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Acute   /əkjˈut/   Listen
Acute

adjective
1.
Having or experiencing a rapid onset and short but severe course.  "The acute phase of the illness" , "Acute patients"
2.
Extremely sharp or intense.  Synonym: intense.  "Felt acute annoyance" , "Intense itching and burning"
3.
Having or demonstrating ability to recognize or draw fine distinctions.  Synonyms: discriminating, incisive, keen, knifelike, penetrating, penetrative, piercing, sharp.  "Incisive comments" , "Icy knifelike reasoning" , "As sharp and incisive as the stroke of a fang" , "Penetrating insight" , "Frequent penetrative observations"
4.
Of an angle; less than 90 degrees.
5.
Ending in a sharp point.  Synonyms: acuate, needlelike, sharp.
6.
Of critical importance and consequence.



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"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books



... on a pole upon their shoulders, as draymen in England do a barrel of ale. He was amazed at the continual noise it made and the motion of the minute-hand, which he could easily discern; for their sight is much more acute than ours. He asked the opinions of his learned men about it, which were various and remote, as the reader may well imagine without my repeating; although, indeed, I could ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... skin, and trickling down until my long boots were full and slopping over at the knees. For the last half of that midwinter day my feet and legs were devoid of feeling. The result of it was rheumatic fever and years of bad health, with constant attacks of acute pain and violent palpitation of the heart which would last for hours at a stretch. From time to time I was sent or taken to consult a doctor in the city, and in that way from first to last I was in the hands ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... indomitable will. He was also a good speaker, and, like all good speakers in a wrong cause, was an able sophist. But he had men to deal with who were accustomed to think and reason closely, as must ever be more or less the case with a self-governed people. There were acute men there, men who had the laws of the land "by heart", in the most literal sense of those words,—for there were no books to consult and no precedents to cite in those days; and his hearers weighed with jealous care ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... dangerous to peace and good order, and submitted the case, the crowd looked and heard with open-mouthed wonder. Had a little summer cloud come down, with thunder, lightning and tempest, they would not have been more amazed. When he ceased, a murmur, which ran into applause, broke from the cool, acute, observing and thinking New Englanders and their ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... danger. You will see Dr. Phillips tomorrow morning, and get something to set you to rights. I am glad you are joining us here, for the sake of his advice. I like him so very much, and I think him clever—perhaps not naturally so acute as Dr. Vivian, but he has had a large practice so long, and so little wedded to routine, and so willing to accept of any new light that can be thrown on medicine, that his greater experience more than counterbalances his son's greater talent. And ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... or some other. It is clear that some of the portion (xxv. 19-22; xxvi. 3-45) is much later than the Elohists, and belongs to the exile or post-exile period. But great difficulty attaches to the separation of the sources here used; even after Kayser's acute handling of them. It is also perceptible from Ezekiel xx. 25, 26, that the clause in Exodus xiii. 15, "but all the first-born of my children I redeem," was added after the exile, since the prophet shows his unacquaintance ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... death. They describe him as "having completed his 74th year, and having thus lived longer than any of his ancestors for the last two centuries; that his existence had been without any great misfortune, and without any acute disease, and that he owed all praise and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being; that the next step would probably be his last; that he was now too much exhausted, both in mind and body, to be of service to his country, but was fortunate in leaving his children well ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... gave me little pleasure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth withheld from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and substance; and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong epigrammatic couplets, as its form: that even when the subject was addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... people excuse me for a bit?" I said lightly. "The General wants me." And with that I left them. I had almost asked Hilderman not to go till I came back, but I was afraid it might sound suspicious to his acute ears. I hardly knew what to do. I should have liked to have been able to speak with Dennis, if only for a moment. Indeed, I am quite ready to confess that just then I would have given all I possessed for ten minutes' conversation with my friend. I stole ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... the present time he was in a state of acute suffering, and, under its paroxysm, he bethought him again of Cornelius's advice, which he had rejected, to betake himself to Polemo. He had a distant acquaintance with him, sufficient for his purpose, and he ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... launch on the little lake, and an inexplicable prescience disturbed the calm of her musings. She watched, with an intensity she could not have explained, the gradual approach of the little craft. What did that boat, or its passenger, matter to her that she should feel such an acute interest in its movements? Yet something told her it did matter much, and though she laughed at her superstition, nevertheless her heart listened to it, and dared not gainsay ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... mark how nettled our friend the goatherd is! I ween, ye cost the reapers pangs as acute as his. ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... community is moral so far as adhering to the standards of the past is concerned. But the population themselves who have to do with the country are undergoing extraordinary moral change, with incidental loss, and many of the problems of the United States as a whole are made more acute by the waste of the country community. Among these should be cited the amusement question in the small town, the decadence of the theatre in the cheaper vaudeville, the white slave traffic and the social disorders peculiar to unskilled laborers, many of whom come ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... society at Bonn, the unchanging kindness of Count Waldstein, the explicit testimony of Junker, that he was not, could not have been, the young savage which some of his blind admirers have represented him. The bare supposition is an insult to his memory. That his sense of probity and honor was most acute, that he was far above any, the slightest, meanness of thought or action, of a noble and magnanimous order of mind, utterly destitute of any feeling of servility which rendered it possible for him to cringe to the rich ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... breathless haste, "is doubtless one of the members. How so grotesque and yet redoubtable an individuality should have become identified with a cause demanding the coolest judgment as well as the most acute political acumen, I cannot stop to conjecture. But that she is a member of our organization, and an important one, too, her prophecies, which have so strangely become facts, are sufficient proof, even had you not seen my ring on her ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... the Uterus.—Inflammation of the uterus may be either acute or chronic. When acute, as following an abortion, taking cold during menstruation, etc., there is considerable fever, pain in the lower part of the bowels, nausea, and sometimes vomiting, tenderness on pressure over the uterus, pain when passing ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could ever have guessed out the way to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... poor would receive fully-subsidized comprehensive coverage; pre-natal and delivery services are provided for all pregnant women and coverage is provided for all acute care for infants in their first year of life; the elderly and disabled would have a limit of $1,250 placed on annual out-of-pocket medical expenses and would no longer face limits on hospital coverage; all full-time employees and their families would receive insurance ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter

... the most brilliant kind of man-talk. To it, Frank Merrill brought his encyclopedic book knowledge, his insatiable curiosity about life; Ralph Addington all the garnered richness of his acute observation; Billy Fairfax his acquaintance with the elect of the society or of the art world, his quiet, deferential attitude of listener. But the events of these conversational orgies were Honey Smith's adventures and Pete Murphy's romances. Honey's narrative ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... his sensations were singularly acute. Mescal's hand dropped from his shoulder; her cheek, that had been cold against his, grew hot; she quivered through all her slender length. Confusion claimed his senses. Gratitude and hope flooded his soul. Something sweet and beautiful, the touch of this desert girl, rioted ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... Cardinal Sforza for his timely assistance in securing his elevation, by giving him the Vice-Chancellorship he had himself occupied as Cardinal, the town of Nepi and the Borgia Palace in Rome. Dissensions between Alexander and the Sforza family soon became acute; Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and sometime husband of Lucrezia Borgia, was expelled, and his brother, Cardinal Ascanio was included in the papal disfavour. He sought refuge in Lombardy, where he was taken prisoner by Louis XII., of France. Peter Martyr had foreseen, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... tongue-tied in acute distress. This was his first adventure in knight-errantry and he had served before neither as page nor squire. He would have given his head to say the unknown words that might comfort her. All he could ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... working-classes, whom they employed in new fortifications or new public buildings—dazzling the citizens by a splendor that seemed less the ostentation of an individual than the prosperity of a state. It was against the aristocracy, not against the people, that they directed their acute sagacities and unsparing energies. Every politic tyrant was a Louis the Eleventh, weakening the nobles, creating a middle class. He effected his former object by violent and unscrupulous means. He swept away by death or banishment all who opposed his authority or excited his fears. He thus ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... something that will last long after his own name has been forgotten. The temptation was never so strong as it is to-day for the supervisor to seek the former kind of glory. The need was never more acute than it is to-day for the supervisor who is content with the impersonal glory ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... be a secret possessed by a person of the last class in which a young lady would seek a confidant, and at the mercy of one who was by profession gossip-general to the whole neighbourhood, gave her acute agony. She had no reason, indeed, to suppose that the old man would wilfully do anything to hurt her feelings, much less to injure her; but the mere freedom of speaking to her upon such a subject, showed, as might have been expected, a total absence of delicacy; and what he might ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... philosophy, and in the age immediately preceding that of Maimonides, Abraham ibn Daud, a writer of surprisingly liberal views, had undertaken, in "The Highest Faith," the task of reconciling faith with philosophy. At the same time