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Collapse   /kəlˈæps/   Listen
Collapse

verb
(past & past part. collapsed; pres. part. collapsing)
1.
Break down, literally or metaphorically.  Synonyms: break, cave in, fall in, founder, give, give way.  "The business collapsed" , "The dam broke" , "The roof collapsed" , "The wall gave in" , "The roof finally gave under the weight of the ice"
2.
Collapse due to fatigue, an illness, or a sudden attack.  Synonym: break down.
3.
Fold or close up.  "Collapse the music stand"
4.
Fall apart.  Synonyms: break down, crumble, crumple, tumble.  "Negotiations broke down"
5.
Cause to burst.  Synonym: burst.
6.
Suffer a nervous breakdown.  Synonyms: break up, crack, crack up, crock up.
7.
Lose significance, effectiveness, or value.  "The stock market collapsed"



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"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books



... more congenial to me. Alas! if I could really devote myself to these interests, if I could at last conquer my inertia.... But no! I shall remain to the end the incomplete creature I have always been.... The first obstacle, ... and I collapse entirely; what has passed with you has shown me that If I had but sacrificed my love to my future work, to my vocation; but I simply was afraid of the responsibility that had fallen upon me, and therefore I am, truly, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... blows from the axe he carried made the rough mud wall collapse, and, without a moment's hesitation Hickathrift forced his way through the hole he had broken, and from which a great volume of smoke ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... without scientific help, he constructs churches, roads, and bridges. However, although these circumstances are so favorable for the development of the ability of the priest, yet it would be better for the buildings themselves if they were executed by professionals; for the bridges collapse readily, the churches often resemble sheep-folds, the more pretentious have at times most extravagant facades, and the roads quickly deteriorate again. However, each one does as well as he can. Almost all of them ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... that match bowled. He was prowling in sequestered lanes and broken-down barns out of bounds on the off-chance that he might catch some member of his house smoking there. As if the whole of the house, from the head to the smallest fag, were not on the field watching Day's best bats collapse before Henderson's bowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and unexpected fifty-three at the end of the ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... language, and it is a statement of the universal law of human history that, after any epoch of great aspirations and strong excitement of the noblest parts of human nature, there has always come a reaction of corruption and a collapse from weariness. What did 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' end in? A guillotine. What do all similar epochs end in, when they do not take the Christ to march ahead of them? An utter disgust and disillusion, and a despair of all progress. That is why wild revolutionists in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... way, but we didn't before we came West. It swells the streams, which in summer are nothing but trickles, to rushing torrents in no time. Bridges snap like twigs, dams burst, telegraph lines collapse; rivers even change their courses entirely, if they feel like it, so that it would really be a good idea to build extra bridges wherever it seemed that a temperamental river might decide to go. I have heard of a farmer who wrote ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... led into the conservatories. Before even, however, the quickest could reach the spot, the curtains were thrown back and Mrs. Rheinholdt, her hands clasping her neck, her splendid composure a thing of the past, a panic-stricken, terrified woman, stumbled into the room. She seemed on the point of collapse. Somehow or other, they got her into ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is in a most melancholy condition: in the last stage of collapse. I have prodded it out from its socket with my knife and set it flabbily on a penny—so it must work to its very last drop of life. That will not be long delayed. I shall suddenly be plunged into darkness and must undress ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... comfortable bedroom. He and Louisa were to live for a time—until they had chosen their shop and furnished it—with the Clays. This arrangement was very disagreeable to Jim, but it did not occur to him to demur; his whole mind was in such a state of collapse that he allowed Louisa and her people to make what ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... fully into what light there was, falling mistily through lattice and door. And at the look in her eyes, young Dr. Vivian's hands fell dead without a struggle at his sides. His tall figure seemed mysteriously to shrink and collapse inside his clothes. He said, oddly, nothing whatever. Yet an hour's oration could not have conveyed more convincingly his sense of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... and he spoke more seriously, "pardon my giving you advice, but you have had a hard morning and you will feel better, later on, for a little food. As for me, I have had nothing since yesterday, and shall collapse without it. Suppose I go to the house and scrape up some sort of a lunch. Won't you come ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... of lull, after the erection and before the collapse of the Napoleonic edifice in Italy. If no thinking mind believed that edifice to be eternal, if every day did not add to its solidity but took something silently from it, nevertheless it had the outwardly ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... trouble Beatty had to face when he became President was too much traffic, too little rolling stock, an almost tragic scarcity of labour and the McAdoo award in wages. Railroading costs were at an apex before even munitions costs