, laws renderd inoperative by neglect; inoperative remedies or processes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inoperative" Quotes from Famous Books



... of freedom for the slaves. "What good would a proclamation from me do, especially as we are now situated?" asked Mr. Lincoln by way of reply. "I do not want to issue a document that the whole world would see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... system of radiocommunication stations for intercity links; 5,000 telephones; stations—3 AM, 1 FM, limited TV service; many facilities are inoperative; 1 Atlantic Ocean ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... strange construction would render constitutional provisions of the highest importance completely inoperative and void. It would tend directly to establish the union of all powers in the legislature. There would be no general, permanent law for courts to administer or men to live under. The administration of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... rate, be deducted," said John Ball, speaking this with a kind of proviso to himself, that the words so spoken were intended to be taken as having any meaning only on the presumption that that document which he had seen in the other room should turn out to be wholly inoperative and inefficient at the present moment. In answer to these side-questions or corollary points as to the deduction or non-deduction of the loan, Mr Slow answered not a word; but when there was silence between them, he did make answer ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... thirtieth day of June, nineteen hundred and three, and such system shall so remain until the first day of January, nineteen hundred and thirteen, and thereafter until modified or changed, as may be prescribed by law provided, that, if the said system shall for any reason become inoperative, the General Assembly shall have power ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... are no empty seats during the performance. A law was passed a few years since forbidding bull-fights to take place in the Federal District of Mexico; but this law has been repealed in accordance with the clamorous demand of a large majority of the people; besides which the law was virtually inoperative, as these exhibitions were held all the same, only they were removed to a few rods beyond the boundary of the prohibited territory. The thought comes over us that, after all, the bull-fight is but one degree worse ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of Charles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any State may undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within its territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when sustained by force it becomes a practical ABDICATION by the State of all rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still further works an instant FORFEITURE of all ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... subsidiary silver, but did not determine the unit of value or provide for the issue of either coin or paper money to take the place of the Mexican and Spanish-Philippine pesos in circulation, so that it was quite inoperative. Finally, Congress Act of March 2, 1903, provided that the new standard should be a peso equal in value to half a United States gold dollar. The maximum amount authorized to be coined was 75,000,000 silver ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... I asked for a general court-martial to try and definitely determine cases specifically defined and set out, and that this preliminary court has no power beyond the mere collection of facts and giving an inoperative opinion thereon; considering that, if we now proceed, the whole labor must be gone over again at least by the parties and witnesses; considering that the court will be obliged to adjourn to the United States in order to have the least hope of obtaining the testimony of ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... into the labyrinth of that warfare. What was happening there? Even the busy ward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... demand, under the provisions of the fugitive-slave law, three field hands alleged to be in Butler's camp. Butler responded that as Virginia claimed to be a foreign country the fugitive-slave law was clearly inoperative, unless the owner would come and take an oath of allegiance to the United States. In connection with this incident, the newspaper report stated that as the breastworks and batteries which had been so rapidly erected for Confederate defense in every direction ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... sail with all speed for Martinique, and there wait forty days for the Brest squadron, if the latter, whose admiral was to be commander-in-chief of the allied fleets, did not appear sooner. Villeneuve had other contingent instructions, which became inoperative through ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... totally devoid of ordinary scruples as the average well-bred Englishman is full of them. He had, no doubt, a code of his own to guide his conduct towards his co-religionists, but this code seemed wholly inoperative when he was brought into relation with those ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... the result without destroying the enemy's Army, namely, upon the expeditions which have a direct connection with political views. If there are any enterprises which are particularly likely to break up the enemy's alliances or make them inoperative, to gain new alliances for ourselves, to raise political powers in our own favour, &c. &c., then it is easy to conceive how much these may increase the probability of success, and become a shorter way towards our object than the routing ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... England and Scotland, giving nothing to any other church, but leaving the remaining one-fourth (or half of future sales) at the discretionary disposal of the Executive for religious purposes. This part of the Imperial Act has proved inoperative to this day; and should any religious persuasion receive any portion of this comparative pittance of the clergy land funds, it would do so not as a matter of right (as do the Churches of England and Scotland in receiving their lion's share), but at ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... supposed to mesmerize herself. Long, however, before mesmerism was heard of, medical history attests examples in which patients who baffled the skill of the ablest physicians have fixed their fancies on some remedy that physicians would call inoperative for good or for harm, and have recovered by the remedies thus singularly self-suggested. And Hippocrates himself, if I construe his meaning rightly, recognizes the powers for self-cure which the condition of trance will sometimes bestow on the sufferer, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... presence of the most unwelcome bodily visitor. The whole of his nervous skeleton seemed to shudder and contract. Every sense was intensified to the acme of its acuteness; while the powers of volition were inoperative. He ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided by the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. [Adopted ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... hopelessly lost unless interpreted in this spirit: then we relegate Plautine drama to a low plane of broad farce, where verisimilitude to life becomes wholly unnecessary because undesirable; where the canons of dramatic art become inoperative; where, contrary to what Koerting says, we are not asked to believe that "everything is happening in a perfectly natural manner"; where the poet may stick at nothing provided the laugh be forthcoming; where all the apparently absurd conventions of palliatae cease to be absurd, vanish ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... under it he (or some other magistrate whose name has dropped out of the text) put a notice that he was going to "watch the sky" all the dies comitiales, so as to prevent the election being held. But this had been rendered inoperative by Clodius's amendment of the lex AElia Fufia (see 2 Phil. Sec. 81)—or at any rate of doubtful validity—and, accordingly, the only thing left was the obnuntiatio by a magistrate, which Milo proceeded to make. The rule, however was that such obnuntiatio ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... unhinged; water-logged, on one's beam ends, rudderless; laid on one's back; done up, dead beat, exhausted, shattered, demoralized; graveled &c (in difficulty) 704; helpless, unfriended^, fatherless; without a leg to stand on, hors de combat [Fr.], laid on the shelf. null and void, nugatory, inoperative, good for nothing; ineffectual &c (failing) 732; inadequate &c 640; inefficacious &c (useless) 645. Phr. der kranke Mann [G.]; desirous still but impotent to rise [Shenstone]; the spirit is willing but the flesh ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... to live, and not die. The doctor smiled at me when I told him so, for he did not believe it. He, and two other physicians, had told me that my lungs were diseased; indeed, six months afterwards, all three sounded me, and declared that one lung was inoperative, and ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... from the President and vested in him and the Senate jointly; and although this respondent had arrived at and still retained the opinion above expressed, and verily believed, as he still believes, that the said first section of the last mentioned act was and is wholly inoperative and void by reason of its conflict with the Constitution of the United States, yet, inasmuch as the same had been enacted by the constitutional majority in each of the two houses of that Congress, this respondent considered it to be proper to examine and decide whether the particular case of ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... good political reasons some daimios have endeavored to render the treaties inoperative, and to frighten foreigners out of the land, there has been springing up among the people a strong antipathy toward them, for which they have themselves alone to blame. Who that read the glowing accounts of the reception at first accorded to our people, did not admire ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... fit to protect certain interests, agricultural and manufacturing, at the expense of the whole of her public. Happily for her the agricultural protection is probably almost, if not indeed altogether, inoperative, as the climate and the soil of the country, and the vigour of her people, give to her, independently, the natural lead in agricultural products. But the manufacturing protection is confessedly effective, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... large body of water contained in any type of generator, there is always danger of its freezing and rendering the device inoperative unless placed in a temperature above the freezing point of the water. It is, of course, dangerous and against the insurance rules to place a generator in the same room with a fire of any kind, but the room may be heated by steam or hot water coils from ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly

... which, being inconsistent with the principle of non- intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... It is one sad part of the sad lives of godless men that they have their seasons of calm weather, when, in the clearer atmosphere, they catch glimpses of their true good, but that they yet do not behold it long and close enough to be smitten with the desire to possess it; and so the sight remains inoperative, or adds to their condemnation. Not to taste is the sadder fate, because there has been sight. To have eyes opened at last to our own folly, and to see the rich provision of God's table, when it is too late, will be a chief pang ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... alternative, but it was eventually agreed to substitute for the guarantee of a third power the obviously futile guarantee of all the powers. Neither party foresaw that the impossibility of obtaining such a guarantee was destined to leave the whole clause about Malta inoperative. After much dispute over the future constitution of the order, France proposed to obviate the chief source of difficulty by the demolition of the forts. This plan commended itself to Cornwallis, but was rejected by the British government. By the end of December ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... corporation for its private ends and in violation of its duty to the public? The power of displacing the public directors and that of issuing a scire facias and of removing the deposits were not intended to be idle and nugatory provisions without the means of enforcement. Yet they must be wholly inoperative and useless unless there be some means by which the official conduct of the public directors and the abuses of power on the part of the corporation may be brought to the knowledge of the executive department ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy. And this causes at once an inequality and difficulty in respect of acts of kindness, for the uses of friendship become inoperative by being dispersed over too wide an area. "One man is acted upon by his character, another by his reflection."