rationalistic Bible exegesis was begun by Abraham ibn Ezra, an acute but reckless controversialist. Orthodox interpretations of the Bible had, before him, been taught in France by Rashi (Solomon Yitschaki) and Samuel ben Meir, and continued by German rabbis, who, at the same time, were preachers of morality—a noteworthy phenomenon in a persecuted ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... sufficient funds; and dispensaries, established for the purpose of affording only ordinary out-door medical relief, could, of course, afford no efficient attendance on the numbers of destitute persons, suffering from acute contagious diseases in their own miserable abodes, often scattered over districts ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but the stone hand was still intact. He struck again—this time with all his force—and the poker flew from his grasp, and his arm dropped ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... on the edge of the table, crossed her arms, and deliberately looked Martin over with expert eyes. Knowing as much about men as a mechanic of a main-road motor-repairing shop knows about engines, her examination was acute and thorough. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... She must have known both books through and through by heart. Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their physics and metaphysics with our girl boarders, some of whom had remarkably acute and well-balanced minds. Her own seemed to have turned from its early bent toward the romantic, her taste being now for serious and practical, though sometimes abstruse, themes. I remember that Young and ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... ambition of the four elders, and while Miss Bruce was busily looking after the luggage, they took possession of a corridor coupe, slammed the door, and blocked the window with determined faces, though deep in each heart lurked the conviction that Miss Bruce's morbidly acute conscience would feel it ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... story, with all little graces and diversions, and those small details with which even momentous things are enveloped in their eyes. I loved her all the more because of these, and I saw, as Doltaire had said, how admirably poised was her intellect, how acute her wit, how delicate and astute a diplomatist she was becoming; and yet, through all, preserving a simplicity of character almost impossible of belief. Such qualities, in her directed to good ends, in lesser women have made them infamous. Once that day Alixe said to me, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... is inconceivably acute; he divines all. He knows my position, I am quite sure. He took advantage yesterday of a moment when I was quite alone to come into my room, and with an air half sad, half jesting, he knelt down before me and drew from his pocket a little bouquet of dried flowers tied ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... imposed upon me by the justice of the peace was remitted by him. I spent twelve days in Montana, travelling about 2,000 miles, and found more general interest than in any other State. With 118,000 voters scattered over the third largest State in the Union, with many contending elements, with an acute labor situation, with the political control of the State vested very largely in one great corporation, there was plenty to occupy the attention of a suffragist worker. Miss Rankin's organization work had been carried to a high ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... of travel. Mrs. Boyd is never dull, and there is plenty of acute observation throughout her pleasant story of travel. My Boyd's illustrations which appear on practically every page, are, it need scarcely be said, up to the high level that is already familiar to ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... said Miss Ford, after waiting a minute to see if there was any more of the prospectus. She had quite recovered herself, and was wearing the brisk acute expression that deceived her into claiming a sense of humour. "But why all those uncomfortable rules? And why that discouragement of social intercourse? I am afraid the average person of the class you cater for does not recognise the duty ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... could hear the crunch of the sentry's heel in the gravel, and from the baseball field back of the barracks the soft spring air was rent with the jubilant crack of the bat as it drove the ball. Afterward Ranson remembered that while one half of his brain was terribly acute to the moment, the other was wondering whether the runner had made his base. It seemed an interminable time before Ranson raised his eyes from Miss Cahill's palm to her father's face. What he read in them caused Cahill to drop his ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... And imitation or not, they would indicate all the same the young lady's love of finery, and suggest to his acute mind the idea of danger to the purse of her future possessor. No, Rosie wouldn't have a chance with him. You needn't frown, Rosie, you haven't. Whether it is the shining things on your head, or the new watch and chain, or the general weakness in the matter of bonnets that has been developing ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... thing up in a package and hand it to 'em on a platter. Not only the fuel, but whole new fields of science. And we've got plenty of time to do it in. They equipped us for ten years. They aren't going to start worrying about us for at least six or seven; and the fuel shortage isn't going to become acute for about twenty. Expensive, admitted, but not critical. Besides, if you send in a report now, you know who'll come out and grab all the glory in sight. Five-Jet Admiral ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... fifteenth century the demand for wool had led to the enclosure of many farms for sheep-raising, and accordingly to distress on the part of many agricultural laborers. Conditions were not improved early in the sixteenth century, and they were in fact made more acute, the abolition of the monasteries doing away with many of the sources of