began to be. The collapse of railways in the United States drove a vast amount of traffic over Canadian roads. The two younger transcontinental systems were on the verge of receiverships. The brunt of the burden fell upon the old C.P.R., which at that time, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... I may as well go home now, boys," said the old gentleman; "as my wrist is paining me considerably. I only want to add that this has been a red day in my calendar. The collapse of the old ice-house is going to prove one of those blessings that sometimes come to us in disguise. I only regret that two little girls were injured. As for myself, I am thoroughly ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... waste-basket. His head went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in a smile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line before he sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while he had the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted another cigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank except ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly scourged by the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack. However, it was done, and after it was done came the collapse. Don't be horrified when I tell you that for the whole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I almost lived on brandy. Appetite for food I had none, but I forced myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant craving for brandy ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... the emperor that edicts regarding ceremonial, music, and expeditions to quell rebellion go forth. When it is being ill governed, such edicts emanate from the feudal lords; and when the latter is the case, it will be strange if in ten generations there is not a collapse. If they emanate merely from the high officials, it will be strange if the collapse do not come in five generations. When the State-edicts are in the hands of the subsidiary ministers, it will be strange if in three ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... better times. ("Oh! oh!") But, come what would, he would hold fast by his principles, which were, "No Compromise, No Meeting Halfway, No Arbitration, No Concession!" Men might starve, Trade collapse, the Country come to ruin, the Company disappear in Bankruptcy, but he cared not. The Directors had put their foot down, and, whether right or wrong, whatever happened, there they meant, with a good down-right national and pig-headed obstinacy, to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... his work developing the history and character of Conover and his crew of professional perjurers there was a sudden collapse in the machinery of the Bureau of Military Justice. Holt was compelled not only to repudiate the wretches by whose hired testimony he had committed more than one murder through the forms of military ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... farewell visit to Lord Lytton. I found him in a state of deep distress and depression. To a man of his affectionate disposition, the fate of Cavagnari, for whom he had a great personal regard, was a real grief. But on public grounds he felt still more strongly the collapse of the Mission and the consequent heavy blow to the policy he had so much at heart, viz., the rectification of our defective frontier, and the rendering India secure against foreign aggression—a policy which, though scouted at the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... riding three-fourths of a mile through a heavy rain, to call upon Garfield. This looked as if somebody had surrendered. As a matter of fact Conkling did not meet Garfield in private, nor did they discuss any political topic,[1729] but the apparent sudden collapse of Conkling's dislike supplied Garfield's opponents with abundance of powder. Meantime the loss of the September election in Maine crushed Republican hope. A victory had been confidently expected, and the failure to secure it, although ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... more colourless classes of the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white man, with a tendency to the grey or the drab. Yet he will explain, in serious official documents, that the difference between him and us is a difference between "the master-race and the inferior-race." The collapse of German philosophy always occurs at the beginning, rather than the end of an argument; and the difficulty here is that there is no way of testing which is a master-race except by asking which is your own race. If you cannot find out (as is usually the case) you ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... much as L7 10s. a foot was paid. The hanging up of the northern land claims, and the inability of the Government to buy native land while it refused to let private persons do so, joined, with a trade collapse in Australia, to make the condition of the Auckland settlers soon almost as unenviable as that of their fellow-colonists ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... Merchant, which claimed acceptance in the name neither of Justinian nor of the Church, but of universal reason. It was amply proved afterwards that the foundations of the Roman system were strong enough to carry the fabric of modern legislation. But the collapse of the Roman power in western Christendom threw society back into chaos, and reduced men's ideas of ordered justice and law to a condition compared with which the earliest Roman law known to us ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... legitimate or illegitimate means; a very successful way, I have observed, of prolonging, as a rule, such a duet indefinitely. The more enlightened actor in any such little human comedy, if he be gifted with insight, will collapse into the wings, and let the two young idiots have the whole stage to themselves. As like as not they'll weary of the play, and of themselves, if left alone. No harm will come of all the sentimental strutting and the romantic attitudinizing, other than viewing the scene, later, in perspective, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... What