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Nonce   Listen
noun
Nonce  n.  The one or single occasion; the present call or purpose; chiefly used in the phrase for the nonce, i. e. for the present time. "The miller was a stout carl for the nones." "And that he calls for drink, I 'll have prepared him A chalice for the nonce."
Nonce word, "a word apparently employed only for the nonce".






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nonce" Quotes from Famous Books



... Now, I bethink me, I have sworn to serve my Queen, but I have given no oath of fealty to the Pope. And as for your religion, well, I am in most ways of one mind with you, and I think these Protestants to be no better than heretics. Master Basil, whose learning is wonderful, did persuade me for the nonce that my duty lay along the path you are treading; but my mind misgives me woefully, and I cannot see that it is an honest thing to work in secret against the whole body of ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... there, quiet and compelling, there was an assumption of frankness and honesty about this man that it was hard to withstand. For the nonce I was persuaded of his sincerity, and weakly I surrendered my hand. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... ago? I speak to you, Count Ammiani. She applied to the Archduke and the Marshal for permission to visit you. It was accorded. To the devil with our days of benignity! She was from Turin. The shuffle has made her my hostess for the nonce. I will go to her. You, sir," the count turned to Wilfrid—"you will stay below. Are you in the pay of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Goethe made his Zauberlehrling, of the stick turned water-carrier. The classical theory of the witch's flight was driven to no such vulgar expedients, the ointment turning her into a bird for the nonce, as in Lucian and Apuleius. In those days, too, there was nothing known of any camp-meeting of witches and wizards, but each sorceress transformed herself that she might fly to her paramour. According to some of the Scotch stories, the witch, after bestriding her broomsticks must repeat the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... her face. She hurried to the open window and looked out. Then she rushed to the kitchen and questioned the servants. None of them had seen Fledra, all were earnestly certain that the girl had not been about the house during the morning. Ann thought of Floyd, and for the nonce her fears were forced aside. In spite of her anxiety, she had a smile on her lips as she entered the breakfast-room and took ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... chairs of the country were placed, and taking the tube of the pipe from the solemn Mussulman whose duty it was to prepare it, I stretched myself out in that indolent lazy peace which is only to be enjoyed in tropical countries. Silent and for the nonce perfectly happy, I slowly inhaled the fragrant vapour of tobacco and aromatic herbs and honey with which the hookah is filled. No sound save the monotonous bubbling and chuckling of the smoke through the water, or the gentle rustle of the leaves ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... for the nonce. So melancholy a face may well suggest some painful family secret. But how explain the violent part played by the young man, who is not mentioned in these abrupt and hastily penned sentences! It is all a mystery, madam, a ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... being now called upon for a song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for the nonce; and was followed by the latter, who gave "Miserere" in fine style, hitting off the mumping notes and lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite humour. April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions: but Good Friday ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... ill-used. By whom? by what? wherein? These were questions Miss Crowe was not prepared to answer. Her intellect was unequal to the stern logic of human events. She expected two and two to make five: as why should they not for the nonce? She was like an actor who finds himself on the stage with a half-learned part and without sufficient wit to extemporize. Pray, where is the prompter? Alas, Elizabeth, that you had no mother! Young girls are prone to fancy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... at it, Dick," said Nicholas; "I scarce know myself; and though the clothes I wear are well made enough, they seem to sit awkwardly on me, and trouble me as much as the shirt of Nessus did Hercules of old. For the nonce I am Sir Richard Hoghton's retainer. I must own I was angry with myself when I saw Sir Ralph Assheton with his long train of gentlemen, all in murrey-coloured cloaks and doublets, at Myerscough Lodge, while I, his cousin, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... was anything in the world to cloud his happiness. He talked to the woman he loved with a serene contempt for everything else in the world—a contempt, too, which was not assumed. He was perfectly happy for the nonce, and doubly so in that such a happy termination to a very long day was wholly unexpected. He had thought that he should find the party gone from New York on his return from Greenwood, and this ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... Looked at from the Northern side, it is a raven, the bird of carnage, to be sure, but whitewashed and looking as decorously dove-like as it can; from the Southern, it is a dove, blackened over for the nonce, but letting the olive-branch peep from ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was worth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... underneath their guardian stone, the froth of the great breakers casting you headlong ere it had drowned your knees. Or you might explore the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, when the very roots of the hills were for the nonce discovered; following my leader from one group to another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of ships, wading in pools after the abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with an eye cast backward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the