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Misused   /mɪsjˈuzd/   Listen
Misused

adjective
1.
Used incorrectly or carelessly or for an improper purpose.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Misused" Quotes from Famous Books



... them. All those poor people, for example, how do we know that some of them, if given an opportunity, would not be amazingly worth while! There must be a great deal of brain-power simply chucked away or misused. I know that lots of people believe that men of genius work their way up to their level no matter how low down they begin, but I doubt that, and anyhow I'm not talking of geniuses ... I'm talking of the average clever man ... there ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... says, "The above-mentioned three divisions are called in common speech, coast defense, colonial defense, and defense of commerce." From this classification we are given a hint as to what a sailor means by "naval supremacy," "freedom of the seas," and other terms so misused that to-day they mean nothing. "Coast defense" means defense against invasion; "colonial defense" means the safeguarding of distant possessions against enemy forces; the "defense of commerce" means such supremacy on the seas as will insure absolute ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... interchange of thought, sentiment, and feeling, and which, though so common, is the most perfect of all instruments for the transmission of sound. Yet how deplorably is it neglected! how shamefully is it misused! It can be fully developed and made what it is capable of being only through the influence of the ear. If this organ be neglected, the voice must needs be imperfect. And the voices of many persons are through life imperfect and disagreeable, because ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... back into the twins' room in a body to "trophy" over Bep, whose double misfortune it was not only to be a Partington, but to strenuously deny her kinship with the family of that name. Bessie Madigan could not be got to admit that she had ever misused a word. And though the expressions she coined became part of Madigan history, though each piece was stamped undeniably by poor Bep her awkward mark, she never ceased insisting that they were counterfeit, issued for the express ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... removed. A national system of education, on the other hand, must be aristocratic in the sense that it is selective of the best ability. Lastly, it must be restrictive, in order that the means of higher education may be utilised to the best advantage, and not misused on those who ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... But the climax was reached when he unearthed a barking, snarling old Cynic, Menippus by name, and thrust his company upon me; a grim bulldog, if ever there was one; a treacherous brute that will snap at you while his tail is yet wagging. Could any man be more abominably misused? Stripped of my proper attire, I am made to play the buffoon, and to give expression to every whimsical absurdity that his caprice dictates. And, as if that were not preposterous enough, he has forbidden me either to walk on my feet or to rise ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... my dear husband, if we may use that term; but, at the same time, it is the will of Heaven. We received the property, supposing it to have been our own; we have, I hope, not misused it during the time it has been intrusted to us; and, since it pleases Heaven that we should be deprived of it, let us, at all events, have the satisfaction of acting conscientiously and justly, and trust to Him for ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... wish still that he had faltered in his decision to make no scenario. There is much to be said for the theory that a dramatist should first vitalise his characters and then leave them unfettered; but I do feel that Brown's misused the confidence he reposed in them. The labour of so many years has somewhat the air of being a mere improvisation. Savonarola himself, after the First Act or so, strikes me as utterly inconsistent. It may be that he is just complex, like Hamlet. He does in the Fourth Act show traces of that ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... necessary. But it would not have been emphatically, indeed not in the least necessary, if the domestic and war policy were different. Then the people would not have been disheartened. If the people's holy enthusiasm—so dreaded in Washington—were not so sacrilegiously misused and squandered, volunteers ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... everybody who is not deficient to this or that extent in sense—to use that word in its widest and best interpretation, for understanding and feeling both—can enjoy an artist's work. Nor is there any more important function of the often misused word "education" than "bringing out" this sense when it is dormant, and training and developing it when it is brought out. And few things are more useful for exercise in this way than the under-current of artistry in Cowper's "chit-chat." His letters ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... physical side—we have now to think of the whole nature of the growing boy or girl, and, by the environment and the occupations we provide, to appeal to interests and motives, and give occasion for the right use of powers, that may otherwise be undeveloped or misused. A school cannot now consist merely of class-rooms and playing fields. This is recognised by the addition of laboratories and workshops, gymnasium, swimming-bath, lecture-hall, museum, art-school, music-rooms—all ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... of St. Croix, to see yourself looked up to as a sort of goddess. Your rank, and accomplishments, and beauty—we are talking plain truth now, Miss Danton—all these gifts that God has bestowed upon you so bountifully, you have misused. It doesn't seem so to you, does it? You think you have been very good, very charitable, very condescending. I don't deny that you have done good, that you have been a sort of guardian angel to the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... no longer a king, was led to the scaffold, his great enemy stood at a window of the royal palace of Whitehall. He beheld the poor victim of pride, and an evil education, and misused power, as he laid his head upon the block. He looked on, with a steadfast gaze, while a black-veiled executioner lifted the fatal axe, and smote off that anointed head at a ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... another, no matter how close the relationship. The careful member of the family suffers at seeing his belongings misused and destroyed by the careless one. Discourage borrowing among the members of a family. Teach each one to have all necessary articles of their own and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... echoed to the brawl of the drunkard, the song of the wanton, the jest of the profane, the laugh of the scorner! It was here, perhaps in this very room, that the dread hand of death had struck him; here he had been suddenly called to account for property misused, a life misspent. Saddened by these reflections, she turned from the picture, and taking her Bible from her bundle, she drew aside the tarnished curtains, and seated herself at one of the windows. The moon had by this time risen, and was shedding her soft light on the peaceful landscape without. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... then would think (since such, my power) That e'er I knew an idle hour? So subtle and so swift I fly, Love's not more fugitive than I. Who hath not heard coquettes complain Of days, months, years, misspent in vain? For time misused they pine and waste, And love's sweet pleasures never taste. 160 Those who direct their time aright, If love or wealth their hopes excite, In each pursuit fit hours employed, And both by Time have been enjoyed. How heedless then are ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... brief conversation during which Marie told him that she had been captured by the Americans, had been terribly misused and he had a miraculous escape, he invited her into his cabin where his aged wife gave her something to eat. This breakfast consisted of boiled rice, some fish which the old man had just brought from his set lines ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... stream of people who brushed lightly against him every moment. He lost for the time that admirable gift of sympathetic interest in his fellows which had once been his chief trait. His outlook upon life was changed. To the world which had misused him so he showed an altered front. He scowled at the men, and kept his face turned from the women. What had they done, these people, that they should be well-dressed and merry, whilst the aching in his bones grew to madness, and hunger gnawed at his life strings. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... were yet only Dauphin, an exile from France, and pursued by the whole bitterness of your father's revenge, and all the power of his kingdom, you were received and protected like a brother by my noble master, whose generosity of disposition you have so grossly misused. Farewell, Sire, my ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... most earnestly sought to extinguish when it was kindling. Therefore, in the moment of victory for one bound to me by the closest ties, I was not captivated by the charm either of public office or of gold, while his other friends, although they had less influence with him than I, misused these rewards in no small degree. Nay, even my own property was impaired by a law of Caesar's, thanks to which very law many who rejoice at the death of Caesar have remained at Rome. I have worked as for my own welfare that conquered citizens might ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... your compositor has "misused the queen's press most damnably" in the quotation from Coriolanus prefixed to the second canto, where he converts the "Great Toe of the Assembly" into its "Great Foe." Rap his knuckles with your crutch, old Gentleman; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... heard them, "My Wallace!" to know that she was the loveliest person in all Scotland. But "The Scottish Chiefs" required the leisure of long holiday afternoons, especially as the copy I read had been so misused that I had to spend precious half hours in putting the pages together. It was worth the ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... who not only had been so deeply susceptible to its emotional influences, so conversant with its scientific construction and its multitudinous forms, but who was acknowledged as 'musical' by those who best knew the subtle and complex meaning of that often misused term. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... mansion! woe ne'er enter thee; * Nor be thine owner e'er misused of Fate Excellent mansion to all guests art thou, * When other mansions to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... tell, there were many now standing in the White Saloon who had often, perhaps, in obedience to the king's command, brought suffering and bitter sorrow upon the prince royal; many were there who had humbled him, misused his confidence, and often brought down his father's rage and scorn ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... was wanted, and they are quite equal to every emergency which can arise in a republican autocracy. But for the very reason that a minister is absolutely in the power of his government, the manner in which that power is used is always open to the scrutiny, and, if it has been misused, to the condemnation, of a tribunal higher than itself; a court that never goes out of office, and which no personal feelings, no lapse of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... local yokel mind Paul was a failure, and he knew it. He had gone away, and his brothers and sisters had magnified his successes, and he was back again, a refugee, as it were, from a world which he had apparently misused. He was taciturn and gloomy, and, to the fancy of those who held themselves his equals and superiors, was disposed to give himself airs. Two years with Darco had made him something of an epicure. He had grown ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... still, Thought only of the flame-winged messenger As a dull drudge that should encircle earth With sordid messages of Trade, and tame Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse Not long will be defrauded. From her foe Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch, The Age of Wonder is renewed again, And to our disenchanted day restores The Shoes of Swiftness that give odds to Thought, The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the cataract in the hues of its iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods of great national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root of all evil)[186] can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of man to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been misused, how much more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to Caliban is ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... provided that he who killed his own slave should suffer the same penalty as he who killed the slave of another.[802] This brought the life of every slave into the protection of the state. Under Nero a judge was appointed to hear the complaints of slaves and to punish owners who misused them. Domitian forbade castration. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators. The right to sell female slaves into ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison of misused wine" of the affections. A new person is to me a great event and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of the ICONOCLAST, either personally or by letter, and have him "roar as gently as a sucking dove." In such moods he revealed a character that was really sweet—though I must apologize for that misused word. He was impressed with the pity of life. He loved to toy intellectually with subtleties of thought. He had intuitions in art and poetry, and music touched him truly and deeply. I never have seen such a gentle man with women and his estimate of woman, either ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... yet a more thoroughly dishonest rascal never sailed under the black flag. In the guise of an accredited officer of the government, he committed the crimes he was sent out to suppress; he deceived his men; he robbed and misused his fellow-countrymen and his friends, and he even descended to the meanness of cheating and despoiling the natives of the West India Islands, with whom he traded. These people were in the habit of supplying pirates with food and other necessaries, and they always found their ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... we gallop away with the rescued queen," he added, as seizing Philippa in his arms he dashed around the room followed by his companions. But while the four were celebrating, in a wild dance of "all hands around," the fancied rescue of the misused queen, the tapestry parted and Sir Hugh de Waterton, the governor of the king's ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... remember how the Spanish general Cardona, in 1325, misused his captaincy of the Florentine forces to keep rich members of the republican militia in unhealthy stations, extorting money from them as the price of freedom from perilous or ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... ruination and impoverishment of the cathedrals, an element in the Church's life inseparable from them, and most salutary and useful, ceased to be. The bishops' deprivation of an authority they had too often disgraced and misused, vested the government of the Church in the presbyterate; and the national sentiment approved of the change. But there was no necessity for upsetting the whole cathedral system, and rooting out the whole cathedral staff, because the bishop was turned adrift. Had the Canonries been spared, ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole, in fear Peeped; but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivelled into darkness in his head, And drop: before him. So the Powers who wait On noble deeds cancelled a sense misused; And she, that ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... SPELLER. Designed to teach the correct spelling, pronunciation, and use of such words only as are most common in current literature, and as are most likely to be misspelled, mispronounced, or misused, and to awaken new interest in the study of synonyms and ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... had turned the scalpel upon himself. He was amazed, he was shocked, almost frightened. He could not hide from himself, he was no longer blind, the searchlight of his own analysis was inexorably focused on his own sins and shortcomings—his powers misused, his strength misdirected, his weaknesses indulged, because his strength protected them. In these hours of what he had grown to grimly call his "stock taking," he had become aware of a new and all-important group of men. Where before he had reckoned values ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... to have been printed without some modifying word; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt," Hawthorne says, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between the soul and the truth which it seeks." What injustice, then, that he should be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen for the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... misused your confidence? Hasn't he taken your money?" she asked. "It may be unpleasant for you to make him unbelt, but you're a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... property is often used, only to foster pride and vanity in the temples, even though it is not squandered wantonly. God has commanded, to give to the poor; do it then; and no one shall be scandalized, if that which has hitherto been misused, is turned to the Christian advantage of the poor. For were they who, unknowingly have contributed to their bellies, still here, they would snatch it again out of their hands. But no appropriating hand ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... Egypt. Thus the Roman government, in the plenitude of its power and during the most profound inward and outward peace at home, had its decrees derided by the impotent kings of the east; its name was misused, its ward and its commissioner were murdered. Seventy years before, when the Illyrians had in a similar way laid hands on Roman envoys, the senate of that day had erected a monument to the victim in the market-place, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... about over by now; think it'll adjourn without seeing any more of Red Pepper and his misused dress clothes," he reflected. "I suppose those dancing puppets think they've had a good time, but it isn't in it with mine. Bless the little woman: she's happy over her first boy! He's a winner, too. As for Tom, I could have tipped him ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... and, among Parisians, to pass as one. Both her parents were dead. Before they departed, knowing they could leave their daughter nothing save their debts, they had had her trained as a nurse. But when they were gone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics, intrigued, indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet eyes. There was a scandal; several scandals. At the age of twenty-five she was dismissed from the Municipal Hospital, and as now-save for the violet eyes—she was without resources, as a ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... life.' She did not suffer all these things to excite compassion; that is out of the question. Had she plunged into 'gaiety' on New Year's night, the consequences would be other than instant starvation. They might have been 'guilty splendour.' She had been most abominably misused, and it was to the last degree improbable that any mortal should so misuse an honest quiet lass. But the grossly improbable had certainly occurred. It was next to impossible that, in 1856, a respectable-looking man should offer ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... were torn out of his note-book, which occasions his report to break off abruptly. We cannot but consider this behaviour as more particularly illiberal on the part of men who are themselves a kind of gentlemen of the press; and they ought to consider themselves as fortunate that the misused reporter has sought no other vengeance than from the tone of acidity with which he has seasoned his ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... Bottles. Poor lads! that had taken such a beating that day, such a cudgelling for my sake; and here I stood at my own door in a wonder of amazement, and something of fright, thinking I had heard a banshee wail. The two misused lads had slipped out of my memory as completely as the devil slipped off Macgillicuddy Reeks into the pond beneath when Saint Patrick had sent the holy words ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... after the great officers of the household have feasted, go to the dependants of these; the peelings and guttings, the scum and scour of the broth, are flung farther, to the parasites of the parasites, the ticks on ticks' backs. Round about the Castle of Verona, where Can Grande II. misused the justice which his forefathers had set up, lay the houses of his courtiers; beyond them the lodgings of the grooms; beyond them again, down to the river's brink, were the stews and cabins and unholy dens, whose office was to be lower than the lowest, that ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... of our victorious troops in Belgium, in order to take charge of the guarding and administration of the treasures of art. The cathedral at Rheims has received but slight damage, and would not have been damaged at all had its tower not been misused by the French as an observation station. I should like to see the commander of an army who, for the sake of the safety of a historical monument, would forget the safety of the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... never be found, how cruel would be the injustice done to him! He had not asked to be made heir to the property! It was not his doing. He had been invited to come in order that he might be received as the heir, and since he had come, every one about the place had misused him. The tenants had treated him with disdain; the very servants had been insolent; his Cousin Isabel, when he had offered to share everything with her, had declared that he was hateful to her; and his uncle himself had heaped insult upon injury, and ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... inexplicable and revolting. Even Letheringham was barely civil. It was certain that his place in the Cabinet would be intolerable. He yearned for escape from it all, and the means of escape were now at hand. In after years he knew very well that the shadow of his broken trust, the torture of his misused opportunities, would stand for ever between him and the light. But at that moment he was able to clear his mind of all such disquieting thoughts. He had won Lucille—never mind at what cost, at what ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Trim huff'd and bounced most terribly;—swore he would get a Warrant;—then nothing would serve him but he would call a Bye-Law, and tell the whole Parish how the Parson had misused him;—but cooling of that, as fearing the Parson might possibly bind him over to his good Behaviour, and, for aught he knew, might send him to the House of Correction,—he let the Parson alone; and, to revenge himself, falls foul upon his Clerk, who had no more to ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne

... Andret rode into Cornwall, but Sir Tristram rode after the two knights who had misused him, namely, Sir Sagramour le Desirous, and Sir Dodinas le Savage. And before long he saw them but a ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... approaches his subject with the normal mind of one who sees the world, its customs and rules of conduct, from what is, after all, the point of view of common-sense—another term that has been so grossly misused that the possessor of true common-sense is apt to be regarded as a most uncommon person. It is, in fact, the least common ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... in the naval situation in the North Sea. Duncan, who was blockading the Dutch fleet in the Texel when his own squadron joined the mutineers, continued the blockade with one ship beside his own, signalling all the while as if the whole fleet were at his back; until the misused seamen, who had lately turned their guns upon the Thames, returned to the admiral, and earned his forgiveness by destroying the Dutch at Camperdown as soon as they ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... sheet of paper, and using the numbers that correspond to those on your theme, state in each case the error you made; then correct it, and give your reason for making this correction: for instance, if the mistake is marked W, i.e. a word misused, state whether the word to which the critic objected is not in good usage, or is too often repeated, or does not give the idea intended. Next, supply the proper word and show that it fits the place. Answer any questions asked by the critic and follow out any suggestion given. Put ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... suffrage has its evils, but it undoubtedly acts as a safety-valve. The only cure for the evils which come from ignorance and shiftlessness is the abolition of ignorance and shiftlessness; and this is slow work. Church and school here find enough to keep them busy; but the vote itself, even if often misused, is a powerful educator; and we need not regret that the restriction of the suffrage has come to be ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... articles that have always to be purchased when one is away from home.'" Whereupon he proceeds himself to offer to contribute one-third of whatever sum the parents collect. He does not believe in giving the whole, because experience has taught him that endowments of this kind are commonly misused. The parents must themselves retain an interest in preventing corruption; and this will be the case so long as they are themselves paying their share. In this instance we are, however, to think rather of a high school or school of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... Another instance of a word often misused, correctly employed in the text. Compare note on aggravate, p. 26, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... Your Royal Highness. It would have been a sin to kindle this universal conflagration had it not been taken for granted that its refining flames would prepare the ground for the happiness and peace of the world. For centuries Great Britain has misused her power to increase her own wealth at the cost of others. Unscrupulously she grabbed everything she could lay hands on, and, injuring at every step important and vital interests of other nations, she challenged that resistance which has now shattered her position as a power in the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... that period of disintegration the theatre was not injured materially; and it actually remained almost intact—although variously misused and perverted—nearly down to our own day. The Lords of Baux, in the twelfth century, made the building the outguard of their fortress on the hill-top in its rear; and from their time onward little dwellings were erected within it—the creation of which nibbled away its ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... like "Esq." is often misused. After all titles of courtesy are not obligatory, unless we regard the unwritten law of custom in such ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun

... polluted the house of the Lord which He had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising up betimes and sending; because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till THERE WAS no remedy. Therefore he brought upon him the King of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... second, as it might, then it was pronounced as an effect of God's displeasure, for their abuse of his patience, his minister, and word. As it also was with Israel of old; "They mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy" (2 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... depriving courts of the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes. Such special limitation of the equity powers of our courts would be most unwise. It is true that some judges have misused this power; but this does not justify a denial of the power any more than an improper exercise of the power to call a strike by a labor leader would justify the denial of the right to strike. The remedy is to regulate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... persons, but they still uphold discrimination as to localities.[3] Now, among abuses of sovereign power, this is one of the most galling, for of all taxes the transportation tax is perhaps that which is most searching, most insidious, and, when misused, most destructive. The price paid for transportation is not so essential to the public welfare as its equality; for neither persons nor localities can prosper when the necessaries of life cost them more than they cost their competitors. In towns, ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... men,] let him in writing give assurance that he will never use her as his wife any more; for by this means she may be at liberty to marry another husband, although before this bill of divorce be given, she is not to be permitted so to do: but if she be misused by him also, or if, when he is dead, her first husband would marry her again, it shall not be lawful for her to return to him. If a woman's husband die, and leave her without children, let his brother marry her, and let him call the son that is born to him by his brother's ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... Marengo Todd, most obnoxious of all that hateful crowd of the Cap'n's "wife's relations"—the man who had misused the Cap'n's honeymoon guilelessness in order to borrow money and sell ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... wonderful suggestiveness of it? Don't you feel the presence of the enormous reserve force which lies behind all this? Oh, believe me, John, this is a weapon too mighty to lie unused, and too intelligent to be misused, if the worst come to the worst. After all, as no one knows better than yourself, it's not your own advancement you're looking for, it's that of the state. Well, there may be other agencies, perhaps entirely ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... in this connection that the Kindergarten is stigmatised as "pretty employments devised by adults and imposed at set times by authority," an opinion evidently gained from the way in which the term has been misused in a type of Infant School now ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... deputy marshal, and that outfit took you at a disadvantage and misused you shameful. You're an officer of the law, Tommy, and it was as bad as contempt of court! It's our duty to arrest 'em for it and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... should see this! My own husband betraying the city! Aiding a traitor!" Then she began whimpering through her nose. "Mu! mu! leave the villain to his fate. Think of me if not of your own safety. Woe! when was a woman more misused?" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... other people has misused its riches as England has. With a hypocritically virtuous air, the British Chauvinist has for years been labouring to undermine the German name, and few can have divined with what means he went ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... freedom rise the accusing phantoms of blankets we signed for and failed to return, blankets we misused as carpets, curtains and table-cloths. The bright dawn of the new era is overcast by their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various

... that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut,—he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... the worst misused man in the crew—and this notwithstanding the fact he was by far the best sailor in the port watch. But Fitzgibbon hated "damned niggers," especially did he hate "these spar-colored half-breeds," as he was fond of ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... to consider for a moment the nature of faith. I said a little while ago that the word is very frequently misused. Nine times out of ten, when I hear people using the word "faith" and I see the connection in which they use it, I discover they do not know the meaning of the word. That which has favor generally under the name of faith is simple credulity. It is closing the eyes ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... all the same to you, Mr. Hollins," said I at length, "I'd prefer you to trust to my honour. Whatever quality my brains may have, I'd rather they were used than misused in the way you're suggesting! If it's just this—that you want me ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... leaving the ranch forever; where he had first clasped her in his arms, and stayed. A turn of the head, a moment's indecision, a single glance of a languorous eye, had brought this culmination. And now he stood again before that ruined grille, his house and lands, even his NAME, misused by a mad, scheming enthusiast, and himself a creeping spy of his own dishonor! He turned with a bitter smile again to the garden. A few dark red Castilian