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Date back   /deɪt bæk/   Listen
Date back

verb
1.
Belong to an earlier time.  Synonyms: date from, go back.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Date back" Quotes from Famous Books



... all subjects referred to in it; contains an article on chess of some dimensions, which may well be taken as an example of the average ignorance of the knowledge of information existing at the time. The Chinese, it says, claim to date back their acquaintance with chess to a very remote period; so with the best testimonies of that country, which acknowledge its receipt from India in the sixth century the writer seems to have been quite unacquainted. Nothing occurs in the article ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... Juruparis means 'demon,' and it is supposed that its mysteries date back to some pre-historic Indian tradition, as various tribes inhabiting the vast forests round the Amazon district practise weird ceremonies in honour of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... its central portion a red cross connecting all four sides of the flag; in each of the four corners is a small red bolnur-katskhuri cross; the five-cross flag appears to date back ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... church of Dayn Aboo Hannes, "the convent of Father John," in Egypt, near Antinoe, has its walls painted with subjects from the New Testament; the church is thought to date back to the time ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... them. I have more than Newport's suspicions upon this curious point; my personal observations and experiments are absolutely convincing. I will relate them as the first phase of the history of the Bee-louse. They date back to ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... highest degree unlawful, but, on the contrary, that the present state of matters is the right one,—that until now the ark has invariably been housed under an equally simple and unpretentious roof. As David's tent does not date back to the Exodus, Nathan is necessarily speaking of changing tents and dwellings; the reading of the parallel passage in 1Chron. xvii.5, therefore, correctly interprets the sense. There could be no more fundamental contradiction to the representation contained ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... the prose epics is the story of Robin Hood, compiled from some twoscore old English ballads, some of which date back at least to 1400. This material has recently been charmingly reworked by Howard Pyle, who has happily illustrated his own book. The bare outline of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... this damning piece of evidence, Mr. Delamere knelt painfully, and with the aid of his cane drew out from under the bureau the yellow object which, had attracted his attention. It was a five-dollar gold piece of a date back toward the beginning of ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... of Gefle is the town of Fahlun, which is the headquarters of the Kopparberg Mining Company, the, oldest industrial corporation in the world. The buildings date back to the seventeenth century and the mines are even more ancient. A mortgage bond was filed upon them in the year 1288 by a German company, and the records show that in 1347 the privilege of working them was sold by the king of Sweden to a syndicate of Lubeck miners. ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... arrive at the same result; with even a deepened conviction that in its essential structure, the Lectionary of the Eastern Church must be of truly primitive antiquity: indeed that many of its leading provisions must date back almost,—nay quite,—to the Apostolic age. From whichever side we approach this question,—whatever test we are able to apply to our premisses,—our conclusion remains still ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... men and many fair women. Kensington is royal among suburbs on account of its Palace, and its annals include history as well as the anecdotes of great men. Yet though old associations live in name and tradition, none of the buildings, as at present standing, date back further than the older parts of Holland House and Kensington Palace, and the greater part are much more modern. The zenith of Kensington's popularity was not reached until after the Hanoverian Sovereigns sat on the English throne, and this is a mere nothing in time compared with that ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... the great Revolution have spared but little of the royal abbey of St. Peter where Dom Perignon lighted upon his happy discovery of the effervescent quality of champagne. The quaint old church, scraps of which date back to the 12th century, the remnants of the cloisters, and a couple of ancient gateways, marking the limits of the abbey precincts, are all that remain to testify to the grandeur of its past. It was the proud boast of the brotherhood that it had given nine archbishops to the see of Reims, and ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... or amulets with Sanscrit inscriptions have repeatedly been found in tombs, which must date back to ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear

... they fed the animals, which were very tame, and made friends with them. The live boys were more pleased with this occupation than in looking at temples and mosques. They all visited the sanctuary of the temple, which was said to date back a thousand years. The party greatly enjoyed the ride back to Secrole, which is the English town of Benares. After dinner Sir Modava told them about ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... in private galleries and sold direct to art lovers, the Impressionist works have been but little seen. The series left by Caillebotte to the Luxembourg Gallery is very badly shown and is composed of interesting works which, however, date back to the early period, and are very inferior to the beautiful productions which followed later. Renoir is best represented. The private galleries in Paris, where the best Impressionist works are to be found, are those of MM. Durand-Ruel, ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... by earthen parapets without any expensive armor by so mounting them that when fired they will recoil downward or to one side, so as to come below the