relief. Men out of work were thrown upon the highways and thus became a menace to society. In 1564 the price of wheat was 19s. a quarter and wages were 7d. a day. The situation ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... in Europe. Contemporaries have explained them after their own manner, and have thus, like their posterity, under similar circumstances, given a proof that mortals possess neither senses nor intellectual powers sufficiently acute to comprehend the phenomena produced by the earth's organism, much less scientifically to understand their effects. Superstition, selfishness in a thousand forms, the presumption of the schools, laid hold of unconnected facts. They vainly thought to comprehend ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... known, alcohol acts as a disturbing element upon the nerve centers, even if it has only once been imbibed in excessive quantity. In consequence of the acute disturbance of circulation and nutrition an acute intoxication takes place, which may range from a slight excitation to a complete loss of consciousness. After habitual abuse of alcohol, the functional disturbances ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... a month at the end of Sir Henry's year of office, in sheer chagrin that "Othello's occupation" was gone, and her crown of glory set upon another's head, while she must retire to the obscurity of Bayswater. Being threatened with acute melancholia, a specialist had advised a change of air; and Lady Meason had begun once more to blossom like a rose—of the fully developed, cabbage order—in the joy of being "one of the most notable, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner." His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... appointment of Justice of the Peace for the county of Southampton, he was but a lad yet, with all a lad's quickness of sensitive shame and burning resentment. The girl's repulsion had been obvious—-that instinctive repulsion, as poor Dickie's too acute sympathies assured him, of the whole for the maimed, of the free for the bound, of the artist for some jarring colour or sound which mars an otherwise entrancing harmony. And the smart of all this was, to him, doubly salted by the fact that he, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... price; that neither virtue nor genius was proof against clever although selfish corruption; that political honestly was a farce; and that the only way of governing those knaves who elbowed their way up through the masses was to rule them by cunning more acute than their own and knavery more subtle and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... sensible of this difficulty, in proportion as he has been accustomed to contemplate and discriminate objects extensive and complicated in their nature. The faculties of the mind itself have never yet been distinguished and defined, with satisfactory precision, by all the efforts of the most acute and metaphysical philosophers. Sense, perception, judgment, desire, volition, memory, imagination, are found to be separated by such delicate shades and minute gradations that their boundaries have eluded the most subtle investigations, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... clasped together and his heart beating wildly, Fred Davis strained his eyes to see it all. To him every moment seemed an hour of acute agony ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... It sometimes attacks only one foot, sometimes two, and sometimes all four; but, in a great majority of cases, it attacks either one or both of the front feet. A chronic form sometimes occurs, and exhibits symptoms somewhat similar to those of contraction of the hoof; but acute inflammation of the laminae is what ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... internal energy resource is hydropower. Despite the severe damage the economy has suffered due to civil strife, Georgia, with the help of the IMF and World Bank, has made substantial economic gains in 1995-96, pushing GDP growth and slashing inflation. Georgia had been suffering from acute energy shortages, although energy deliveries improved in 1996. Georgia is pinning its hopes for long-term recovery on the development of an international transportation corridor through the key Black Sea ports of P'ot'i and Bat'umi. The decision in 1996 ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... were officers of scientific corps, still finding subjects for discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age which a few discoveries have encouraged to hope for explanations of everything, these individuals, amid the acute sufferings we were enduring from the north wind, were seeking to divine the cause of its unvarying direction. The theory was advanced that, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun, by heating the southern hemisphere, had rarefied all its currents of air, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... want to start round the world," he cried with a note of acute distress. "I want to go to Egypt and India and see what is happening in the East, all this wonderful waking up of the East, I know nothing of the way ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... gave adhesion. It was hard for him to think that a single little group of borderers could hold up a great force like theirs, armed with cannon too. But he was acute enough to see that the menace of a rupture would become a reality if he insisted upon ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... moments more prudent than the Servite Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had; more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the whole ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... a waste of breath to explain to you that Providence meant these things for me. You are not acute enough to understand close reasoning. I could not show you that, for the sake of a few coins, which would do you only that harm which would come from their value in cheap whisky or beer, you might be wrecking the future of a soul that is awake. I simply ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... a bell. Soundness of action involves a sense of