[335] For neither do our natures and impulses always incline in the same directions, nor are our fortunes in life identical, for ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... Impulse, then the planets and meteors, sun and stars would for ever remain at rest, and the Laws of Motion would remain inoperative. If there were no Centripetal Force, then the Centrifugal Force would hurl the planets and comets, asteroids or minor planets away into the depths of space, never to ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... Christ may be as accepted of God, and be made as useful to their fellow-men as the most prodigally endowed, yet the possession of great and well-directed talents must not be underrated. Different soils require different culture, and that which is inoperative on one man may be beneficial to another, and it is hardly possible for any one to form a due estimate of the elevation of which pulpit oratory is susceptible who never heard Robert Hall. This character ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... they not only acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for an immediate remedy, but they assert that unless the remedy is applied without loss of time it will come too late; that the Tithe Bill, which this year would accomplish its object, will in all probability next year be wholly inoperative. To my mind this reasoning is so conclusive that I can come to no other than the harsh judgment which I have passed upon their conduct, and I think I have made good my charges against both ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... Monday he's worth keeping an eye on." "Many a man that keeps the fourth commandment is not so particular about the others." Such are the phrases one is perpetually hearing, and they go far to prove how inoperative are ritual, profession, and form, in the life of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... later times, who advertised themselves as possessing the same patent knowledge of ceremonial rites, and the same means of guiding the will of the gods, as Epimenides had wielded before them.... Had Epimenides himself come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the stratagem of Phye, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athena, which had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus—a stratagem which even Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although a century before his time both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... Auxiliary, and Technician Melran stated that his control circuits were inoperative and that he was tracing the difficulty. He cleared the trouble, but condensation had already been established and precipitation had commenced. I ordered re-absorption, which was started as soon as repairs had ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole

... very good-natured crowd, on the whole, and withal inclined to be courteous, but the pressure of numbers, and the utter impossibility of doing anything, or prosecuting my search for the exit on the other side of the city, renders the good intentions of individuals wholly inoperative. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... to be put on one side and forgotten. This is what has happened with this particular doctrine in the case of multitudes; it is not denied, but it is banished to what Mr. Lecky calls "the land of the unrealized and the inoperative." But if, on the one hand, the doctrine has suffered from neglect, on the other it has suffered hardly less from undue attention. Indeed of late years the whole subject of the "Last Things" has been turned into a kind of happy hunting-ground for little sects, who carry on a ceaseless wordy ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... broken by frost, does not lie so much in the probability that disadvantage may result from the disuse of one element of the plant, as in the liability that such a breakage may interfere with the whole system and render it inoperative. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... true that England had previously formed a treaty with Portugal, permitting English vessels to trade to her South American Colonies, but such was the influence of Portuguese merchants with the local governments, that it was nearly inoperative; so that, practically, the Portuguese were in the exclusive possession of that commerce which my expulsion of the fleet and army of the mother country unreservedly threw open to British enterprise. The same, even in a higher degree, may be said ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... a sharp command; we swooped downward at lightning speed and, barely skimming the surface, flew after this escaping enemy. Whether its larger projector had been rendered inoperative, or many of its crew killed, or whether it thought merely to escape us and make a landing in the Light ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter's brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible. Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed to her to be terribly long. Marien himself had said: "There ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... heat absorbed by the water-jacket should point out to the ingenuity of inventors the first problem to be attacked, viz., how to save this heat without wasting the lubricant or making it inoperative; and in the solution of this problem, I look for the most important improvement to be expected in the engine. The most obvious contrivance would be some sort of intercepting shield, which would save the walls of the cylinder and the rings of the piston from the heat of the ignited gases. I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... machine, such as its descent upon hostile territory, but includes damage to machines, no matter how slight, landing within their own lines. In the difficult country of the Vosges many aeroplanes have come to earth somewhat heavily, and have suffered such damage as to render them inoperative, compelling their removal from the effective list until they have undergone complete overhaul or reconstruction. Upon occasions this wastage has been so pronounced that the French aviators, including some of the foremost fliers serving with the forces, have been without ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... 1888, provided for the incorporation and management of a reform school for girls in the District of Columbia; but it has remained inoperative for the reason that no appropriation has been made for construction or maintenance. The need of such an institution is very urgent. Many girls could be saved from depraved lives by the wholesome influences and restraints of such a school. I recommend that the necessary appropriation be made for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... with them, and could on all occasions rely on their support. Though the crime of abduction was punishable with death, as the girls who were thus carried off were in most instances immediately married, few were found willing to prosecute their husbands. The law was consequently almost inoperative, and the abominable practice up to this ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... Without the spirit of Christianity, the body would be good for nothing; it would be only a corpse. Without the body of Christianity, the spirit would be comparatively inactive; it would be only a ghost. A body without spirit corrupts and is offensive; a spirit without body is inoperative and alarming. Through body alone the spirit can act; through spirit ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... is all that stands between Canada and a pest of rabbits like that of Australia. Just why this parasite is inoperative in Australia, or why it has not been introduced there to lessen the rabbit evil, we do not know. Mr. Seton declares that the rabbits of his park were "subject to all the ills of the flesh, except possibly writer's paralysis ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... confers no powers but delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,—they are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... That will mean that Germany will be brought up into line with the rest of Europe, America, Australia, and half Asia, throughout her whole empire. That will mean again that our own repressive measures will really and truly be put into force. At present they are largely inoperative." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... great grief lay was in perceiving that the very innocence of Elfride in reading her little fault as one so grave was what had fatally misled him. Had Elfride, with any degree of coolness, asserted that she had done no harm, the poisonous breath of the dead Mrs. Jethway would have been inoperative. Why did he not make his little docile girl tell more? If on that subject he had only exercised the imperativeness customary with him on others, all might have been revealed. It smote his heart like a switch when he remembered how gently she ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... really but a special aspect of the first; for the ideal which I form always represents some improvement in myself. An ideal which did not promise to better me in some way would be no ideal at all. It would be quite inoperative. I never rise from my chair except with the hope of being better off. Without this, I should sit forever. But I feel uneasiness in my present position, and conceive the possibility of not being constrained; or I think of ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... of the minority, the Question 'that the Question be now put' shall be put forthwith and decided without amendment or debate." Discussion may thus be cut off instantly and a vote precipitated. Closure is inoperative, however, unless the number of members voting in the majority for its adoption is at least one hundred, or, in a standing ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... dissenters being excluded by the corporation and test acts, from all corporations, so far is this from being the fact, that, as must be well known to your Lordships, some corporations are absolutely and entirely in the possession of dissenters. Can you suppose that the repeal of laws so inoperative as these, can afford any serious obstacle to the perfect security of the church, and the permanent union of that establishment with the state? The fact is, that the existing laws have not only failed completely ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... other people" till his fourteenth year, when a severe attack of illness left him bankrupt in both mind and body. He rose from his bed lame of a foot and hand, his one side shrunken and nerveless, the one lobe of his brain apparently inoperative, and with less than half his former energy and intellect; not at all an idiot, however, though somewhat more helpless—the poor mutilated fragment of a reasoning man. Among his other failings, he stuttered lamentably. He became an inmate of the kitchen of Cromarty House; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... bright and able speaker. He had argued the right of a State to dissent from, or nullify, a law passed by the House of Representatives and Senate, making such law inoperative within its borders. His claim was that the framers of the Constitution did not expect or intend that a law could be passed that was binding on a State when the people of that State did not wish it so. Mr. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... little, if any, extension of your doctrine, to make it wrong to remove all the graven images out of a nation. For, in that event, the law of God against bowing down to them would have nothing left to act upon. It would thenceforth be inoperative. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... argued that the Acts of Secession are all inoperative and void, and that therefore the States continue precisely as before, with their local constitutions, laws, and institutions in the hands of traitors, but totally unchanged, and ready to be quickened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... claim that it should be complete in its elements, eliminated of what the African, with a fine intuition of the truth, ingenuously terms 'de wite trash,'—yes, in the Southern social scheme the whites are trash,—and they only find their place as a sort of useless ornament, non-productive and inoperative, even according to their own ideas. Therefore the 'wite trash' must ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Gottlieb when he had retired to the seclusion of his inner office, "that you fully understand that the divorce secured by your wife is inoperative—Tut! Tut! Don't interrupt me!"—for Hawkins had opened his mouth in protest—"for the reason —for the very good reason, I repeat—that you were never served with any summons or notified that the proceeding had been commenced. Am ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... the cheaper but fatal policy of concealing the weakness of the English power by combining it with the strength of the strongest of the Anglo-Norman houses. Under this faulty system, the statute of Kilkenny became inoperative almost ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly to me. What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative like the Pope's Bull against the comet. Do not misunderstand me, because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my acting in some such way as you desire. I have ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... Konfutation des Augsburgischen Bekenntnisse, 1891). At the same time, however, the Lutheran Church, though not so strongly as the English, retained the consciousness of being the true Catholics. But, as the history of Protestantism proves, the original impulse has not remained inoperative. Though Luther himself all his life measured his personal Christian standing by an entirely different standard than subjection to a law of faith; yet, however presumptuous the words may sound, we might say that in the complicated struggle that was forced on him, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... in a different class? Simply because you think yourself into another class; think yourself into inferiority; because you place limits for yourself. You put up bars between yourself and plenty. You cut off abundance, make the law of supply inoperative for you, by shutting your mind to it. And by what law can you expect to get what you believe you can not get? By what philosophy can you obtain the good things of the world when you are thoroughly convinced that ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... advantages to the seaman. Under its provisions he drew a yearly allowance when not required at sea, and extra prize-money when on active service. Yet the bait did not tempt him, and the system was soon discarded as useless and inoperative. Bounty, defined by some sentimentalist as a "bribe to Neptune," for a while made a stronger appeal; but, ranging as it did from five to almost any number of pounds under one hundred per head, it proved a bribe indeed, and by putting an irresistible ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... an illustration is annexed, there is nothing to cause damage or to interfere in any way with the proper handling of the engines, and it is practically out of the power of the driver to render the gear inoperative. It is here shown in its simplest form as applied to the ordinary reversing and steam handles of a winding engine, the only additions being an arm jointed to the top of the valve spindle, with its connections to the shaft of the reversing lever, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... exposed to the weather (air, moisture, and ordinary temperatures), fermentation and decay will take place, unless the germs can be removed or rendered inoperative. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... took flight from Paris in a small hydrogen balloon only partially filled, but rigged with some contrivance of wings which were designed to render it self-propelling. Discovering, however, that this device was inoperative, M. Testu, after about an hour and a half, allowed the balloon to descend to earth in a corn field, when, without quitting hold of the car, he commenced collecting stones for ballast. But as yet he knew not the ways of churlish proprietors of land, and in consequence was presently surprised ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... long ago that He came from God, now, for the first time, they grasp it as a living reality. Why? Because experience had taught it to them. It is the only teacher that teaches us the articles of our creed in a way worth learning them. Every one of us carries professed beliefs, which lie there inoperative, bedridden, in the hospital and dormitory of our souls, until some great necessity or sudden circumstance comes that flings a beam of light upon them, and then they start and waken. We do not know the use of the sword until we are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions is ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... 14th of August, and, except when he was conducting some independent expedition, had been manifested on all occasions since. I therefore thought that the interest of the service would be subserved by removing one whose growing indifference might render the best-laid plans inoperative. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... carried through the Congress of the United States and through a parliamentary warfare, in which no other man than he could have triumphed, the bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, declaring inoperative and void the Missouri geographical compromise line, and affirming the true intent and meaning of the Kansas and Nebraska act to be, "to leave the people of any State or territory perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... feelings, and particularly their known attachment to France, were dexterously assailed; and the effort was earnestly made to kindle in their bosoms, that enthusiastic love of liberty which was felt too strongly by the authors of the letter, to permit the belief that it could be inoperative with others. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... the qualities of these groups, in politics, religion, social work, and to a lesser extent in literature, are not and cannot be fused together, but on the contrary, stand apart in water-tight compartments, so that the whole is like an elaborate system of checks to make each part inoperative, that, at a time when the whole community is strangely alive with good will, the actual social achievement ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... can be laid on only by a hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We acknowledge ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... of those medicines were deceptive, fraudulent and futile. But they had the intended effect of advertising the person who sold them, whose "professional" services were generally brought into request when the pills proved inoperative. This was the secret of Madame Restell's reputation and immense accumulated fortune. Her occupation was that of a midwife, and in that assumed capacity she advertised her "Female Pills." As all the world knows now, her real vocation ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... individual mainly depends on his moral qualities, the crimes committed by the entire population of the country must depend in an equal degree on their collective moral qualities. To render this element inoperative upon the large scale, it would be necessary to suppose that the general moral average of mankind does not vary from country to country or from age to age; which is not true, and, even if it were true, could not possibly be proved by any existing statistics. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... now may argue as follows. Several words which are applied to one thing are meant to express one sense, and as this is not possible in so far as the words connote different attributes, this part of their connotation becomes inoperative, and they denote only the unity of one substance; implication (lakshana), therefore, does not take place. When we say 'blue (is) (the) lotus' we employ two words with the intention of expressing the unity of one thing, and hence do not aim at expressing a duality ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... a great degree inoperative when they do not spring from and represent the opinion of the nation, but they have in their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing opinion. When some important progress has ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... are currently 8.7 million users of cellular services. international: country code - 964; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Atlantic Ocean and 1 Indian Ocean), 1 Intersputnik (Atlantic Ocean region), and 1 Arabsat (inoperative); coaxial cable and microwave radio relay to Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey; despite a new satellite gateway, international calls outside of Baghdad ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... meets us at the threshold of this part of the inquiry is, whether Congress was authorized to pass this law under any of the powers granted to it by the Constitution; for if the authority is not given by that instrument, it is the duty of this court to declare it void and inoperative, and incapable of conferring freedom upon any one who is held as a slave under the laws of any one ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... at once would reveal his identity. Miko had been engaged in smashing the ports. He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come to assail me. And then he had read Grantline's message to me. It was his first knowledge that his ship was at hand. With the camp exits inoperative, Grantline and his men were imprisoned. Miko had made an effort to kill me. He did not know my companion was Anita. But the effort was taking too long; with his ship at hand, it was Miko's best move to return to his own camp, rejoin ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... recover possession, under specified and heavy penalties. The wording of these passages recalls most strikingly the imprecations of the kings in their charters upon those who, in after times, should dare to render their gifts inoperative. This grand style is one of the many indications that for the Assyrian period most of the deeds we have were drawn up on behalf of the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... an offence knowingly to infect any person with venereal disease, is practically inoperative, as will be shown later in this report, owing to the extreme difficulty, in the absence of any system of notification and compulsory treatment, of proving that ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... that in this case, as in all others, when an organisation has become effete and inoperative for its legitimate purpose, it is employed for quite other ones—quite opposite ones. What is the usual plea put in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? "I admit that they are stupid and frivolous enough," ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... him; and yet there was that heart of reality in the whole thing which no moral vulgarity of theory, no injustice towards God, no tyranny of stupid logic over childlike intuitions, could so obscure as to render it inoperative. From the form of the Son of Man, thus beheld from afar, came a warmth like the warmth from the first approach of the far off sun in spring, sufficing to rouse the earth from the sleep of winter—in which all the time the same sun has been ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Some serious factor, inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877 must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such a marvellous revolution during the ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... tobacco-pouches, bows and arrows, and whatever else the savage art of the neighboring squaws can invent; in sauntering through these gay booths, pricing many things, and in hanging long and undecidedly over cases full of feldspar crosses, quartz bracelets and necklaces, and every manner of vase, inoperative pitcher, and other vessel that can be fashioned out of the geological formations at Niagara, tormented meantime by the heat of the gas-lights and the persistence of the mosquitoes. There were very few