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Patent   Listen
adjective
Patent  adj.  
1.
Open; expanded; evident; apparent; unconcealed; manifest; public; conspicuous. "He had received instructions, both patent and secret."
2.
Open to public perusal; said of a document conferring some right or privilege; as, letters patent. See Letters patent, under 3d Letter.
3.
Appropriated or protected by letters patent; secured by official authority to the exclusive possession, control, and disposal of some person or party; patented; as, a patent right; patent medicines. "Madder... in King Charles the First's time, was made a patent commodity."
4.
(Bot.) Spreading; forming a nearly right angle with the steam or branch; as, a patent leaf.
Patent leather, a varnished or lacquered leather, used for boots and shoes, and in carriage and harness work.
Patent office, a government bureau for the examination of inventions and the granting of patents.
Patent right.
(a)
The exclusive right to an invention, and the control of its manufacture.
(b)
(Law) The right, granted by the sovereign, of exclusive control of some business of manufacture, or of the sale of certain articles, or of certain offices or prerogatives.
Patent rolls, the registers, or records, of patents.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Patent" Quotes from Famous Books



... he was extra late, and that was the opportunity of the joking room-mates. They carefully dropped some powerful, strong-holding gum into the heels of his patent leather shoes, and had barely put them in place, when the ever-late actor was heard coming on the run down the passage. In he tore, flinging things right and left, overturning make-ups, and knocking down precious silk hats. He grabbed his shoes, jammed his foot into ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... he was in favor of the party's trying to hold three claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, even if there were only two men legally entitled to enter homesteads. Wouldn't Charlie be of age before the time came to take out a patent for the land? ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... accounting for the present condition in which we find the earth-moon system. Of course it will be understood that we have never contended that the tides offer the only conceivable theory as to the present condition of things. The argument lies in this wise. A certain body of facts are patent to our observation. The tides offer an explanation as to the origin of these facts. The tides are a vera causa, and in the absence of other suggested causes, the tidal theory holds the field. But much ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... and so full of conversation. But after a while she changed and was either feverishly cheerful or morbidly sad, so that my visits caused me more pain than pleasure. The reason for these changes in her was patent to everybody. Though her husband was a handsome man, he was as unprincipled as he was unfortunate. He gambled. This she once admitted to me, and while at long intervals he met with some luck he more often returned dispirited and with that ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... seclusion, week and week about, cooking scant meals of the Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets of Consecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W. Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in the jogging of her young man, bulked larger every day? She was not ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... has constructiveness large. He understands plot. He invents and circumvents. Were he not Alexander he would be Diogenes. Were he not a diddler, he would be a maker of patent rat-traps or an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... she stood a minute in front of the store, and shook her head at Jacob, a little boy, some three years old, who was trying to balance a patent washboard against a tree which grew out of the brick pavement. It was a large, scrawny tree, which looked as if it was obliged to live there, but didn't want to, and had tried in vain to get burnt up in the Portland fire. From the lower branches of the tree depended a couple of ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... is, indeed, a masterpiece of skill, but a masterpiece marred by ineffaceable stains of treachery. And at the close of his life, he himself said: "I embarked very badly on the Spanish affair, I confess: the immorality of it was too patent, the injustice too cynical, and the whole thing wears an ugly look since I have fallen; for the attempt is only seen in its hideous nakedness deprived of all majesty and of the many benefits which ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... cried Dave, in pretended delight. He wished to humor the man until Phil returned with the others. "It couldn't be better. You ought to patent that ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... cartridges, caps, tunics and rifles. To our soldiers this was a remarkable sign of flight, for they are accustomed to military training of a different sort. In the forts, it is true, they found among the soldiers also civilians wearing patent-leather shoes. Indeed, the whole Belgian campaign has shown how badly the army ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... returns from the university, with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that lead but to the grave." Wait till society gives welcome in the brilliant ball, and the swallow-tail coat, and the patent leather pumps whirl with the decollette and white slippers till the stars are drowning in the light of morning. Wait till the graduate staggers from the giddy hall, in full evening dress, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... any one else who would be proud of the patent. Please to consider the seals about his waistcoat, and the lady-like droop of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... idea! Build bureaus right down to the floor and then collar buttons can't roll under them!" "Fine idea! Better patent it. Must ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells

... ounce of hog fat in Cottolene, and from cottonfield to kitchen human hands never touch the product. It is pure and absolutely free from taint or contamination from source to consumer. Packed in our patent, air-tight tin pails, Cottolene reaches you as fresh as the day it was made. Lard and butter are sold in bulk, and do not have ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller

... had been was patent to all; and so the chairs got burned—but one, which was rickety. After which a story crept out, of a disjointed skeleton lying in a corner under the thatch. Though just a little suspicious that this might be a ruse to frighten us ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... could walk with you, reading your heart and soul, sorrowing and rejoicing with you, and make you feel without a word that she did so. It was this power to sympathise, and the longing she had to find good in everything, that made her forgive the faults that were patent in a nature with which she was finally brought into contact, for the sake of the virtues which she discovered hidden away deep down under a slowly hardening crust of that kind of self- ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... the glittering sentence until he could have said it backward. It would have been a patent lie had he heard it by word of mouth. But as it was in print, of ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... getting gradually into the unofficial employ of the Government. He had become one of the "Learned Counsel"—lawyers with subordinate and intermittent work, used when wanted, but without patent or salary, and not ranking with the regular law officers. The Government had found him useful in affairs of the revenue, in framing interrogatories for prisoners in the Tower, in drawing up reports of plots against the Queen. He did not in this way earn enough to support ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... The same seeing eye and understanding mind, when they were eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Solvent of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out afterwards by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as his present reputation—I don't suppose he ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... by his eloquence to his point of view, and saw things with his eyes. When she came to examine the poor dragon in the cool light of her own reason it appeared at the worst to be but a pushful patent medicine of an inferior order which, on account of its cheapness and the superior American skill in distributing it, was threatening to drive Sypher's Cure off ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... a pair of soft lips kiss each mark in turn, and then the covering was quickly and caressingly restored, and Mary added, "Lie down, my child, and now to bed, to bed, my maids. Patent the lights." Then, making the sign of the cross, as Cis had seen poor Antony Babington do, the Queen, just as all the lights save one were extinguished, was divested of her wrapper and veil, and took her place beside Cis on the pillows. The two Maries left the chamber, and Jean Kennedy disposed ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Vernon, and which had been objects of great interest at Arlington for more than fifty years. After the Federal authorities took possession of the place, the most valuable of these Mount Vernon relics were conveyed to Washington City and placed in the Patent Office, where they remained on exhibition for many years labelled "Captured from Arlington." They were then removed to the "National Museum," where they are now, but the card has been taken off. In 1869, a member of Congress suggested to my mother that she should apply to President ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... promises of money from Richard, would have insisted on the keeping of the treaty. On February 4, 1194, Richard was finally set free, having done homage to the emperor for the kingdom of England and having apparently issued letters patent to record the relationship,[57] a step towards the realization of the wide-reaching plans of Henry VI for the reconstruction of the Roman Empire, and so very likely as important to him ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... various: bring in Sap superbly, and Pea with peculiar power; with a short cut to Lettus (Lettuce), and Hanson's Patent Safety,—a beautiful allusion to the "Cab-age." May be tried when there is an attorney and young doctor, with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various

... high-pressure steam. As early as 1803, Mr. Woolf patented a tubular boiler, which was extensively employed at the Cornish mines, and was found greatly to facilitate the production of steam, by the extension of the heating surface. The ingenious Trevithick, in his patent of 1815, seems also to have entertained the idea of employing a boiler constructed of "small perpendicular tubes," with the same object of increasing the heating surface. These tubes were to be closed at the bottom, and open into a common reservoir, from which they were to receive ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... in which within one ynch of the tope thereof, ys a lytle hole bored through, in which hole they putte an yron hoke, and with the same they wyll pluck unto them quickly anything that they may reche therewith."—(Harman, Caveat, 1869, p. 35, 36). Line 19. Frater "such as beg with a sham-patent or brief for Spitals, Prisons, Fires, etc."—(B. E.). Line 20. Irish toyle a beggar-thief, working under pretence of peddling pins, lace, and such-like wares. Line 21. Dimber-damber the chief of a gang: also an expert thief. Angler hooker (see ante). Line ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... come," says I to myself. "Alexis has come. To-morrow we shall see him—handsome, young, filled with Imperial royalty from the crown of his noble head to the soles of his patent-leather boots. But will he wear his crown in the procession, or only keep it for the grand ball. What if he should rest that crown on the head of some distinguished American, selecting a literary lady?" This thought impressed me; both hands ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... found himself tete-a-tete with the archdeacon in that same room, in that sanctum sanctorum of the rectory, to which we have already been introduced. As he entered he heard the click of a certain patent lock, but it struck him with no surprise; the worthy clergyman was no doubt hiding from eyes profane his last much-studied sermon; for the archdeacon, though he preached but seldom, was famous for his sermons. No room, Bold thought, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... natural opposition of ranks. What are we? We are slaves: all are slaves. While I am a slave, shall I boast that I am of noble birth? "Proud of a coronet with gems of paste!" some one writes. Save me from that sort of pride! I am content to take my patent of nobility for good conduct in the revolution. Then I will be count, or marquis, or duke; I am not a Republican pure blood;—but not till then. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... present tendency of the Saxon government, Austria has certainly more opportunity to help him in keeping his place than has Prussia. This circumstance indeed does not prevent Herr von Nostitz from avoiding, as far as his instructions will allow, any patent injury to Prussia; but with his great capacity for labor, his intelligence, and his long experience, he constitutes the most effective support of all Austria's efforts in the federal assembly. He is particularly adroit in formulating reports and propositions in awkward controversial ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... and shouted out a most awful imprecation upon the author of the deed which met his eye. The fore-wheel of the coupe had been taken from the axle, and in the difficulty of so doing, from the excellence of the workmanship, two of the spokes were broken—the patent box was a mass of rent metal, and the end of the axle turned ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... fifteen regiments were raised by patriotic nobles, who gave the commissions, and stipulated that although they were to be employed only in suppressing the rising, the officers should have permanent rank.[16] So, as was shown in Mrs. Clarke's case, a patent for raising a regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker, who again might get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke. The officers had, according to the generally prevalent system, a modified property in their commissions; and the system of sale was not abolished ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... place: besides the patients there were coming and going a stream of people,—agents, canvassers, acquaintances, and promoters of schemes. A scheme was always brewing in the dentist's office. Now it was a plan to exploit a new suburb innumerable miles to the west. Again it was a patent contrivance in dentistry. Sometimes the scheme was nothing more than a risky venture in stocks. These affairs were conducted with an air of great secrecy in violent whisperings, emphasized by blows of the fist ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... which he was retained by the railroad and successfully prevented the taxation of land ceded to the railroad by the State,—and then had to sue to recover his modest fee of five thousand, which was the largest he ever received. In the McCormick reaper patent litigation he was engaged with Edwin M. Stanton, who treated him with discourtesy in the Federal Court at Cincinnati, called him "that giraffe," and prevented him from delivering the argument which he had so carefully and solicitously prepared. Such an experience was, of course, very painful ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... Pinkertons shoved Lamar forward. Norton gave a contemptuous look at him. "Delanne," he said, "I knew you were a crook when you tried to infringe on my patent, but I didn't think you were coward enough to ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... all these troubles to an extent which the average Bailee can only fancy by looking with his mind's eye through "patent double million magnifiers." A man so eminent as the Laureate is the butt of all the miserable minor poets, all the enthusiastic school- girls, all the autograph-hunters, all the begging-letter writers, all ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... was he disappointed, for the next day's search resulted in his finding a third case, the contents of which consisted of a complete set of gun-metal belaying-pins and other fittings, together with a number of patent blocks, single, double, and threefold, that he had no difficulty in identifying as ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... way for reducing the power of an Order which had been too strong for the Crown. The operation of these laws, in course of time, would have brought the Peers, as an Estate of the Realm, to utter insignificance, had not the practice of supplying the Peerage with new Members, through creation by patent without intervention of Parliament, been substituted for the only mode previously tolerated by the great Barons for the exercise of this royal prerogative, namely, by authority of Parliament. Thus did the consequence of the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... steel, arming each clattering hoof! Leather strap and shining buckle, replace musty rope and ponderous knot! The carriage is easier than a Landgravine's,—the horses more sleek,—the driver as civil,—the road is like a bowling green,—the axletree and under-spring, of Collinge's latest patent. But the heart! the heart! that may be ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... and other relics from all chateaux in the provinces. About twenty-seven years of age, and spoiled, like others, by success, Martin Falleix had had the luck to become the active agent of Monsieur Saillard, the sleeping-partner in the working out of a discovery made by Falleix in smelting (patent of invention and gold medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only daughter was treading—to use an expression of old Saillard's—on the tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy, active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... apparent clumsiness is to be explained by the facility it was then the custom to afford for the interpolation or extraction of "sheets," by a contrivance somewhat resembling that of the present day for temporarily fixing loose papers in a cover, and known as the "patent leaf-holder." ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various

... was a constituent of petroleum, a discovery destined to affect the modern construction of automobile vehicles toward the close of the century. A number of other achievements made this an important year for science in England. John Crowther took out a patent for his invention of a hydraulic crane. The steam jet was first applied to construction work by Timothy Hackworth. Joseph Clement built a planing machine for iron. One of the earliest chain suspension bridges ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... rather style yourself Earl of Rochester? We heard that the issuing of some such patent by the King of Scots was a step which your ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... the honour of Mortgrange! He forgot that Richard had opened his eyes to its merit, and imagined himself the discoverer of its value: did he not pay the man for his work? and is not what a man pays for his own? Does not the purchaser of a patent purchase also the credit of the invention? That the workman in the library knew as much more than he about the insides as about the outsides of the books, gave him no dignity in his eyes: none