parapet for loading. This method of mounting is called the disappearing principle, and has been suggested by many engineers, some of whose designs date back more than one hundred years. We may also mount our guns in deep pits, where they will be covered from the enemy's guns, and fire them at high elevation, so that the shell will fall from a great height and penetrate the decks of the enemy's ships. This is known as mortar firing, but the modern ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... begins in different countries at varying dates. A few manuscripts and inscriptions found in Egypt date back three or four thousand years before Christ. The annals of Babylonia are scarcely less ancient. Trustworthy records in China and India do not extend beyond 1000 B.C. For the Greeks and Romans the commencement of the historic period must be placed about 750 B.C. The inhabitants of northern ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... sovereigns who sprang from this match, our Henry the Second and his sons, lie not in Angers itself but in the suburb across the river. The suburb seems to have originated in the chapel of Roncevray, the Roman-like masonry of whose exterior may date back as far as Fulc Nerra in the tenth century. But its real importance dates from Henry Fitz-Empress. It is characteristic of the temper and policy of the first of our Plantagenet Kings that in Anjou, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... methods of handling children date back to a time when there were many wolves and cart-horses and no method would have generally survived ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... never been in any part of France, the peculiarly French aspect of the lower town struck them immediately. The old-fashioned dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside the river is called after ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... heaven and was married to that delightful Englishman?'—Briton, I ought to say! I do wish our dear old Lady Elspeth could be here. How she would enjoy it!—'That feast,' they will say, 'when we were all ill for a month after and the doctor died of overwork.' They will date back to it as ancient peoples did to the Flood. It will be a Great White Stone Day to generations to come. Let us hope there will be no new white stones over yonder"—nodding in the direction of the churchyard—"in commemoration ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... he excelled himself. The records of Brummell date back to 1750 and are voluminous; but Rudolph Musgrave did not overlook an item in any Will Book, or in any Orders of the Court, that pertained, however remotely, to the Stapletons. Then he renewed his labors at the courthouse of the older county from which Brummell was formed in 1750, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... people at table. It is Friday, and to-morrow will be market day; with perhaps a fair or a procession thrown in. You reach the Cathedral of St. Sauveur (Sint Salvator), erected in the tenth century, though the foundations date back to the seventh. The narrow lane-like street winds around the rear of the church. Presently another church is discerned with a tower that must be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn, some time between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... conditions recur: they follow the snow-line as the snow-line recedes ever in summer higher north toward the pole or higher vertically toward the mountain summits. And this bespeaks in one way to the reasoning mind a very ancient ancestry. It shows they date back to a very old and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... family degree of difference, he has been changing almost wholly in the brain and head—then in geological antiquity the SPECIES man may be as old as many mammalian families, and the origin of the FAMILY man may date back to a period when some ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... because Bourke was a diplomatist of sorts, Marcel acquired the knack of being at ease in every grade of society: he came to know that a self-made millionaire, taken the right way, is as approachable as one whose millions date back even unto the third generation; he could order a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German slang—French slang he already knew as ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... celebrated by unknown poets; or, rather, by improvisers who give definite form to sentiments, phrases, and words which are on many lips. The Russian peasant tells his stories as they were told to him; those heroic epics whose life is believed, in some cases, to date back at least a thousand years. These great popular stories form a kind of sacred inheritance bequeathed by one generation to another as a possession of the memory, and are almost entirely unrelated to the written literature of the country. Miss Hapgood ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards

... states, attempts to remedy these and other evils by creating some kind of a state railroad commission date back to the fifties of the last century. Massachusetts developed in the seventies a commission of "the advisory type" which investigated and made public the conditions, leaving to public opinion the correction of the evils. A number of the Western states, notably Illinois and Iowa, developed ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... the Old Testament and 150,000 in the New Testament, are very significant facts. The oldest manuscripts of the New Testament are the Alexandrine Codex, known since the commencement of the seventeenth century, and believed to date back to the middle of the fifth century, the Sinaitic, and the Vatican Codices, each believed to have been executed about the middle of the fourth century. The Sinaitic Codex was discovered by Professor Tischendorf, a German scholar, at a monastery ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... her down on the tomb of Chaucer the other day, an' her little legs got as cold as the tomb itself, an' I told him that there was too big a difference between a tomb nigh four hundred years old an' a small baby which don't date back two years, for them to be sot together that way; an' he promised to be more careful after that. He gouged a little piece out of Chaucer's tomb, an' as we went