people besides themselves in the shops, and Isabel's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... machine proposed to make the bill inoperative was recognized from the moment the committee was called to order. The manner in which this was to be done developed as rapidly. The ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... the ball of the waste steam pipe to send back the water carried upward by the steam, should never be inserted; as in some cases this cone has become loose, and closed up the mouth of the waste steam pipe, whereby the safety valves being rendered inoperative, the boiler was ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... absolute but inoperative laws. No statute of Carolinia was to bind beyond a century. Europe suffered from the multiplication of law-books and the perplexities of the law. In Carolinia not a commentary might be written on the constitutions, the statutes, or the common law. Europe suffered from the furies ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... Convention had framed it; sent it to Congress, then sitting under the Confederation; Congress had transmitted it to the State legislatures; and by these last it was laid before conventions of the people in the several States. All this while it was inoperative paper. It had received no stamp of authority, no sanction; it spoke no language. But when ratified by the people in their respective conventions, then it had a voice, and spoke authentically. Every word ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... that this new ally should look at this great question as her mother had looked at it. The father had been regarded as a great outside power, which could hardly be overcome, but which might be evaded, or made inoperative by stratagem. It was not that the daughter did not love him. She loved him and venerated him highly,—the veneration perhaps being stronger than the love. The Duchess, too, had loved him dearly,—more dearly in late years than in her early life. But her husband to her had always ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... Among the more intelligent farmers there is a revolt against Home Rule. At a Unionist meeting held the other day at Athenry, all the speakers agreed on this point. One said that the change might be inoperative, because the farmers dare not avow their true opinions, because they have little or no faith in the secrecy of the ballot, and because they dread the unknown consequences of ruffian vengeance. The ignorant masses have also ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... past times. In all other respects, commercial legislation is a nuisance; and if under some circumstances trade is found to flourish concurrently with such interference, the fact is due either to the restrictions and regulations being practically inoperative, or more frequently, to the high profits arising from unexhausted resources, in the absence of competition, enabling commerce to advance in spite of impediments; in the same way as cultivation by slave labor, notwithstanding its expensiveness and inordinate ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... pursued by the Bank. The resolution was likewise opposed by Sir John Wrottesly, Alderman Thompson, Alderman Heygate, and Mr. Wilson, who were adverse to it on various grounds: that it would be wholly inoperative to give any effectual relief; that it would be positively mischievous; and that the present state of the country required the postponement of such a measure. The scheme of increasing the number of partners in a bank by way ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... where the will sits sovereign. It is so about little things, it is so about great ones. Nothing is more common than that a man shall know perfectly well that some possibly trivial habit stands in the way of something that it is his interest or his duty to pursue; but the knowledge lies inoperative in the outermost part of him. It is so in regard to graver things. The majority of the slaves of any vice whatsoever know perfectly well that they ought to give it up, and yet nothing comes of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the gift of self-government. In religious ideas, he was inexhaustible; but he was deficient in constructive capacity. The local governments, which were effective, had defended the Reformation and assured its success against the hostility of the central government, which was intermittent and inoperative, and as they afforded the necessary protection, they assumed the uncontested control. Lutheranism is governed not by the spiritual, but by the temporal power, in agreement with the high conception of the State which Luther derived from the long conflict of the Middle ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... to defend the helpless native or even to make his woes known; the tender-hearted Queen, who loved justice and hated iniquity, was remote and her beneficent intentions towards her humble subjects in the islands were inoperative. "The heavens are high and the Tzar is far" say the long-suffering mujiks, whose road to their "little father's" throne is barred by an army of interested bureaucrats. Tyranny is of divers sorts and one tyranny differs ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... should never be extended. Douglas incorporated in his "Kansas-Nebraska" bill, a clause declaring that the prohibition of slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, by the act of 1820, had been "superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850," and was "inoperative and void." Later he added the explanatory clause: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... for it satisfactorily to myself. One other remark only will I make concerning it: I have no doubt it was an old forgery. One after another those immediately concerned in it had died, and there the falsehood lurked—in latent power—inoperative until my second visit to Umberden Church. But what differences might there not have been had it not started into activity for the brief space betwixt then ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... to this particular instance, and became inoperative immediately after its application; and this Government cannot understand how suspicion can therefore fall upon the impartial administration