but a university-man at least must gain honour by knowledge! The fact, however, did ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... was the last to leave Bhulwana. She returned nervous and fretful, accompanied by Tessa whose joy over rejoining her friends was as patent as her mother's discontent. Tessa had a great deal to say in disparagement of the Rajah of Markestan, and said it so often and with such emphasis that at last Captain Ermsted's patience gave way and he forbade all mention of the man under penalty of a severe slapping. When Tessa had ignored the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... with a laugh. "I've heard there are lots of rats on ships, and maybe he has a patent stuff ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... squat-bodied, big-headed, thick-lipped, and with a face swept clean of all emotions save where his two great eyes glowed with a sulky fire under exaggerated eyebrows. I noticed his grimy nails, his soiled collar, his unbrushed clothes, the patent signs of defeat changing to utter rout, and from the heights of my great peace I was not sorry for him. He was like that, other boys were different, that ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... him, Aug. 30, 1660: "It is said that the University of Copenhagen brought their album unto you, desiring you to write something; and that you did scribere in albo these words." It is said that the first line is to be found in the patent granted in 1616 by Camden (Clarencieux).—Notes and Queries, March ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... was pressed down upon Mr. Carraway's corn he announced rather forcibly his disbelief in the utility of any such infernal Christmas present as that. And as time went on, and that offending, staring slipper slipped into his hand every time he searched the closet in the dark for a left patent-leather pump, or some other missing bit of foot-gear, the conviction grew upon him that of the great reforms of which the world stood in crying need, the reformation of the Christmas gift was possibly the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... time spent every penny of his own and my mother's capital, and had, moreover, died deeply in debt. I was too young and too grief-stricken to feel anything but the terrible bereavement, but it soon became patent to me that an immense alteration was to be made in my mode ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... attacks from excisemen, constables, and other personages, considered as worthy to use what are called the king's keys, [In common parlance, a crowbar and hatchet.] 'and therewith to make lockfast places open and patent,' set his efforts at defiance. Meantime the noise continued without, and we are to give an account of its origin in our ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... with Mengs when a chamberlain of the Holy Father called. When he came in he asked M. Mengs if I lived there, and on that gentleman pointing me out, he gave me, from his holy master, the Cross of the Order of the Golden Spur with the diploma, and a patent under the pontifical seal, which, in my quality as doctor of laws, made me a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Blanquely Castle still Frowns o'er the oak wood's summer state, (The maker of a patent pill Has purchased it of late), And then through Fancy's open door I backward turn to days of old, And see Sir Guy—a bachelor Who ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... steel Patent, bush or hammer steel Facing and welding steel Pick steel Fork steel Pivot steel Gin saw steel Plane bit steel Granite wedge steel Quarry steel Gun barrel steel Razor steel Hack saw steel Roll turning steel High-speed ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... best men are far better than the best women, and there are many more of them. However all this may be, it is only an opinion. Neither in their law, nor in their religion, nor—what is far more important—in their daily life, do they acknowledge any inferiority in women beyond those patent weaknesses of body that are, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... condition of humanity,—using the word "fittest" in its ethical sense. In spite of all the misery and vice and crime, nowhere so terribly developed as under our own so-called Christian civilization, the fact must be patent to any one who has lived much, traveled much, and thought much, that the mass of humanity is good, and therefore that the vast majority of impulses bequeathed us by past humanity is good. Also it is certain that the more normal a social condition, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... ardently desired, had now at last arisen in the person of another lieutenant of the Guards. With a vehemence which made light of her treachery to her old friend, she elected this slim young man, whose moral and intellectual weaknesses were patent to every eye, as the chosen keystone of her life's love. He took the good luck that befell him so seriously, that he would brook no jesting, and at once laid hands on the fortune of his future wife, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... Especially should parents and teachers remember that there is absolutely no scientific basis for supposing that great diffidence, indigestion, pimples on the face, boys' lack of interest in girls, and numerous other popular "signs," are indications of the masturbation habit. Like the symptoms in patent-medicine advertising, the above "signs" are so general that they are sure to ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... belonged to Aneta's party, and it is highly probable that they might have refused to accept the invitation but for that magical postscript, "Mrs. Ward has most kindly promised to attend." But there was no withstanding that patent fact, as Mrs. Ward knew very well when she made ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... Her almost daily journeys to Cross Hall were known, and it was remembered, both by the Marquis and his wife, that this old woman, who had never been allowed to see the child, but who had known all the preceding generation as children, could not but be an enemy. Of course it was patent to all the servants, and to every one connected with the two houses, that there was war. Of course, the Marquis, having an old woman acting spy in his stronghold, got rid of her. But justice would shortly have required ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... ant-eater is properly the long-tailed Manis, being an African species of the Pangolin. His scaly armor will turn a musket-ball. This animal, with a few other natural and artificial curiosities from Africa, has been deposited in the National collection, attached to the Patent Office at Washington.] 