war had starved out the butchers' stalls, but Indians and hunters took their places for the nonce with an abundance of game of all kinds, which had multiplied exceedingly during the years that men had taken to killing Bostonnais and English instead ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... England there is a kind of drink made of apples which they call cider or pomage, but that of pears is called perry, and both are ground and pressed in presses made for the nonce. Certes these two are very common in Sussex, Kent, Worcester, and other steeds where these sorts of fruit do abound, howbeit they are not their only drink at all times, but referred unto the delicate ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... Alec, forced for the nonce to maintain the discussion. "What are they? What is the difference between your suspected Austrian terms and ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... creek, with its untrimm'd bushes and turfy banks—away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilized life—from entourage of artificial store, machine, studio, office, parlor—from tailordom and fashion's clothes—from any clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heats advancing, there in those watery, shaded solitudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee out singly, reader dear, and talk in perfect freedom, negligently, confidentially,) for one day and night at least, returning to the naked source-life of us all—to the breast of the great ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up against them all; against the Law represented by the troopers camped at Fort Fair Desire, against the troopers and their captain speeding after Nancy Machell—his Nonce, who was risking her life and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was up ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... rigidity of demonstration desirable is in the present state of erotics beyond our power. Until our family trees give us something more than mere skeletons of dead branches, we must perforce continue ignorant of the science of grafts. For the nonce we must be content to generalize from our own premises, only rising above them sufficiently to get a bird's-eye view of our neighbor's estates. Such a survey has at least one advantage: the whole field of view appears ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... him from pillar to post, keep him constantly trudging from North to South and East to West, and withdraw him entirely from his executive duties?" The President had the best of the encounter on all scores. Not only had Marshall forgotten for the nonce the doctrine he himself had stated in Marbury vs. Madison regarding the constitutional discretion of the Executive, but what was worse still, he had forgotten his own discretion on that occasion. He had fully earned his rebuff, but that fact did ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... entring into his gallie, as nothing discouraged with these newes, he rowed a flight shot or two from the shore, and forthwith returned, and then going vp into an high place like a pulpit, framed and set vp there for the nonce, he gaue the token to fight vnto his souldiers by sound of trumpet, and therewith was ech man charged to gather cockle shells vpon the shore, which he called [Sidenote: The spoile of the Ocean.] ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed

... Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce The Ostracism, and sham'd it out of Use. The Indian that Heaven did forswear Because he heard some Spaniards were there. Had he but known what Scots in Hell had been, He would, Erasmus-like, have hung between. My Muse has done. A voider for the Nonce; I wrong the Devil should I pick the Bones. That Dish is his, for when the Scots decease, Hell, like their Nation, feeds on Barnacles. A Scot, when from the Gallows-Tree got loose, Drops into Stix, and ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... scene itself, to which the old clipt hedges, the formal distribution of the ground, and the antiquated appearance of one or two fountains and artificial cascades, in which the naiads had been for the nonce compelled to resume their ancient frolics, gave an appearance of unusual simplicity and seclusion, and which seemed rather to belong to the last than to the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce particle names, including the 'clutron' or 'cluon' (indivisible particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon) and the futon (elementary particle of {randomness}, or sometimes of lameness). These are not so ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... next day, and nothing more was said for the nonce about a "will" or a "life estate," or any matter thereunto appertaining, and disagreeable to Alice and to me alike. The cold weather having melted away into sunshine and warmth, I once more began to be deeply interested in horticulture and floriculture, and ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... was restless too. Not because of the unwontedness of a return to English scenery; not because he was about to meet his parents, and settle down for awhile to English cottage life. He was indulging in dreams, and for the nonce the warehouses of Bombay and the plains and forts of Poonah were but a shadow's shadow. His dream was based on this one atom of fact: Elfride and Knight had become separated, and their engagement was as if it had never been. Their rupture must have occurred ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... affairs and stronger and lustier than the sailors who use the long Southern voyages, but these courageous, young, lusty, strong-fed younkers that shall be bred in the Busses, when His Majesty shall have occasion for their service in war against the enemy, will be fellows for the nonce! and will put more strength to an iron crow at a piece of great ordnance in training of a cannon, or culvining with the direction of the experimented master Gunner, then two or three of the forenamed surfeited sailors. And in distress of wind-grown sea and foul winter's weather, for flying forward ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... necromancer, whom