of Justice in this Republic. If the Government had acquiesced in the position ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... function automatic, principally because of the liability of the user to forget to move the switch to the proper position after using the telephone, resulting not only in the rapid waste of the battery elements but also in the inoperative condition of the signal-receiving bell. The solution of this problem, a vexing one at first, was found in the so-called automatic hook switch or switch hook, by which the circuits of the instrument were made automatically to assume their proper conditions by the mere act, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... particular project is likely to tend to the public benefit, and, if so, whether this is a fit and proper time to bring it forward—should be discussed elsewhere. A recommendation of the Board of Trade, which still leaves the matter open, is plainly useless and inoperative. It has been overleaped, derided, despised, and will be so again—we scarcely dare to say unjustly; for no body of five men, however intelligent, could by possibility be expected to form an accurate judgment upon such an enormous mass of materials and conflicting statements as were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... How would you lubricate the valve of low-pressure cylinder if the oil feed became inoperative ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... minute, and that entirely by side-pressure on the rail, which, if not sufficient to cause the engine to leave the line, would be quite sufficient to produce violent and dangerous oscillation. It may be observed, in conclusion, that as the cause above alluded to will be inoperative while we travel along the parallels of latitude, it clearly follows, that a higher degree of speed may be attained with safety on a railway running east and west than on one which runs north and south." There is no doubt of the tendency ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... to subside; calcined air, and air filtered by the deeper cells of the human lungs. In all cases the correspondence between my experiments and those of Schroeder, Pasteur, and Lister in regard to spontaneous generation was perfect. The air which they found inoperative was proved by the luminous beam to be optically pure and therefore germless. Having worked at the subject both by experiment and reflection, on Friday evening, January 21, 1870, I brought it before the members of the Royal Institution. Two or ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... habeas corpus, the only protection against lettres de cachet and all forms of unjust imprisonment, which the constitution declares "shall not be suspended, except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety demands it," is held inoperative in every State of the Union, in case of a married woman against her husband—the marital rights of the husband being in all cases primary, and the rights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... their products for the former articles. If that time should come, the industry that had to grow up originally under the protection of a duty would become so fruitful that it could dispense with the duty. Taxes of this kind tend to become inoperative, provided always that the latent resources for economical ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... intrusted with a brighter and a more pure light of spiritual truth, are, first of all, bound to prove by their lives that religion is not in them a dead and inoperative letter; but a vivifying principle, productive of practical holiness and virtue. Enlightened Christians are bound to show forth their principles by the exercise of every Christian excellence, and so to prove to the world that God is ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... can exist against them. It might be esteemed desirable that no such augmentation of the taxes should take place as would have the effect of annulling the land-proceeds distribution act of the last session, which act is declared to be inoperative the moment the duties are increased beyond 20 per cent, the maximum rate established by the compromise act. Some of the provisions of the compromise act, which will go into effect on the 30th day of June next, may, however, be found exceedingly inconvenient in practice under any regulations that ...
— 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

... acid from the calcining-furnaces or "roasters'' cannot be employed immediately for the Deacon process, as the sulphuric acid always contained in the roaster gases soon "poisons'' the contact-substance and renders it inoperative. This acid must, therefore, be condensed in the ordinary way into liquid hydrochloric acid and formerly could be worked up only by the Weldon process. R. Hasenclever has overcome this drawback by running this impure acid into moderately strong sulphuric acid (140 deg. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... deviating from it was entertained by the new Ministers. Although, however, Lord Northington did not openly deviate from the main points of his policy, he followed it up with a luke-warmness and insincerity that rendered it to a great extent inoperative. His Lordship appears to have betrayed, not only in his measures, but in the spirit and tone in which they were brought forward, an unworthy desire to discredit the influence and reputation of his predecessor, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... nations, would in fact by being an act of war create a state of war, which constitutionally can only be done by a declaration of Congress. To contract by treaty to create a state of war upon certain contingencies arising would be equally tainted with unconstitutionality and would be null and inoperative. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... to be some question whether this clause is likely to have any practical effect. The clause is obviously inoperative if Belgium ultimately declines to take over the Congo territory, and there is at least the chance that this will happen. If it does happen, King Leopold and the Belgian Parliament recognise the prior claim of France to all the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose



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