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Complement   /kˈɑmpləmənt/   Listen
Complement

verb
1.
Make complete or perfect; supply what is wanting or form the complement to.



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"Complement" Quotes from Famous Books



... your wife. I was so proud of her when you brought her home! Of all the women in the world, I felt she was The One Woman God had meant for the mother of your children. In every way, mentally and physically, she is your complement and mate. Your differences only make the needed contrast ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... continent (1518) with a little band scarcely more than half the complement of a modern regiment, Cortez prepared to traverse an unknown country, thronged by savage tribes with whose character, habits, and means of defense he was wholly unacquainted. This romantic adventure, worthy of the palmiest days ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... a nucleus for the crew of another new destroyer turning up in American waters. Their places are taken by drafts from the training-bases in Europe. The destroyer referred to as turning up in this country makes up her complement from the battleships and other naval units here. The training-bases in this country are established at Newport, Chicago, San Francisco, and Pelham Bay, N.Y. Here the men have many months' instruction. As ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... claims of justice afford presumptive proof, hard to be resisted, of a future state wherein there are compensations for the unmerited ills, a complement for the fragmentary experiences, and rectification for the wrongs, of the present life.15 God is just; but he works without impulse or caprice, by laws whose progressive evolution requires time to show their perfect results. Through ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... muralla, esquina a los oficios,"—and the black machine moves on, without look, word, or sign of intelligence. In New York, your Irish coachman grins approval of your order; and even an English flunkey may touch his hat and say, "Yes, Mum." But in the Cuban negro of service, dumbness is the complement of darkness;—you speak, and the patient right hand pulls the strap that leads the off horse, while the other gathers up the reins of the nigh, and the horses, their tails tightly braided and deprived of all movement, seem as mechanical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... at home—sufficiently long to recount my adventures in the Mediterranean, and to grow tired of doing nothing—I joined my new ship at Spithead the day after she came out of harbour. I found Pearson on board, but some of the officers had not joined, nor had the ship her full complement of men. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... place, handing over the old issues to representatives of the second line, and in the second place, assembling all the new saddlery (which was issued in small pieces) and packing it into sacks ready for the voyage. The rest of the saddlery was put on board without being unpacked. Then our complement of machine guns was increased from two to six per regiment, which meant taking from each squadron 1 officer and 20 men to form the new personnel, and replacing them in the squadrons with men from the second line. By this arrangement we lost also our adjutant, Captain M.E. Lindsay, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... Guantanamo, Cuba, on the 21st of July, 1898; and landed at Guanica, Puerto Rico, on the 25th of the same month. The troops sailing with him numbered 3,554 officers and men, mainly composed of volunteers from Massachusetts, Illinois, and the District of Columbia, with a complement of regulars in five batteries of light artillery, thirty-four privates from the battalion of engineers, and detachments of recruits, signal, and ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman

... kingdom of love—but I could have wished it had been for an object that at least could have understood its value and pitied its excess. You say her not coming to the door when you went is a proof—yes, that her complement is at present full! That is the reason she doesn't want me there, lest I should discover the new affair—wretch that I am! Another has possession of her, oh Hell! I'm satisfied of it from her manner, which had a wanton insolence in ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt

... thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, until he finds that he is the complement[65] of his hearers;—that they drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... in a quiet and easy way, only give them time enough, so connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past by almost imperceptible gradations—a view which finds large and increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of which Darwins theory is the natural complement. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... sailing in a small schooner, a vessel of only seventeen tons burthen, with no cabin but a mere hole, scarcely large enough to receive our baggage. The berths, for there were two, had but one mattress between them; however, a foresail folded made up the complement. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... is with the roast or game. Here the crisp, green salad herbs, delicately acidulated, complement and correct ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill

... is magic? According to the dictionary definition—and this will serve us for the present—it is the (pretended) art of producing marvellous results by the aid of spiritual beings or arcane spiritual forces. Magic, therefore, is the practical complement of animism. Wherever man has really believed in the existence of a spiritual world, there do we find attempts to enter into communication with that world's inhabitants and to utilise its forces.Professor LEUBA(1) and others distinguish ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... ladyship sought the maid's person. A nervous hand fumbled the folds of her obi (sash). "Ah! The treasure house is not far off. Such valued gems are carried on the person." Thrusting her hand into the gentle bosom the himegimi drew forth the guilty complement. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... believe. That, and the fact that the full complement of the battleship's crew cannot be at once made up. There will be changes made in the crew of the Colodia when she returns from her European cruise. If you youngsters do well on the Kennebunk some of you may soon be gunners' mates. The present ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... foreboding: "Competent observers have remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.' Organized but four weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted with their officers. In addition ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... I think," said Roswell Gardiner, with the frankness of his nature, utterly free from the slightest suspicion that he was communicating with one in the interests of rivals. "My mates have not yet joined me, and I am short of my complement by two good hands. Had that fellow Watson stuck by me, I would have given him a look at water ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... complement, I suppose," said Thorn. " 'Item, two lips indifferent red; item, two gray eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins —royal stuff; though .. sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due complement of places—four in all, including one for Mrs. Primmins—in, or upon, the fast family coach called the "Sun," which had lately been set up for the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... after daylight and Lord Hastings set about his preparations with vigor. Before evening the lads found themselves aboard one of the German submarines that had been captured and brought to the surface. The vessel was manned with a full complement of British underwater sailors. Edwards was ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake

... hath eaten up my sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love, and I profess requital to a hair's breadth; not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, complement, and ceremony of it. But are you sure 5 ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... elements, should not gain a rough perception of an external order much more complete than our auditory perception, which is necessarily so fragmentary. This supposition appears, indeed, to be the necessary complement to the idea first broached, so far as I am aware, by Professor Croom Robertson, that to such animals, visual perception consists in a reference to a system of muscular feelings defined and bounded by ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... well with your defensive works. We shall be able by mid-summer, to give you a sufficient number of gun-boats to protect Charleston from any vessels which can cross the bar; but the militia of the place must be depended on to fill up the complement of men necessary for action in the moment of an attack, as we shall man them, in ordinary, but with their navigating crew of eight or ten good seamen. I salute you ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... myself more; so, one evening, I packed up all that I could call my own, and all that I could lay my hands on belonging to my honoured parent, and shipped on board a Genoese vessel, which was then standing out of the harbour. She was a large ship, mounting twelve long guns, with a complement of sixty men; being what is termed in European countries a "letter of marque." This implies that she fights her way without convoy, capturing any of the enemy's vessels she may happen to fall in with, who are ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... woman were evidently made for each other, and have shown equal capacity in the ordinary range of human duties. In governing nations, leading armies, piloting ships across the sea, rowing life-boats in terrific gales; in art, science, invention, literature, woman has proved herself the complement of man in the world of thought and action. This difference does not compel us to spread our tables with different food for man and woman, nor to provide in our common schools a different course of study for boys and girls. Sex pervades all nature, yet the male and female tree and vine and shrub ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... your overwhelming love of plastic beauty," I replied; "he fell in love with a dominant personality, the complement of his ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... Commandante's house, the barracks, the store house, the shops and the jail. The government buildings as a rule were whitewashed. The chief object of the Presidios was to give protection to the Missionaries and guard them against the Indians. The full complement of soldiers in each Presidio was two hundred and fifty—but the number rarely reached as high as this. The soldiers in those early days were not, as a rule, of the highest standing. Many of them were from the dregs of ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... of which was hid from view by the simple covering of green baize, which moreover constituted the garniture of the windows, were to be seen other products of their art. Here stood upon an elevated stand a model of a bark canoe, filled with its complement of paddlers carved in wood and dressed in full costume; the latter executed with such singular fidelity of feature, that although the speaking figures sprung not from the experienced and classic chisel of the sculptor but from the rude scalping knife ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... detailed measurements it must have been an enormous tiger. The number of caudal vertebrae in the tiger and lion should be twenty-six. I now regret that I did not carefully examine the osteology of all short-tailed tigers which I have come across, to see whether they had the full complement of vertebrae. The big tiger in the museum is short by the six terminal joints three inches. This may have occurred during life, as in the case of the above-quoted panther; anyhow the tail should, I think, be thrown out of the calculation. Now as to the measurement of the head and body, I ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... Greek loveliness of body that created in me a convulsion. From the day that we met, from the hour that I heard her laugh at her uncle's objection to mixed bathing, I was as one possessed; and my triumphant joy may be judged, though never measured, when I perceived that Jenny recognized in me the complement and precious addition unconsciously ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... clearly. An object being 5 feet distant, and another at 10 feet from the observer, a line between the eyes will subtend a very much larger angle in the former than in the latter instance: hence the inclination of the axes of the eyes is the chief criterion by which people with the usual complement of those useful organs judge of proximity: but if half a dozen houses are made to appear as if 10 or 12 feet distant (by means of the increase of the angle between the points of formation of the pictures), while the angle which each picture subtends is relatively small; it is clear that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... is a man so ample In every complement of entertainement, That guests with him are, as in Bowers enchanted, Reft of all power ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... the fire test is the phoenix (a figure much used by the alchemists). The member has the task of changing himself into the phoenix. Not only [Symbol: Fire] belongs to the work, however, but also the act must be guided by intelligence; activity and receptivity must complement each other. Therefore the member has to know both pillars thoroughly. And therefore he becomes also the already mentioned androgynous material, Rebis. That is only to be attained when the elemental propensities are overcome, therefore the figure Rebis ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... There was nothing of rogue in himself, so there could be nothing of it in his bride. Elfishness, tricksiness, freakishness, were antipathetic to his nature; and he argued that it was impossible he should have chosen for his complement a person deserving the title. It would not have been sanctioned by his guardian genius. His closer acquaintance with Miss Middleton squared with his first impressions; you know that this is convincing; the common jury justifies ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... enlisted men, and other expenses. As soon as his company was raised, he was ordered to join, as he thought expedient, either the westward or eastward detachment. The date of his orders is April 18, 1771. Captain Campbell had expressed himself as being able to raise the complement.[27] The records do not show whether or not Captain Campbell and his company took an ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... this To send down sum ham and beef to me—two pound will be Enuff—or a quarter kitt off pickuld sammun, if you can git it, and I wish you may; and sum german silver spoons, to complement prince Allbut with; and, praps, as he and his missus knos they've come to Take pot-luck like, they won't be patickler, and I think we had better order the beer from the Jerry-shop, for owr own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various

... of the pool I wasn't dead by any means. And when the surgeons got done with me, there were the fingers gone from my hand, that scar down the side of my face . . . and, though you'd never guess it, I've been three ribs short of the regular complement ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... fitting out at Boston, one small annoyance ruffled the auspicious undertaking. Three different crews were signed before a full complement could be persuaded to tarry in the forecastle. The trouble was caused by a fortune-teller of Lynn, Moll Pitcher by name, who predicted disaster for the ship. Now every honest sailor knows that certain superstitions are gospel fact, such as the bad luck ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... off the polluted leg, and that a crab had been seen thus to deprive itself of all its eight limbs, and after a bath to hobble back to its hole with the aid of its claws, to remain until it had grown a complement of supports. I wondered why it did not content itself with washing instead of mutilation. To the biblical expounder it was an apt illustration of "cutting off an offending member," ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... had him at her sweet mercy. He was helpless. She was easily the stronger. He perceived then, what many a husband dies without having perceived, that his wife had a genuine individual existence and volition of her own, that she was more than his complement, his companion, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... of the people by the people for the people." This is a sufficiently compact statement of it as a political arrangement. Theodore Parker said that "Democracy meant not 'I'm as good as you are,' but 'You're as good as I am.'" And this is the ethical conception of it, necessary as a complement of the other; a conception which, could it be made actual and practical, would easily solve all the riddles that the old sphinx of political and social economy who sits by the roadside has been proposing to mankind from the beginning, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... passengers, Mr. Holdfast, who commanded the long boat, retained Harry, the professor and Clinton. Six sailors, including Jack Pendleton, made up the complement. ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger

... selection of pleasures and the cultivation of tastes much wisdom is shown in choosing in such a way that each should form a complement to the others; that different pleasures should not clash, but rather cover different areas and seasons of life; that each should tend to correct faults or deficiencies of character which the others may possibly produce. The young man who starts in life with keen literary ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... to be supplied from the Scorpius complement. One landing boat, large, model twenty-eight. Eight each, oxygen cutting unit gas bottles. Four each, chemical cutting unit ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... richest man the poorest men,[n] to maintain the balance. Such is the arrangement of persons which I recommend, and my reason you will know when you have heard the nature of the entire system. {18} I pass to the distribution of the ships. You must provide a total complement of 300 ships, forming twenty divisions of fifteen ships apiece, and including in each division five of the first hundred vessels,[n] five of the second hundred, and five of the third hundred. Next, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... a critical condition. The complement of torpedo vessels has been reduced from 15 to 25 per cent. to get men to commission new boats. This reduction in personnel is a serious handicap, reduces the efficiency of the destroyers, affects contentment, and prevents the boats being kept in good ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... convenient to you; and if I cannot introduce you to your old acquaintance and recollections, I shall have great pleasure in substituting new ones,—Mrs. Lowth and eleven of our baker's dozen of olive-branches, our present complement in the house department, my eldest boy being in the West Indies, and my third having returned to the military college last Saturday, his vacation furlough having expired. As the summer begins to borrow now and then an autumn evening, the sooner you will favour me with your ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... going to like New York. It had a great name and was really a great place, but the very bigness of it frightened her and made her feel alone, for she knew that there could not be so many people together without a deal of wickedness. She did not argue the complement of this, that the amount of good would also be increased, but this was because to her evil was the very present ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... the trust—is gathering strength to-day. It is the unification of wage-workers. We stand in relation to it as the men of the '80's did to the trusts. It is the complement of that problem. It also has vast potentialities for good and evil. It, too, demands understanding and direction. It, too, will not be stopped by ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... itself, where (in the war of lust) the American missionaries were once shelled by an English adventurer, and once raided and mishandled by the crew of an American warship; add the practice of whaling fleets to call at the Marquesas, and carry off a complement of women for the cruise; consider, besides, how the whites were at first regarded in the light of demi-gods, as appears plainly in the reception of Cook upon Hawaii; and again, in the story of the discovery of Tutuila, when the really decent ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... residences. As Brant stood on the river's bank, he saw a medley of craft afloat in the current: ships of the fur traders laden with peltry; transports coming and going with food for the garrisons, or new men for the service; sloops-of-war, lying at anchor with their complement of guns, grim ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... but only as a whole; and, manifestly, the only Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul, or George Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be he who he may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our finiteness, and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in Scripture under the symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being accomplished—as any one may perceive who reads aright the progressive enlightenment of conscience and intellect which history, through many vicissitudes, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is ...
— Symposium • Plato

... is in building arks—arks of levium, the metal that floats. I have sent broadcast plans for such arks. They can be made of any size, but the larger the better. In my own ark I can take only a selected number, and when the complement is made up not another ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... many tried soldiers, both foot and horse, was about to sail out, giving great hope to his citizens, and no less alarm to his enemies, upon the sight of so great a force. And now the vessels having their complement of men, and Pericles being gone aboard his own galley, it happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it grew dark on a sudden, to the affright of all, for this was looked upon as extremely ominous. Pericles, therefore, perceiving the steersman seized with fear and at a loss what ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Spy. After the Mooncat she's the fastest job in the Fleet. She's got guns, and her normal complement is twenty ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz

... where he served during the rest of the action. Two officers and five men had also escaped in one of the Tecumseh's boats, which was towing alongside, and four swam to the fort, where they were made prisoners; so that twenty-one were saved out of a complement of ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... H. Ismay, of Liverpool, the spirited shipowner, then formed, in conjunction with the late Mr. G. H. Fletcher, the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited; and we were commissioned by them to build six large Transatlantic steamers, capable of carrying a heavy cargo of goods, as well as a full complement of cabin and steerage passengers, between Liverpool and New York, at a speed equal, if not superior, to that of the Cunard and Inman lines. The vessels were to be longer than any we had yet constructed, being 420 feet keel and 41 feet beam, with 32 ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... the ideal individualist is more productive for human society than the ideal communist, who would lead us to the mechanical perfection of the bee-hive, and at the very least he is indispensable as corrective and complement. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... ethical bearing. Its complement is his assertion that virtue is knowledge. Here again the gods are the necessary presupposition and determination. That the gods were good, or, as it was preferred to express it, "just" (the Greek word comprises more than the English word), was no less a popular dogma than the notion ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... was protested by William Weldon the Commander of the men who settled this property. At the time, late 1619 and early 1620, Capt. Samuel Mathews was established at "Harrowatox" on an excellent site where he had at least two surplus houses. Weldon, with a small complement of his college tenants, was assigned to be "in consortship with Captaine Mathewes" ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... today many hundred thousand souls. In place of a single hamlet, in the smallest corner of which the members could have congregated, there now are about seventy stakes of Zion and about seven hundred organized wards, each ward and stake with its full complement of officers and priesthood organizations. The practise of gathering its proselytes into one place prevents the building up and strengthening of foreign branches; and inasmuch as extensive and strong organizations are seldom met ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage

... the Arabic. The complement of the amplitude, or an arc between the meridian of a place ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... toleration and legal protection to the three leading Christian cults, and even to Judaism, would of itself already satisfy the most sensitive of religious demands; owing to the donation furnished by the State and communes and by private individuals, the necessary complement ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... rope into the lifeboat came the second mate with the captain's child in his arms. Up the stiff half-frozen rope again he climbed and brought down the captain's wife; and some more of the crew rapidly came the same way. Then the lifeboat having their full complement of people on board, some of whom were perishing with the cold of that awful night, made for the land; still holding the cable from the ship they drifted, or rather were hurled ashore, in the darkness, pelted by hail and snow and ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... far. On one occasion, when the hotel was thronged with guests, one of the waiters was suddenly indisposed, and although there were fifty waiters in the hotel, the landlord thought he must have his full complement, or his "system" would be interfered with. Just before dinner-time, he rushed down stairs and said, "There must be another waiter, I am one waiter short, what can I do?" He happened to see "Boots," the Irishman. "Pat," said he, "wash your hands ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum

... Ravana, the Satan of the Hindus. This evil spirit, by standing on his head in the midst of five fires ten thousand years in succession, had secured from Brahma a promise that no god, demon, or genius should slay him. By this extraordinary feat he had also obtained nine extra heads with a full complement of eyes, ears, and noses, hands and arms. Mindful of his promise, Brahma was at a loss to grant this request until he remembered he had never guaranteed Ravana should not be attacked by man or monkey. He, therefore, decided ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Portsmouth and Gosport, and although men were at that moment very hard to get, several of the ships in harbour being so short-handed as to be unable to go to sea, it was no sooner made known that we required a few more hands to complete our complement than we had more offers than we had room for. We remained at Spithead only three days, during which we replenished our stock of water, provisions, and ammunition, and then we were once more dispatched by the admiral to ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... choir. The music in this book will show what sort of a hymnal might be made on my principles, while the notes at the end of the volume will illustrate almost every point in this essay which requires illustration, besides many others. As a complement to this essay and for advertisement of the Hymnal I here give the prefaces of that book, which ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... see anyone there I recognized, but I heard some of them talk. One was taking a little veronal; another said something about heroin. It was high-toned hitting the pipe, if you call it that—a Turkish bath, followed by massage, and then a safe complement of anything you wanted, taken leisurely by these ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... done wrong since Christmas twelvemonth: the present afternoon's proceedings— including as they did the almost certain sacrificing of a sister to a violent death, together with the probable destruction of a father, no longer of an age to trifle with apoplexy—being but a fit and proper complement to what had gone before. It would be long, as Robina herself that evening bitterly declared, before she would again give ear to the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... recognize No bounds that Nature clearly has defined, Saying, with no uncertain tone, to one, Do this, and to the other, Do thou that? The rearing of young children and the care Of households,—can we doubt where these belong? Woman is but the complement of man And not a monstrous contrariety. Co-worker ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... had a little yellow house dog which invariably gave the alarm if we boys undertook to slip away unobserved after night had set in—as we sometimes did—to go coon hunting. One night my brother, John Johnston, and I, with the usual complement of boys required for a successful coon hunt, took the insignificant little cur ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... called by the Company "the inseparables." Imagine Damon and Pythias, Euryalus and Nisus, Orestes and Pylades at twenty-two—one joyous, loquacious, noisy, the other melancholy, silent, dreamy; sharing all things, dangers, money, mistresses; one the complement of the other; each rushing to all extremes, but forgetting self when in peril to watch over the other, like the Spartan youths on the sacred legions—and you will form an idea ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... Near by, the wife of a professor at the University, young and distinguished and but yesterday welcomed everywhere, sat dumb in misery, her eyes wide open, her thoughts upon the child she had left. Not among these did Alban find Lois, but in the second of the great stalls still waiting its complement of prisoners. He wondered that he found her at all, so dark was this place; but a sure instinct led him to her and he stopped before he had ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... for more than an allusion to what is the complement of this arrogance, and is a most pregnant subject of thought, whenever the fortunes of the Ottomans are contemplated; I mean the despair which takes its place in their minds, consistently with the barbarian temperament, upon the occurrence of any considerable reverses. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... her flirtatious soul. Avid of admiration and experienced in most of the arts and wiles necessary to secure this from contiguous males, small wonder that the unsophisticated Larry became her easy prey long before she had brought to bear the full complement ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... the mainland and throughout the islands of Torres Strait. Five is the greatest number of wives which I was credibly informed had been possessed by one man—but this was an extraordinary instance, one, two, or three, being the usual complement, leaving of course many men who are never provided with wives. The possession of several wives ensures to the husband a certain amount of influence in his tribe as the owner of so much valuable property, also from the nature and extent of his connections ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... could be at once made. The frame of a vessel of twenty tons was put on board each ship, to be set up, if found necessary, to serve as tenders, or to enable the crews to escape should the ships be wrecked. The Resolution had a complement of one hundred and twelve officers and men, and the Adventure of eighty-one. Fishing-nets and hooks of all sorts, articles to barter with the natives or to bestow as presents, and additional clothing for the crews were put on board. Medals also were struck, with the likeness of his Majesty ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... chief officers, Bourlamaque, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now preserved in a private collection. I have examined them, and obtained copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on the persons and events ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... they learned to handle theirs. As each succeeding boat was launched its crew took it out and practiced with it under the tutorage of those who had graduated from the first ship, and so on until a full complement of men had ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... plants, a white-jacketed negro appeared with a noble smile and a more important tray, whereon tinkled bedewed glasses and a crystal pitcher, against whose sides the ice clinked sweetly. There was a complement of straws. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... Quaker, a native of the city of Penn. Captain Marlin had been for many days and nights considering whether it were best to carry a complement of wine for himself and friends, and grog for his crew. He had that morning met Simon Prim, and asked his opinion, which he gave as above; yet Captain Marlin seemed undetermined. He felt it to be an important question, and he desired to ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... contrivance. Thus, the human body is penetrated by the passive and powerless skeleton, which is a mere weight upon the muscles, a part of the burden that, nevertheless, it enables them to bear. The lever of Archimedes would push the planet aside, provided only it were supplied with its indispensable complement, a fulcrum, or fixity: without this it will not push a pin. The block of the pulley must have its permanent attachment; the wheel of the locomotive engine requires beneath it the fixed rail; the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... clogs. When the festive miner rejoices, his dancing would lack the distinguishing clatter which is its richest charm, without alder grown on the banks of the Donegal Finn. The countries were made to run in harness. One is the complement of the other. The brainy dwellers of Hibernia know this, and stick like limpets to England. Only the visionary, the lazy, the ne'er-do weels, the incompetent, the disorderly, the ignorant, the ambitious, want Home Rule. The contemners of law and order want ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... success of this trip would depend even more on the machine's worth as a bomber than on her speed and climbing qualities. It was, therefore, to be undertaken at night, with a full complement of real bombs to drop upon headquarters at Compiegne. Herter had suggested this. Daylight wouldn't have suited ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... very old, and very infirm and dirty, and in every way bore out the character of a squalid Irish goblin. Besides, she was already heavily laden with passengers, and, with the addition of the other steamer's people had now double her complement; and our friends doubted if they were not to pass the Rapids in as much danger as discomfort. Their fellow-passengers were in great variety, however, and thus partly atoned for their numbers. Among them of course there was a full force of brides ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Complement of human kind, Holding us at vantage still, Our sumptuous indigence, O barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense The constant mountain doth dispense; ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... felt tolerably forlorn and desolate when, upon his last evening there, he was led away by his new master, whose name, it seemed, was Beeching, and locked in a small inclosure of high iron rails with nine other dogs, the remaining complement of the team in which he was now to serve. However, for a while he was kept too busy here to spare much thought for the matter of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... continued. "I know that it is a matter which can scarcely be decided off-hand. In my own case, it cost me some thought before I ventured to make the suggestion. I am not an emotional man, but I am conscious in your presence of the great evolutionary instinct which makes either sex the complement of the other." ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... daring, and fond of fighting. On high ground just outside the city stood the palace of that great personage, the Resident, the representative of British power and authority. It stood in the midst of spacious grounds, with its due complement of outbuildings, and the grounds were enclosed by a wall—a wall not for defense, but for privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air, but the whites were not afraid, and did not feel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... converted into the Mint. The door-ways and window-frames are, generally, throughout the streets of Vienna, of a bold and pleasing architectural character. From one till three, the usual hour of dining, the streets of Vienna are stripped of their full complement of population; but from three till six; at the latter of which hours the plays and opera begin, there is a numerous and animated population. Notwithstanding the season of the year, the days have been sometimes even sultry; while over head has constantly appeared one of the bluest ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... sparingly, and it is not easy to lay down very definite rules as to what is allowable and what not. It is best not to deviate from the usual order of words unless one can find a precedent in one of the Dramas. Some inversions, however, are quite allowable. Thus one may put the complement of a predicate, e.g. an infinitive, an accusative, or a participle, at the beginning ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... June the 3d found tired eyes aboard the Wolverine. Every officer in her complement had kept a private and personal lookout all day for some explanation of the previous night's phenomenon. All that rewarded them were a sky filmed with lofty clouds, and the holiday ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the tail, we don't thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it to its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one side of the medal—the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three legs still go kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, the dolphin flirts ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... Dependance, and Attendance, where he talks of a Body worn out with Poxes ill cured, and Shooes with Dependance, and Attendance. Not having the Book by me, I am forced to quote at Random, but I hope the courteous Reader will bear me out. He complains of it again in this Treatise, and makes a Complement to Mr. Austin, Mr. Braund's late Servant; who keeps the Braund's Head in New Bond-street, near Hanover-Square; a House of great Elegance, and where he used frequently ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous

... smoothly out from the dock to which it had been made fast. Behind it the water boiled as if it had been stirred by some invisible furnace. The graceful lines of the boat, its manifest power and speed, formed a fitting complement to the bright sunshine and clear air which rested over the waters of the ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... or completes, is a Complement. As Cornwallis completes the expression of the act by naming the thing acted upon—the object—we call it the Object Complement. Connected objects completing the same verb form a Compound Object Complement; as, Washington ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... too, commended him to the starved graces of his spare host. It was as characterless as it was possible for fabric to be, and considered with his meager physique and vacant physiognomy, was a fitting complement to both; an adjustment of component detail too consistent to have been the needless aspect it ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... natural causes operating through long ages of time, it will be little disposed to allow that living beings have made their appearance in another way, and the speculations of De Maillet and his successors are the natural complement of Scilla's demonstration of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... had suppressed a whole Pandora's box of loves and graces who, when the lid was lifted by the Regent, flew, a happy crew, to fix themselves in dainty decorative effect, trailing with them their complement of accessory flowers, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... of reverence. The lack is indubitably there—is necessarily there; for what the Englishman does not commonly understand is that that lack is not a positive quality in itself. It is but the reflection, as it were, or complement, of the national self-reliance. How should the American in his new country, with his "Particularist" spirit, his insistence on the independence and sovereignty of the individual, seem to Europeans other than ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... province, and when he removed from Arima he left nearly all his old retainers behind him. The newly instituted daimyo, on the contrary, who came to occupy the vacated province brought with him a full complement of his own followers. To make room for these new retainers the old ones were displaced placed from their dwellings and holdings, and compelled to become farmers or to take up any other occupation which they could find. Like the samurai of ...
— Japan • David Murray