Messer Ansaldo, shouldst thou play him false, might, peradventure, cause to do us a mischief. I am minded, then, that thou go to him, and contrive, if on any wise thou canst, to get thee quit of this promise without loss of virtue; but if otherwise it may not be, then for the nonce thou mayst yield him thy body, but not thy soul." Whereat the lady, weeping, would none of such a favour at her husband's hands. But Giliberto, for all the lady's protestations, was minded that so ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... are inclined to believe that the wooden bridge, upon which the chaise hired by the Club to make the journey from Rochester to Dingley Dell came hopelessly to grief, was Aylesford Bridge, transmuted for the nonce from Kentish ragstone into timber. However that may be, there is a matter of genuine history which has signalized in no common way this old-world village. At this ford, the lowest on the Medway, the Jutes under Hengist and Horsa routed the ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... volunteered a few reasonable pledges for the future, and then took his leave—the kindest thing he could do, since thus he set the mother at liberty to go and comfort her child. Her idea of comforting and Bessie's idea of being comforted consisted, for the nonce, in having ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... your steed, Robert Shurland! Make much of your steed!" cried the hag, shaking at him her long and bony finger." Groom to the hide, and corn to the manger! He has saved your life, Robert Shurland, for the nonce? but he shall yet be the means of your ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... Carlyle and Miss Martineau select as favorite 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which amuses and surprises me somewhat. In that poem I had endeavoured to throw conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce) into the fire of poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things. Well, I shall soon hear what you like best—and worst. I wonder if you have been very carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of your hereditary ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... answered Juba. "It is really a capital joke, but she has got into prison for certain, for being a Christian. Fancy it! they caught her in the streets, and put her in the guard-house, and have had her up for examination. You see they want a Christian for the nonce: it would not do to have none such in prison; so they will flourish with her till ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... of the people,—the narration of an old soldier of the First Empire,—there is a topical realism that makes one regret the never-achieved Battle. Add to these excellences the writer's having put into his work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration towards the idea; and, despite flaws, the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... agricultural implements, hoping thereby, though at my own expense, to give an impetus to industry in Chili. All this was, however, frustrated, and the mortification was not a little enhanced by the circumstance that, whilst turning printer for the nonce, there lay opposite my house at Quintero one of our best prizes, the Aguila, a wreck, tenanted only by shell-fish—she having gone ashore whilst waiting the decision of the Chilian Government, previous to being sold for the benefit of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the nonce to play the part of outraged innocence, a part which she further emphasized by the display of easy-going kindliness. She placed one of her daintily-gloved hands on Bela's arm, she threw him a look of understanding and of indulgence, she cast a provoking glance on Andor and ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... its way in on this gusty night through the windows opening upon the balcony. Paula held a letter in her hand, the contents of which formed the subject of their conversation. Happy as she was in her general situation, there was for the nonce a tear in ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... — N. the present, the present time, the present day, the present moment, the present juncture, the present occasion; the times, the existing time, the time being; today, these days, nowadays, our times, modern times, the twentieth century; nonce, crisis, epoch, day, hour. age, time of life. Adj. present, actual, instant, current, existing, extant, that is; present-day, up-to-date, up-to-the-moment. Adv. at this time, at this moment &c 113; at the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... over for the nonce. Visitors begin to drop in for the evening; there is music and singing in Brown's little drawing room. Keats is very fond of music, and can himself, though possessing hardly any voice, "produce a pleasing musical effect." He will sit and listen for hours to a sympathetic ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron

... Amabaean eclogue between her and Lewis—both obstinate, clever, odd, garrulous, and shrill. In fact, one could have heard nothing else. But they fell out, alas!—and now they will never quarrel again. Could not one reconcile them for the "nonce?" Poor Corinne—she will find that some of her fine sayings won't suit our fine ladies ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... reason he was truly glad of the altered condition of affairs; he believed that, for the nonce, at least his father had abandoned any ill designs he might have cherished against James Moore; those sneaking visits to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... on the bed had summoned her soul back to earth for the nonce, and answered in a cool, little tone of distance, as she might have spoken to her employer, perhaps; or, in other circumstances, to the stranger begging for work on her door-sill—Bonnie was a lady anywhere—"Yes, I am ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... by a Mrs. Robins, he walked into the hall with the air of one who treads familiar ground. Up one flight of stairs, up two flights of stairs, and up three flights of stairs did he climb, until on the fourth landing he pushed open a door and found