do you mean?" I shrieked, with my card-house beginning to collapse, while the Eau de Cologne lost its savor in my nostrils. "Has a codicil been found to Captain Noble's will, as in the last number of ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... development since first holding multiparty elections in 1991, but deficiencies remain. International observers judged elections to be largely free and fair since the restoration of political stability following the collapse of pyramid schemes in 1997. In the 2005 general elections, the Democratic Party and its allies won a decisive victory on pledges of reducing crime and corruption, promoting economic growth, and decreasing ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of Suffering Creek that the awakening had come. It had come with an overwhelming rush of horror which, in the midst of her dressing, had sent her reeling and fainting upon the bed from which she had only just risen, and where for two hours she had subsequently lain in a state of collapse. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... would be, Lady Violet, if our modern controversialists had those accomplishments, and if Mr. Max Muller could, literally, "double up" Professor Whitney, or if any one could cause Peppmuller to collapse with his queer Homeric theory! Plotinus had many such arts. A piece of jewellery was stolen from one of his protegees, a lady, and he detected the thief, a servant, by a glance. After being flogged within an inch of his life, the servant (perhaps to save the remaining inch) ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... the press think that our calling is recognised, and must be recognised as a profession. Talk of permanence, Sir Marmaduke, are not the newspapers permanent? Do not they come out regularly every day,—and more of them, and still more of them, are always coming out? You do not expect a collapse ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... held good on her part when it was a question of business. From his first words, she had found a weak point in the plan, and had attacked him with such plainness that the financier, seeing his enterprise collapse at the sound of the mistress's voice-like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the Jewish trumpets—had beaten a retreat, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... reprisal followed the collapse of the agitation; none indeed were needed. The revolutionary epidemic, which had spread hitherward from France, found our body politic in too sound a condition, and could not fasten on it; and the subsequent ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... man, his utter collapse and his evident fear of me, did not suit me. Treachery comes through that kind of fear; I meant to rule him in another and safer manner. I meant to be absolutely honest ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... that seemed to shrink and collapse from this gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light, redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and motionless; and it was perhaps the contrast of these two things—the ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Those yellow shades make me bilious." The glory of full day flooded the lovely banks, but the light pained our eyes, and we sought refuge in the cool, dim shades of the parlour. Our conversation was exactly like that of passengers on board ship when they are just about to collapse. The minutes seemed like hours; our limbs were listless, as if we had been beaten into helplessness. So passed one doleful hour. I mentioned breakfast, and Bob shuddered, while Coney rushed from the room. What a pleasant thing is a ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... papers even, by horrid possibility; even now a few intimates of the McNaughton family had been warned "not to kill the Governor's wife." He would surely tell the girl the next time he could find her alone, and then the absurdity would collapse. But the words would not come, or if he carefully framed them beforehand, this bold, aggressive leader of men, whose nickname was "Jack the Giant-killer," made a giant of Lindsay's displeasure, and was afraid of it. He had never been afraid of anything before. He would screw his courage up ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... a bewildering half-hour of bustle and hustle, found themselves, with all their belongings intact, safely in the train for Paris. Irene had caught brief glimpses of the child whom she named "Little Flaxen," whose mother, in a state of collapse, had been almost carried off the vessel, but revived when she was on dry land again: a maid was in close attendance, and two porters were stowing their piles of hand-luggage inside a specially reserved compartment. "The cross ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... claim to be the greatest of magicians in whose presence Thallus has remained for any considerable time upon his feet. For he is continually lying down, either a seizure or mere weariness[15] causing him to collapse. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... as well as to the fellaheen. He showed how great a triumph for the mine was this vast increase of business; and the stark necessity of impressing the new customers by the promptitude and uniform excellence of all shipments. He pointed out the utter collapse to this and to all the rest of the mine's connections which a strike would ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... looked up at the little clock ticking against the wall, and saw the time he gave an exclamation of surprise and leaped to his feet. Just as he opened the outer door of the office he saw a horseman leap from a winded pony in front of the building. He saw the animal collapse and sink to the ground, and then he recognized the pony as Brazos, and another glance at the man brought recognition of ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... crampons, and relieved us of some weight. The Base Camp was reached at half-past twelve. One of the first things Tucker did on returning was to weigh all the packs. To my surprise and disgust