home we bought a copy of the old gentleman's poems, so as we could ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... we find in Brahmanism and Buddhism two systems of religion that are related to one another exactly as are Judaism and Christianity. The analogue of the Old Testament is a group of priestly hymnal writings known as the Vedas, which date back to about the fourteenth century before Christ lived. Their objects of worship at first are numerous invisible beings that actuate the things of the world, as in Greek theology, but later one of them assumes preeminence as the all-pervading essence of things,—Brahma. The precepts of Brahmanism ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... the fur trappers live on house-boats, renting their hunting rights. But Jeems owns his own land. Now some northerners are prospecting for oil. They have a queer sort of car which can travel either on land or water. And Pere Armand has church records that date back to the middle of the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... permitted. A portion of their funds is frequently employed in the purchase of lottery-tickets, and a deep spirit of gambling is the natural consequence; for though the stake entered is dollars, the prize, if won, is freedom. These lotteries date back to 1812; and if they have always been kept up as before explained, they must have contributed something like ten millions sterling to the Government during ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... Chippendale may date back to the middle of the century; Windsor chairs, also known and manufactured in Philadelphia at that date, were not common in New England till a score of years later, when they were made and sold in vast numbers, being much more comfortable than the old bannister ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... prove suggestive, and it is better to secure from the library or bookseller a book by some authority than to depend upon dealers' catalogues, which are not always edifying. English models affecting present-day outfitting date back as far as the Elizabethan period, approximately 1558-1603. Following there came the Early Jacobean, the Early Queen Anne, and the Georgian. The last includes the work of Chippendale, Heppelwhite, Sheraton, and the Adams, all of whom executed some beautiful designs. ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... the Basuto people, who date back generations, made treaties with the British Government, which treaties are equally binding, whether between two powerful states, or between a powerful ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... country of the orchard. Horace Greeley said he had seen no land in which the orchard formed such a prominent feature in the rural and agricultural districts. Nearly every farmhouse in the Eastern and Northern States has its setting or its background of apple-trees, which generally date back to the first settlement of the farm. Indeed, the orchard, more than almost any other thing, tends to soften and humanize the country, and to give the place of which it is an adjunct a settled, domestic look. The apple-tree takes the rawness ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... in the world have so artificial a set of rules of evidence as England and the United States. This is because in no other country is the right to a jury trial so extensive. Many of these rules date back to the early history of the English common law. It was a time of general illiteracy. The ordinary juror could not read or write. His powers of reasoning and discrimination had had little or no cultivation. It was thought dangerous to allow him to listen to any evidence that was not of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... jars are found throughout the interior of the Philippines and are very closely associated with the folk-lore of the Tinguian. Some of the jars date back to the 10th century, while many are from the 12th and 14th centuries, and evidently entered the Islands through pre-Spanish trade. They are held in great value and are generally used in part payment ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... of this European tension date back several years: to the time of Edward VII. On the one hand England's dread of the gigantic growth of Germany; on the other hand Berlin's politics, which had become a terror to the dwellers by the Thames; the belief that the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person, or the principal object. Cymbeline is the only exception; and even that has its advantages in preparing the audience for the chaos of time, place, and costume, by throwing the date back ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... can boast of higher antiquity than the city of Chichester. Its origin is supposed to date back beyond the invasion of Britain by the Romans. It was destroyed towards the close of the fifth century, by Ella, but rebuilt by his son, Cissa, the second king of the South Saxons, who named it after himself, and made it the royal residence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various

... translations from authors profane, and his versions of certain psalms, a hymn, and chapters from the Book of Job. But, beyond the general statement as to the early date of composition, Luis de Leon gives no precise information as to when individual poems were written. The assertion that the poems date back almost to the author's childhood is contradicted by concrete facts. Take, for instance, the celebrated Noche serena dedicated to Oloarte. If, as I conjecture, the dedicatee of the Noche serena is identical with the Diego de Loarte, archdeacon ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... ordinances of the Great Assembly, the most prominent is the fixation of the prayer of the Eighteen Benedictions. The several benedictions composing this prayer date back to remote ancient times. The Patriarchs were their authors, and the work of the Great Assembly was to put them together in the order in which we now have them. We know how each of the benedictions originated: 1. When Abraham was saved from the furnace angels spoke: "Blessed art ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... been selected from past works of mine, and not without care. Some of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there, of course, they