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Misdeed   /mˈɪsdˈid/   Listen
Misdeed

noun
1.
Improper or wicked or immoral behavior.  Synonyms: misbehavior, misbehaviour.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Misdeed" Quotes from Famous Books



... and regeneration must be cast out of the scheme of things. Moreover, Bower's version of the incident might put a new face on it. There was no knowing how he too had been tempted and suffered. That he raged against the resurrection of a bygone misdeed was shown by his mad impulse to kill Stampa on the glacier. That such a man, strong in the power of his wealth and social position, should even dream of blotting out the past by a crime, offered the clearest proof of the frenzy that possessed him ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... twenty years. He was frank, bluff, even harsh in his speech and manner, but kind at heart, and it is told of him that once when he discovered a wretched neighbor robbing his corn crib, he moved out of sight that the man might not know he had been caught in the misdeed to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... present at the trial. I have no further charge against the army or any one, since the prisoner himself admits that he rescued the man." Then the man who had been rescued said: "In behalf of myself, Cleander, if possibly you think that I was being taken up for some misdeed, it is not so; I neither struck nor shot; I merely said, 'The sheep are public property;' for it was a resolution of the soldiers that whenever the army went out as a body any booty privately obtained was to be public property. That was all I said, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... he learnt the particulars of Chaffery's misdeed and the additional fact that the "lady" had also disappeared. "That's a good job," he remarked selfishly. "There's no chance of his coming back." He spent a moment trying to imagine the "lady"; he realised more vividly than he had ever done before the narrow range ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... by misdeed, not fortune. Fortune and chance, Oh, most convenient words! Man runs the wild career of blind ambition, Plunges in vice, takes falsehood for his buoy, And when he feels the waves of ruin o'er him, Curses, in "good set ...
— Andre • William Dunlap

... nearer eve must thou, Odin, come, if thou wilt talk the maiden over; all will be disastrous, unless we alone are privy to such misdeed." ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... he concluded earnestly, "you may think, when you do wrong, that you will take all the punishment yourself, but you can not; no one can bear the consequences of a misdeed wholly alone. Every time you do wrong you hurt someone else, two or three others, perhaps, and usually those ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... misdeed should be punished in such a way that the punishment shall be an exercise in self-command and shall tend to correct the fault. For example, if a child has lied, used profane language, or been quarrelsome, give him solitude and fasting. If he is greedy and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... den. The king was amazed at this story and at all that had happened. The sisters of the queen were sent for and questioned, and, having got into scrapes by differing in accounts, confessed at last their misdeed and told the truth. They were thrown before the same lion that the queen had been given to, and it tore them to pieces immediately and ate them ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... auditors might be given, every six years, to each one the liberty of a cargo, so that in this way they would have what is needed to marry their children and maintain their households. For otherwise they are the causes of great losses; and, as they are involved in the same misdeed, they are not urgent in having the mandates and decrees of your Majesty ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... I have pledged myself on oath The blood avenger of my own misdeed. Ah, Furia,—still I seem to see your eye, Wildly aflame like that of death's own goddess! Your words still echo hollow in my ears;— The oath I shall ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... ethics did not take much note of the animus of the violator of the rules. But civilization could not advance far, without the establishment of a capital distinction between the case of involuntary and that of wilful misdeed; between a merely wrong action and a guilty one. And, with increasing refinement of moral appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of this distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical importance. If ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... shift the blame for his misdeed from himself, so also Eve. She, like her husband, did not confess her transgression and pray for pardon, which would have been granted to her.