himself in a small room, which formed for the nonce the "little place" about which he was wont at the club to make depreciatory allusions, so skilfully introduced that the listener was left in doubt as to whether the major was the happy possessor of a country house ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the poorest blade. There was something in its oppressive horizontality which too much reminded him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a single living thing ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... or to be Printed or put vpon their banketting dishes of suger plate, or of march paines, & such other dainty meates as by the curtesie & custome euery gest might carry from a common feast home with him to his owne house, & were made for the nonce, they were called Nenia or apophoreta, and neuer contained aboue one verse, or two at the most, but the shorter the better, we call them Posies, and do paint them now a dayes vpon the backe sides of our fruite trenchers of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... say. I dare say, but I won't. One of those tongues I'll borrow for the nonce. He'll never miss it. We mean his ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... flour barrel. Tears are always unavailing, but sometimes I think they are more so when they are shed into a barrel of flour. He was an easy weeper. He would shed tears on the slightest provocation, or anything else. Once I told him something so touchful that his eyes were blinded with tears for the nonce. Then I took a pie, and stole away so that he could be ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... the nonce could say nothing more to her. She had worked herself into such a passion that she would listen to no words but her own, and think of nothing but the wrong that was still being done to her. He put her down at the hall door ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... original word bearht for both bright and pert. Loo (or lee), sheltered. Steady, slow. "She is so steady I can't do nothing with her." Kickety, said of a one-sided wheel-barrow that kicked up (but this may have been invented for the nonce). Pecty, covered with little spots of decay. Fecty, defective throughout—both used in describing apples or potatoes. Hedge-picks, shoes. Hags or aggarts, haws. Rauch, smoke (comp. German and Scotch). Pond-keeper, dragon-fly. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... us has not felt at the Play, the strong allegorical power in the coming of the first actress before the house? The hero may pose, the clown dance, the villain plot, the warrior, the king, the merchant, the page, fuddle the attention for the nonce: it is a dreary business; it is like parsing poetry; it is a grammatical duty; the Play could not, it seems, go on without these superfluities. We listen, weary, regret, find fault, and acquire an aversion, when lo! upon the monotonous, masculine scene, some ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... scene of excitement than did our top-gallant forecastle and forward gangways, during the preparations for a race; the claims of different candidates for an oar would be carefully canvassed, and the coxswains became, for the nonce, men of vast importance, for upon their ipse dixit in selecting the crews, the success of the boats was thought mainly to depend. Then the non-combatants had their favorite boats and men, and their suggestions ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... formerly of being better distinguished from the vulgar than at present; for, what the ancient farthingale and more modern hoop were to court ladies, the sword was to the gentleman; an article of dress, which only rendered those ridiculous who assumed it for the nonce, without being in the habit of wearing it. Vincent's rapier got between his legs, and, as he stumbled over it, he exclaimed—"Zounds! 'tis the second time it has served me thus—I believe the damned trinket knows I am no true gentleman, and does ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... kitchens. He should like to turn in there for a few minutes, to see how the fellow was coming on. The brute ought not to pull through. But it was too late: a new regime had begun; his little period of sway had passed, leaving as a last proof of his art this human jetsam saved for the nonce. And there rose in his heated mind the pitiful face of a resolute woman, questioning him: "You held the keys of life and death. Which have ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... sir, something which, though not so marvellous as that omen, is nevertheless hard to understand. You know that in old days I should have been glad to drown the Soplica family in a spoonful of water; and yet of this young fellow Thaddeus I was always immensely fond, from his childhood up. I took nonce that whenever he got into a fight with the other lads he always beat them; so, every time that he came to the castle, I kept stirring him up to difficult feats. He succeeded in everything, whether he set out to dislodge the doves from the tower, or to pluck the mistletoe from ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... Croix, nonce en Portugal, et Nicholas Tornabon, legat en France, l'introduisent en Italie ou elle recut les noms d'herbe de Sainte Croix, et de Tornabonne; elle a encore porte d'autres noms fondes sur des proprietes ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... men, and also of horses, which the English endured [147] till Harold came; and then luckily came also the good old Leofric, and Bishop Alred the peacemaker, and so strife was patched up—Gryffyth swore oaths of faith to King Edward, and Algar was inlawed; and there for the nonce rests the matter now. But well I ween that Gryffyth will never keep troth with the English, and that no hand less strong than Harold's can keep in check a spirit as fiery as Algar's: therefore did I wish that ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... on amid the woods, "Peace, from the land that is the spirit's goal,— The land that nonce may see but with his soul,— Peace on the darkened house above the floods." Pale constellations of the clematis, Hark to that voice of his That will not cease, Swing low, droop low your spray, Light with your white stars all the shadowed way ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob

... No to God I vow. And dyd not I knowe afore of the insurance Betweene Gawyn Goodlucke, and Christian Custance? And dyd not I for the nonce, by my conueyance, Reade his letter in a wrong sense for daliance? That if you coulde haue take it vp at the first bounde, We should therat such a sporte and pastime haue founde, That all the whole towne ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall

... seldom perceptibly the case, an imagination which has been powerfully excited is fond of laying hold of any congruity in sound which may accidentally offer itself, that by such means he may, for the nonce, restore the lost resemblance between the word and the thing. For example, how common was it and is it to seek in the name of a person, however arbitrarily bestowed, a reference to his qualities and fortunes—to convert it purposely into a significant name. Those who cry out against the play ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... hapless couple returned to London, where a pure fluke with some mining shares introduced Minchin to finer gambling than he had found abroad. The man was bitten. There was a fortune waiting for special knowledge and a little ready cash; and Alexander Minchin settled down to make it, taking for the nonce a furnished house in a modest neighborhood. And here it was that the quarrelling continued to its culmination in the scene ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... old house, which had been originally contrived to hold runlets of Nantz and bales of Lyons, lodged men whose faces were known in the Mall and St. James's, and whose titles were not less real because for the nonce they wore them, with their stars, in their pockets. Naturally, in the general break-up consequent on the discovery of the Turnham Green plot, these practices came to light, the lonely house in the marshes was entered, and Hunt was himself seized and conveyed to London under ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... The only doubt was whether so very quiet a person could be asked to undertake such an affair, and her husband took leave, that he might consult her and see whether she could bring herself to be mother for the nonce to the wild heiress, of whom his family were wont to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... glancing about him with an uncertain smile. But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were still sleeping, the slatternly women across the aisle were in open-mouthed oblivion, and even the crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled. Paul settled back to struggle with his ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... that side of the crosse which was next to the stone: so that till the crosse was taken from the stone, it was vnseene. His bodie was found, not inclosed within a toome of marble or other stone curiouslie wrought, but within a great tree made hollowe for the nonce like a trunke, the which being found and digged vp, was opened, and therein were found the kings bones, of such maruellous bignesse, that the shinbone of his leg being set on the ground, reached vp to the middle thigh of a verie tall man: as a moonke ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... the end of November. But Marion Fay was on his mind, and he had arranged his scheme. His scheme, as far as he knew, would be as practicable on a Tuesday as on a Monday; but he was impatient, and for the nonce preferred Marion Fay, whom he probably would not find, to the foxes which would certainly be found in the ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... artisan, and turned the men of clay into men of steel. The village preacher, when he left his pulpit, doffed cap and cassock, and donned morion and steel-coat. The Lothian yeoman's household became for the nonce a band of troopers, who would cross swords with the night riders of Buccleuch. It was a terrible time, a time rather of anarchy than of defined war, for it was without form or shape. Yet the horror of it was everywhere. Houses and villages were burned, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... reflection, on which alone can have been safely based the great measures which we have been briefly reviewing! "But all these," says some faithful mourner after the deceased Ministry, "they intended to have done, and would have done, if they could." Ay, to be sure. Admit it, for the nonce; 'twas easy to say it, but the thing was to do it—quoth Mr Blewitt! That same doing, is what we are congratulating the present Ministry upon. Yes, it has been done—the great experiment is being tried; may it prove as safe and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... mentioned, there was another person, who sat so often at the Doctor's board and spent so many hours beneath his roof, that, for the nonce, I shall reckon her among his family. Indeed, Laura Stebbins was almost as much at home in the Bugbee mansion as at the parsonage, and she used to regard the Doctor and his wife with an affection quite filial in kind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... glum-faced brewer on the back; and simultaneously checking over, with an oily-haired agent, his committee-meetings for the following days. His customary arrogance and pompousness of manner were laid aside. For the nonce, he was ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... decumbiture or during the period which followed it—which period houses an astonishing number of fights, rows, bullyings, etc. He must have had a light case for he was cured in no time, and on everyone's back as usual. Well, I will leave him for the nonce; in fact, I will leave him until I come to The Young Pole, who wore black puttees and spoke of The Zulu as "mon ami"—the Young Pole whose troubles I will recount in connection with the second Delectable Mountain Itself. I will leave the Sheeney with the observation that he was almost ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... de Maintenon when he was there, were unable to entertain him. Music, frequently introduced, languished from that cause. Detached scenes from the comedies of Moliere were thought of, and were played by the King's musicians, comedians for the nonce. Madame de Maintenon introduced, too, the Marechal de Villeroy, to amuse the King by relating ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... named some new step in dancing, just introduced at her school the last dancing day, and then such a practising and trying of this step commenced amongst the young ladies as made a pretty sight to look on, the young ladies being all nicely dressed, and for the nonce thinking more of ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood

... without conflicting. Some talk, frankly audible, and others are frankly silent, but a deep, wide purr, tacit or explicit, close upon a muted hymn of thanksgiving, in that assemblage of mutually repellent personalities, for the nonce united, would best ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... we cannot do better than halt awhile for Master Lorimer's folk to mend the tackling of their gear, while we make our noonday meal and provide for our further journey. Allow me to be your hostess for the nonce, my lords.' ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... others, a docile body which he had pressed tightly in his arms and explored with his fingers, a woman of whom he might one day come into absolute possession if he succeeded in making himself indispensable to her. There she was, often tired, her face left blank for the nonce by that eager, feverish preoccupation with the unknown things which made Swann suffer; she would push back her hair with both hands; her forehead, her whole face would seem to grow larger; then, suddenly, some ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... I have for the nonce taken on the village mind, I am as much interested in my incorporeal, invisible neighbours as in those I see and am accustomed to meet and converse with every day. They are here in the churchyard, and I am pleased to be with them. Even when I sit, as I sometimes do of an evening, on a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... seemed that the Carter Handicap and the winning by his very good friend and neighbor, Colonel Desha, had stuck firmly in Major Calvert's craw. He promised to faithfully follow his trainer's directions and leave for the nonce the preparatory training ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... to my staff, becoming for the nonce my attendants, that I had some difficulty at starting; but at last I passed all the sentries safely, much to the annoyance of many officers, who were trying every conceivable scheme to evade them, and entered the city. I can give you no very clear description of its condition on that Sunday ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... scarce know whether I will receive you—a truant should be whipped as a punishment—but, mayhap, this will do as well for the nonce,' and the Queen stroked Philip Sidney on both cheeks, saying, 'The gem of my Court, how has ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... violet eyes a high, indomitable spirit occasionally gleamed and a stray flash from them, combined with her radiant freshness of complexion and perfect grace of figure and of carriage, would light up the common sordid streets of the common masculine mind and turn them, for the nonce, into vistas of imagination. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... moved by a common impulse to satisfy without further delay the animal cravings of their physical natures. They strode along with quick, nervous step, each chatting and laughing with his fellow, interested for the nonce in the day's work, making plans for well-earned recreation when five o'clock should come and the up-town stampede ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... share the good offices of my patron saint, you must wear my badge too, for love of me. See here, this little silver swan, the device of my noble ancestor King Edward the Third, it is now my badge, and you must wear it for my sake. Farewell for the nonce; we shall meet again—I am sure of it—ere we say goodbye to this pleasant city. I would I had a brother like you. But we will meet anon. Farewell, ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... borne in the arms of Ferdinand III., the King of Castile and Leon, whose daughter was the first wife of our Edward I. In this he was undoubtedly correct. The puzzle that the Weaver proposed was this. "Let us, for the nonce, see," saith he, "if there be any of the company that can show how this piece of cloth may be cut into four several pieces, each of the same size and shape, and each piece bearing a lion and a castle." It is not recorded ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... trios, and groups of every size. Here and there large companies were absorbed in attention to one elevated above the rest, not in a pulpit, or on a platform, but on the stilts of his own legs, elongated for the nonce. The aurora, right overhead, lighted up the lake and the sides of the mountains, by sending down from the zenith, nearly to the surface of the lake, great folded vapours, luminous with all the colours of ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald

... try to familiarise himself with the habits and thoughts of the poor by going and living among them. I think he got this notion from Kingsley's "Alton Locke," which, High Churchman though he for the nonce was, he had devoured as he had devoured Stanley's Life of Arnold, Dickens's novels, and whatever other literary garbage of the day was most likely to do him harm; at any rate he actually put his scheme into practice, and took lodgings in Ashpit Place, a small street in the neighbourhood ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... are thinking of some particular exhibition of some particular kind of virtue or vice. Nay, I am not even concerned to deny that our idea of idea in general may possibly be a copy of some particular one of our previous ideas which, for the nonce, serves to represent all our other previous ideas. I limit myself to saying that our idea of idea in general, whether it be or be not itself an abstraction, is, at all events, not a copy of sensation. I admit that it thereby differs essentially from most, if not all, other general ideas. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... games,—backgammon, dice {20a} and cards; pictures of various lands, towns and persons, inventions and amusing tricks; all kinds of waters, perfumes, pigments and spots to make the ugly fair, and the old look young, and the leman's malodorous bones smell sweet for the nonce. In short, the shadow of pleasure and the guise of happiness in every conceivable form was to be found there; and sooth to say, I almost think I too had been enticed by the place had not my friend instantly hurried me away far from the three alluring towers to the top end of the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... had prime Holland linens on hand, just received from Amsterdam, when he was waited upon by a gentleman of good address and evidently of French extraction, who inquired of the consignee, whom we will call Mr. Schulemberg for the nonce, "whether he had the linens he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... thus bluffed came down the street and told their grievance to Mr Oscar Lawyer, for the nonce head of the Opposition League, and at ordinary seasons a father of his people, to whom all the town made in times of necessity,—whether it was an old beldame requiring assistance from the Benevolent Society ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... quietly-laboring, cool and conservative world is for the nonce left behind. With the first stepping across Customhouse street, the place widens architecturally, and the atmosphere, too, seems impregnated with a sort of mental freedom, conducive to dangerous theorizing and broody reflections on the inequality of the classes. The sun shines in a strip ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... are a Laurel and a Rose, Beneath whose branches wide a broode doth haunt; The whom high walls and fretted gates enclose, Where goode may enter, badde are bidde avaunt. And there is one yclepen Margarete, Who alsoe for the nonce is clepen Rose, For she must on some other hille be sette When Hymenaeos shall her lotte dispose. And, little booke, it is to her you runne. And sisters eight, for they, in soothe, are nine; And in ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... off at Brook Farm, for the nonce. What anyone did that was out of the common, might cause smiles and laughter but no frowns or scoldings. Each felt and believed in the demonstration of his or her own individuality, and, as a first consequence, there was something that was often mistaken, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... smithy as a worthless time-waster—whenever that worthy showed face—and Jim, for the nonce, had to find companionship and entertainment in his world of Penny Dreadful creation ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... disproportionately excited, that, inconsistent in me as the task would have been, I would gladly have explained away her difficulties, and restored to her mind its wonted confidence and serenity, had I possessed sufficient knowledge for the purpose. I really pitied her, and heartily wished Mr. Smith, for the nonce, at the devil. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... wives of 'citizens and burgesses,' like all nouveaux riches, were still more bizarre than the courtiers. 'They cannot tell when or how to make an end, being women in whom all kind of curiosity is to be seen in far greater measure than in women of higher calling. I might name hues devised for the nonce, ver d'oye 'twixt green and yallow, peas-porridge tawny, popinjay blue, and ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... hadn't," answered the ireful Mrs. Peggy Nonce;—"a hard fate is mine; sweltering over a great fire all my life, to cook for a family that don't know nothing only to make the work as hard as they can. Now, here's Mr. Pimble goes and gets you here to wash; never tells me a word about it ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... amiability, was prompt to realize that a bold response on his part would bring the cart to a standstill, and that the young woman would be ready to give him any assignation he pleased. Nevertheless, although the recognition of this fact put him in a better humor for the nonce, it seemed hardly worth while to waste minutes upon so trivial an adventure. He was content, therefore, to allow the peasant woman to drive her cart and all its contents unimpeded through the dust of ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... tremor. The mere destruction of the immense, undetermined sum of money did not seriously ruffle him. As an ex-bank clerk he was aware that though an individual would lose, the State, through the Bank of England, would correspondingly gain, and thus for the nonce he had the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... not quite so sure of that. But then for the nonce she was regarding the matter from a strictly personal ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... calmness till his enemy is within one or two yards, and then disappears into the burrow. After having been foiled in this way many times, the dog resorts to stratagem: he crouches down as if transformed for the nonce into a Felis, and steals on with wonderfully slow and cautious steps, his hair bristling, tail hanging, and eyes intent on his motionless intended victim; when within seven or eight yards he makes a sudden rush, but invariably with the same dis-appointing result. ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... emotions; and assure, to the grasp of universal human ken, the import of those emotions; that will express, in turn, fervor, pathos, humor; that, to find its completest purpose of unerringly revealing each passion, alternately, and for the nonce, swaying the human breast, will traverse, as it were, and compass, and range over the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... the great barn, called for the nonce the Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with transepts. It not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one of a group of conventual buildings ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... interrupted by the lackey, who came with Mr. Dot Gibson's respects to his honour, and would his honour like the refreshment of a shave and a bath as both were at his service? Like master, like man. This resplendent person was for the nonce humility's self. I went with him and was made clean and comfortable, and my rags ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... brought: Quod his men, 'Lord, we have pork sought; Eates and sups of the brewis SOOTE,[Sweet] Thorough grace of God it shall be your boot.' Before King Richard carff a knight, He ate faster than he carve might. The king ate the flesh and GNEW [Gnawed] the bones, And drank well after for the nonce. And when he had eaten enough, His folk hem turned away, and LOUGH.