will be found to have been made a little more intelligible, but above all, more brief. Read consecutively, they can leave no one in any doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning Wagner: we are antipodes. The reader will ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... order to ascertain for sure whether this year's prize picture is a quick lunch or an Italian gloaming. I'm very peculiar that way. I like to be able to tell what a picture aims to represent just by looking at it. I presume this is the result of my early training. I date back to the Rutherford B. Hayes School of Interior Decorating. In a considerable degree I am still wedded to my early ideals. I distinctly recall the time when upon the walls of every wealthy home of America there hung, among other things, two staple oil paintings—a still-life for ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... to his murder by someone who is, we will suppose, an avenger, someone from outside. This avenger, for some reason which I confess I am still at a loss to explain, took the dead man's wedding ring. The vendetta might conceivably date back to the man's first marriage, and the ring be taken ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... deeply sympathetic letters from which we have already quoted. And in 1554, when he left England to escape Mary Tudor, he introduces into a short but admirable treatise on Prayer some autobiographical references, which seem to date back to the extreme suffering of his captivity, 'when not only the ungodly, but even my faithful brethren, yea, and my own self, that is, all natural understanding, judged my cause ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... every French court-house, and seems the result of a conviction that a palace of justice - the French deal in much finer names than we - should be in some degree palatial. The great hall at Poitiers has a long pedigree, as its walls date back to the twelfth century, and its open wooden roof, as well as the remarkable trio of chimney-pieces at the right end of the room as you enter, to the fifteenth. The three tall fireplaces, side by side, with a delicate gallery running along the top of them, constitute the originality of this ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... enough of sea-life to satisfy him. As it happened, Loup cared little for roaming; and the old traditions of the past were quite forgotten. But one day young Louis of Daneshold entered the armoury by chance, and came across a somewhat rusty old shirt of mail, quite out of style. He knew it must date back to the time of the vikings, and must have seen many a wild fray, and the fancy took him to polish it up and look for scars. In those days a lad was taught to shine up his armour as carefully as now ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... professors all over North Italy." This extract shows that the short necks were dispensed with in Paris towards the close of the last century, and doubtless Viotti was the chief instigator with regard to the change. The family of Mantegazza, as Violin-makers, date back to about the middle of the eighteenth century. They appear to have made many Tenors. The workmanship is good, and also the modelling of the later-dated instruments. The older ones are rather high, but the varnish is brilliant. The wood is somewhat hard. Count Cozio was a patron ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... on glass was probably invented in the West not later than the year 1100, and there are in France many examples, at Chartres, Le Mans, and other places, which date back to the middle ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... In New England, land endowments, local taxes, direct local appropriations, license taxes, and rate-bills had long been common. Land endowments began early in the New England Colonies, while rate-bills date back to the earliest times and long remained a favorite means of raising money for school support. These means were adopted in the different States after the beginning of our national period, and to them were added a variety of license taxes, while occupational taxes, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... twenty-nine provinces or fragments of provinces which had become petty states, the former governors of which, under the names of dukes, counts, marquises, and viscounts, were pretty nearly real sovereigns. Twenty-nine great fiefs, which have played a special part in French history, date back to this epoch. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... windows on the outside have been restored, but the buttresses have been very little touched. Most of the tracery in the windows of the aisles and chapels of the choir, and the triforium of the choir, date back to his time. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... File (hereafter referred to as 'jargon-1' or 'the File') was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time until the plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was named AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back considerably earlier ({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to the early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... yet spoken of the pearl of our museum. This piece of sculpture was not one of uncle's Italian purchases, nor does it date back for centuries, but it is priceless to us, especially as it is, we believe, the only copy now existing. I allude to the bust made of uncle in 1846 by Hart, the Kentucky sculptor. This bust was the first work of importance ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... most instances of cardiac disease which date back to childhood or youth, while arteriosclerosis and chronic infection cause most cardiac diseases in the adult. In the former case it is the mitral valve which is the most frequently affected, while in the latter it is the aortic valve. Any ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... of documents contained in this work date back to the twenty-fourth century B.C., and as they are regarded as historical are considered to be of greater importance than are any others ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... class of human beings whose description is connected with the subject of this work. They date back to mythological times, and the confusion