[81] Gracious as God is, He did not pronounce the doom ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... side repentance implies action as well as feeling, and involves a determination of will to quit the past and start on a new life. A man repents not merely when he grieves over his misdeed, but when he confesses it and seeks to make what amendment he can. This positive outlook upon the future, rather than the passive brooding over the past, is happily expressed in the New Testament term metanoia, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... forgive; the war itself, had it been fought greatly by Austria and Germany, would have made no such deep and enduring breach as these silly, futile assassinations have down between the Austro-Germans and the rest of the civilised world. One great misdeed is a thing understandable and forgivable; what grows upon the consciousness of the world is the persuasion that here we fight not a national sin but a national insanity; that we dare not leave the German the power to attack other ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... birth of the wrong-doer, making myself equal with him and enabling him to enter into combat with me; and so, I challenge and defy him, though absent, on the plea of his malfeasance in breaking faith with this poor damsel, who was a maiden and now by his misdeed is none; and say that he shall fulfill the promise he gave her to become her lawful husband, or else stake his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... word "fire," we are to translate it as "fear," and the word "fear" as "heat"; while we must remember that Eve never put the blame for her sin upon the serpent, but, having "learnt that corporeal sense is the serpent," she was the first to confess her misdeed in having followed the dictates of the flesh instead of ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... with all security, by virtue of a treaty of alliance with one of the kings of the country. Throughout Aquitaine there was but one cry of indignation against Pepin, and the popularity of Charles was increased in proportion to all the horror inspired by the ineffable misdeed of his adversary. Charles the Bald himself, if he did not ally himself, as Pepin did, with the invaders, took scarce any interest in the fate of the populations and scarcely more trouble to protect them, for Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, wrote to him in 859: 'Many folks ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... neurotic mother hen and her golden convoy of chicks. The Mistress,—luckily for all concerned,—was within call. At her sharp summons the puppy wheeled, midway in his charge, and trotted back to her. Severely, yet trying not to laugh at his worried aspect, she scolded Lad for his misdeed. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of Humanity. He turned into the road, leaned forward, and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... If I saw him at a distance, riding a beautiful horse, my blood boiled with rage; the air seemed poisoned by his presence, and my very native English was changed to a vile jargon, since every phrase I heard was coupled with his name and honour. I panted to relieve this painful heart-burning by some misdeed that should rouse him to a sense of my antipathy. It was the height of his offending, that he should occasion in me such intolerable sensations, and not deign himself to afford any demonstration that he was aware that I ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... of their potts, and opening their coubards [cupboards] we take and eat what we [can] gett. For drinking of their wine we weare good fellowes. So much that they fought with swords among themselves without the least offer of any misdeed to me. I drunk more then they, but more soberly, letting them make their quarrells without ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... great company of my people in this city; ye, men of Rome, will be wholly occupied with these games. Now I remember what on the like occasion was done in this place by certain young men of the Sabines, and I am in some fear lest the Volscians also should venture on a like misdeed. Of this, therefore, I give you warning, not for your sakes only, but also for ours. As for myself, it is my purpose to return straightway to my own home, lest something of the guilt of my countrymen should ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... misdeed itself, I know of nothing to say. When the toedium vitoe lays hold on a man, he is to be pitied, not to be blamed. That all the symptoms of this strange, natural, as well as unnatural, disease have raged within me—of that Werther leaves no ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... "Thy face is like thy father's, the friend whom I wronged. Be nigh to hear, but let me not see thee. Eveline, the property which should be thine, I have misapplied, and it has melted from my grasp. It was that my misdeed might not be discovered that I denied thee to Miles Arundel, though thy father wished the nuptials. Yet, Eveline, marry him not; he is of the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... Are yet aware my faithful word has warned you. Ere he appears, send back the Prince's sword, Send it, as, after all, he has deserved. One piece of chivalry the more you give To history, and one misdeed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... porter; "then the culprit is not here—for there is not a soul beneath this roof who would perpetrate a misdeed." ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... Anglo-Saxon cnaep, a protuberance]. The top of a hill. Also, a blow or correction, as "you'll knap it," for some misdeed. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... seem, therefore, to be needed. He is inclined to think that, in the majority of cases, the designs referred to show merely the victims of divine anger or vengeance, punished by the deity for some misdeed or sin, either ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... who suffered most, however, was the youngest boy. Three weeks before, he had dressed the cat in doll's clothes and taken it round the garden in the perambulator. He himself had forgotten the incident, but Justice, though tardy, was on his track. The misdeed was suddenly remembered at the very moment when unavailing regret for the loss of the favourite was at its deepest, so that to box his ears and send him, then and there, straight off to bed was felt to ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... false accusation— the memory of that was ineradicable—nevertheless, in view of the outcome of that cowardly attempt, he had no desire for further revenge. It seemed to him that the fellow had been sufficiently punished for his misdeed; in fact, he could have found it easy to feel sorry for him had it not been for the ill-concealed malice in ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... leading ideas there are several others that run through the story. Meanness and wickedness are made unattractive and bring punishment. The punishment grows logically out of the offense and has a direct relation to the misdeed. Persons are not rewarded for their good deeds but they are happy in being good. It is not a credit to do right, but wrongdoing is discreditable. Little meannesses stand in the way of happiness though they may not bring any definite punishments. Evil is ugliness, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against the misdeed of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the corporation itself from wrongful aggression. If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... be aware that the young Hebrew had been made to suffer almost beyond the bounds of human endurance. So far as it was possible to judge, Israel Kafka's fault consisted in loving a woman who did not return his love, and his worst misdeed had been his sudden intrusion upon an interview in which the Wanderer could recall nothing which might not have been repeated to ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... face, and know of thy estate. If aught in my ability may serve To light'n what thou suffer'st, and appease Thy mind with what amends is in my power, Though late, yet in some part to recompense My rash but more unfortunate misdeed. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... depths I cry to thee, Lord God! Oh, hear my prayer! Incline a gracious ear to me, And bid me not despair. If thou rememberest each misdeed, If each should have its rightful meed, Lord, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... implores their help to save Sieglinde,—for the Waelsungen all Wotan has threatened with destruction. She conjures them, too, to conceal herself, who has not the hardihood to face her father in the extremity of his indignation. But the sisters are appalled at the revelation of her misdeed, and no less at the suggestion that they should join in her act of rebellion. Her prayer for the loan of one of their horses on which the woman may escape, meets with obtuse looks, headshakes, uncompromising denial. She is ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... half-playful sneer graduates into one of great ferocity when, together with a heavily frowning brow and fierce eye, the canine tooth is exposed. A Bengalee boy was accused before Mr. Scott of some misdeed. The delinquent did not dare to give vent to his wrath in words, but it was plainly shown on his countenance, sometimes by a defiant frown, and sometimes "by a thoroughly canine snarl." When this was exhibited, "the corner of the lip over the eye-tooth, which happened ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... the performance the following day, getting away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished for Buck's misdeed. ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!" Then he wept for her with sore weeping and said to his brothers, "It was not well of you to do this deed and bereave me of my wife." They answered, "Indeed, we have sinned, but our Lord hath requited us our misdeed and this was a thing which Allah decreed unto us, ere He created us." And he accepted their excuse; but Sa'idah said to him, "Have they done all these things to thee and wilt thou forgive them?" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... to prevent, he drew up an appeal to the soldiers of the army of Saxony, in which he explained every detail of the cause for which he stood, and which he then had printed and distributed broadcast. This was too flagrant a misdeed for the public prosecutors: he was therefore immediately placed under arrest, and had to remain three days in gaol while an action for high treason was lodged against him. He was only released when the solicitor Minkwitz stood bail for the requisite ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... colouring. This was what he had been waiting for—the day the Colonel should wantonly sacrifice some innocent person. And could his wife be a party to that final atrocity? Lyon had reminded himself repeatedly during the previous weeks that when the Colonel perpetrated his misdeed she had already quitted the room; but he had argued none the less—it was a virtual certainty—that he had on rejoining her immediately made his achievement plain to her. He was in the flush of performance; and even if he had not mentioned what ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... any consequence. If we elders stand here in the place of the Heavenly Father towards those younger children of His, He will not hold us guiltless when we obscure for them the important difference between a great and a small misdeed, or wring their souls, fear-clouded as they always are, with a sense of perdition for ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... homestead. Then Gunnar, by force and craft, carried away my foster-daughter, Hiordis; but thou, Sigurd, didst take Dagny, my own child, and sailed with her over the sea. For that thou art now doomed to pay three hundred pieces of silver, and thereby shall thy misdeed ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen

... did I do it for?" said Nick, and the strong Irish accent in his speech told how deeply he felt his misdeed. For he was always most Irish when most moved. "I reckon," he went on, and the rolling intonation fell from his tongue like a faint breath from the green isle itself, "I reckon I did it just to show my friends what a measly, coyote, white-livered, tackey, ornery, spavined, ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... he resolved to slay her and, making his way into her lodging by night (and she sleeping), thought to strike at her with a knife; but it smote the little one and killed it. Now when he knew his misdeed, fear overtook him and he went forth the house and Allah preserved from him her chastity. But as she awoke in the morning, she found the child by her side with throat cut; and presently the mother came ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... her face, and strike at her with any sort of weapon that happened to be within reach. Further, when the vicious fit took her, she would lock up pantry and kitchen, and make this hard-working girl go hungry to bed at night, by way of punishment for some pretended misdeed. And the astounding thing was that, with all this and more, Fanny retained a very real affection for her unnatural parent; and used to plead that, but for the effect of liquor upon her, Mrs. Pelly would be and was ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... long story, Avdotya Romanovna. Here's... how shall I tell you?—A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It's galling too, of course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... The Minister of War, who at the time was Greatauk, Duke of Skull, could not endure him. He blamed him for his zeal, his hooked nose, his vanity, his fondness for study, his thick lips, and his exemplary conduct. Every time the author of any misdeed was looked ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... that separates man from beast, that retaliation is the vicious resource of the tyrant and the slave; that magnanimity is the splendour of manhood; and he will remember that he strikes not at his enemy's life, but at his misdeed, that in destroying the misdeed, he makes not only for his own freedom, but even for his enemy's regeneration. This may be for most of us perhaps too great a dream. But for him who reads into the ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... he smiteth the knight upon his shield with such a sweep that he maketh him lose one of his stirrups and pierceth his shield above the boss, and passeth beyond full speed. And the knight marvelleth much, and maketh demand, saying, "Fair Sir, what misdeed ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown

... not shield himself by saying he did not know what he was doing at the time. The court sternly frowned on him and said: "No matter what was your condition at the time of making it, you must carry it out." This was the penalty for his misdeed. It may be the courts thought that by requiring him to fulfil his contracts he would be more careful and restrain his appetite. Whatever the courts may have thought, they have changed their opinions regarding his liability for his contracts ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... crime, fault, misdeed, vice, criminality, guilt, offense, viciousness, delinquency, ill-doing, transgression, wickedness, depravity, immorality, ungodliness, wrong, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... strait; for He who knoweth the future shall provide for the future." With this she brought the Wazir a cup of wine and his heart was quieted, and he ceased to feel wrath and fear. Thus far concerning him; but as regards his son Nur al-Din Ali, fearing the consequence of his misdeed he abode his day long in the flower garden and came back only at night to his mother's apartment where he slept; and, rising before dawn, returned to the gardens. He ceased not to do thus for two whole months without ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... be frightened nor corrupted. One should not consider the assassination of Agrippina as a simple personal crime of Nero, as the result of his and Poppaea's quarrels with his mother. This crime, besides personal causes, had a political origin. Nero would never have dared commit such a misdeed, in the eyes of the Roman almost a sacrilege, if he had not been encouraged by Agrippina's unpopularity, by the violent hatred of ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... maternal tenderness and watchfulness could answer, that he had the misfortune to survive his mother, the thought would have been just. The same might also have been wrung from any man (thinking of himself) when his soul was smitten with compunction