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Aggravating   /ˈægrəvˌeɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Aggravating

adjective
1.
Making worse.  Synonyms: exacerbating, exasperating.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Aggravating" Quotes from Famous Books



... now it was worse than before. He avoided her markedly, for the smile which so annoyed him still lighted her face whenever she saw him, and there was in it a reproachful sadness which was even more aggravating than its simple childishness ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... had a hard time with the mother over her steady refusals to have anything to say to Black Shawn. She was an aggravating old woman, one of the whimpering sort; and sorely she must have tried poor Fanny often with her coaxing and crying, but the little girl was as stout as a rock where her absent ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... "delight" in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man—courage, endurance, and skill—in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy—be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would run off with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and not wicked interest, that ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... with men may be found, on the average, to do the same things with some variety in the particular kind of excellence. But, that they would do them fully as well on the whole, if their education and cultivation were adapted to correcting instead of aggravating the infirmities incident to their temperament, I see not the smallest ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... back the poor man on whom thou hast passed sentence, for he is innocent. 'Tis enough that I have incurred the wrath of the Gods by one deed of violence, to wit, the murder of him whom your serjeants found dead this morning, without aggravating my offence by the death of another innocent man." Perplexed, and vexed that he should have been heard by all in the praetorium, but unable honourably to avoid compliance with that which the laws enjoined, Varro had Gisippus brought back, and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... as is our power of judging others, it is a power we are all obliged to exercise. It is impossible to exclude the considerations of moral guilt and of palliating or aggravating circumstances from the penal code, and from the administration of justice, though it cannot be too clearly maintained that the criminal code is not coextensive with the moral code, and that many things which are profoundly immoral ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... his agonies. He said no word, but he had his wits keenly sharpened. He was not a "gone coon" yet. The squaws were worse than the men. There was one squaw, a chief's squaw, with a baby in her arms, especially aggravating. She darted in, to strike him. Instantly his two hands flew out, tore the baby from her and dropped ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... shell, this surface-knowledge of what lies below, does not content me. I have also a brave friend who shares my feeling. We agree, that, despite the interest of this crust, to know of the fruit beneath and not taste it is worse than aggravating; we grow reckless in our thirst ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... Marcius, who sent a man privately to the consuls, falsely to accuse the Volscians of intending to fall upon the Romans during the games, and to set the city on fire. This public affront aroused their hostility to the Romans; and Tullus, perceiving it, took advantage of it, aggravating the fact, and working on their indignation, till he persuaded them, at last, to despatch ambassadors to Rome, requiring the Romans to restore that part of their country and those towns which they had taken from the Volscian in the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... was evidently drawn up with the view of saving the life of the Sire de Retz; for the crime of homicide was presented without aggravating circumstances, in such a manner that it could be denied or shelved, whilst the crimes of felony and rebellion against the Duke of Brittany were brought ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... a little aggravating. Spring always thrills me to the tips of my fingers; I had put on my very nicest clothes; we were eating the very last word in lunches, and there was a glorious atmosphere of holiday in the air; but it was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... would not have taken offence just now at any remark of Grandmamma's; but he could not help speaking to her with a sort of respectful indulgence, as much as to say, "I know she can't help it, poor old lady," which Grandmamma found exceedingly aggravating. "Beg pardon. But it's Mrs. Twiss. If she could see you for a ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... fiscal arrangements, literacy, and the legal framework are needed if the country is to move out of poverty. Fighting along the Sierra Leonean and Liberian borders, as well as refugee movements, have caused major economic disruptions, aggravating a loss in investor confidence. Foreign mining companies have reduced expatriate staff. Panic buying has created food shortages and inflation and caused riots in local markets. Guinea is not receiving multilateral aid. The IMF and World Bank cut off ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... a happen-so. Most of them were dressed for the auspicious occasion when I arrived on the scene. Their suits were suitable, so I beat it back here in a hurry. Please tie my sash for me, Marjorie, while I labor some more with my aggravating hair. I swear I will have ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... posted; while a little distance behind Lydenburg was General Walter Kitchener with an equally strong garrison. We were, therefore, obliged to be continually on the alert, not relaxing our watchfulness for one single moment. One or two burghers were still deserting from time to time, aggravating their shameful behaviour by informing the enemy of our movements, which often caused a well-arranged plan to fail. We knew this was simply owing to these ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... been more aggravating? The poor girls were nearly crying with vexation. There was no appeal, however. Miss Frazer escorted them into their bedroom, and stood over them, giving directions, until each pair of stockings or pocket-handkerchief was disposed according to her ideas of neatness. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... the enormous Walloon chasseur, who was one day found embracing Miss Flouncy, who waited on Amethyst's own maid. The very instant Miss Flouncy saw Mr. Jeames entering the Servants' Hall, where Monsieur Anatole was engaged in "aggravating" her, Miss Flouncy screamed: at the next moment the Belgian giant lay sprawling upon the carpet; and Jeames, standing over him, assumed so terrible a look, that the chasseur declined any further combat. The victory was made known to the house-steward himself, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... impositions practiced by the oily-tongued, deferential Dawson. True, he did 'get upon her nerves' now and again, but she secretly reproached herself for what she felt to be her American prejudices, and by way of self-discipline overlooked in Dawson many little aggravating peculiarities which she would have felt it her duty to instantly correct in ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... treated me proudly, and made me feel my insignificance? No. The little that she did say was affable; the tone was conciliating, the eye encouraging, and the countenance expressed the habitual desire of conferring kindness. But these were only aggravating circumstances, that shewed the desirableness of that intercourse which to me was unattainable. I say to me, for those who had a less delicate sense of propriety, who were more importunate, more intruding, and whose forehead ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... not