incident to the misapplication of names and the want of proper observation on the part of the narrators has tended to carry the uncertainty of their real existence ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... a half a bottle of porter. From this it will easily be seen, in the first place, that it would be with a fight that his master would get him off, by obliging the corporal to take back the trepan money; in the second place, how long a date back it is since the Eirish began to be the death of us; and, in conclusion, that my honoured faither got such a fleg, as to spain him effectually, for the space of ten years, from every drinkable stronger than good spring-well water. Let the unwary take caution; and may this be a wholesome ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... sacred functions to the joys of archaeological research, and was carefully compiling a history of the churches in the arrondissement of Soissons and Chateau-Thierry. He had been our guest at Villiers, and I remember having made for him an imprint of two splendid low-relief tombstones which date back to the 15th century, and were the sole object and ornament of historic interest in ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... architecture in England. The house has now passed into the female line, and by marriage has been for two or three generations in possession of another family. But the blood of the old inheritors is still in the family. The house itself, or portions of it, are thought to date back quite ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the various forms of relapsing osteomyelitis date back to an antecedent attack, and their occurrence depends on the capacity of staphylococci to ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... governmental and commercial public buildings of Philadelphia are its churches, of which several of noble architecture date back ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... as that I have just described upon Ascension Day are of very ancient origin, even if they do not date back to that earliest "Fete aux Normands," whose institution you will remember in 1070. Two years afterwards began the Confrerie de la Vierge to which Pierre Dare, Lieutenant-General for the King, gave fresh lustre when he was elected its Master in 1486. Though older poems (like that of Robert Wace) ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... what we have come to trouble you about. The tragedy must date back to some twenty years ago. Was nothing known of it at ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... the Anglo-Saxon tongue are the songs and legends of Robin Hood and his merry outlaws, which have charmed readers young and old for more than six hundred years. These entertaining stories date back to the time when Chaucer wrote his "Canterbury Tales," when the minstrel and scribe stood in the place of the more prim and precise ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been going to say, 'for the last seven hundred years,' but fancying from Ethelberta's addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy, and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she might have made. This sensitiveness was a trait in her character which gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... the towns of Belgium, Ypres is a town of the past, and it is only in the light of its history that the meaning of its wonderful buildings can be realized, or an estimate formed of the vandalism of its destroyers. Its records date back to the year 900, and in the twelfth century it was already famous for its cloth. By the thirteenth century it was the richest and the most powerful city in Flanders, and four thousand looms gave occupation to its two hundred thousand inhabitants. These great commercial ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... generally admitted that correct astronomical observations were first made on the plains of Chaldea, records of eclipses having been discovered in Chaldean cities which date back 2,234 years B.C. The Chaldeans were true astronomers: they made correct observations of the risings and settings of the heavenly bodies; and the exact orientation of their temples and public buildings indicates the precision with which they observed ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... than they—our fathers, the proud Levites, having been high-priests in Solomon's temple, and the people having treated them as noblemen even at that time. We will remind the Christian ladies of this whenever they talk to us about their own ancestors, who, at best, only date back to the middle ages or to Charlemagne." "That is right. I like to hear you talk in this strain," exclaimed Marianne, joyfully. "I see you will represent us in Vienna in a noble and proud manner, and be an honor to the Jews of Berlin. Oh, I am so glad, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... to the faubourg Saint-Germain through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... half forgotten rights of way. In the legal argot, a right of way is a permission to cross property that has road frontage to reach fields, pasturage, wood lots, or the like which are otherwise without means of access. To be binding, of course, such agreements must have been recorded. Where they date back half a century and have been forgotten and unused for many years, lawyers are sometimes careless in their title search and overlook them. This is a serious omission since they can suddenly be revived to the discomfort of a totally ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... Mining operations have been carried on in these plains for generations, and one estimate is that at least three hundred and seventy-five million dollars' worth of gold had been extracted. Some have thought that the older workings must date back to one or even three thousand years ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... (chap. vii), doubtless here figures the earthly kingdoms, Babel, Media, Persia, Greece (Alexander), and God's kingdom Israel. The Psalter appears to have been closed as late as 140 B.C.; some Psalms doubtless date back to 701—a few perhaps to David himself, about 1000 B.C. The comminatory Psalms, even if spoken as by representatives of God's Church and people, we cannot now echo within our own spiritual life; any heightened ...