roses still leaned forward and swayed in the wind with dripping leaves. It ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... high and we are so low, the country beneath Him that He looks down upon is not flattened to Him, as it is to us from an elevation, but there are greater and smaller men in His sight, too. No epithet is more misused and misapplied than that of 'a great man.' It is flung about indiscriminately as ribbons and orders are by some petty State. Every little man that makes a noise for a while gets it hung round his neck. Think what a set they are that are gathered in the world's Valhalla, and honoured as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... call morality. On the contrary, they are exceedingly strict. Their faults are the faults of the mind, not the faults of the lower desires, of the organs of the different bodies which may gratify them. Their faults are the more dangerous faults of mental powers misused for personal ends. But they realise very well that if they want the mental powers and the higher ranges of those powers, they must be as rigid in the discipline of the lower bodies as any pupil of the White Lodge could be. Take it, then, that to develop in this way, a regimen ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... people may be, a coincidence of favoring conditions may place an opportunity in the hands of a super-leader. If this comes, one can be sure that California will be both very astonished and very misused." ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... Richardson, an elopement is the highest stretch of external excitement Miss Austen vouchsafes. Yet all is drawn so beautifully to scale, as in such a scene as that of the quarrel and estrangement of Elizabeth and Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice," that the effect is greater than in the case of many a misused opportunity where the events are earth-shaking in import. The situation means so much to the participants, that the reader becomes sympathetically involved. After all, importance in fiction is exactly like importance in ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... often misused. One administers a dose of medicine, the laws, an oath, or the government; one does ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the road from which he was rescuing her, saw them first as sweet and merry children bubbling with joy, and again, after the world had misused them for its pleasure, haggard and tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. He wondered if life must always be so terribly wasted, made a bruised and broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... the narrative and the subject of the dedication—but I will not enter into personal themes—else, substituting ******* **** for Ben, and the Honble United Company of Merch'ts trading to the East Indies for the Master of the misused Team, it might seem by no far fetched analogy to point its dim warnings hitherward—but I reject the omen—especially as its import seems to have been diverted to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... pref. p. 5, seq., where I have attempted to prove the spuriousness of the document called the Charter of William I., printed in the ancient 'Laws' ed. Thorpe, p. 211. The way in which the regulation of the Conqueror here referred to has been misunderstood and misused is curious. Lambarde, in the 'Archaionomia,' p. 170, printed the false charter in which this genuine article is incorporated as an appendiz to the French version of the Conqueror's laws, numbering the clauses 51 to 67; from Lambarde, the whole ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... I hope, will not think me either pedantic or supercilious if I insist that no word is more misused by the newspapers, indeed by the whole modern world, than this word statesmanship. It is a word of which the antonym is drifting. It signifies steersmanship, and implies control, guidance, direction, and, obviously, foresight. Now, let us see how this word is used by those who are ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... him he appeared to be well. His mind was unclouded, his pulse quiet. His heart was beating with some slight excess of the natural impulse. He told me he had of late sometimes, but rarely, lost or misused a word; that he forgot names, and numbers, but had always done that; and he promised implicit obedience ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... this palace of misused magnificence, hatred of the enemy is stigmatized as a crime, I must go and breathe a freer air, and bow before the temple of Glory before ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... Dick gave utterance to a howl of execration that made their horses jump, and two tightly rolled sombreros came flying toward Bert's head. But he ducked just in time, and then had a good laugh as Tom and Dick were forced to dismount and secure their misused headgear. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... kept in mind, in considering that God chastens His children, the distinction that while chastenings are sufferings, all sufferings are not chastisements. The expression, "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" (Heb. 12:6), has been widely misused and sadly misapplied. Because David's babe was taken from him as a chastisement (2 Sam. 12:14), many thoughtlessly conclude that every babe's death is meant for a chastisement for the father and mother; and many apply "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" to all of the sorrows and sufferings of God's ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... settle his mind—and then the texts were read aloud to us to make the matter sure; if the slaves themselves had an aversion to slavery they were wise and said nothing. In Hannibal we seldom saw a slave misused; ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... precious gifts of Providence which are liable to be misused and misinterpreted. It has been applied, like oratory, to pernicious, as well as to useful purposes. It has been made to minister to vice, to indolence and to luxury—as well as to virtue, to industry, and to true refinement. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... of this subject impresses upon us the fact that we have lost many of the best words in the Bible because they have been misused and their teaching misapprehended. If you speak of holiness men look askance at you, and yet holiness is simply wholeness or healthfulness and is to the soul what health is to the body. Who, then, would be without it? If you speak of sanctification immediately your hearers imagine you ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... exclaimed the consul, hurriedly adjusting his spectacles. "Are you a Yale man, too? Were you in that crowd? I don't seem to remember any one with red—any one named Maloney. Such a lot of college men seem to have misused their advantages. One of the best mathematicians of the class of '91 is selling lottery tickets in Belize. A Cornell man dropped off here last month. He was second steward on a guano boat. I'll write to the department if you like, Maloney. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... and always being lost.' Her master, fortunately, was one of the kindest of men, an old gentleman of about sixty-five, who wore a white necktie, clean every morning. He was really a GENTLEman in the true sense of that much misused word, and not a mere TRADESman; that is to say, he loved his business, not altogether for the money it brought him, but as an art. He was known far and wide, and literary people were glad to gossip with ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... lost two thousand, then five thousand dollars of the money that had been entrusted to him. For almost a year he had been the treasurer of a New York charitable organization, and the time was near at hand when he must give a report of the money that he had misused. He knew that disgrace, imprisonment, stared him in the face unless he could persuade Mrs. Curtis to advance him five thousand dollars for some charitable purpose, or give it to him for himself. He, therefore, ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... Church. Many people believed these stories, and the result was that the brethren were often annoyed and badly treated. On the night of March 25th, 1832, Joseph and Sidney Rigdon were dragged from their homes by an angry mob into the woods. Sidney was so misused that he was left for dead. Joseph was beaten and stripped of his clothes, and his body was covered with tar. The mob also tried to force poison from a bottle into his mouth, but in this they failed. Notwithstanding this ill treatment, Joseph was able the next day, it ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson

... sentiment—i.e., the personality of man and his feelings brought to bear upon facts. It is also the world's dynamic force. Now, the books of the Bible—especially, perhaps, the magical, beautiful Psalms—are the most tender and sentimental (the word has been misused, of course) that were ever written. They express the thoughts and feelings of generations of men who always did express their thoughts and feelings, and thought no shame of it. And so we northern people, with our passionate inarticulateness, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... away?" asked Peggy softly. "Will they be good to you out yonder? Will they understand what a prize they have got? Washington is far away and so big and so fashionable, they tell me. It would break my heart to have you misused." ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... hands, they have deserved chains, While rage is absent, take some friend the pains. For rage against my wench moved my rash arm, My mistress weeps whom my mad hand did harm. I might have then my parents dear misused, Or holy gods with cruel strokes abused. Why, Ajax, master of the seven-fold shield, Butchered the flocks he found in spacious field. And he who on his mother venged his ire, Against the Destinies durst sharp[163] darts require. 10 Could I therefore ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... and repaired the principal streets. Road commissions were appointed 27 B.C. The Aqua Virgo was built 19 B.C. Many of the collegia, or guilds, founded for the promotion of the interests of professions and trades had been misused for political purposes, and Augustus deprived many of them of their charters. Curae, or commissions, were appointed to superintend public works, streets and the water-supply; and the Tiber was dredged, cleansed and widened, and its liability to overflow reduced. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... that it is somewhat misused. With regard to many of the categories, we are content to lay down the necessity of an abstract idea in order to explain the comprehension of a concrete one. It is said, for example: how can it be perceived that two sensations are successive, if we do not already possess the idea of time? The argument ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... silence with love's cry, Foreseeing how this Babe, born lowlily, Should—past dispute, since now achieved is this— Bring earth great gifts of blessing and of bliss; Date, from that crib, the dynasty of love; Strip his misused thunderbolts from Jove; Bend to their knee Rome's Caesars, break the chain From the slave's neck; set sick hearts free again Bitterly bound by priests, and scribes, and scrolls; And heal, with balm of pardon, sinking souls: Should mercy to her vacant throne ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... Massachusetts, which duly forwarded them—and that was the end of it. Three years had been spent in this catalogue of misadventures, and Captain Driver, his owners, and his men were helpless against such intolerable aggression. They and their kind were a prey to every scurvy rascal who misused a privateering commission to fill his ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... pause to speak of other characteristics of that period of life—such as its enthusiasm, its life by impulse rather than by reason, its buoyant energy and delight in action. All these gifts, so little cared for when possessed, so often misused, so irrevocably gone with a few brief years, so bitterly bewailed, will surely be found again, where God keeps all the treasures that He gives and we let fall. For transient enthusiasm, heaven will give us back a fervour of love like that of the seraphs, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate, I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women, I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth, I see the workings of battle, pestilence, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... restored to health, and kept in good health, through the stimulative effects of satisfactory coitus and the absorption of semen, when both these items are present in perfection. On the other hand, there are many women who suffer all sorts of ills, when these normally beneficial factors are misused or wrongly applied. The results that follow all depend upon the way the act is done, and ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... was given a nervous system of superb quality, which used for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life; misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. She could have been a leader in her community, a blessing in her generation, a builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed to choose the good part which neither loss of servant, death of child nor advancing age ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... of the question-and-answer method.