timing. Thoroughness is the way of duty, rather than a speed which goes off half-cocked. There is frequently a time for waiting; there is always time for acute reflection. The brain which works "like a steel trap" exists only in fiction. Even such men as General Eisenhower, or Admiral Nimitz, or for that matter, Gen. U. S. Grant, have at times deferred decision temporarily while waiting for a change in ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... Opposition at this time was not assumed by any more adventurous calculator, who might have perplexed him, at least by ingenious cavils, however he might have failed to defeat him by argument. As it was, he had the field almost entirely to himself; for Sheridan, though acute, was not industrious enough to be formidable, and Mr. Fox, from a struggle, perhaps, between candor and party-feeling, absented himself almost entirely from the discussion of the new taxes. [Footnote: "He had absented himself," he said, "upon principle; that, though ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... nest took fire, soon all four galleries Where he had spread his treasures were become one tongue Of gleaming, brutal fire. The Boy instantly swung His pitcher off the wash-stand and turned it upside down. The flames drooped back and sizzled, and all his senses grown Acute by fear, the Boy grabbed the quilt from his bed And flung it over all, and then with aching head He watched the early sunshine glint on the remains Of his holy offering. The lacquer stand had stains Ugly and charred all over, and where the golden pear Had been, a deep, black hole gaped miserably. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... to watch it and dance. The Inquisition had its torments; Society has improved on them, for her victims cannot cry out and the torments of Frances Rhett were acute. Not that she was troubling much about Richard Pinckney and what the poisonous Silas had said; she was not in love with Richard Pinckney, but she was passionately in love with herself. She was the ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... Mondes, and in the New York Tribune. Of an article in the former publication, the first thirty-three pages form an able survey of the history of Hayti since its independence, and of the rule of Emperor Soulouque. Nowhere is there, in the same compass, more of authentic information and acute remark upon the subject. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... Some few there are of such quick and strong Faculties, as to grasp at every thing, and who have made a very eminent Figure in several Professions at once. We have known in our Days the same Men learned in the Laws, acute Philosophers, and deep Divines: We have known others at once eloquent Orators, brave Soldiers, and finished Statesmen. But these ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... angry. I did not know that many men, acute enough to all else, are stone-blind where the wiles of a woman are concerned. 'You may go then, if you like. I see you don't care for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... cold about three days previously, but, after taking the prescription of every loving friend within a radius of four miles, the cold had almost disappeared. In place of the cold, however, Uncle Peter now had acute indigestion, nervous procrastination, delirium tremens and a spavin on ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... signior Macilente, if this gentleman, signior Deliro, furnish you, as he says he will, with clothes, I will bring you, to-morrow by this time, into the presence of the most divine and acute lady in court; you shall see sweet silent rhetorick, and dumb eloquence speaking in her eye, but when she speaks herself, such an anatomy of wit, so sinewised and arterised, that 'tis the goodliest model of pleasure that ever was to behold. Oh! she strikes the world into admiration of her; O, O, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... became acute. The weight of the child on his shoulder was an increasing torture. The cramped arm raised to hold her secure was racked by intolerable pain. The chill of the water was paralyzing. His heart labored. His breath came with difficulty. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... you felt the first twinge of inflamed muscle or the first pang of indigestion. When you cannot sleep, Christ keeps awake with you. All the pains you ever had in your head are not equal to the pains Christ had in His head. All the acute suffering you ever had in your feet is not equal to the acute suffering Christ had in His feet. By His own hand He fashioned your every bone, strung every nerve, grew every eyelash, set every tooth in its socket, and your every ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... nature, and her present condition. Lady Bassett has always appeared to me a very remarkable woman. She has no mediocrity in anything; understanding keen, perception wonderfully swift, heart large and sensitive, nerves high strung, sensibilities acute. A person of her sex, tuned so high as this, is always subject, more or less, to hysteria. It is controlled by her intelligence and spirit; but she is now, for the time being, in a physical condition ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... in progress as they quietly settled down in their chairs at the back. From the vantage point of a slight eminence they found themselves afforded an excellent and unimpaired view of his lordship, the jury, prisoner, witness and barristers. Presumably the case had reached an acute stage, for even the judge appeared slightly mindful of what was going on, and allowed his glance to stray toward the witness. The latter, a little man, in cheap attire flashily debonnaire if the worse for long service, seemed to experience ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... their distance due, He twitch'd his sleeve, and stole a word; Then to a corner both withdrew. Imagine now my lord and Bush Whispering in junto most profound, Like good King Phys and good King Ush,[3] While all the rest stood gaping round. At length a spark, not too well bred, Of forward face and ear acute, Advanced on tiptoe, lean'd