18.—After many days of calm or light winds, a stiff and fair breeze, for twenty-four hours past, has been driving us rapidly on our course. We hope to see ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... high treason, when he broke out of gaol, and kept him six weeks in his house; sending by him an assurance to the Pretender of his fidelity, and at the same time desiring Roy Stuart to procure him a commission as lieutenant-general, and a patent ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... ground for the elaborate mythical genealogy in Men. 409 ff. We contend that "Portus Persicus" is pure fiction, as our novelists refer fondly to "Zenda" or "Graustark," while the Men. passage is a patent burlesque of the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... bias of their lives is in full action. There is no drag on anywhere. The natural tendencies are having it all their own way; and although the victims may be quite unconscious that all this is going on, it is patent to every one who considers even the natural bearings of the case that "the end of these things is Death." When we see a man fall from the top of a five-story house, we say the man is lost. We say that before he has fallen a foot; for the same principle that made him fall the one foot will ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... French king's mind fixed on his home dominions, and Chabot, Cartier's former patron, had fallen upon evil times. At last, however, a new adventurer appeared in the person of the Sieur de Roberval, a nobleman of Picardy. The elaborate but almost incomprehensible text of the royal patent described the new envoy as Lord of Norembega, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Baccalaos. Under him Cartier was persuaded to take the post of Captain-General. The objects of the enterprise ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... influenced John Endicott, "a man well known to divers persons of note" and a native of Dorchester, where he was born in 1588, to take an active part in developing the new Colonies, and mainly through the influence of White a patent was obtained from the Council on March 19th, 1628, by which the Crown "bargained and sold unto some Knights and Gentlemen about Dorchester, whose names included that of John Endicott, that part of New England lying between the Merrimac River and the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... the hotel to leave a note for Kingdon. Again he walked and lost himself in memories, seeing as in a mirror all the incidents that had so intrigued his interest, but which now in the light of his new understanding seemed so very patent. ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... Irish Court of King's Bench, in the reign of Charles I., and was raised in this way: James I. had issued "a commission of defective titles." Any Irish owner, upon surrendering his land to the king, got a patent which reconvened it on him. Wentworth (Lord Stafford) wished to SETTLE Connaught, as Ulster had been SETTLED in the preceding reign, and, to accomplish it, tried to break the titles granted under "the commission of defective titles." Lord Dillon's case, which ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... want nothing else?" said Napoleon, as if relieved at once of an oppressive burden. "Write to my chancellor of the Legion of Honour, Lacepede, to send him a patent, and do you inform ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... fairy legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The beautiful well-sweep! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy farm exists, doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance; but the loss of the well-sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... asked many questions about him, because, in her intercourse with her niece, she wished, as far as possible, to ignore him. Having mentally pictured him in various mean conditions of life, she had finally settled it in her mind that he was an agent for some patent fertilizer; a man of this kind being a very obnoxious person to her. This avocation, however, constituted in the old lady's mind no excusable reason for his protracted absence; and if ever a wife was deserted, she believed that her niece Annie ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... humbugged too often!" replied the suspicious patron of patent-medicine venders. "No; ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... Nilssen who tediously nursed him back to health. Kettle had always been courteous to Mrs. Nilssen, even though she was as black and polished as a patent leather boot; and Mrs. Nilssen appreciated Captain ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos," [Footnote: Baxter, "Memoir of Jacques Cartier," note, p. 40, writes: "These titles are given on the authority of Charlevoix, 'Histoire de la Nouvelle France,' Paris, 1744, tome I, p. 32. Reference, however, to the letters patent of January 15, 1540, from which he professes to quote and which are still preserved and can be identified as the same which he says were to be found in the Etat Ordinaire des Guerres in the Chambre des Comptes at Paris, does not bear out his ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... put it on again. The hat was silk. It topped iron grey hair, steel-blue eyes, a turn-under nose, a thin-lipped mouth, a pointed chin, a stand-up collar, a dark neckcloth, a morning coat, grey gloves, grey trousers, drab spats and patent-leather boots. These attributes gave him an air that was intensely respectable, equally ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... his head. It was patent that he did not quite know what to do. Came then Dolan, the local justice of the peace. Dolan's hair was plastered well over his ears and forehead. Dolan was pale yellow of countenance and breathed strongly through his nose. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... he was magnificently entertained by the court. The negotiations for the indemnity, which he began almost immediately, were abruptly terminated by the transfer of the matter for settlement to Paris. Jones, on the day he agreed to suspend the negotiations, received from the Danish government a patent for a pension of 1500 crowns a year, "for the respect he had shown the Danish flag while he commanded in the European seas." Jones kept this transaction, for which he possibly felt ashamed, to himself, until several years afterwards, when, writing to Jefferson, he said: ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... fallen from him since his entrance, as he followed Lord John upstairs, he left behind that sense of blankness so curiously independent of either words or deeds. Greatorex, in his patent leather shoes and immaculate white gaiters, pattered over to Miss Levering, but she unkindly presented her back, and sat down at the writing-table to make a note on the abhorred Shelter plan. He showed his disapproval by marching off with Mr. Freddy, and there was a general trickling back into ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... of the Norns and of their web of fate is too patent to need explanation; still some mythologists have made them demons of the air, and state that their web was the woof of clouds, and that the bands of mists which they strung from rock to tree, and from mountain to mountain, were ruthlessly torn apart ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... began to recall the evening, how they had started to the show with the Fayal family and turned aside to hear the patent medicine man sing, how Richard and Georgina had dared each other to touch the wild-cat's tail through the bars, and how Georgina in climbing down from the wheel had stumbled over Captain Kidd whom they thought safely shut up ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... daughter he spoiled as thoroughly as he ruled his part of the financial world, and wilful Mildred, once she had taken an interest in the young college man so evidently ready to be numbered among her lovers, did not pause half way, but made her preference patent to all, and opened to him a realm of dazzling possibilities. He well remembered the perplexities of those first delirious days when her regard was beginning to make itself apparent. She was so different, so wonderfully far removed from ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... of mind and heart Lee had no doubt. It was patent enough for the world to read. But how about Ida, his own dozen-years' wife of a glorious love-match? He knew that woman, ever the mysterious sex, was capable any time of unguessed mystery. Did her frank comradeliness ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... armed, sir," observed Sir Gervaise, drily. "Is it your intention, when you succeed, to carry the patent of the baronetcy, and the title-deeds, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Here the personal conditions of the author have much to do with success; and then there are the newspapers, where either friend or enemy has an assistant, whereas the being anonymous gives it the patent of nobility. It is well never to know an author. What does his person matter to us, if his book is ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... commonplace position in one of the show-cases in the large hall of the Patent Office is one little model which in ages to come will be prized as one of the most curious and most sacred relics in that vast museum of unique and priceless things. This is a plain and simple model of a steamboat roughly fashioned in wood by the hand of Abraham Lincoln. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... the patent truth that, if some people wore gaudy and costly raiment, others must dress in rags; if some ate and drank more than they needed, and wasted the good things of earth, others must go hungry; if some never worked with their hands, others must needs ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... adopted citizen of Washington and as a personal friend of President Adams was Dr. William F. Thornton, Superintendent of the Patent Office, who had by personal appeals to his conquering countrymen, in 1814, saved the models of patents from the general conflagration of the public buildings. He was also a devoted lover of horse-racing, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... of the Hymns, and on the aspect of Greek literary art which they illustrate. But the Hymns, if read even through the pale medium of a translation, speak for themselves. Their beauties and defects as poetry are patent: patent, too, are the charm and geniality of the national character which they express. The glad Ionian gatherings; the archaic humour; the delight in life, and love, and nature; the pious domesticities of the sacred Hearth; ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... for Mr. Douglass was very fastidious in all matters pertaining to his dress, and had no fancy for soiling his white pants, or patent leathers. So Cora and I set off together, while he walked slowly back to the village. Scarcely was he out of sight, however, when, seating herself beneath a tree, and throwing herself flat upon the ground, Cora announced her intention ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... the Burgesses had taken the oath of Supremacy and were admitted into the house, and all sett downe in their places, a Copie of Captain[33] Martin's Patent[34] was produced by the Govern^{or}[35] out of a Clause whereof it appeared that when the general[36] assembly had made some kinde of lawes requisite for the whole Colony, he and his Burgesses and people might deride ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... extremely difficult; nevertheless, he wore the boldest possible face when he received the ambassadors of France, and on December 9 refused to grant the letters patent of passage through the Pontifical States which the French demanded. Thereupon Charles advanced threateningly upon Rome, and was joined now by those turbulent ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... upon Lord Cochrane for his wonderful successes in the northern part of Brazil, except the confirmation of his patent as First Admiral, be it noted, were unsubstantial. He had for ever crushed the power of Portugal in South America; he had added vast provinces to the imperial dominion, and had thus augmented the imperial revenues by considerably ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... degrees, till it is quite smooth, and a little raw cream. It is much softer this way, does not taste bitter, and will keep well. A tea-spoonful of sugar, to half a pint of mustard, is a great improvement, and tends much to soften it. Patent mustard is nearly as cheap as any other, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... so ardent a lover that, once he had got to know almost all the women of the aristocracy, once they had taught him all that there was to learn, he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a patent of nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon him, save as a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no intrinsic value, which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in some little hole in the country, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... mechanically. And amidst much laughter from the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room. Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument described by Mr. Samuel Weller,—a pair of patent double-million-magnifying microscopes of hextry power, to see through a deal door. Instead of this, I had to learn ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... college work. He was ambitious to become a great engineer, and was always tinkering at some kind of a machine. He used to joke with me about becoming a great inventor, and after we were married he did try his hand at a patent coupler and a back-firing device for a gas engine. He was just like you, my boy, always dreaming and seeing things in the out-of-doors. I can remember the delight he found in rising early on summer mornings to search for caterpillars, ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... chiefs kept no longer an open house; and the roads (even such a wandering, country by—track as the one I followed) were infested with beggars. And here again I marked a difference from my own part of the country. For our Lowland beggars—even the gownsmen themselves, who beg by patent—had a louting, flattering way with them, and if you gave them a plaek and asked change, would very civilly return you a boddle. But these Highland beggars stood on their dignity, asked alms only to buy snuff (by their account) and would give ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... companion-way. He had dined with a riotous company and withdrew as soon after dinner as possible; this privilege was freely accorded him, for he was at intervals gloomy, or silent, and his companions were quite willing to dispense with his society. Hilarity had ceased for the night, the fact was patent. The truth is, there was apt to be something too much of it aboard that ship. When a young gentleman, on the death of a distant relative, comes suddenly into an almost fabulous fortune, he is apt to set about doing that which pleases him best; in all probability he overdoes it. If he be fond of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... firm passed to his sons, Michael Arthur Bass and Hamar Bass (d. 1898). Michael Arthur Bass (1837-1909), after twenty-one years in parliament as member first for Stafford, then for two divisions of Staffordshire, was in 1886 raised to the peerage as Baron Burton; by a special patent of 1897 the peerage descended to his daughter, Nellie, the wife of Mr J. E. Baillie of Dochfour, the baronetcy descending to his nephew W. A. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... social life are there; and there are the noisy school-house, the decent church, the mill, the country store, the fat ox, and the sleek plough-horse. The yankee is there with his notions and his patent-rights, and the travelling agent with his subscription book; there are merchandise from India and from England, and, in short, all the luxuries of life, from Bulwer's last novel down to Brandreth's pills. And all this has been done in six years—in less than half ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... was a first necessity that she should conceal it from the other actor on the stage. It was nice and loyal of Mr. BASIL RATHBONE to behave as if he didn't notice anything unusual, but it must have been as patent to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... he was treated to a ball, a visit to the Patent-Office and the tomb of Washington, and such like gaieties. President Buchanan entertained him as handsomely as our national palace, the White House, would allow; and afterwards wrote a courtly letter to Queen Victoria, congratulating her on the charming behavior of her son and heir—"the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... snow-bent or broken off, and the main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species is patent ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... the scope of the neutrality laws of the United States be so enlarged as to cover all patent acts of hostility committed in our territory and aimed against the peace of a friendly nation. Existing statutes prohibit the fitting out of armed expeditions and restrict the shipment of explosives, though the enactments in the latter respect were not framed with regard ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur

... Succeed," used as the title for a book, will make any book sell, though it be as dry as a patent-office report. People want to know how to succeed in the world. How strange then that ministers and churches who are brilliant and conspicuous failures should shun the preaching of Pentecost—the one cure for failure and ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... Vernon! Is that you, my lad, hey?" he roared out, making a dandified exquisite, who was just then lounging past us, jump into the gutter and soil his polished patent leathers in nervous alarm. "Glad to see me, you said? Stuff and nonsense, you rascal—you're not half so pleased as I am to clap my eyes on you again! Gad, you young scamp, why, it seems only the other day ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to say that the instrument is in no way protected. Some friends, whose opinion I highly value, urged me to patent it; but as I strongly hold the view that the work of all students of science should be given freely to the world, the apparatus was described at the Physical Society a few hours after the advice was given, lest the greed of filthy lucre should, on further ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... wander in the wilderness, and ne'er Set wary foot within the promised land. Quezox: Most worthy sire, when guile hath strong intrenched, Guile of a firmer mould, should countermatch, And beat the bulwarks down; 'twere easy done. In sooth so easy that no glory crowns The working of a scheme so patent to An eagle eye, which hath discernment keen. To unmake offices, were quickly done. To lower stipends till the hungry mouth Shall to the belly say: "We must go hence Or else we perish," were a shrewd device. 