or remorse, through the consciousness of a misdeed from which he might have been preserved (as he hopes or believes) by his mother's prudence, by her anxious care if longer continued, or by the reverential fear of offending or disobeying her. But even then (unless accompanied with a detail of extraordinary circumstances), if transferred to her monument, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the window, waved to a diminutive telegraph boy, who, being new to his job, had come up to the front entrance of the Lodge instead of the back, and was now—recognising his misdeed—retreating in alarm from the mere aspect of "the great fortified post." He saw the lady at the window, however, and checked ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... succession of new laws learns presently to disregard them, and to regulate his life according to certain deductions of his own—sometimes surprisingly wise and politic deductions. The way to re yourself of this law-making habit is to stop thinking of every little misdeed as the beginning of a great wrong. It is very likely an accident and a combination of circumstances such as may not happen again. To treat misdemeanors which are not habitual nor characteristic as evanescent is the ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... memory, however, lingers still in Strood of St Thomas, for certain folks there hated him and to spite him one day as he rode through the village they cut the tail from his horse. Mark now the end of this misdeed. In Strood thereafter everyone of their descendants was born, it is said, with a tail, even as ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... one clanking caravan of shackled malefactors, a half-breed, part Mexican and the rest of him Indian, who had robbed a territorial post-office and incidentally murdered the postmaster thereof. Wherefore this half-breed was under sentence to expiate his greater misdeed on a given date, between the hours of sunrise and sunset, and after a duly prescribed manner, namely: by being hanged by the neck ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... day's work, his quarrel and the possible consequences of his misdeed had begun to weigh heavily on Comale's conscience, and had lent an accusing tongue to nature. So true is it that a guilty conscience finds censure where a heart that is at peace with God and man would find no ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... spoke, happily—even a bit recklessly—conscious that they were themselves a beautiful story without the flash of a sword or the cloud of a misdeed in range of their sight, and not because the vieux carre was unlike, but so like the rest ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... reached me, O auspicious King, that the ancient Lady of Calamities cried, "When Queen Nur al-Huda doeth such misdeed to her sister, what will she do to a stranger like myself, against whom she is incensed?" Then said she, "I conjure thee, O devil, by the Most Compassionate, the Bountiful-great, the High of Estate, of Dominion ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... heir of Schonburg, something of which I have already heard. And as for your outlaws, send them word if you think they are impatient to lead virtuous lives, which I take leave to doubt, that before another day passes they need fear no penalty for past misdeed, providing ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... wanted for some other crime altogether. Many criminals had met their deserts by venturing out of their own particular line of crime into another; often a man who got into trouble over something comparatively small found himself in for a startlingly larger trouble, the result of some previous misdeed that otherwise would have gone unpunished. The ruble note-forger Mirsky might never have been handed over to the Russian authorities had he confined his genius to forgery alone. It was generally supposed at the time of his extradition that he had communicated ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... her own expense and leaving a lucrative practice, to urge the need of this institution. At length $10,000 were appropriated for this purpose in 1897 and $20,000 more in 1899. Now a girl committing a minor offense is no longer placed in jail or in the penitentiary while her brother for the same misdeed is sent to the Reform School. Dr. Jones was elected president and all ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... weapons; calls gods and demons, etc.[58] When misfortune or disease arrives it is invariably ascribed to the malignant action of a devil, although the karma teaching should suggest that it was the result of a former misdeed on the victim's part. But the very iteration, the insistence on new explanations of this doctrine, show that the popular mind still clung to the old idea of demoniac interference. Occasionally the naivete with which the effect of a mantra is narrated is somewhat amusing, as, for ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... the captain's character, might be regarded as complete adhesion; and the crew were accordingly called aft. Never had the captain worn a front more menacing. It was supposed by all that some misdeed had been discovered, and some surprising punishment was to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... asked him to paint you,' said Lord Findon, hastily, swallowing a sip of tea under the regulation time, and frowning at the misdeed. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... one is certain to bring misfortune upon himself and possibly his companions. A prudent traveler would be careful not to offend this or any other nautical superstition. In case of subsequent danger the sailors might remember his misdeed and leave him ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... was a poor Knight at Arthur's Court who had been kept prisoner for a year and a half because he had slain the King's cousin. He was of high birth and his name was Balin, and after he had suffered eighteen months the punishment of his misdeed the Barons prayed the King to set him free, which Arthur did willingly. When Balin, standing apart beheld the Knights one by one try the sword, and fail to draw it, his heart beat fast, yet he shrank from taking his turn, ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... night, some time, I heard a cow bawling around close, and this morning I went out to drive her away; the fence is always down somewhere—I suppose she found a place to get through. So I went out to drive her away." Her eyes dropped, as if she were making a confession of her own misdeed. She clenched her hands tightly ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... now, 'twere Injun Jake does un?" asked Thomas, unwilling to believe his friend and partner capable of such treachery. By disposition Thomas was naturally cautious of passing judgment or of accusing anyone of misdeed without conclusive proof. ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... happened. A cow chewed up the coat of one of my men, which was lying on the ground. In his fury the owner of the coat, on discovering the misdeed, seized his carbine and fired four shots at the cow and four at the farmhouse. None of us could tell where the bullets went. The cow, startled by the shots, gave a few jumps and kicks, then, absolutely uninjured, peacefully continued ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... relief to speak to some one of what she had borne alone for so long. To speak of it, and even to argue round it a little; for, like most wrongdoers, Laura soon acquired a taste for dwelling on her misdeed. And Mary, being entirely without humour, and also unversed in dealing with criminals, did not divine that this was just a form of self-indulgence. It was Cupid who said: "Look here, Infant, you'll be getting cocky about what you did, if ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... but it is just the one which should test your manhood. It is not for one who has been all his life buffeting with the world and ill-fortune, to despond at every mischance or misdeed. Proceed with your narrative; and, in providing for the future, you will be able to forget not ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... he is included in the amnesty,' he said. 'He was not convicted for a political misdeed, but for a military crime involving a breach of trust. He aggravated his offence by escaping. I do not ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... Holmes illustrates the practical as well as the purely ethical value of "honour among thieves," and shows how a comparatively insignificant misdeed may ruin a great and comprehensive plan of crime. To dare to attempt the extermination of a family of seven persons, and to succeed so nearly in effecting it, could be the work of no tyro, no beginner like J. B. Troppmann. It was the act of one who having ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... that moment, a light-minded woman apologizing for the petty misdeed, and paying no heed to the graver wrong that she had done him. Jeannette Willard could have set him right in a word; could have shown him what the girl felt, unavowedly to herself but with underlying conviction, that ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... to be cruel and despotic. He oppressed the men in many ways, hanging and imprisoning at will those who displeased him. Soon the men began to murmur under his tyranny. Black looks greeted Albert de Pierria: he answered them with blacker deeds. At length one day for some misdeed he banished a soldier to a lonely island, and left him there to die of hunger. This was more than the colonists could well bear. Their smouldering anger burst forth, and seizing the tyrant they put him to death. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... Bankside, for the amusement of the Morocco ambassador, many of the nobility who knew the horse, and any others who would pay the price of admission. It seems this animal originally belonged to the Earl of Rochester, and being of a ferocious disposition, had killed several of his brethren; for which misdeed he was sold to the Earl of Dorchester; in whose service, committing several similar offenses, he was transferred to the worse than savages who kept the Bear-Garden. On the day appointed several dogs were set upon the vindictive steed, which he destroyed ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... virile strength. The disease of melancholy had long kept its seat at his heart, and that any shadow of doubt could rest on Rotha as a result of a misdeed, or supposed misdeed, of his had never yet ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... had acted out of character, but herself. She submitted therefore to the penalty she had incurred. If they had any fault, it was only that they would not inform themselves of such circumstances, which would alleviate a little her misdeed; and that supposing her a more guilty creature than she was, they punished her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... who have perpetrated this horrible crime!" added Count Goertz, folding his hands, and uttering a fervent prayer. "O God, reveal the authors of this misdeed; let us find those who have committed this outrage, lest it may remain a bloody stigma on the fame of our country! Have mercy on poor Germany, on whose brow this mark of infamy is now burning, and who will ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... That had been a part of Gaston's plan—he was a blunderer born, and this precious project was worthy of him. This execution of it would surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from the splendid wing of Francis I.