his head, To overhear the grand dispute; To learn what Northern kings design, Or from Whitehall some new express, Papists disarm'd, or fall of coin; For sure (thought he) it can't be less. My lord, said Bush, a friend and I, Disguised in two old ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... he trembled at the responsibility he had undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... away purse-whole, it is only to fall a victim to some painted fans of so exquisite a make and decoration that escape short of possession is impossible. Opposed as stubbornly as you may be to idle purchase at home, here you will find yourself the prey of an acute case of shopping fever before you know it. Nor will it be much consolation subsequently to discover that you have squandered your patrimony upon the most ordinary articles of every-day use. If in despair you turn for refuge to the booths, you will but have delivered yourself into the embrace ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... preference or otherwise, as to secure that so far as possible the several interests concerned shall be adequately represented on the Port Authority."[7] The reports of the Poor Law Commission also raise in an acute form the problem of minority representation. If the far-reaching suggestions of these reports are to become law, and especially if the powers of County and County Borough Councils are to be still further increased, the constitution of these ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... grumble, and I have, I believe, shouldered my share of the new taxes like a man, but I am not made of such stern stuff as to be superior to all human aid, and in my own case the mortification of non-combating, which now and then becomes depressingly acute, is to be alleviated only in this way. Nice women ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various

... with acute accent ['a] a with grave accent [^a] a with circumflex [:a] a with diaeresis [)a] a with breve [a] a with macron [c,] c with cedilla [C,] C with cedilla ['e] e with acute accent ['e] e with grave accent [^e] e with circumflex [:e] e with diaeresis [)e] e with breve [e] e with macron ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Bacon, the man who brought out of his treasures things both new and old. Up to him the story gradually leads from the prehistoric times of Aesculapius, the pathway first becoming plainly visible in the life and labours of Hippocrates. His fine intellect and powers of acute observation afforded the material necessary for the making of a true physician. The Greek mind, partly, perhaps, from its artistic tendencies, seems to have been peculiarly impatient of incomplete forms, and therefore, to have much preferred the construction of a theory from the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... possessing no specific gift in such perfection as the dramatic talent of the Kembles, had in a higher degree than any of them the peculiar organization of genius. To the fine senses of a savage rather than a civilized nature, she joined an acute instinct of correct criticism in all matters of art, and a general quickness and accuracy of perception, and brilliant vividness of expression, that made her conversation delightful. Had she possessed ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... mosquito-borne (Culex tritaeniorhynchus) viral disease associated with rural areas in Asia; acute encephalitis can progress to paralysis, coma, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... old Luca Gaddi, the woman's husband. It is difficult to convey in words any notion of its supreme excellence of tragic truth: to match it we must revert to almost the very finest Elizabethan work. The representation of Ottima and Sebald, the Italian and the German, is a singularly acute study of the Italian and German races. Sebald, in a sudden access of brutal rage, has killed the old doting husband, but his conscience, too feeble to stay his hand before, is awake to torture him after the deed. But Ottima is steadfast ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... look at meritorious pictures in an endeavor to analyze and appreciate them intelligently; but Charlie labors under no such restraints. Once he went into the Louvre, but it was to get out of the rain. Except for an acute sense of smell, he could not detect an oil painting from a water color, even if he should try; and except for an abnormal self-confidence he would hesitate in the first step of criticism—a careful consideration of the value of the canvas as compared with that of the frame. It is therefore because ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... raft, as it might be termed, had floated very quietly down-stream for about half an hour, when the wonderfully acute ears ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... upon my left side. Nothing broke the fall, my arms being raised to seize a hold above my head, and I came down upon deck with my entire weight, the hip taking the principal force of the fall. The anguish I suffered was acute, and it was some time before I would allow my ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... ingenuity, in action and repartee, which his annals afforded, and charitably bottomed thereupon a hypothesis that David Gellatley was no farther fool than was necessary to avoid hard labour. This opinion was not better founded than that of the Negroes, who, from the acute and mischievous pranks of the monkeys, suppose that they have the gift of speech, and only suppress their powers of elocution to escape being set to work. But the hypothesis was entirely imaginary; David Gellatley ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... pavement, the torch in one hand, the holy symbol in the other; then it disappeared under the arch of the gate; and when it had come through, the sharp espial was beforehand with it, and waiting. It commenced ascending the acute grade—now it was in the cut—and now, just below the Prince, it had but to look up, and its face would be on a level with his feet. At exactly the right moment, Scholarius did look ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... was assembled