'Twere he who holds the money bags, must rule And we the golden sword hold in our ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... that they can never be ruffled by soups or fish coming to table one degree less hot than the most epicurean palate could desire. Luxury can go no farther, unless, which may be invented some day, a patent appetite and digesting apparatus were supplied, enabling host and guests to sit down every day to the feasts spread before them with undiminished relish ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... manned, they would show to no discredit among our smart yachts at Cowes. Not a day passes without one or more entering or leaving the harbour, returning from or bound to the lonely isles with which the south-west portion of the Pacific is studded. They are provided with a patent log, but their captains, who are intelligent men, do not care much about a chronometer, as the distances to be run are comparatively short and are ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... not go to Edinburgh next winter? You could board me with Mistress Brodie, and come every day to sort our quarrels and see that I was properly treated. Then you could have your crow over the ignoramuses who did not know such a patent Burns story; and I could take lessons in music and singing, and be learning something or seeing something, ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... new, patent, jointless fishing-rod, guv'nor," rejoined Sam, in a Stygian aside. "Nobody 'ere'll 'ave the slightest notion vot it ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... addressing her, stood a man, obese, gross, abnormally distended with luxurious and sluggish living, as little common to the scene as a statue of Phoebus Apollo had been: a babu of Bengal, every inch of him, from his dirty red-and-white turban to his well-worn and cracked patent-leather shoes. His body was enveloped in a complete suit of emerald silk, much soiled and faded, and girt with a sash of many colours, crimson predominating. His hands, fat, brown, and not overclean, alternately fluttered apologetically and rubbed one another ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... came home to find him sitting in a corner, crying bitterly, one hand tied to his chair. He had been put there for punishment. It seemed that busy morning that everything he touched made trouble for somebody. At last his exploring little fingers found the plug of the patent churn. The next minute he was a woebegone spectacle, with the fresh buttermilk pouring down on him, and spreading in creamy rivers all over ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... tolerable; the terrible, annihilating thing about it was the painting that sprawled over the middle of the board. A handsome yellow lion with the face of a man and with wavy mane, standing erect; in his front paws he held a boot, apparently of patent-leather. Beneath this representation was printed the following: You may ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... companies in which he is engaged may bring him to ruin. There's the Ginger Beer Company, of which Brough is a director: awkward reports are abroad concerning it. The Consolidated Baffin's Bay Muff and Tippet Company—the shares are down very low, and Brough is a director there. The Patent Pump Company—shares at 65, and a fresh ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... relations as these that we must inform ourselves when we dare to interfere, and charitable societies cannot afford to adopt any patent formula with regard to them; they must be courageous enough and intelligent enough to bear their part in the solution of industrial questions. The individual friendly visitor may be called upon at any time to advise an unemployed {32} workman whose only immediate ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate, it adopts the decency of secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again, in the thousand and one French novels which ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in some way or other, has received a shock. But either this, or the supposition that man has been insufficiently equipped for the uniform elimination of religious truth, is, I think, alone in harmony with the facts; and to those facts, patent on the page of the whole world's history, I appeal for proof that man has not on these highest subjects, the certitude of any internal revelation, marked by the remotest analogy to those other undoubted principles ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... lose his windbreaker," she warned in an almost grownup manner. Trying to button her jacket and hold on to her red patent leather handbag at the same time, she dropped the bag and its contents spilled ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson

... when, in 1578, he furnished James Fitzmaurice, the great Geraldine, with a fleet and army to fight against Elizabeth? The authority greatest in Catholic eyes, and most worthy of respect in the eyes of all impartial men—the Pope— thus endorsed the patent fact that Ireland was an independent nation, and could wage war against her oppressors. Here we have a stand-point from which to argue the question ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... can expect the governors of public institutions to allow you to touch their inmates there must be a preliminary illustration of your power. Otherwise they would say justly that they would be over-run with quacks, all of whom might wish to try a patent nostrum upon the unfortunate ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... But do you think you could get Joe Pickering to do it? As long as the money in the bank lasts—I forget what it is, several thousand, more than twenty, I think— we'll go along as we are. Joe has a half-interest in a patent, anyway, some sort of curtain-pole; it's always going to make us ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... this misfortune, Garay lost four of his ships, by which he was greatly disheartened. While Cortes was preparing an expedition to Panuco, to resist Garay, Francis de las Casas and Roderigo de la Paz, brought letters-patent to Mexico, by which the emperor gave him the government of New Spain, including Panuco. On this he desisted from going personally on the expedition, but sent Pedro de Alvarado with a respectable force, both of infantry and cavalry, to defend his government against aggression, and dispatched Diego ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... the fault of the artist," the foreman answered. "Gentlemen look just as natural in these clothes as in any other. They are quite simple, you see—all black, with open vest, white shirt, white tie and gloves, and patent leather boots." ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Patent" :   official document, unobstructed, patent of invention, Patent Office, patentee, patent log, legal instrument, unmistakable, evident, legal document, law, change, secure, plain, letters patent, patent law, obvious, manifest, apparent, document, modify, papers, alter, patency, patent system, register, patent application, procure, instrument, patent right



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