I learned that on the way down Tucker, afraid that some of us would collapse, had carried sixty-one pounds, and Gamarra sixty-four, while he had given me only thirty-one pounds, and the same to Coello. This, of course, does not include the weight of ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... materials we know of would be capable of bearing it. Were the ring formed of the toughest steel that was ever made, the pressure would be so great that the metal would be squeezed like a liquid, and the mighty structure would collapse and fall down on the surface of the planet. It is not credible that any materials could exist capable of sustaining a stress so stupendous. The law of gravitation accordingly bids us search for a method by which the intensity of this ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... the life is to be welcomed. Nevertheless, the attempt to build up a scheme of morals, without Christian grace to give the spiritual power to resist the evil forces which will try to frustrate the effort, can at best only bring about a superficial improvement, liable at any time to collapse. However, these indications of an improved type of schoolboy give hope for an improved type of man, which may mean much for the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... speechless, motionless. She had not expected either his prompt denial of her position or its powerful effect on him physically. Never before had she seen John show any symptoms of illness, and his sudden collapse of bodily endurance, his evident suffering and deliberate walk frightened her. She feared he might have a fit and fall downstairs. Colonel Booth had found his death in that way when he heard of his son's accident on the railway. "All Yorkshiremen," she mused, "are so full-blooded and hot-blooded, ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... thought he was going to collapse, so great was the relief and the slackening of tension. He did laugh out, but caught ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... easier to deal with." And after talking French very vivaciously and boldly with a man from Lyons, she hurried back to the West End, and to the numerous engagements which naturally take up much of one's time when Lent is approaching, and dilatory hospitality is stirred up by the startling collapse ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... to take fire slowly. She might be innocent enough in asking him to give her notice before he joined her at the seaside—she might naturally be anxious to omit no needful preparation for his comfort. Still, he didn't like it; no, he didn't like it. An appearance as of a slow collapse passed little by little over his rugged wrinkled face. He looked many years older than his age, as he sat at the desk, with the flaring candlelight close in front of him, thinking. The anonymous letter lay before him, side by side with his wife's letter. On a sudden, he lifted his gray head, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... most surprising features of the general election in Ireland is the complete collapse of the Liberal party. Not a single Liberal has returned for any constituency. Saturday's dispatches announced the defeat of Mr. Thomas Lea in West Donegal, and Mr. William Findlater in South Londonderry. That settles it. The list is closed. Every Liberal candidate who tried ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... of the first rank are a part of a large number. Many of them and many more, are given in Prof. Townsend's "Collapse of Evolution," McCann's "God or Gorilla," Philip Mauro's "Evolution At the Bar," and other anti-evolution books. Alfred McCann, in his great work, "God or Gorilla," mentions 20 of the most prominent ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... but, seeing how many plants which have not changed hands since their establishment, twenty or thirty or forty years ago, have grown continually bigger and finer, it seems much more probable that our ignorance is to blame for the loss of those species which suddenly collapse. Sir Trevor Lawrence observed the other day: "With regard to the longevity of orchids, I have one which I know to have been in this country for more than fifty years, probably even twenty years longer than that—Renanthera coccinea." The finest specimens ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and then an exhausting dance, were sufficient ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... her fervency, her inconstancy of purpose, as well as her tendency to collapse under pressure. Physically he had always been of slender figure, with weak lungs, and these weaknesses he had used to free himself from work, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... not a trace of his misfortune to be read in his face. But Decker, the victor, moved away like a man oppressed, pale, staggering, half-fainting, as though the nervous strain had brought him to the edge of collapse. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... Red River Settlement and partly in England, was sold for little more than one dollar a yard. The L2,000 of capital was all swallowed up, L4,500 of debt to the Hudson's Bay Company was never paid, the scheme became a laughing stock in England, and failure and misery followed its collapse in ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... drop down there, Giraffe, since you were so kind as to promise, and hook me on that gay fellow I nearly had two different times. Let me feel how heavy he is? I'd go myself, but chances are I'd sure collapse down there, because already I'm feeling weak again, ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... heart full of anguish, he had sought to reason away the dread that Mabel Manderson had known too much of what had been intended against her husband's life. That she knew all the truth after the thing was done, he could not doubt; her unforgettable collapse in his presence when the question about Marlowe was suddenly and bluntly put had swept away his last hope that there was no love between the pair, and had seemed to him, moreover, to speak of dread of discovery. In any case, she knew the truth