with the new parliament, the lower house chose Dr. Atterbury their prolocutor. He was an enterprising ecclesiastic, of extensive learning, acute talents, violently attached to tory principles, and intimately connected with the prime minister Oxford; so that he directed all the proceedings in the lower house of convocation in concert with that minister. The queen, in a letter to the archbishop, signified her hope that the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... allowed Mrs. Wilkins to leap at her conclusions unchecked. But they did, both of them, for a whole day feel that the only thing to be done was to renounce the mediaeval castle; and it was in arriving at this bitter decision that they really realized how acute had ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... power, excellent education, and of a social and right manly nature. This new acquaintance coloured the whole of Hume's future life. They became fast friends, and were inseparable. The imagination of Hume was restrained by the acute judgment and critical ability of Mr Raine. When Hume published his first volume of "Songs," it would perhaps be difficult to determine whether their great success and general popularity resulted from the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... violence, confesses his fears for the future. He places less reliance than I do upon the generosity or friendship of Aurelian. It is his conviction that superstition is the reigning power of his nature, and will sooner or later assert its supremacy. It may be so. Probus is an acute observer, and occupies a position more favorable to impartial estimates, and the formation of a dispassionate judgment, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... can put his hands to. Again I feel inclined to swear, as it is all owing to that intellectual splitting of hairs. They ought to make a diagnosis upon me, as to the disease of Time's old age, which in me has reached the acute stage. He who is a sceptic in regard to faith, in regard to science, conservatism, progress, and so on, has indeed difficulty in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... with their clouds of black smoke blowing across his father's ground during the winter; so they could not have lived very far from the Worcester railroad. Horace Mann's house is still standing, opposite a school- house on the road from the station, where a by-way meets it at an acute angle. The freight-trains and their anthracite smoke must have had a disturbing influence ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... was a distressed gentlewoman. The death of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning, seems to have given her her first chance of displaying those strong qualities which ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she was of those to whom plan of action comes instantly upon the arrival of opportunity. With ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... And as she so uttered his name twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that—that—if I were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word—that ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... none were allowed participation in the Higher Mysteries, without having proved their fitness for the reception of esoteric truth, so in these days only those seem to be permitted to breathe the hidden essence in Shelley, who have realized the acute phases of spiritality. Among the few who have enjoyed these bi-fold gifts, none have had more fortuitous experience than yourself, to whom I now take the liberty of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... of travel, form one of the main staples of conversation round the evening fire. Every wanderer or captive from another tribe adds to the store of information, and as the very existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes, depends upon the completeness of this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties of the adult savage are devoted to acquiring and perfecting it. The good hunter or warrior thus comes to know the bearing of every hill and mountain range, the directions and junctions of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... about. They all began within the precincts of universities. Moreover, the Lord Jesus, consummate mystic, incomparable artist, was such partly because He was a great theologian as well. His dealings with scribe and Pharisee furnish some of the world's best examples of acute and courageous dialectics. His theological method differed markedly from the academicians of His day. Nevertheless it was noted that He spoke with an extraordinary authority. "He gave," as Dr. Peabody also points out, "new scope and significance to the thought ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... difficulty was relieved for a time by the sale of copyrights and much of the stock to Constable, on the understanding that the publishing concern should be wound up as soon as possible. But Scott was preparing fresh embarrassments for himself by the purchase of another parcel of land; a yet more acute crisis in the Ballantyne firm forced him to borrow from the Duke of Buccleuch; and when planning out his work for the purpose of retrieving his position he determined to complete the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... trouble, and annoyance. I never had much pleasure in the performance of one of my operas, and shall have much less in future. My ideal demands have increased, compared with former times, and my sensitiveness has become much more acute during the last ten years while I lived in absolute separation from artistic public life. I fear that even you do not quite understand me in this respect, and you should believe my word all the more implicitly. Your nature and position in life and in the world are so entirely different from mine ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... The acute peril to Warsaw is accentuated by the Russian official communication which says that German columns are within artillery range of the fortress of Novo Georgievsk, the key to the capital from the northwest, and only ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... blood