... out in several places. Down into the bowels of the ship plunged the resolute, undaunted heroes who remained behind, the chosen complement reserved for just such an emergency by ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... definition, nevertheless. It was found that among the saints there were certain weaker brethren who did not want a hymn to their ale. One of these was Johnny Niplightly, the rural constable, who was the complement of Katherine in the choir, being leader of the singing among the men. He was a tall man with a long nose, which seemed to have a perpetual cold. Making his rounds one night, he turned in at "The Manx Fairy," when Caesar and Grannie were ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... as "most ver' beautiful fella" was not without some justification. Regular, clean-cut features, long and thin, were the complement of a slight well-knit figure, of which the only criticism one could make was that it looked slippery. Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back a long, supple, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... very fluctuateing they may probably be so reinforced as to render it too hazardous to risque only the Two frigates in this River viz: the Confederacy of 36 Guns & the Deane of 28 Guns the latter of which wants a great number of hands to make up her complement. ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... radioactivity. As radium is constantly giving off electronic emanations and changing its atomic structure thereby, so katultron is constantly giving off ultronic emanations, and so changing its sub-electronic form, while metultron, its complement, is constantly attracting and absorbing ultronic values, and so changing its sub-electronic nature in the opposite direction. Thin plates of these two substances, when placed properly in juxtaposition, with insulating plates of inertron between, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... lost their expectation of the one, and to a large extent their faith in the other. But we shall not understand Scripture unless we seek to make as prominent in our thoughts as on its pages that second coming as the complement and necessary issue of the first. It stands stamped on every line. It colours all the New Testament views of life. It is used as a motive for every duty, and as a magnet to draw men to Jesus Christ by salutary dread. There is no hint in my text about the time of the Lord's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... satisfy a true woman's yearnings for conjunction with a kindred nature? Nothing! He was all outside as to good. A mere selfish, superficial, speculating man of the world. While she had a heart capable of the deepest and truest affection. Would he make the fitting complement to her life? Alas! No! ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... in bringing about the perilous position in which Conde speedily found himself, necessarily led Madame de Longueville to the commission of another error, in some sort compulsory, and which was the complement of the first; it is certain that more than anyone else she incited her brother to take the resolution he ultimately determined upon adopting. La Rochefoucauld says so, and all contemporary writers repeat the same. We will merely make this essential remark: Madame de Longueville had at first very ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... James Terry's account of the facts he had placed before the jury, and when the police informed the coroner that they proposed to place George Higgins himself in the witness-box, as his evidence would prove, as it were, a complement and corollary of that of Terry, the ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... indeed, the counterpart or complement of another phenomenon with which we are more familiar. While prices are actually rising, profits, as we have come to recognize, necessarily rule high, because every trader or manufacturer is constantly in the position of selling at a higher price-level, stock which he purchased, or goods made from ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... troops at Neustadt? Altringer, But yesterday, stood sixty miles from there. Count Galas' force collects at Frauenberg, 15 And have not the full complement. Is it possible, That Suys perchance had ventured so ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... our being the existence of an internal reality—the internal man. Analysis of these different manifestations has permitted us to penetrate its nature. Externally it is the exact image of the person of whom it is the complement. Internally it reproduces the mould of all the organs which constitute the framework of the human body. We see it, in short, move, speak, take nourishment; perform, in a word, all the great functions of animal life. The extreme tenuity of these constituent ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... with 175 riflemen, far short of his hoped-for complement, set out from the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville). The small number can be attributed to the fact that the men, like the assembly, had to sign-on without knowing their destiny. A few slipped away after they learned Clark's true plans. Those who stayed ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... prepared at every step; nor was he discouraged or deeply saddened, only somewhat surprised at so strange a persistence; until at last there came the great and solitary good fortune of his life: a love that was the complement of the one that was eager within him, a love that was complete, passionate, exclusive, unalterable. And from that moment it was as though he had come under the influence of another star, the beneficent rays of which were blending with his own; vexatious events grew slowly remoter, fewer, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... one of contentment in their present lot. It is true, they were fortunate in having found and occupied the building in ruins, as it afforded them a more secure shelter than they could have built, with the small complement of tools they possessed, yet it is a safe venture to conclude, that had they not discovered them, they would have made themselves an abode that would have shielded them from ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... carousal on the heights of Montmartre, the roystering realism of the scene in a dressmakers' shop, the splendid acting of Miss Garden and Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, the fine singing of M. Dalmors, and the more than superb acting and singing of M. Gilibert—found their complement in the finish of a hundred little details, insignificant in themselves, but singularly potent in helping to create the atmosphere without which "Louise" would be little better than Bowery melodrama,—a play that would be a hundred times more effective ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... balance a dream of extraordinary and unearthly grandeur might be the result? By no rational being could a just and benevolent life be accepted as proof of such astonishing announcements. Miracles are the necessary complement then of the truth of such announcements, which without them are purposeless and abortive, the unfinished fragments of a design which is nothing unless it is the whole. They are necessary to the justification of such announcements, which, indeed, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... drowned in a whirlpool of exploits that would forever sully the records of humanity; and this keeping of a fellow-creature on the rack in order to wring from him a Judas-like betrayal was but a complement to a record of infamy that had ceased by its very magnitude to weigh ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... and those about him had clearly indicated by the conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that Peter was in a sense an odd number in the "Sunrise's" complement of pleasure-seekers. Whether or no Mr. Pierce's monologue also indicated that he was not a map who dealt in odd numbers, or showered hospitality on sons of mill-overseers, the fact was nevertheless true. "For value received," or "I hereby promise to pay," were favorite formulas ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... for other people that it was a great change to find another person living entirely for him; and it was a change that was wholly beneficial. As his nature deepened Elisabeth's, so her nature expanded his; and each was the better for the influence of the other, as each was the complement of the other. So after a time Christopher grew almost as light-hearted as Elisabeth, while Elisabeth grew almost as tender-hearted as Christopher. For both of them the former things had passed away, and all things ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... Adwaitee Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of Bahipragna from the original Chinmatra. As the different conditions of differentiated C osmic matter are but the different aspects of the various conditions of Pragna, the Adwaitee Cosmogony is but the complement of the Arhat Cosmogony. The eternal principle is precisely the same in both the systems, and they agree in denying the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... Rosalie?" he asked. He had suddenly made up his mind about that look in her face—he thought it the woman in her which answers to the call of man, not perhaps any particular man, but man the attractive influence, the complement. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... been faithfully completed, it is far more of an architectural unity than its larger rivals, the Cathedral or St. Ouen. Of these three either one would make the reputation of an English town alone, and the jewelled chiselling and admirable proportions of the smallest of them make a fitting complement to the heavy splendour of the Cathedral on the one hand, and to the dizzy altitudes of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... horse, sharply defined and statuesque. The bugler had dashed down the speed and disappeared behind a wood. Presently his bugle was heard singing in the cedars, and in an incredibly short time a single gun with its caisson, each drawn by six horses and manned by its full complement of gunners, came bounding and banging up the grade in a storm of dust, unlimbered under cover, and was run forward by hand to the fatal crest among the dead horses. A gesture of the captain's arm, some strangely agile movements of the men in loading, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... accompanied us to the water's edge. The man of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor cage-bird! Do I not remember the time when I myself haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and read the names of distant places on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in this sense more particularly that Hawke and Rodney are presented as types. It might even be said that they complement each other and constitute together a single type; for, while both were men of unusually strong personality, private as well as professional, and with very marked traits of character, their great relation to naval advance is that of men who by natural faculty detect and seize ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... accept their proffer. Had the matter been settled in June, instead of August, there could have been three hospital ships plying, enough to transport every sick soldier by water. By the 6th of September the "Mayflower" was ready with a crew and a complement of nurses. The army provided their own medical staff, the Society running the steamer and supplying the cuisine, which was under the direction of a French "chef." The "Mayflower" was able to convey, in most comfortable quarters, with every possible attention to their needs, seventy-two ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... Camel-driver and the Carpenter: the barbaric grandeur, the magnanimity and fidelity of the Arab as well as the sublime spirituality, the divine beauty, of the Nazarene, I deeply reverence. And in one sense, the one is the complement of the other: the two combined are my ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... of any government to its invalided soldiers, if ambition, prejudice, or a love of false glory, may, on light grounds, cover the earth with bleeding and mangled victims! As each of the veterans in such hospitals is often the solitary survivor of a thousand, of whom the complement have fallen premature victims of the cruel accidents of war, the authors ought not to conclude that they atone for their crimes by lodging, feeding, and cloathing the thousandth man, when he is no longer able to serve ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... she went out bare-headed to look how a certain den, wont to be haunted by wild-flowers and singing-birds, was getting on towards its complement of summer pleasures. As she was climbing over a fence, a horseman came round the corner of the road. She saw at a glance that it was Alec, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... universe nothing is wasted, I suppose. Everything has its complement, its response. For every bashful man, there must be a ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... doctor's assistant, and the paymaster's clerk. In the gun room were the three lieutenants, the doctor, the lieutenant of the marines, and the chief engineer. The crew consisted of a hundred and fifty seamen and forty marines; the Serpent having a somewhat strong complement. She had been sent out specially for service in the rivers, being of lighter draught than usual, with unusually airy and spacious decks, and so was well fitted for the work. The conversation in the junior mess of the Serpent was very lively ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... lower hive, into which the combs and bees of a full hive can all be transferred, as soon as the bees are gathering honey enough to build new combs. This box is now set over the old hive, which contains its complement of frames with guide combs, or better still, with empty combs. As soon as the bees begin to build, they take possession of the lower hive, through which they go in and out, and the queen descends with them, in ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... which we had 320 men, but much too few to man them as they ought to be, the great Portuguese ship requiring of herself near 400 men to man her completely. As for our lost, but now found comrade, her complement of men was 180, or thereabouts; and Captain Avery had about 300 men with him, whereof he had ten carpenters with him, most of which were taken aboard the prize they had taken; so that, in a word, all the force Avery had at Madagascar, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... sure o' beating them; but, I say, make sure o' that, and then give them ivery advantage. Now I reckon Government is not sure as yet, for i' the papers it said as half th' ships i' th' Channel hadn't got their proper complement o' men; and all as I say is, let Government judge a bit for us; and if they say they're hampered for want o' men, why we must make it up somehow. John and Jeremiah Foster pay in taxes, and Militiaman pays in person; and if sailors cannot pay in taxes, and will not pay in person, why they must ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... cause of the cordial reception which in England the idea of women's political emancipation has long received among politicians. Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished the plebeian complement to Mill's. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... apprehensions and combinations. "Plenty of basements," he used to say, "without attics and skylights. Plenty of skylights without rooms enough and space enough below." But here was "a three-story brain," he said to himself as he looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty, but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the "heft" of a baby the moment she fixed her old ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... numerous elephants feeding at their ease in various directions. If they were part of the herd which we had lately attacked, they had soon recovered from their alarm. We took up our posts in satisfactory positions, hoping that, before the night was over, we should have bagged the full complement of tusks ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston

... of action. He figuratively converts his ploughshare into a sword, although the uses of that weapon are unknown to him. At the time of the Jameson Raid it may safely be asserted that there did not exist a single Boer—young or old—who was not in possession of a serviceable firearm and the full complement of ammunition. The Kantoors—i.e., the Government offices—were daily besieged by eager men as eager to possess themselves of the instruments and munitions of war. Every man was ready; farmers were no longer farmers, but soldiers, prepared to face the worst ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann

... or to help others to become, good. For this it is necessary to bring into play the great force of the Political Community or State, of which the main instrument is Law. Hence arises the demand for the necessary complement to the Ethics, i.e., a treatise devoted to the questions which centre round the enquiry; by what organisation of social or political forces, by what laws or institutions can we best secure the greatest amount of ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... there will be one possessing all the qualifications of a good workman, one bad, and the other three middling, and approximating to the first and the last. So that in so small a platoon as that of even five, you will find the full complement of all that five men CAN earn. Taking five and five throughout the kingdom, they are equal: therefore, an error with regard to the equalization of their wages by those who employ five, as farmers do at the very least, cannot be considerable. 2ndly. Those who are able to work, but not ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... completion of the Robinson Treaties, the then Government of the old Province of Canada deemed it desirable to effect a treaty with the Indians dwelling upon the Great Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, as a complement to the former treaties, and with the object of rendering available for settlement the large tract of good land upon the Island. The duty was entrusted to the Honorable William McDougall, then Superintendent-General of Indian ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... hurriedly fitted out. She had no marines on board, while she was twenty seamen short of her complement. She was rated as a thirty-two gun frigate, mounting twenty-four long twelve-pounders on the main-deck, with six eighteen-pounder carronades and eight long six-pounders on her quarter-deck and forecastle, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... 28th's arrival in Egypt, one or two battalions of the 5th Brigade, and the whole of the 6th Brigade, were already in Aerodrome Camp, just without and on the north-east side of Heliopolis. The 4th Light Horse Brigade, minus the 13th Regiment, was also camped near by. The complement from the "Ascanius" was the nucleus of the 7th Brigade. The 27th Battalion, after landing, went first to Aerodrome Camp, but moved to Abbasia within a fortnight. The 25th Battalion, the second half of the 26th Battalion, and the remainder of the ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... mischievous fallacy. If they were, then they were no lesson for the rest of us; if they were not, to call them so is to encourage certain gin-and-water philosophers who would fain extenuate their unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... afternoon found us in Jane's large square room, which faced the western sky, and no less than twenty children were seated there with us. This number seemed to be the complement of the Home,—as many as could comfortably be accommodated. It was a pleasant care to Jane, for her heart was in the work, and she looked younger now than before the work began. The wishes of the boys were consulted, and each one as nearly fitted to the place he occupied as possible. ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... the disorder," she cried as she piloted me through these various encumbrances to a small but exquisitely furnished room still glorying in its full complement of ornaments and pictures. "This trouble which has come to one I love has made it very hard for me to do anything. I feel helpless, at ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... des facultes humaines trace entre l'homme et Dieu."[52] These words seem to me to express a great truth. The religious mind conceives of the natural, not as opposed to the supernatural, but as an outlying province of it; of the economy of the physical world as the complement of the economy of Grace. And to those who thus think, the great objection urged by so many philosophers, from Spinoza downwards—not to go further back—that miracles, as the violation of an unchangeable order, make God contradict himself, and so are unworthy of being attributed to the All-Wise, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... out the gig at once, Mr Courtenay, and pull for your life to that ship; too probably it is a case of the Wyvern over again, and if there are any people left aboard her they must be saved. Let the men go fully armed, but do not take more than the boat's proper complement, as you are not likely to have any fighting to do, while you may want all the room in the ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... duties that fall to the additional naval lord and controller. He has charge of everything that concerns the material of the fleet, and his operations are the complement of the work of the first naval lord. A great number of civil departments are directed by the controller, and his survey and supervision extend to the dockyards and building establishments of the fleet. He submits plans to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... his head and looked out of the window. He would have liked to say: Run away, child, run away, and don't let them see your confusion. Polly, however, went conscientiously about her task, and only left the room when she had picked up her full complement of plates.—But she did not appear ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a snuff-box that performs its waltz correctly, nor a volume of prints that is not dogs-eared, stained, and ink-spotted. These are serious evils; but they are the least that flow from a neglect of the maxim which stands at the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... equipment of the Piranga, your Excellency may consider Captain Shepherd authorised to act, in my absence, in all ordinary cases. And that officer, having instructions to acquaint me whenever the Piranga shall have two-thirds of her complement of men on board—I can at any time be in London within two days of the receipt of such communication, and most assuredly before ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... gleaming through the trees': 'gleaming' is a shortened predicate of 'church'; and the full form would be, 'the church stood and gleamed.' The participle retains its force as such, while acting the part of a coördinating adjective, complement to 'stood'; 'stood gleaming' is little more than 'gleamed.' The feeling of adverbial force in 'gleaming' arises from the subordinate participial form joined with a verb, 'stood,' that seems capable of predicating by itself. 'Passing strange' ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... said, with her little cackling laugh, "that men would be extravergant, especially in some things. There are some things they're fidgety about and will have just so. Well, well, who has a better right than a well-to-do, fore-handed man? Woman is to complement the man, and it should be her aim to study the great—the great—shall we say reason, for her being? Which is adaptation," and she uttered the word with feeling, assured that Holcroft could not fail of being impressed by it. The poor man was bolting such food as had been prepared ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe



Words linked to "Complement" :   immune response, opposite number, ship's company, expression, adjunct, immune reaction, counterpart, work force, company, hands, enzyme, equilibrize, manpower, count, balance, immunologic response, construction, vis-a-vis, equilibrate, grammatical construction, equilibrise, workforce, men



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