after reading what ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... in detail here. He also moved into another garret, this time in Green-Arbour Court, Fleet Street, in a wilderness of slums. The Coromandel project, however, on which so many hopes had been built, fell through. No explanation of the collapse could be got from either Goldsmith himself, or from Dr. Milner. Mr. Forster suggests that Goldsmith's inability to raise money for his outfit may have been made the excuse for transferring the appointment to another; and that is probable enough; but it is also probable that the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... Yuen-nan, which are sometimes indescribable. Earthen floors are saturated with damp filth and smelling decay; there are rarely the paper windows, but merely a sort of opening of woodwork, through which the offensive smells of decaying garbage and human filth waft in almost to choke one; tables collapse under the weight of one's dinner; walls are always in decay and hang inwards threateningly; wicked insects, which crawl and jump and bite, creep over the side of one's rice bowl—and much else. Who can describe it? It makes one ill to think ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... a life of gratified whims, to lose the very thing she wanted most of all—that for which she would willingly have given up every other desire her heart had ever coined—was a thought hardly to be endured. She felt that the world would surely collapse. It could not, would not, should ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... out of other ventures. But the collapse of the mine was a sad blow to me. As the president, I might have had something from the wreck, but I did not. I suffered with the rest. Now, may I ask what I can ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... longer had a living parent as she stood by the poor woman's bedside, and she was enabled, as much perhaps by the necessity incumbent upon her of attending to the wretched woman as by her own superior strength of character, to save herself from that prostration and collapse of power which a great and sudden blow is apt to produce. She stared at the woman who first conveyed to her tidings of the tragedy, and then for a moment seated herself at the bedside. But the violent sobbings and hysterical ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Gate, no good, as it turned out, would have been effected. Nicholson's columns, as related, had been forced to retire; the gate would have remained closed, and possibly the undertaking would have resulted in a more serious collapse than the ineffectual ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... changed the faith I held while wandering in the forests and bogs of Siberia. It sustained me then—it sustains me now. The great Powers of Europe are bound to disappear—and the cause of their collapse will be very simple. They will exhaust themselves struggling against their proletariat. In Russia it is different. In Russia we have no classes to combat each other, one holding the power of wealth, and the other mighty with the strength of numbers. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... ruin. In June, 1783, the Estates of Holland appointed a Commission to examine into the affairs of the Company. Too many people in Holland had invested their money in it, and the Indian trade was too important, for an actual collapse of the Company to be permitted. Accordingly an advance of 8,000,000 florins was made to the directors, with a guarantee for 38,000,000 of debt. But things went from bad to worse. In 1790 the indebtedness of the Company amounted ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... remarks that one may often hear, concerning elderly ladies, that in their youth in the country, they suffered, almost to collapse, from haemorrhages from the genital passage, because they were too modest to seek medical advice and examination; he adds that it is extremely rare to find such an attitude among our young women to-day. (S. Freud, Zur Neurosenlehre, 1906, p. 182.) It would be easy to find evidence of the disappearance ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... supposed by all who are watching us that I am goading you to desperation. Act, then, your part. Up, and attempt to strike me. Then when I return the blow—and I shall strike heavily that no make-believe may be suspected—collapse on your oar pretending to swoon. Leave the rest to me. Now," he added sharply, and on the word rose with a final laugh of derision as ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... great exaltation of spirits there had succeeded an equally dismal depression. It was my turn now to weep, and I dimly remember any Father coming into the room, and my being carried up to bed, in a state of collapse and fatigue, by the silent and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... found, those efforts proved futile. He can only reiterate the warning words of Mr. Albert Hartshorne:—“I know not whether such aid will be forthcoming; but of two things I am quite certain: if nothing is done the chapel must collapse, and that very soon; and when it does so fall, it will become such an utter ruin that it would be quite impossible to put ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... began abusing one of the native drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his melodious voice in tones of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... collapse. A yawning gulf had been driven into the earth, and the hut—originally a solid structure—having been hurled bodily skyward, shattered to atoms, and inextricably mixed in its parts, had come down again into the gulf ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... restlessness of us, their children? As soon as we meet them in historic times, they are always moving, migrating, invading. Were they not doing the same in pre-historic times, by fits and starts, no doubt with periods of excitement, periods of collapse and rest? When we recollect the invasion of the Normans; the wholesale eastward migration of the Crusaders, men, women, and children; and the later colonization by Teutonic peoples, of every quarter of the globe, is there anything wonderful in the belief that similar migratory ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... that the N.C.O. is a corporate joke, sprung on the dear public by the Trinidad Redwood Timber Company to get the said dear public excited, create a real-estate boom, and boost timber-values. Before the boom collapses—a condition which will follow the collapse of the N.C.O.