must go through the living system in sixty or seventy years, should the injured system last so long! And how many bad feelings, and how much severe pain and suffering, and chronic and acute disease, must almost inevitably ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... superficial observer appear'd only the overflowings of misanthropy, were, in reality, the effusions of deep sensibility. I convinc'd myself, by repeated perusals of your different productions, that though disappointments the most painful, and sensations the most acute, might have stung your heart to its very core, it had yet many feelings of the most exalted kind. From these I hoped everything. Those hopes may be disappointed, but the opinions which gave rise to them have not been ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... facts. Dr. King, of Banning, Cal., says, "Out here we scarcely know what storms are. All winter long my front yard has been green and beautiful—roses blooming in January, and callas in March. During three and a half years there have been but two cases of acute disease of the chest within six miles of my office. I do not know of any death having occurred in this village or vicinity from an acute disease, since I came here nearly four years ago." What are the lauded climates of Italy and Greece compared to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... represent omega and eta. "i" represents upside-down i (used in I.3.6). {gh} represents yogh (used in I.4.10). {L} represents the "pounds" symbol. Letters with diacritics are "unpacked" and shown within braces: {a'} {e'} a with acute accent, e with grave accent Irregularities in chapter numbering are explained at the end of ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... An easy journey was experienced until Newfoundland was reached, but then storms and electrical disturbances rendered it necessary to alter the course, in consequence of which petrol began to run short. Head winds rendered the shortage still more acute, and on Saturday, July 5th, a wireless signal was sent out asking for destroyers to stand by to tow. However, after an anxious night, R.33 landed safely at Mineola Field at 9.55 a.m. on July 6th, having accomplished the journey ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs. If they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose not the slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather gain them in consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor grief, and as frequently result from absolute indifference ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... was thinking that if these embarrassments had been growing up gradually for some time, they might have already assumed an acute form at the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... powerful fire the earthworks crumbled. On the fourteenth the French and Americans carried by storm two redoubts on the second parallel. The redoubtable Tarleton was in Yorktown, and he says that day and night there was acute danger to any one showing himself and that every gun was dismounted as soon as seen. He was for evacuating the place and marching away, whither he hardly knew. Cornwallis still held Gloucester, on the opposite side of the York River, and he now planned to ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... hat of a moment ago. Everything charms him, fascinates him, from the rumbling of the watering-carts to the rattle of the blinds at the doors of cafes which overflow to the middle of the sidewalk. The approach of death gives him the acute faculties of a convalescent, sensitive to all the beauties, all the hidden poesy of a lovely hour in summer in the heart of Parisian life,—of a lovely hour which will be his last, and which he would like to prolong until ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... trepidation. Acute as he is, he does not understand her, for the simple reason that he does not give her credit for the shrewdness engendered by much experience. If she cannot have the marriage she will have the flirtation, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... with your mother the last hour," answered Moya, vaguely on the defensive. Since Paul's return there had been little of the old free intercourse in words between them, and without this outlet their mutual consciousness became acute. Often as they saw each other during the day, the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... around us vary so rapidly and so continually, that a contemporary record of opinion, honestly preserved, differs very widely from the final and mature judgment of history: yet the judgment of history must be based upon contemporary evidence. It was remarked by an acute observer to Mr. Greville himself, that the nuances in political society are so delicate and numerous, the details so nice and varying, that unless caught at the moment they escape, and it is impossible to collect them again. That is the charm ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... in so marvelously with West's mood of acute discontent with all that his life had been for the past two years, that it looked to him strangely like Providence. The easy ways of commerce appeared vastly alluring to him; his income, to say truth, had suffered sadly in the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... AEschylus, because we read his plays!" Why, if they live still, let them come and take Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup, Speak in my place! "Thou diest while I survive?"— Say rather that my fate is deadlier still, In this, that every day my sense of joy Grows more acute, my soul (intensified By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen; While every day my hairs fall more and more, My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase— The horror quickening still from year to year, The consummation coming past escape When I shall know most, and yet ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke



Words linked to "Acute" :   critical, pointed, perceptive, chronic, medical specialty, obtuse, medicine, accent, accent mark



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