show the white feather but immediately set to work once more with his weapon. No sooner was its chatter "on the air" than Perk started giving his own gun a chance to show its worth. This made it lively again and once more those aggravating splinters began to scatter, worrying Perk not a little, for strange to say he dreaded lest one of them find lodgment in his anatomy and this troubled him much more than the possibility of being struck by ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... would not have to answer for the sin which you have in these instances, knowingly committed. Besides this, you must have calculated largely on the credulity of your readers, to suppose that all of them would swallow such absurdities. As that men, who had just committed one of the most aggravating crimes ever recorded in the annals of history, in barbarously and cruelly murdering the son of the living God, should then for fear of having it recorded against them as touching the purity of their motives that they had violated the holy Sabbath of God by calling on the Governor, on ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... taste it, that he had not a chance until I came up and shot it. He was, in consequence, the staunchest dog in the country. Only once, in this respect, did I know him guilty of a breach of decorum, and that too, I must say, under very aggravating circumstances. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... into the train at Calais, though he looked for her, feeling some curiosity as to the stepmother and the sister whom he had imagined prostrate in the ladies' cabin. By the time he had arrived at Paris he felt sleepy and dull after an aggravating doze or two on the way, and had almost forgotten the red-haired child with the vivid blue eyes, until, to his astonishment, he saw her alone parleying with a douanier, over two great boxes, for one of which there seemed to ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... spear-head, which detaches itself from the staff and holds in the flesh like a harpoon. Sometimes, however, the seal will slip away after the spear is thrown, and, instead of striking him, it strikes the ice where he had been lying. This is very aggravating after the cold and tedious labor of working up upon it has been accomplished; but the Esquimau bears his misfortune with equanimity. It is seldom that he says more than "ma-muk'-poo now" (no good), or "mar-me an'-ner" (which means "angry," or ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... offended, was not aware how low she had sunk in her friend's opinion: she endeavoured, by playful wit and caresses, to atone for her fault, and to reinstate herself in her favour. But playful wit and caresses were aggravating crimes; they were proofs of obstinacy in deceit, of a callous conscience, and of a heart that was not to be touched by the marked displeasure of a benefactress. Three days and three nights did the displeasure of Mrs. Somers continue in full force, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... rich merchant but will pause in fear, To trust his wealth to the unsafe abyss? So Hero dotes upon her treasure here, And sums the loss with many an anxious kiss, Whilst her fond eyes grow dizzy in her head, Fear aggravating ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... got the PAUSE right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes. But you MUST get the pause right; and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... producing the least sensible benefit. The ship became so water-logged and heavy that she hardly rose at all to the waves, which con- sequently often washed over the deck and contributed their part toward aggravating our case. Our situation was rapidly becoming as terrible as it had been when the fire was raging in the midst of us; and the prospect of being swallowed by the devouring billows was no less formidable than that of perishing in ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... always found gone when lines are pulled up! This would seem to be an angling law of nature. At all events, it would seem to have been a very aggravating law of nature on the present occasion, for John Watt frowned and growled to himself as he put on ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... was coming slowly across the room. Fear laid hold of the Colonel. She was going to address some aggravating remark to him—he could see it in her eye—which would irritate him into ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome

... with the only antidote, the truth! It was not his part to judge of consequences so long as a duty remained to be done! and what could be more a duty than to undeceive where he had deceived, especially where the deception was aggravating that worst of diseases, self-conceit, self-satisfaction, self-worship? It was doubtful whether she would read what he might write; but the fact that she did not trust him, that, notwithstanding his assurance, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... as though they were trying to escape the Greek fire, or that they were at least interested in what was going forward. But the steady advance of so many men, each plodding along by himself, with his head bowed and his gun on his shoulder, was aggravating. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... a matter a thought. She looked from the window a minute, her lips firmly compressed. Then she spoke slowly: "Well, for one thing, I should become that woman's bosom companion. About seven times a week I should uncover her most aggravating weakness all unintentionally before the man in the case, at the same time keeping myself, strictly myself. I should keep steadily on doing and being what he first fell in love with. Lastly, since eighteen ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... herself, resigned the right of speech to her husband, who began to jerk out in disconnected phrases a statement of his case. Seven days ago he had annoyed his wife by some incautious word; she had annoyed him by an incautious answer; he had made matters worse by an aggravating retort; and she had widened the breach by a bitter reply. This little squall was succeeded by a cool calm, and that by a sullen silence, until some sudden friction kindled a new flame, and finally, after successive storms and lulls, there burst forth a ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... of Literature I really could benefit Posterity with, I do believe, is an edition of that wonderful and aggravating Clarissa Harlowe; and this I would effect with a pair of Scissors only. It would not be a bit too long as it is, if it were all equally good; but pedantry comes in, and might, I think, be cleared away, leaving the remainder one of the great, original, Works of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... It is aggravating to continually break the cork of the stock mucilage bottle because of its sticking to the neck of the bottle after a supply has been poured out. If a stove bolt is inserted lengthwise through the cork with a washer on each end and the nut screwed up tightly, as shown ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... them "to annoy." Well, they did, and they do, annoy—not because they were jokes, but because they were feeble jokes. "If it is thought desirable to have an article on the Odyssey, I have abundant, most aggravating and impudent matter about Penelope and King Menelaus"—so he wrote to Mr. H. Quilter, who naturally jumped at it. Here is another gem which Mr. Jones seems to admire: "There will be no comfortable and safe development ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... in Scotland were aggravating the tension with France, where the proposal to marry the Scots Queen to the French Dauphin was approved. English troops harried the borders, and in the course of the spring captured and garrisoned Haddington. French troops were landed in Scotland, and the marriage ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... there until nearly midnight and chattered my teeth almost out of my head with the cold, she did not appear at her window. The aggravating part of it was that while I was shivering out there in the beastly raw, miasmic air, she doubtless was lying on a luxurious couch before a warm fire in a dressing gown and slippers,—ah, slippers!