—the Trinidad people hope to sell their holdings and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... wonderful. Though there was no noise, smoke nor flame, the steel plate seemed to crumple up, and collapse as if it had been melted in the fire. There was a jagged hole through the center, but some frail boards back of it were not ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... Sunday-school teachers waltzed together until the long room shook, and the very bunting on the walls waved and fluttered with the gyrations of those religious dervishes. Nobody knew—nobody cared how long this frenzy lasted—it ceased only with the collapse of the musicians. Then, with much vague bewilderment, inward trepidation, awkward and incoherent partings, everybody went dazedly home; there was no other dancing after that—the waltz was the one event of the festival and of ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... 15th, when the Kaiser mounted a high observation post to watch the launching of the offensive which was to achieve his crowning victory, but proved the prelude of the German collapse, the conflict has raged continuously and with uninterrupted success for the Allied Armies. The Kaiser Battle has become the Battle of Liberation. The French bore the initial burden of the attack, but since August 8 "hundreds of thousands of unbeaten Tommies," to quote the phrase of a French military ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... true, and favouring her already with marked respect; but Francoise d'Aubigne,—thoughtful and meditative as I knew her to be, could certainly not have failed to appreciate the voluptuous and inconstant character of the monarch. She had seen several notorious friendships collapse in succession; and it is not at the age of forty-six or forty-seven that one can build castles in Spain to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of liturgical use on Sundays have been made legal by Act of Parliament, but in all important respects the Prayer Book of Victoria is identical with the book set forth by Convocation and sanctioned by Parliament shortly after the collapse of the Savoy Conference. Under no previous lease of life did the book enjoy anything like so long a period of continued existence. Elizabeth's book was the longest lived of all that preceded the Restoration, but that only continued in use five-and-forty years. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... in operation three months before it became evident that the principle on which it was founded, if not rejected, would insure its defeat. It was that principle of State sovereignty, for which the States seceded, more than the superior resources and numbers of the Government, that caused the collapse of the Confederacy. The numbers were relatively about equal, and the military resources of the Confederacy were relatively not much inferior to those of the Government. So at least the Confederate leaders thought, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... at a cottage on the edge of St. Leonard's Forest, and, despite our increasing leakage, made shift to climb the ridge above Instead Wick. Knowing the car as I did, I felt sure that final collapse would not be long delayed. My sole concern was to run our guest well into the wilderness ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... witnessed the decline of Webster's political career, owing to his truckling to the Southern proslavery element, and to his increasing intemperance. To see the placid, transcendental Emerson "fighting mad," flaring up in holy wrath, read his criticisms of Webster, after Webster's defection—his moral collapse to win the South and his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. This got into Emerson's blood and made him think "daggers and tomahawks." He has this to say of a chance meeting with Webster in Boston, at this period: "I saw Webster on the street—but he was ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... truth would have had an ugly sound had it come out. This was why he had spread the story of the guide's defection, which he now regretted. It might not have been strictly necessary, but he had reached the trappers' camp on the verge of a collapse, too far gone to reason out the matter calmly. A man in that condition could hardly be held accountable for his action. Besides, it was incredible that the guide's statement that he had made the journey without replenishing ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... saved from starvation. Cherubini's creative genius was never more brilliant than at this period, as the wonderful two-act ballet, Anacreon, shows; but his temper and spirits were not improved by a series of disappointments which culminated in the collapse of his prospects of congenial success at Vienna, where he went in 1805 in compliance with an invitation to compose an opera for the Imperial theatre. Here he produced, under the title of Der Wassertrager, the great work ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... stared. When he came to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened—unless one observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks—while her mother, who showed not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... and squares. Traddles lived in Gray's Inn: Traddles who was in love with "the dearest girl in the world"; Tom Pinch and his sister used to meet near the fountain in the Middle Temple; Sir John Chester had rooms in Paper Buildings; Pip lived in Garden Court at the time of the collapse of Great Expectations; Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn had their queer domestic partnership in the Temple. The scene of the murderous plot in "Hunted Down" is also laid in the Temple, "at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river," ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood

... sensitive—aware of the collapse of my family, of my own shortcomings, of my lack of opportunity," she said, staring with immense grey eyes at the wall behind him. "I was just beginning to feel I could be somebody, could mean something to someone I—liked—when you dropped ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin

... through a half-open door, staggering like besotted revellers. At the corner we stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient driver looked round from his box with morose scorn at our efforts to get her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a half faint. Facing us, the youth in knickerbockers remained as mute as a fish, and, till he jumped out with the latch-key, sat more still than I would have ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... weak reeds," Chafi Three said. "Creatures who collapse with terror at the mere projection of a Zid can be of ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee

... Reformed sect. Especially these discreditable internal dissensions were a cause of deep humiliation and of anxious concern to all loyal Lutherans. To the Romanists and Reformed, however, who united in predicting the impending collapse of Lutheranism, they were a source of malicious and triumphant scoffing and jeering. A prominent theologian reported that by 1566 matters had come to such a pass in Germany that the old Lutheran doctrine ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... wooden beams; the amount of material to be extracted from a given spot is scientifically fixed; it is shattered by minute blasts of dynamite and, once the trolley cars have carried it away, the wooden supports are removed and these cavities filled up by the collapse of the roof. By this means accidents are forestalled such as that which took place some years ago when, owing to an oversight of some subordinate left in charge, an immense mass of mountain fell in, entombing about three hundred miners, whose ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... had scarcely known calamity, and when it occurred he was prepared for it neither by experience nor a correct view of moral duty. On the morning of his wife's funeral, such was his utter prostration both of mind and body, that even his own sons, in order to resist the singular state of collapse into which he had sunk, urged him to take some spirits. He was completely passive in their hands, and complied. This had the desired effect, and he found himself able to attend the funeral. When the friends of Ellish assembled, after the interment, as is usual, to ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... Work and deep Sleep. Fighting to keep the Snake at bay. No, fighting to get away from it—there was no keeping it at bay—nothing but shrieking collapse when It came.... ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... Bent and Dora had returned to the hotel. Mrs. Hauksbee had come out of the Valley of Humiliation, had ceased to reproach herself for her collapse in an hour of need, and was even beginning to direct the affairs of the world ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling

... accession of the youth Charles I in 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached its climax. Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in their island communities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be greatly increased as a means of preventing industrial collapse, but a delegation of Jeronimite friars and the famous Bartholomeo de las Casas, who had formerly been a Cuban encomendero and was now a Dominican priest, appeared in Spain to press the same or kindred causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned in industrial enterprises, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... the American quickly. "Before your collapse you were a confirmed alcoholic, but you are slightly different now. Your eight days of fever, when Hogan and I had to hold you in bed, must have burned you out, cleaned up your whole system. You are nearer normal now than you were. You have a fresh ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... were like men who, falling to with axe and pick to demolish a building, had seen that same building collapse beneath their feet. They had sat quietly by all the day watching the events, content that these would shape themselves in accordance with their will. Young Escanes from time to time fingered the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... weary of life, as our unbelief would phrase it, let us bethink ourselves that it is in truth the inroad and presence of death we are weary of. When most inclined to sleep, let us rouse ourselves to live. Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented; we need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent. Discontent, I repeat, is the life in us that has not enough of itself, is not enough to itself, so calls for more. He has the ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... think the flare of that irony which lighted her face so often immeasurably worse than any other expression she could assume; but this lack-lustre stare and dismal collapse of feature ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... in some ways a singularly unlucky man. A place for him, and that a high one, ought to have been quite secure in the next Unionist Cabinet. Now he will never hold office under any government, and yet no one can say that his collapse was in any way his ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind, in what squalls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what pacing of streets and plunging into public-houses, it would profit little to relate. His misery, if it were not progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish; for in proportion as grief and indignation ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the air, even if it must be so at night, she can stand a great deal, especially if you insist that she shall sleep