—No matter how good a method may be, there are always some dangers connected with its use, some points at which a teacher needs to be on guard to see that the method is not misused or over-used. The question-and-answer method is ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... fallen into any great sin, would go through everything to pray at the Holy Sepulchre for forgiveness. The Saracens, who had not been unkind to the pilgrims, were subdued by a much fiercer set of Mahometans, the Turcomans, who did everything to profane the holy places, and robbed and misused the Christians who came to worship there. The news of this profanation stirred up all Europe to deliver the Sanctuary from the unbeliever. Monks went about preaching the holy war, and multitudes took the cross, that is, fastened on their shoulder one cut out in cloth, and vowed to win back Jerusalem. ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of misused years, through the tangle of two ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... upset the mind of any person, and at times play the wild with him. Leslie was naturally clear-headed, far-sighted and sagacious; yet, when he permitted his ideas to dwell upon the object of his love, they sadly misused him. At such times he was another person. He lost sight of the obstacles and dangers which would have been apparent to any one gifted with ordinary shrewdness; and he formed plans which, in his sober moments, would have ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... and had been universally recognized as sacred. It was as sacred as any other rights of property. The spoliation was infinitely worse than the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII. He had some excuse, since they had become a scandal, had misused their wealth, and diverted it from the purposes originally intended. The only wholesale attack on property by the State which can be compared with it, was the abolition of slavery by a stroke of the pen in the American Rebellion. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... saith, 'And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling-place.' And did they make them welcome? No, but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words. And was that all? No, they 'misused his prophets.' How long? 'Until the wrath of the Lord arose against them. Till there was no remedy.' See also Jeremiah ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and excesses and every evil by civilisation, so that now we rule them out of every calculation in judging of a circumstance; if we are 'nice' people they are taboo. Supposing we so suppressed and distorted and misused the other two primitive instincts, to obtain food and to kill one's enemy, the world would have ended long ago. We have done what we could to distort those also, but nothing to the extent to which we have debased the ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... usually described as a pitched battle between English and Irish —the turning point in the war of races—and the second foundation of English power. The simple circumstances are these: Ulick III., Lord of Clanrickarde, had married and misused the lady Eustacia Fitzgerald, who seems to have fled to her father, leaving her children behind. This led to an embittered family dispute, which was expanded into a public quarrel by the complaint of William O'Kelly, whose Castles of Garbally, Monivea, and Gallagh, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... "that you have yourself taken from my heart that which was my great anxiety for you, from the day that your good father, who sleeps in peace, committed you to my hands. For all best things, Amyas, become, when misused, the very worst; and the love of woman, because it is able to lift man's soul to the heavens, is also able to drag him down to hell. But you have learnt better, Amyas; and know, with our old German forefathers, that, as Tacitus saith, Sera juvenum ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... With it came also the certainty that Jesus had been in complete possession of those sacred mysteries. There could be no question now that his mission had been woefully misunderstood, often deliberately misinterpreted, and too frequently maliciously misused by mankind. His greatest sayings, teachings so pregnant with truth that, had they been rightfully appropriated by men, ere this would have dematerialized the universe and revealed the spiritual kingdom ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... plenty of wrong turns taken at cross roads, time misused or wasted, gold taken for dross and dross for gold, manful effort mis-directed, facts misread, men misjudged. And yet those who have felt life no stage play, but a hard campaign with some lost battles, may still resist all spirit of general insurgence in the ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... our country, or sitting at our own firesides with wife and child, we should be all that time in heaven. Why not? we are in heaven now—if we had but faith to see it. Oh, get rid of those carnal, heathen notions about heaven, which tempt men to fancy that, after having misused this place—God's earth—for a whole life, they are to fly away when they die, like swallows in autumn, to another place—they know not where—where they are to be very happy—they know not why or how, nor do I know either. Heaven is not a mere PLACE, my friends. All places are ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Sally, married John Turk an' he abused her till she couldn't endure hit no longer. Her pride was mighty high an' she'd hev cut her tongue out afore she'd hev told her neighbours ther way she war misused—but I knowed hit." As he paused his eyes darkened into sombre memory. "I reasoned with John an' he blackguarded me, too, an' ferbid me ter darken his door.... Deespite thet command I feared fer her life an' I fared over thar ... I went ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... the nation at large. With the nation the faults of the bill lay not in this detail or that, but in the character of the Ministry which proposed it. To give the rule and patronage of India over to the existing House of Commons was to give a new and immense power to a body which misused in the grossest way the power it possessed. It was the sense of this popular feeling which encouraged the king to exert his personal influence to defeat the measure in the Lords, and on its defeat to order his Ministers ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green



Words linked to "Misused" :   ill-used, put-upon, victimized, used, victimised, abused, exploited



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