—reading ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... boys went up stairs to bed, Frank continued his aggravating allusions to Louis' weakness, but in so covert a manner, that no one but those acquainted with Louis' former history could have understood their import. For some time Reginald pretended not to hear them; there was a strong struggle within ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... one in a hundred! So handsome, so noble, so good, so grand, so amiable, so everything that a young lady could wish to dream about: one, too, that never has vagaries and jealousies, and nasty little aggravating ways. Oh! Mademoiselle, I look upon you as the happiest young lady ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... "the murder is the principal fact with which we have to do; and the fire is only an aggravating circumstance,—the means which the criminal employed in order to succeed the better in perpetrating ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... devils, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, employed as tormentors. The sinners in this circle are those who have been guilty in any way of leading others into sin, deceiving or cheating them, without any aggravating circumstances of ingratitude or breach of natural ties. In the first pit are those who have led women astray; these are scourged by fiends. In the next lie flatterers immersed in the most loathsome filth. In each Dante notes two examples: one of recent times—indeed, in both cases an acquaintance ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... been summoned before the Bureau! He had expected it. Hardly had he given way to his petulant anger when he recognized the folly of his course. The demeanor of the colored man had been so "sassy" and aggravating, however, that no one could have resisted his wrath, he was sure. Indeed, now that he came to look back at it, he wondered that he had been so considerate. He was amazed that he had not shot the impudent rascal ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... very aggravating, you may be sure, dears, (you see I can talk to you quite reasonably, because you're so nicely behaved;)—it was very aggravating, of course; but I used to make allowances for them. Says I to myself, 'Cook, you've had the blessing of being brought up to hard work ever since you were a babby. ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... tell you his secrets, Uncle Cassius?" she asked. "He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... him' said the other boy, 'Dont you see he is drunk?' So I put my arms about his shoulders and tried to tell him he had better sleep a while before we started. The poor boy was a breed. His mother was almost white and his father was a thoroughbred Indian and the son had a most aggravating temper. He made me no answer but running his hand into his pocket, he drew out his knife and with one thrust, cut a deep gash in my neck. A terrible fight followed. I remember being knocked over and my head stricking something. I reached out my hand and discovered it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... thereby was amazing; the American tour alone gave him a net profit of L20,000; and he expected to make as much more in two seasons in England. But he paid dearly for these triumphs, being often in trouble with his voice, suffering from fits of sleeplessness, aggravating the pain in his foot, and affecting his heart. In spite, then, of the success of the readings, his faithful friends like Forster would gladly have seen him abandon a practice which could add little to his future fame, while it threatened to shorten ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... stand at the door of St. Paul's Cathedral in a white sheet, with a lighted candle in your hand, until you gave up your wicked aggravating ways—you Man!" ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... of Empress of India, this child of the Orient had made of Great Britain an Oriental empire. He had ruled the country for six consecutive years when he next went into retirement. He died shortly afterward, from the effect of a severe cold, aggravating an attack of gout, on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... may be sure, dears, (you see I can talk to you quite reasonably, because you're so nicely behaved;)—it was very aggravating, of course; but I used to make allowances for them. Says I to myself, 'Cook, you've had the blessing of being brought up to hard work ever since you were a babby. You've had to earn your daily bread. Nobody knows how that ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... answered the other with aggravating politeness; "perhaps it was a rather nice coup leading to very ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... Prohibant on the frontier, or that which he causes to be used by the law, may be judged very differently in a moral point of view. Some persons consider that plunder is perfectly justifiable, if only sanctioned by law. But, for myself, I cannot imagine anything more aggravating. However it may be, the economical results are the ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... agitation caused by this great event was increased by the remembrance of the religious warfare that had been waged there between the Protestants and Catholics for more than a century. This enmity blazed out afresh, greatly aggravating the bitterness naturally caused by the elections. Were not these last a mere pretext invented by one sect to conceal their evil designs against the other? Was it only a conflict between the champions of the old and of the new regime, or were these excited men eager to take up arms one against ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... the Military insist on aggravating the enemy? This was our new shibboleth. We had, practically speaking, been left unmolested until Long Cecil sounded its timbrel. Hence the bloody sequel! Now, all this would have been in better taste had not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... old woman,—by what affinity, as the Buddhists say, I don't know,—loved me a great deal. Strange, indeed! She was almost blindly fond of me,—me, whom mother, became thoroughly disgusted with three days before her death; whom father considered a most aggravating proposition all the year round, and whom the neighbors cordially hated as the local bully among the youngsters. I had long reconciled myself to the fact that my nature was far from being attractive to others, ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... full sight of the entire ship's company, Captain Claret promenaded to and fro below his lofty perch, reading him a most aggravating lecture upon his alleged misconduct. To a lad of sensibility, such treatment must have been almost as stinging as the lash ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... knowledge for a case which leaves a certain shallow sediment of intelligence in their memories about a good many things. They are apt to talk law in mixed company, and they have a way of looking round when they make a point, as if they were addressing a jury, that is mighty aggravating, as I once had occasion to see when one of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the witness-stand at a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... story about the number of times it had been round the Cape. The bagman took everything that came his way, and held his tongue about it, which was rather damping. At last, when it came to dessert and the Madeira, Carew, one of our fellows, couldn't stand it any longer—after all, it is aggravating if a man won't praise your best wine, no matter how little you care about his opinion, and the bagman was ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... in the bewildered glimpse at his sorrow and agitation. Richard spoke with calmness and good sense, and his replies, though brief and commonplace, were not without effect in lessening the excitement and despondency which the poor doctor's present mood had been aggravating. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... of Fiesco we have to admire not only the energetic animation which the author has infused into all his characters, but the distinctness with which he has discriminated, without aggravating them; and the vividness with which he has contrived to depict the scene where they act and move. The political and personal relations of the Genoese nobility; the luxurious splendour, the intrigues, the feuds, and jarring interests, which occupy them, are made visible before ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... odd—Mr. Hobbs likes pies—perhaps you don't have the crust made thick eno'. How somever, you can make it up to him with a pudding. A wife should always study her husband's tastes—what is a man's home without love? Still a husband ought not to be aggravating, and dislike ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... there may be many other transgressions whereof the lands wherein we live are guilty, and these attended with many heinous aggravating circumstances beyond what they were in our fathers, which we have not been humbled for to this day; but, instead of mourning for them, confessing and forsaking them, we have been rather defending or daubing, covering or coloring, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... by a powerful effort of the will, by the aid of prayer, and by adopting a more wholesome diet, he succeeded in getting the mastery of his vice. But the local difficulties still continued in a great degree, and under particularly aggravating circumstances occasioned a relapse at long intervals. After a time, the local difficulties grew less and less, and enabled him to gain a complete victory over the habit, though the results of previous sin still remained, for ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... made no difference with Claude, nor did it interfere in the slightest with his self-content and self-complacency. In fact, he looked as though he rather enjoyed the situation; and this was not the least aggravating thing in the surroundings to the mind ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... in a terrible state of excitement. The shares had just fallen a hundred and twenty francs. A panic had ensued. The affair was considered as absolutely lost, and the shareholders were aggravating matters by wanting to sell out ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... among the number, and although I would like to spare the latter three, in thankful remembrance of many a gratuitous concert, the first must take his chance of powder and lead, for the little rascal is too aggravating. A few dry bushes, raised above the trellis will serve as their resting place before they commence their work of destruction, where they ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... mid-air. As the elevator sank out of sight, as the characters, painting and frame disappeared below the floor, the audience applauded approvingly at first, then the absurdity of the scene struck them and approving applause changed to aggravating laughter. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... with me to enlighten you?" asks she, with a little aggravating half glance from under her long lashes; "well—the North Pole, Kamtschatka, Smyrna, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... cheerfulness, from the testimony of those who were present in your last moments, did you meet your fate, as if striving to the utmost of your power to make the emperor appear guiltless. But to myself and your daughter, besides the anguish of losing a parent, the aggravating affliction remains, that it was not our lot to watch over your sick-bed, to support you when languishing, and to satiate ourselves with beholding and embracing you. With what attention should we have received your last instructions, and engraven them on our hearts! This is our sorrow; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... model of behavior all the evening. Mother would be sure to ask if she had been good, when they got home. That was one of those aggravating questions that only time could relieve her from. No one ever asked Paul, or Hilary, ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs

... greater the calculation evident in the design of an evil-doer, the more will it be found that the wickedness has been deliberate, and the more readily will one decide that it is great and deserving of punishment. Thus a too artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called stellionate, and a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very foundations of our security in written documents. But one will have greater indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... Edna with the old-time aggravating smile that was always warranted to further incense her opponent. It had its desired effect, for Edna fairly bristled with indignation and was about to make a furious reply when she was pushed aside by Eleanor, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... man! Of course you must have your own way, and every one else must give in to you," she cried with aggravating emphasis, giving me no credit for trying to choose the ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... thousand sick and two hundred wounded. The citadel has been invaded by the suburban inhabitants, who have abandoned their homes, owing to the barbarity of the rebels. These inhabitants constitute an embarrassment, aggravating the situation, in view of a bombardment, which, however, is not seriously apprehended for ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... life was one long struggle with dyspepsia, an inherited weakness which he persisted in aggravating by indulgence in those twin enemies of health—pastry and reading in bed. During our intimate association I had exercised a wholesome restraint on his pie habit and reduced his hours of reading in bed to a minimum. As the reader may remember, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... the bronco kept galloping from her with aggravating persistence. The Overland girl rode and coaxed until she tired of it, then, touching her mount lightly with the crop, she dashed straight ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... the parlor reading a letter by the light on the centre-table. Her dress was a plain black silk, made high at the neck, and with an open stomacher, disclosing an aggravating bit of white lace. There was always something neat and becoming in Mattie's dress, and the white ruffles that now encircled her neck and wrists added the charm of simplicity to her appearance. Her hair, too, was ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... be whispered and not pronounced aloud. The man who swears is certainly beyond the pale, and the one who uses silly and senseless exclamations is not far away from him. One of the marks of a gentleman is his complete mastery of himself under the most trying and aggravating circumstances. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... But his brother Edgerton has always been a city man in nice clothes with pleasing manners, and if he had money— But what's the use talking? Seems like that's the worst waste of time there can be, and the most aggravating, to say if so-and-so had money I Because if he hasn't got it, somebody else has, and if you think money's more than the man, there you are. And Mr. Gledware has it. He's not the man but he ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... look at me while I'm telling you. I'll be sure to blush in places. When Beatrix wants to be particularly aggravating she says I have lost the art of blushing. But that is only her way of putting it, you ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... well as could be wished; but before entering the royal enclosures, I found, to my disagreeable surprise, that the men with Suwarora's hongo or offering, which consisted of more than a hundred coils of wire, were ordered to lead the procession, and take precedence of me. There was something specially aggravating in this precedence; for it will be remembered that these very brass wires which they saw, I had myself intended for Mtesa, that they were taken from me by Suwarora as far back as Usui, and it would never do, without remonstrance, to have them boastfully ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... sweetheart, my love for you is the evergreen, and write me, darling, not of the budding trees and the wild flowers so tender in the morning dew, for there is an aggravating indirection to such devotion. Write me, my dearest, so that I ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... and again Eli never despaired, for he was certain he would sooner or later come upon that which he meant to have, and the delay, while aggravating, could not ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... The latter was not quite as bold as Amanda—nor quite as mean. "I heard you say something about the secret society. Are you invited?" The last words were said with such a sneer and the grin on her face was so aggravating that the girls felt ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler

... up from his chair and went towards the window, forgetting where he was. He had so often gone over in his mind the possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances that would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so often decided against it—he had so often said to himself that his assertions would not change people's impressions—that Dorothea's words sounded like a temptation to do something which in his soberness ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... at picturesque old Morro on the bluff, and there, close to the lighthouse, still floated the Spanish colors. It was aggravating, and we would like to have shot ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... probably a bat that had strayed in at the opening, he decided. Suddenly he came to a standstill. Right across the way was a mass of freshly fallen earth and rock that quite obstructed his further progress. "Well this is a pretty fix to be in. How aggravating!" he said to himself, and leant for a moment against the wall of the tunnel, to consider what would be best to do. The wall instantly gave way, he stumbled, bruised his arm against a sharp corner of the rock, and his lantern went out. At the same time he heard a sound resembling the slamming ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... here," yet he had somehow avoided being battered and chipped in the process. This last affair, however, made me seriously uneasy, because if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involving him in pot-house shindies, he would lose his name of an inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose you will understand that by that time I could not think of washing my hands of him. I took ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... streams, to fish, as an excuse for idleness. A day that drives you dinnerless from smoking joints, and plunges you thirstfully into barrels of beer. A day that induces apathetic listlessness and total prostration of energy, even under the aggravating warfare of gnats and wasps. A day that engenders pity for the ranks of ruddy haymakers, hotly marching on under the merciless glare of the noonday sun. A day when the very air, steaming up from the earth, seems to palpitate with the heat. A ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... that it is "an awful subject or there is none this side of the grave." He states that he has studied the question for years, and while Parliament has pursued a vacillating policy and one aggravating to the colonies, he has a fixed policy and one sure to restore "the former unsuspecting confidence in the Mother Country." His policy is simple peace. This by way of introduction. He then divides the argument into ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... hopes her son will get her. That's as plain as the nose on your face. But she doesn't know anything. Is that a good sign or a bad one? I wish I knew. Alix isn't the sort to forget. Maybe Strong has gotten over it and not she. It's darned aggravating, that's what it is. There must be some good reason why she's never married. I wonder if she's still keen about him. This talk of Charlie Webster's may be plain bunk. If she hates him,—why? That's the question. WHY does she hate ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... deal, and in this establishment there were many boys of colour. I saw them first at their work (basket-making, and the manufacture of palm-leaf hats), afterwards in their school, where they sang a chorus in praise of Liberty: an odd, and, one would think, rather aggravating, theme for prisoners. These boys are divided into four classes, each denoted by a numeral, worn on a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a new-comer, he is put into the fourth or lowest class, and left, by good behaviour, to work his way up into the first. The ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... relations of master and slaves. The head of the family was absolute master of his slaves, having over them the power of life and death. Moral and social degradation was the common lot of slaves. Their wretched condition in pagan times was often rendered more intolerable by aggravating circumstances. Many of them had once enjoyed the blessings of freedom, but had been reduced to bondage by the calamities of war. Unlike the Negro slaves of America, they were usually of the same color as their masters; and in some instances, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... 4th of November Longstreet left our front with about fifteen thousand troops, besides Wheeler's cavalry, five thousand more, to go against Burnside. The situation seemed desperate, and was more aggravating because nothing could be done until Sherman should get up. The authorities at Washington were now more than ever anxious for the safety of Burnside's army, and plied me with dispatches faster than ever, urging that something should be done for his relief. On the 7th, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... wholly unburdened himself. Instead of immediately leaving the room in pursuance of the succinct instructions given him, he again cleared his throat nervously, and made known a further aggravating factor in the situation. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... not it won't be Joe's fault. Unless it is his fault on account of its not being his fault. What I mean is that good-natured people are sometimes aggravating." ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... applicant to the justice of France for the satisfaction of claims the validity of which was never questionable, and has now been most solemnly admitted by France herself. The antiquity of these claims, their high justice, and the aggravating circumstances out of which they arose are too familiar to the American people to require description. It is sufficient to say that for a period of ten years and upward our commerce was, with but little interruption, the subject ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... said just now that you and he were both going the same way; how, then, could you meet him?' the squire would ask, frowning sternly. Whether the witness overtook or met the defendant mattered nothing to the point at issue; but the squire, having got a satisfactory explanation, turned aside, with an aggravating air of cleverness. For the rest of the week the squire could not account for his time. He sometimes, indeed, in the hunting season, rode to the meet; but he rarely followed. He had none of the enthusiasm that makes a hunter; besides, it made the horse in ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... of youth, usually ceasing at the climacteric. Social, financial and domestic worries are exciting causes, a happy marriage often curing, and an unhappy one greatly aggravating the complaint. It is most common among the races we usually deem "excitable", the Slavs, Latin races and Jews, and is often associated with ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese 'coppette amatorie' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his glance—now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent brow—in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... daughter was hunted from the family which should have exulted to receive her, and the land of which she was the native ornament. Why should a happier lot await you than fell to your parents? You are in the same position as your father; you meditate the same act. The only difference being aggravating circumstances in your case, which, even if I were a member of the same order as my Lord Monmouth, would prevent the possibility of a prosperous union. Marry Edith, and you blast all the prospects of your life, and entail on her a sense of unceasing humiliation. Would ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... their multitudinous spores in the atmosphere has any appreciable influence on the health of the human race. Hence their association with cholera, diarrhoea, measles, scarlatina, and the manifold ills that flesh is heir to, as producing or aggravating causes, must, in the present state of our knowledge and ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... its own sake, or indeed for any less object than that of general benefit to others. Such an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian I know there is; I have met him myself occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imaginable heautontimoroumenos; aggravating and sustaining, by calling into distinct consciousness, every symptom that would else perhaps, under a different direction given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But as to myself, so profound is my contempt ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... be received by the most portion of the population as a triumph over the Government which Mr. Willis has ungratefully and wantonly insulted, would be most pernicious to the peace of this colony, and an act of the most aggravating injustice to those faithful servants of the Crown against whom he has, for unworthy purposes, dishonourably laboured to excite the prejudice and hatred of the ignorant and malicious." It is worth while to note ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... I was worrying along, and sized him up, on the quiet. He was a queer pet. Not a bad set-up man, and rather good looking in the face. Light yellow hair, little yellow moustache, light blue eyes. And clean! Say, I never saw anybody that looked so aggravating clean in all my life. It seemed kind of wrong for him to be outdoors; all the prairie and the cabin and everything looked mussed up ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... out of my Head. Sitting in the Chocolate House, a young Gentleman was giving himself Airs with a Snuff-box, which to my Eye (and it was my Interest to observe it very narrowly) appear'd to be the very same I had some time before presented the Lady with, and as an aggravating Circumstance, in taking Notice of the Gentleman's Periwig, it had the same Form with the Reflexion I saw up in the Lady's Chamber Window, vid. a flat Top, neither rais'd nor parted in the Middle, which spoke it to be a Piece of English Furniture. The Sight of the ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... part of the African continent had an inexplicable fatality landed him? Evidently on the western coast, and as an aggravating circumstance, the young novice was forced to think that the "Pilgrim" was thrown on precisely that part of the coast of Angola where the caravans, which clear all that part of ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... instantly recovered her temper, changed the subject, and privately resolved to confine her prejudices to her own bosom, as they seemed to have an aggravating effect upon the youthful person whom she had set her heart on disposing of to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... Mexico to the seaport city of Vera Cruz; or if one prefers he may make a night ride of it in times of peace. The train which left the City of Mexico that April morning made no such time. After a tiresome all-day ride with numerous aggravating stops, when darkness fell they were still on the plateau of Mexico, some miles west of Orizaba, running slowly for fear some stray bunch of Carranzistas or Zapatistas might have torn up a ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... School-house station; such is the matter-of-fact pet-name given to a cluster of dull houses, once known by some melodious but forgotten Spanish appellation. The ranch wagon awaited us; a huge springless affair, or if it had springs they were of that aggravating stiffness that adds insult to injury. Excellent beasts dragged us along a winding, dusty road, over hill, down dale, into a land that grew more and more lonely; not exactly "a land where it was always afternoon," ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... mountains or of moving into the interior was idle, for not one of the plans could be carried out with our utterly insufficient transportation, and at that season and in that climate they would merely have resulted in aggravating the sickliness of the soldiers. It was deemed best to make some record of our opinion, in the shape of a letter or report, which would show that to keep the army in Santiago meant its absolute and ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... and in the cool shade of the interior could be seen the outline of dark, well-rounded forms looming between the heel-posts of the stalls which lined the side walls. An occasional impatient stamp from the heavily-shod hoofs told of the capacity for annoyance of the ubiquitous fly or aggravating mosquito, whilst the steady grinding sound which pervaded the atmosphere within, and the occasional "gush" of distended nostrils testified to healthy appetites, and noses buried in mangers well filled with ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful; he, therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on which he might tire his fancy, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... glad you did nothing so foolish," said the young lady seriously, "or"—with a smile—"I should have been still more aggravating to you when we met. The bank was quite right. Nor have I any pathetic story like yours. Some years ago my little half-cousin whom you saw lost his mother and was put in my charge by his father, with a certain ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... all in the dark about it, and felt it very hard after all these years, "particular, when he could hardly help thinking that Mrs. Price—a new hand compared to himself, not to speak of being a female—knowed all about it, and were very aggravating. But there, he would say no more; he knew his place, and he always had been valued in it, long afore Mrs. Price come up to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... detained there until Wednesday the day of —-; and upon that day, betwixt the hours of two and four o'clock afternoon, to be conveyed to the common place of execution, and there hanged by the neck upon a gibbet. "And this," said the Doomster, aggravating his harsh voice, "I pronounce ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... think, Chancellor, that after all, you'd better try and take me to some more probable, as well as more suitable, place to look for Miss Mowbray?" he suggested, with a drawl intended to be as aggravating as it actually was. "There doesn't appear to be any one about. Even the care-takers ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... disputes and jealousies. Cibber's manners had not been studied in the school of Chesterfield, although that school was then open and flourishing. He was rude, presumptuous, dogmatic. To superiors in rank he was grudgingly respectful; to equals and inferiors, insupportably insolent. But when to these aggravating traits he added the vanity of printing an autobiography, exposing a thousand assailable points in his life and character, the temptation was irresistible, and the whole population of Grub Street enlisted in a crusade against him.