—which is the last word of free and joyous invention—to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous pavilion of Mansard, one ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... a position. There was universal sympathy for Lady Arthur, who was in a very precarious state of health. Her worship of her worthless husband was well known; small wonder that his final and awful misdeed had practically broken her heart. The latest bulletin issued just after his arrest stated that her ladyship was not expected to live. She was then in a comatose condition, and all hope had ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... Upton penetrated. "Whether Imogen is so good and lovely that she irritates you is another matter. But, whatever you may think of her, don't,"—and here she paused a little over the proper expressing of Rose's misdeed,—"don't call her a calla lily," she found. And she finished, "Especially not before her mother, who is not so blind to your meaning as we must hope ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... here by "position" and "space." I stand at the window of a railway carriage which is travelling uniformly, and drop a stone on the embankment, without throwing it. Then, disregarding the influence of the air resistance, I see the stone descend in a straight line. A pedestrian who observes the misdeed from the footpath notices that the stone falls to earth in a parabolic curve. I now ask: Do the "positions" traversed by the stone lie "in reality" on a straight line or on a parabola? Moreover, what is meant here by motion "in space" ? From the considerations of the previous ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... uncomfortably upon him. His vanity was not equal to his sense of guilt. The uniform was a livery of dishonor. He could not distort it into a virtue, try as he would. He lacked that cunning artifice which a man of the world possesses, that of winning over to the right a misdeed. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... from my book on the Gipsies in Hungary, it has been sought to pick a quarrel with me, and to make what is called in French une querelle d'Allemand, I can in all good conscience affirm that I feel myself to be guiltless of any other misdeed than that of having feebly reproduced the argument of the kingdom of Jerusalem, set forth by Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), George Eliot (Mrs. Lewes), and Cremieux, three Israelites ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... Pentaur had turned away from his friend, and covered his face with his hands, and he groaned as if he were suffering some frightful physical pain. Nebsecht divined what was passing in the mind of his friend. Like a child that has to ask forgiveness of its mother for some misdeed, he went close up to Pentaur, but stood trembling behind him not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... sorrowfully. She had tried so hard to make Lemuel a good boy, but nothing seemed to touch him, and, young as he was, the neighbours had begun to lay the blame of every misdeed upon his shoulders, and Deacon Croaker predicted with a mournful shake of his head, 'No good will ever come of Lemuel Harding. He's a bad lot, ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... word," said Saffredent, "the only misdeed that I have ever seen punished is foolishness. There is never a murderer, robber, or adulterer condemned by the courts or blamed by his fellows, if only he be as cunning as he is wicked. Oft-time, however, a bad man's wickedness so blinds him that he becomes a fool; and thus, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the misdeed of another,' she ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... difficulty in avoiding friction with native tribes. All Governments have at certain times and places behaved more or less culpably towards them. British annals have been fouled by many a misdeed on the part of harsh officials and grasping pioneers, while recent revelations as to the treatment of natives in Western Australia show the need of close supervision of officials even in a popularly governed colony. The record of German ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose



Words linked to "Misdeed" :   actus reus, misbehavior, liberty, indiscretion, impropriety, ruffianism, infantilism, irregularity, indecorum, rascality, indecency, roguery, mischief, peccadillo, familiarity, delinquency, wrongdoing, devilry, mischief-making, roguishness, mischievousness, shenanigan, wrongful conduct, juvenile delinquency, misconduct, devilment, abnormality, deviltry



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