her usual length of time. If she will not listen or obey, she runs a large risk, and is very apt to collapse as the patient recovers, and to furnish her family with a new case of illness, and the doctor and herself with some variety of disorder of mind or body arising out of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... to laugh at the woes of sea-sickness will perhaps remember how, on occasion, the sudden collapse of a fellow-voyager before their very eyes has caused them hastily to revise their self-confidence and resolve to walk more humbly for the future. Even so it was with Edward, who turned his head aside, feigning an interest in the landscape. It ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... whispered one. A confusion of thoughts was in his brain. Already almost unconsciously he had laid the foundations of a dream fabric, and these were destroyed suddenly, burying him for a moment in the collapse. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... countries and is expanding its presence in world markets. From 2001-03 real wages fell and Brazil's economy grew, on average only 2.2% per year, as the country absorbed a series of domestic and international economic shocks. That Brazil absorbed these shocks without financial collapse is a tribute to the resiliency of the Brazilian economy and the economic program put in place by former President CARDOSO and strengthened by President LULA DA SILVA. Since 2004, Brazil has enjoyed more robust growth that yielded increases in employment and real wages. The three ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... another element in his character, which those who knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard, —that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self- distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... highest pitch of splendour; and painting was at the outset of the course which was to culminate, more than two hundred years later, in Titian and Raffaelle. But in no field did the energy of the thirteenth century manifest itself as in that of politics. With the collapse of the Empire came the first birth of the "nationalities" of modern Europe. The process indeed went on at very different rates. The representative constitution of England, the centralised government of France ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... with the doctor, for she was on the point of collapse at recognizing them. But in a few seconds she recovered herself, though she was deathly pale and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... etiquette, the people are not able to formulate new rules for new conditions. To the Westerner, on the other hand, these seem to follow from the simplest principles of common sense and kindliness. The general collapse of etiquette in Japan, which native writers note and deplore, is due, therefore, not only to the withdrawal of feudal pressure, but also to introduction of strange circumstances for which the people have no rules, and to the fact that ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... slept a wink the previous night. Instead, they had kept themselves awake with hot tea. Fagged out after a day of hard hunting, each was convinced his life depended on wakefulness. West's iron strength had stood the strain without any outward signs of collapse, but Whaley was stumbling with fatigue as he dragged himself along beside ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... last, the hanging Virgin, holding up the Babe above the devastation below, in dumb protest to God and man. The gilded statue, which now hangs at right angles to the tower, has, after its original collapse under shell-fire, been fixed in this position by the French Engineers; and it is to be hoped that when the church comes to be rebuilt the figure will be left as it is. There is something extraordinarily significant and dramatic in its present attitude. Whatever artistic defects ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... period there was considerable activity in East Prussia, and the Courland coast was bombarded by the German Baltic squadron. There was every indication that Austria was near collapse, but all the time the Germans were preparing for a mighty effort, and the secret was kept with extraordinary success. The little conflicts in the Carpathians and in East Prussia were meant to deceive, while a great army, with ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... he at length consented—as he eventually always did to everything on which the Queen had set her heart. He yielded all the more readily now, because he did not believe in the possibility of my ascent; he was convinced that even though the balloon should mount a few feet into the air, it would collapse immediately, whereon I should fall and break my neck, and he should be rid of me. He demonstrated this to her so convincingly, that she was alarmed, and tried to talk me into giving up the idea, but on finding that I persisted ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... Civil War it was alternately held for the Parliament and the king, and in 1546 it was regarded as Charles's last hope in Somerset. Its resistance was stout; for 160 days Colonel Wyndham baffled the assaults of no less an adversary than Blake, and only surrendered on the total collapse of the Royal cause (p. 17). The grounds are entered under a gateway (Perp.), built by Sir H. Luttrell. The oldest part of the castle lies to the R. of this, flanked by two round towers (13th cent.), built by Reginald Mohun. (Note door ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade



Words linked to "Collapse" :   descent, sink, debacle, go over, abandon, subsidence, heat hyperpyrexia, collapsible, turn up, crumple, happening, concertina, give up, drop like flies, weaken, change integrity, breakdown, slump, implosion, sickness, occurrent, fold up, prostration, crumble, suffer, fold, get, natural event, deflate, illness, sustain, unwellness, heatstroke, go off, implode, shock, slide down, algidity, crack-up, fiasco, buckle, fall over, have, pop, change, occurrence, malady



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