[Laughed] He lay still and drew in his arm; His chamberlain him wrapped warm. He lay and slept, and swet a stound, And became whole and sound. King Richard clad him and ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... blameless in this matter, yet she had been the one to bear the punishment; and, as girls and bosom friends, they could not but sympathise with her, and endow her with heroic attributes; make her, in fact, as we are doing, their little heroine for the nonce. This was, perhaps, not serviceable for Mary; but it was ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... in cowboy garb? Nothing more—except—and Sundown realized with a slight sensation of emptiness that he had forgotten to eat breakfast. He had plenty to eat in his saddle-bags, but he put the temptation to refresh himself aside as unworthy, for the nonce, of his higher self. Naturally the pent-up flood of verse that had been oppressing him of late surged up and filled his mind with vague and poignant fancies. His love for animals, despite his headlong experiences on the Concho, was unimpaired, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... if both parties leave judgment "out in the cold" while enjoying each other's society, and possibly already pleasantly occupied in building "castles in the air." Whatever may eventually come of it, the fair one is conscious for the nonce of being unusually happy. This emotion is not likely to be diminished when she finds herself the object of general attention—accompanied, it may be, by the display of a little envy among rival beauties—owing to the assiduous homage ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... away the swarming thoughts that used to persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well at ease: argal, an thou ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... should have existed at all, much more to so immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... it came on me all at once, 175 This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... haven't had a peaceful moment since I got back from Cannes. Ever since I put my foot across this blasted threshold," said Aunt Dahlia, returning for the nonce to the hearty argot of the hunting field, "everything's been at sixes and sevens. First there was ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... Mule, those "capital caverns," celebrated in Pantagruel's conference with the Limosin student, which has conferred upon them an immortality like that of our own hostel, the Mermaid, were wholly neglected; the dice-box was laid aside for the nonce; and the well-used cards were thrust into the doublets of these thirsty ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... fraternised and exchanged tobacco-pouches and wine, ready to seize their firelocks and knock each other's heads off when the truce was over; and thus our old soldiers, skilful in war, but knowing the charms of a quiet life, laid their weapons down for the nonce, and hob-and-nobbed gaily together. Of course, whilst drinking with Jack Frenchman, you have your piece handy to blow his brains out if he makes a hostile move: but, meanwhile, it is A votre sante, mon camarade! Here's to you, mounseer! and everything is as pleasant as possible. Regarding ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... tackles him twice. The first time he opens on me with his 44-gun before ever I ends the sentence. But he misses. Nacherally, I abandons them marital intentions for what you-all might call the "nonce" to sort o' look over my hand ag'in an' see be I right. Do my best I can't on earth discern no reasons ag'in the nuptials. Moreover, the lady—who takes after her old gent a heap—cuts in on the play with a bluff that while she don't aim none to crowd my hand, she's doo to begin shootin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... and importunate, as-it commonly is, but suffragan and docile itself; we there only seek to pass away our time; when we have a mind to be instructed and preached to, we will go seek this in its throne; please let it humble itself to us for the nonce; for, useful and profitable as it is, I imagine that, at need, we may manage well enough without it, and do our business without its assistance. A well-descended soul, and practised in the conversation of men, will of herself render ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... best I could not imagine what charge Mr. Aaron Woodward had brought against me. Yet such had been his earnestness that for the nonce everything else was driven from ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... skin and mane, the mark of a fierce fighter in battle, was thrown over his shoulder, a sword was next girt on his side, and a spear and shield, intended for his use, handed to one of the aides-de-camp, who acted for the nonce as his armour bearer. In this guise the general had to ride back to his own camp on a mule, but fortunately by this time the shades of evening having closed in, he was prevented from exhibiting himself in so antique a guise ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... him to find that the Real People of this system were humanoid in shape instead of—ah—Nipoid? A bad word, but it will do for the nonce. To find Real People of a different shape is something new, but he can absorb it because it does not contradict ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett



Words linked to "Nonce" :   present, nowadays, nonce word, time being



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