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Initiatory   Listen
Initiatory

adjective
1.
Serving to set in motion.  Synonyms: first, inaugural, initiative, maiden.  "The initiative phase in the negotiations" , "An initiatory step toward a treaty" , "His first (or maiden) speech in Congress" , "The liner's maiden voyage"






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"Initiatory" Quotes from Famous Books



... holds good in Okyon, Calabar district, where, should a girl have to leave the fattening-house, she must be covered with white clay. I believe this fattening-house custom in Calabar is not only for fattening up the women to improve their appearance, but an initiatory custom as well, although the main intention is now, undoubtedly, fattening, and the girl is constantly fed with fat-producing foods, such as fou-fou soaked in palm oil. I am told, but I think wrongly, that the white clay with which a Calabar girl is kept covered ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... to perceive physical objects. Having perceived an object several times, the intellect lifts itself to a higher process, and knows it when it sees it again, remembers it. Perception is the first, the simplest, the initiatory intellectual process, memory is the second. Higher than they, and rising out of them, is a third process, the one whereby are modified and transmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered. A mother, just parted from ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... ceremony. The birds sang the choral service. The wind-shaken roses, blooming around her, with their sweet ordos, were the censers and incense, and the sunlighted garden, the earliest sacred place of Bible history, where the first fair woman worshipped, was the hallowed ground of the initiatory rite. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't. I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want any more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it; whereas I was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would have invented a decent historical game long ago—a thing which nobody had done. I think I've got it in pretty fair shape—so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... with his sober grey goose-quill, And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed, Would fain, pretending just the insect's good, Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again. Into another state, under new rule I knew myself was passing swift and sure; Whereof the initiatory pang approached, Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste, Feel at the end the earthly garments drop, And rise with something of a rosy shame Into immortal nakedness: so I Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... neither for a Nemean nor for any other athletic victory, but for the [Greek: eisitaeria] or initiatory ceremonies at the election of a new [Greek: prytanis] of Tenedos. The Prytanis would seem to have been a kind of President of the Senate. The ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... the times,—and the universal slaughter of wild life on this continent,—point straight as an arrow flies in that direction. Soon or late, we have GOT to come to it! If Congress does not take the initiatory steps, the People will! Such a consummation is necessary; it is justified by common sense and the inexorable logic of the situation, and when ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... degree, etc. The letter A is at the beginning (not the commencement) of every alphabet. If we were to speak of the commencement of the Pacific Railroad, we should be understood to refer to the enterprise and its initiatory act; if we were to refer to the roadway we should say "Here is the beginning of the Pacific Railroad." In the great majority of cases begin and beginning are preferable to commence and commencement as the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... initiatory information upon the Phenomena of Nature, the Mechanical Powers, Astronomy, Geography, Light and Heat, Electricity, Attraction, Chemistry, Magnetism, and include a great variety of valuable matter, condensed and simplified in a very clever ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood

... philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,—the initiatory trials, labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,—before she reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches her wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... imperative mood: 'let the soldier's music and the rites of war speak loudly for him.' 'Go, bid the souldiers shoote,' with which the drama closes, is a more definite initiatory order to the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... appear to be contained (as indeed was, in some measure, the case with the area that embraced the various buildings of Solomon's temple) a pyramidal tower, various sanctuaries, sepulchres; a small and a large quadrangular court, one surrounded, as we have said, by cloisters; subterranean initiatory galleries beneath; oracles, courts of justice, high places, and cells or dwellings for the various orders of priests. The whole combination of the buildings is encircled by a quadrilateral pilastered portico, embracing a quadrangular area, and resting on a terraced ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)



Words linked to "Initiatory" :   maiden, first, inaugural, opening, initiate



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