[12] Fortunately, beneath the crust of insolence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... and petty thieveries and crimes of a like nature seem to fall very short in comparison of the atrocious guilt of murder and the imbrueing one's hands in blood, more especially when a crime of so deep a dye in itself is heightened by aggravating circumstances. ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... prisoner was tried by torture. The rack was the court of justice; the criminal's only advocate was his fortitude—for the nominal counsellor, who was permitted no communication with the prisoner, and was furnished neither with documents nor with power to procure evidence, was a puppet, aggravating the lawlessness of the proceedings by the mockery of legal forms: The torture took place at midnight, in a gloomy dungeon, dimly, lighted by torches. The victim—whether man, matron, or tender virgin—was stripped naked, and stretched upon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Most aggravating of all were the persistent attentions of Miss Madeline Elton. No one likes to be loved as a matter of duty, certainly not Lena Quincy, whose shrewd little soul easily divined that this equable warmth of manner, which she dubbed snippy condescension, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... sour poor Martin's temper; but he himself declared it was nothing compared to the aggravating behaviour of Prince Primus, commonly called "Lord ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... at this time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you, they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose, of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn to a scarf. As a neat English expression has it, "they fish for compliments," and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... creating a threat to public health or safety, or injury to any person; (C) assure reasonable consistency with other relevant directives and with other sentencing guidelines; (D) account for any additional aggravating or mitigating circumstances that might justify exceptions to the generally applicable sentencing ranges; (E) make any necessary conforming changes to the sentencing guidelines; and (F) assure that the guidelines adequately meet the purposes ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives

... not go well. To properly cast a trout-fly, one's thoughts must be upon the art. A preoccupied mind and wandering attention tends to a tangled line, a snarled leader, and all sorts of aggravating complications. Sibyl—usually so skillful at this most delicate of sports—was as inaccurate and awkward, this day, as the merest tyro. The many pools and falls and swirling eddies of Clear Creek held for her, now, memories more attractive, by far, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... the dog Berecillo, of the Seigneur d'Accords, and in ignorance of the man to whom we owe the discovery of rafting and the manufacture of porcelain. For others it is the knowledge how to burn a will and live respected, be looked up to and popular, instead of stealing a watch with half-a-dozen aggravating circumstances, after a previous conviction, and so perishing, hated and dishonored, in the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... two glared at each other, neither speaking, but the same aggravating, scornful smile was on the face of the young Shawanoe. Suddenly he did an astounding thing. He tossed his knife several feet up in the air, caught it by the handle as it came down and then flung it a couple of rods to ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... aggravating dance. Ketch was aggravated sufficiently without it. "What d'ye call me?" he asked, in a state of concentrated temper that turned his face livid. "'D?' What d'ye mean by 'D?' D stands for that bad sperit as is too near to you college boys; he's among you always, like a ranging lion. It's like your ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... great relief to be rid of him, for, as I told Mercer, he was always ten times more sneaky and aggravating during the last half, and you couldn't stoop to hitting a fellow like that, especially when you knew how easily you ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... position was something akin to what used to happen in St. James's Hall when Manager came forward to announce that, owing to sudden cold, Mr. SIMS REEVES would not be able to sing. Members glared round as if they were going to ask for their money back; increasingly aggravating to have OLD MORALITY still nodding and smiling on Treasury Bench. If he thought they were going to be put off in that way, should learn he was mistaken; so Debate raged over three hours, at end of which, OLD MORALITY, swearing he would ne'er consent to adjournment ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various

... Holy Ghost dat I still is speaking of—jest penetrates de wicked man's consciousness widout him a-knowing it. Dat penetrating make de bad man say, 'Lawd have Mercy.' I hoes and I cuts sprouts, and den I plows. When you plows, mules is allus so aggravating dat dey gits you all ruffled up. Dat de devil a-working at you. Dat's all old mules is anyhow. I does not cuss, nohow, kaise it sho am wicked and I is had de Holy Spirit in my soul, now gone sixty-five years, since I jined Padgett Creek Church. When ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... reverse took place. The introduction of military conscription of a most aggravating kind and the unspeakable cruelties attending its practical execution were followed, in the case of the Jews, by an unprecedented recrudescence of legislative discrimination and a monstrous increase of their disabilities. The Jews were lashed with a double knout, a military and a civil. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... the red glow which broke out on his face, and the crisp note in his extended hand shook violently at her. "Sooner than take this money from you, I would perish in the street! What! Do you think I will rob you of the gift sent you by some one who had a human heart for the distresses I was aggravating? Sooner than— Here, take it! O my God! ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... the case, which, with all its aggravating details, Mr. Sheridan had to state in these two memorable Speeches; and it was certainly most fortunate for the display of his peculiar powers, that this should be the Charge confided to his management. For, not only was it the strongest, and susceptible of the highest charge ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... a turned-up nose,—a very much turned-up nose; so much so, indeed, that it presented a front view of the nostrils! It was an aggravating nose, too for the old lady's spectacles refused to rest on any part of it except the extreme point. Mrs. Grumbit invariably placed them on the right part of her nose, and they as invariably slid down the curved slope until they were brought up by the little hillock ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... line struck out across the valley towards the foot of the mountain side, Ashton paused to roll a cigarette before holding his rod for the reading. Small as was the incident, it was particularly aggravating to an engineer. The reading would have taken only a moment, and he could then have rolled his cigarette and smoked it while Blake was moving past him for the next "set up." Instead, he deliberately kept Blake waiting until the cigarette had ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... in a few deliberate touches, moving his head from side to side, and with aggravating slowness said, "What do you want to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... king of France for prosecuting Molinos, said, he could prove against him more than was necessary to convince them he was guilty of heresy. To do this he perverted the meaning of some passages in Molinos' books and papers, and related many false and aggravating circumstances relative to the prisoner. He acknowledged he had lived with him under the appearance of friendship, but that it was only to discover his principles and intentions: that he had found them to be of a bad nature, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... made by St. Luke: "Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery."(541) Both of these Evangelists forbid either husband or wife to enter into second wedlock, how aggravating soever may be the cause of their separation. And surely, if the case of adultery authorized the aggrieved husband to marry another wife, those inspired penmen would not have failed to mention ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... linked fingers. "Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I've tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful—or I seemed so; I wasn't, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head—and so he made up his mind that everything ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... want anything at all, but to be left in peace, and that was the aggravating part of it. Malvine had set her heart on marrying him, and marrying him well. Her sentiment for him had long since given place to other and less agitating feelings, as beseemed a model wife, mother, and landed ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... alighted on the first convenient branch, and it was only from the ring sticking in the front of its beak that it was prevented from swallowing the entire bunch. Finding my people close upon it, the bird flew away to a piece of forest some hundreds of yards away, where it seemed to take a most aggravating pleasure in dangling my keys from the tops of the loftiest trees, and it was some time before it let them drop, which I conclude it at last did merely because it could not ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... come?" she cried, addressing the circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some coaching party. An impudent woodpecker seated on a limb above her commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping. ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... jury's "good sense," "The world he must defy Ever to justify Any presumption of 'Malice Prepense;'"— The unlucky lick From the end of his stick He "deplored"—he was "apt to be rather too quick;"— But, really, her prating Was so aggravating: Some trifling correction was just what he meant;—all The rest, he assured them, was ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... safely out of reach, and there, hanging head downwards, call us every name he could think of. Squirrels have an awful vocabulary, but I never knew one that could talk like Blacky. And every time he thought of something new to say he waved his tail at us in a way that was particularly aggravating. You have no idea how other animals poke fun at us because we have no tails, and how sensitive we really are on the subject. They say that it was to hide our lack of tail that we originally got into ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... his aggravating way of wanting to see a company of human men going across the parade like a great big caterpillar or a big bit of a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... the next day. All the rest, soldiers, administrators, women and children, sick and wounded, driven by the enemy's balls, crowded the bank of the torrent. But at the sight of its swollen current, of the sharp and massive sheets of ice flowing down it, and the necessity of aggravating their already intolerable sufferings from cold by plunging into its chilling waves, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... lower ten, came that particular aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano, goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears the very air. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... provocation—he slapped vigorously, giving sundry falsetto howls, which he fondly imagined were in good imitation of Henry. After three encores the skipper stepped forward for enlightenment, returning to the mate with a grin so aggravating that the sensitive Henry was near to receiving a thrashing for insubordination of the most ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs

... despite express imperial command and threat, to accept the "Pseudo-Sexta." So that while the synod adopted a body of legislation that has continued to be authoritative for the Eastern Church, it did so at the cost of aggravating the irritation of the West, and by so much hastening the inevitable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... little aggravating to the salmon men, just the same," said Colin thoughtfully, "when they are trying to keep their canning factories going full blast, to have to allow half the catch to go on up the stream. But," he continued, "why don't they catch the salmon coming down the stream again? ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... imagination is buoyant, ethereal, and elevates poor mortals up to the stars sometimes. It was so with Bobby. He was building up some kind of an air castle, and had got up in the clouds amidst the fog and moonshine, and that aggravating voice brought him ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... follows the scene at Mr. Heskett the publican's, and you will observe how the stranger was treated by the deceased, and I am sorry to observe, by those around, who seem to have urged him in a manner which was aggravating in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various

... unequivocal crime of keeping the ports closed against the importation of foreign provisions, thus either abdicating their duty to the people or their sovereign, whose servants they are, or involving themselves in the enormous guilt of aggravating starvation and famine, by unnaturally keeping up the price of provisions, and doing this for the benefit of a selfish class who derive at the present awful crisis pecuniary advantages to themselves by the maintenance of the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... aggravating, now, don't it, when a man has worked hard half his life and more to make property, that he shouldn't be able to enjoy it when he ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... just as willing to be left to Mr Robinson as Mr Robinson is to be left to her. [Straker looks at his principal with cool scepticism; then turns to the car whistling his favorite air]. Stop that aggravating noise. What do you mean by it? [Straker calmly resumes the melody and finishes it. Tanner politely hears it out before he again addresses Straker, this time with elaborate seriousness]. Enry: I have ever been a warm advocate of the spread of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... he was not authorized to make. The charge was denied, and his relations were finally closed on November 8 by a note in which he was informed that inasmuch as he "had used a language which cannot be understood but as reiterating and even aggravating the same gross insinuation, no further communications will be received." Having thus practically been dismissed for brutally insulting the government to which he was accredited, Jackson made a tour of the Eastern States, and was received with hospitality and enthusiasm ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... not hear the doctor and his guest tramp up to bed until very late at night, and though she had tried to keep awake she had been obliged to take a nap first and then wake up again to get the benefit of such an aggravating occasion. "I'm not going to fret myself trying to make one of my baked omelets in the morning," she assured herself, "they'll keep breakfast waiting three quarters of an hour, and it would fall flat sure's the world, and the doctor's got to ride to all p'ints ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... "Aggravating? Well, rather! His mother used to get up in prayer-meeting and tell all her children's shortcomings and ask prayers for them. 'Course it made them mad, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery



Words linked to "Aggravating" :   intensifying



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