— Progress and History • Various

... but the disagreements between the various students of the subject need give us little concern. For our present purpose it does not in the least matter whether the pyramids were built three thousand or four thousand years before the beginning of our era. It suffices that they date back to a period long antecedent to the beginnings of civilization in Western Europe. They prove that the Egyptian of that early day had attained a knowledge of practical mechanics which, even from the twentieth-century point of view, is not to be spoken of lightly. It has sometimes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... the Temple. In a communication to the Russian Geographical Society, M. Pogodin makes the statement, that there still exist a synagogue and a cemetery in the Crimea that belong to the pre-Christian era. Some of the tombstones, bearing Jewish names, and decorated with the seven-branched Menorah, date back to 157 B.C.E.; while Chufut-Kale, also known as the Rock of the Jews (Sela' ha-Yehudim), from the fortress supposed to have been built there by the Jews, would prove Jewish settlements to have been made there during the Babylonian ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... into use earlier than granite is known as freestone or sandstone; although its first employment does not date back further than the erection of King's Chapel, Boston, already referred to as the earliest well-known occasion where granite was used in building. Altogether the most famous American sandstone quarries are those at Portland, on the Connecticut River, opposite Middletown. These were worked before ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... Arizona appears to date back to an assurance given about 1870 in St. George by Brigham Young. A prediction was made by Jesse N. Smith about 1882, to the effect that a temple, at some future day, would be reared on the site of Pima in Graham County. The first donation toward such an ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... schools—the symbolists, the decadents, the dividers of tones, the professors of the rhythm of gesture—date back about ten years. For ten years the division of the tones has been the subject of discussion in the aesthetic circles of Montmartre. And when we penetrate further into the matter—or, to be more exact, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... glasses in the Lateran, Ravenna, and Vatican museums. Illuminations in Vatican and Paris libraries. Almost all the museums of Europe, those of the Vatican and Naples particularly, have some examples of Byzantine work. The older altar-pieces of the early Italian churches date back to the mediaeval period and show Byzantine influence. The altar-pieces of the Greek and Russian churches show the same influence even in ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... Benedictine antiquary, Montfaucon, in that monument of labour and erudition, Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum MSS. Nova, is of opinion that it is as old as 1463; and that in the Harleian collection of MSS. in the British Museum, also numbered 2,764, stated to date back to 1412, can scarcely be older than 1440 or 1450, from the diphthongal writing, first introduced by Guarino of Verona, who died in 1460. The MS. of Grenoble, written on very fine vellum, and containing the whole of the Annals, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... legends date back to a time when the races of the earth had not yet separated. Hence we find the same story, in almost the same words, in Polynesia ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... Philadelphia,) and was situated twenty miles east of the Jordan on one of the northern tributaries of the Jabbok, and within five miles of the place where the famous "Moabite Stone" was found. Tristam considers it to-day as "PROBABLY THE MOST PERFECT ROMAN CITY LEFT ABOVE GROUND." The present ruins seem to date back to the second century of the Christian era. A Christian bishop from Gerasa attended the Council of Seleucia in 359 A.D., and another that of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. In the thirteenth century this city was in ruins. It was then for five centuries lost to the eyes of ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal

... do not invalidate this general rule. It is true that stone in the kidney or bladder is often found in the summer or in animals feeding at the time on a more or less succulent ration, yet such masses usually date back to a former period when the animals were restricted to a ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... interest in linguistic work and the inception of a plan for a linguistic classification of Indian languages date back about 20 years, to a time when he was engaged in explorations in the West. Being brought into contact with many tribes, it was possible to collect a large amount of original material. Subsequently, when the Bureau of Ethnology was organized, this store was largely increased through the labors ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... sufferin's date back before she wuz born, and that's goin' pretty fur back. Her father and mother had some difficulty and he wuz took down with billerous colick, voylent four weeks before Serepta wuz born. And some think ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley

... you are stormier than blustering Adriatic, I should love to live with you," etc. Such is the billing and cooing, after quarrel, between the president and the Assembly. Still, it is clear that the puissant hat-and-cane argument must date back to Cavour. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... manifestation of art occurs through attempts to reproduce objects. Such attempts have been found which date back to prehistoric times. But what is primitive man's idea in such attempts? He wants to record by a line the contour of the object, the likeness of which he wishes to preserve. This contour and this line do not exist in nature. The whole ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... and Alaskan Indians, each with its own variations, but all with one thread of similarity woven through the tales—was partly interpreted and grouped by the author into the legend that appears in this book. It is said to date back thousands of years before Abraham and our Bible. Acknowledgments for original texts and tales are due the ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... their bodies to a generic or even family degree of difference, he has been changing almost wholly in the brain and head—then, in geological antiquity the species of man may be as old as many mammalian families, and the origin of the family man may date back to a period when some ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... the oldest town of purely native growth, and is closely associated with the life of Affonso Henriquez. The massive castle in which he was born, and the church which witnessed the christening of the first king of Portugal, are still standing: the old walls of the town date back to the time of the hero; and not far off is the field where he fought the battle which gained him his independence at eighteen. Within a few miles of Guimaraens is Braga, celebrated for centuries as a stronghold ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various



Words linked to "Date back" :   originate, ascend, initiate, start



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