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Reverting   /rɪvˈərtɪŋ/   Listen
Reverting

adjective
1.
Tending to return to an earlier state.  Synonym: returning.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Reverting" Quotes from Famous Books



... was time for smoking; they began to drink and, reverting to their usual topic, they spoke of their monotonous and tedious life. Bottles of cognac and liqueur passed from hand to hand, and seating back on their chairs, they were all absorbing their liqueur in repeated sips, holding at the corner of their mouths the long curved pipes ending ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... men who had been the tireless reapers, the skilled wood-choppers, the husky threshers of the olden time, and as they talked, each of them reverting to significant events in those heroic days, I sobered with a sense of irreparable loss. Pathos and humor mingled in their talk ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... same fruit, or are separately produced on the same tree; nothing is known of its origin. In regard to the bizzarria, many authors believe that it is a graft-hybrid; Gallesio, on the other hand, thinks that it is an ordinary hybrid, with the habit of partially reverting by buds to the two parent- forms; and we have seen that the species in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... them with its evil thought. There is no laugh—what is worse, no smile —in these men. Incipient puritanism, not yet the terrible brawny reality of Bunyan, but a vague, grey spectre, haunts Spenser; and the puritanism of Don Quixote, the vague, melancholy, fantastic reverting from the evil world of to-day to an impossible world of chivalry, is troubling the sight of Tasso. He cannot go crazy like Don Quixote, and instead he grows melancholy; he cannot believe in his own ideals; he cannot give them life, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... such as that leader would spurn as both wicked and base, he therefore does no violence to his heart in screwing it to the work he takes in hand; his heart is even more at home in the work than his head; whereas Brutus, from the wrenching his heart has suffered, keeps reverting to the moral complexion of his first step. The remembrance of this is a thorn in his side; while Cassius has no sensibilities of nature for such compunctions to stick upon. Brutus is never thoroughly himself after the assassination; that his heart is ill at ease is ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... to correspond with the consecrated edifice round which these buildings were usually grouped; and hence the architecture of the abbey or priory is essentially of a piece with that of the cathedral." Reverting to the chimney-piece, it should be added that formerly both on the continent, as well as in England, fire-places and chimneys were decorated with architectural ornaments, as columns, entablatures, statues, &c., like the entrance to a small temple; now they are mostly made of marble, and more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... "Yes, ma'am," answered Molly, reverting to her childhood's method of answering older people. She climbed the ladder in a dazed sort of way. It was more difficult than climbing down, but at last she scaled the window sill and jumped into the room. Judy was still sitting on the floor, holding her temples. Perhaps it had been only ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... Reverting to the above assumption, we must ask: First, Is the death punishment the severest of all evils, and to what extent does the fear of it act as a preventive? Secondly, Is it true that no other punishment would serve as powerfully in preventing murder ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... Lord Keeper, his mind reverting to the political circumstances of the country. "Has anything come to your knowledge—any ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... not clever enough to explain WHERE their injury lies. And so, as they cannot talk about it coherently, any more than a lion struck by an arrow can give a learned dissertation on his wound, they act, . . and the heat and fury of their action upheaves dynasties! Again,—reverting to the question of taste and literature,—the mob, untaught and untrained in the subtilties of art, will applaud to the echo certain grand and convincing home-truths set forth in the plays of the divine Hyspiros,—simply because they instinctively FEEL them to be truths, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... eating his heart out in the Pasha's prison at Tripoli, his thoughts reverting constantly to his lost frigate, he reminded Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed to correspond, that "the greater part of our crew consists of English subjects not naturalized in America." This incidental remark comes with all ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... Reverting once more to our Flute, whose tube is shortened by lifting the fingers from the holes, it is not generally known that this can be done with an organ pipe; the writer has met with instances of it in England. The two lowest pipes of the Pedal Open Diapason were each made to give ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... before him, no doubt, but in that bright morning hour he could harbor only cheerful and trusting thoughts. Hopefully he looked forward to the time when he could fulfil his father's dying injunction, and lift from his name the burden of a debt unpaid. Then his mind reverting to another thought, he could not help smiling at the surprise and anger of Mr. Mudge, when he should find that his assistant had taken French leave. He thought he should like to be concealed somewhere where he could ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... and Plants which have run wild.—In the cases hitherto considered, the reverting animals and plants have not been exposed to any great or abrupt change in their conditions of life which could have induced this tendency; but it is very different with animals and plants which have become feral or run wild. It has been ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... quite at home before he is perceived by the host. At last the denouement came; the dinner-giver approached the stranger, and with great politeness asked his name. 'Smith' was, of course, the reply, and reverting to mistakes made by servants in announcing, &c., 'Smith' hurried off into an amusing story, to put his host in good humour. The conversation that followed ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... a sparse beard. His skin is a deep brown, lined and veined. His legs showing over white socks are scaly. His hands are palsied, but his mind is intelligent. He shows evidences of association with white people in his manner of speech, which at times is in the manner of white persons, again reverting to dialect. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... brown, and sparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from evolution through environment, and their original trustful openness was marred by the experience of watching for flying stones, sods, and passing kicks from the rear, so that the pupils were continually reverting to the outer angle of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... mighty simplification, as though the complexities of the world were reverting toward their original philosophic unity. The complex summer had become simple autumn; the autumn, winter; now the very winter itself was apparently losing its differentiations of bushes and trees, hills and valleys, streams and living things. The growths were disappearing; ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... Commodore, reverting to his grievances. "Never has such a loss happened to me, since I went ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... next day. All the journey through, my uncles were continually reverting to the matter of John's parentage: the more they saw of him, the less could they believe lady Cairnedge his mother. Through questions put to him, and inquiries afterward made, they discovered that, when he went to London, he had gone to lady Cairnedge's lawyer, not his father's, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... Reverting to the practice of lamenting the degeneracy of humanity, I should say that the fashion is by no means a new one. Search the records of the ancients and you will find the same harping upon the one string of present decay and former virtue. Herodotus, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... tells us, kept every breed of domestic pigeons he could purchase or obtain, in order to study their variations. In this he was himself reverting to the associations of childhood, when the beauty, variety, and tameness of The Mount pigeons at Shrewsbury were ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... Effingham was seated, his daughter's head resting on a knee, for she had thrown herself on the carpet, by his side. Mademoiselle Viefville paced the cabin, occasionally stopping to utter a few words of consolation to her young charge, and then again reverting in her mind to the true dangers of their situation, with a force that completely undid all she had said, by betraying the extent of her own apprehensions. Ann Sidley knelt near her young mistress, sometimes praying fervently, though in silence, and at ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... in the centre of the pattern; the general similarity between this last design and the examples of TUSHUN TUVA shown in the designs on Pl. 138, Figs. 4 and 5, is quite obvious; the lower of the two TUSHUN TUVA designs in Fig. 5, Pl. 138, is Cornposed of angular lines, thus reverting to the angularity of the lines in text, Fig. 69; at E, Fig. 3, Pl. 140, the lines are partly angular, partly curved, and the bilateral symmetry is entirely lost; finally, in Fig. 72, the relationship of the TUSHUN TUVA design to an ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... out again on the old man's cheeks. "If madam would call me Steptoe," he said ceremoniously, "I think she'd find it easier. I mean," he went on, reverting to the original theme, "that 'E didn't make 'em to be cooks and 'ousemaids and parlormaids, and all that. That's men's work. Men'll do it as easy as a bird'll sing. I never see the woman yet as didn't fret 'erself over it, like a wild animal'll fret itself in a ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... reason, Father, wherefore I should not become a great man?" he said, reverting to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... "The biographies of men of letters are the wretchedest chapters in our history, except perhaps the Newgate Calendar," a remark that recalls the similar cry of Burns, "There is not among the martyrologies so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets." Carlyle, reverting to this crisis, refers with constant bitterness to the absence of a popularity which he yet professes to scorn.—I was entirely unknown in Edinburgh circles; solitary eating my own heart, misgivings as to whether there shall be presently ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... not hard to make out. When a boy has had his head swelled by his importance as a member of the Junior Street-cleaning Band to the point of reproving his mother for throwing a banana peel in the street, the thing to be done is to take him out and spank him, if it is reverting to "the savagery" of the street. Better a savage than a cad. The boys have the making of both in them. Their vanity furnishes abundant material for the cad, but only when unduly pampered. Left to itself, the gang can be trusted not to ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... turning off Breede's letters, his mind kept reverting to those nicely printed stock certificates Aunt Clara had sent to him, five of them for ten shares each, his own name written on them. Of course there were hundreds of shares at the brokers', but ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... refrain from reverting, in this connection, to the essential difference between the animal instincts and the intellect of man, and would quote, on this subject, the forceful statement of the case by Paul Haffner in his "Materialismus" (Mainz, 1865). We translate: "If the hypothesis of materialism ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... returned, I at once understood the importance of the first words which we should speak in the presence of the examining-magistrate. I thought that, by supporting my father's story, I should be helping to prevent trouble. To-day, in the face of the inexorable facts, I am reverting to ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... the theory of descent is under no logical necessity to furnish a full proof of all the natural causes which may have been concerned in working out the observed results. We do not know the natural causes of many diseases; but yet no one nowadays thinks of reverting to any hypothesis of a supernatural cause, in order to explain the occurrence of any disease the natural causation of which is obscure. The science of medicine being in so many cases able to explain the occurrence of disease by its hypothesis ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... led, by hearing on every side the conversation reverting to the dangers and tragic incidents of the era, separated from us by not quite two years, to make inquiries of every body who had personally participated in the commotions. Records there were on every side, and memorials even in our bed rooms, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... said I, reverting to the question a few moments later, as Hippopopolis opened a box of sardines and set the bread a-toasting on the fire he had made. "Of course, I should not venture to say that I, a stranger, know as much about the private habits of the gods as do you, who have been their neighbor; but that ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... confidently, but ended very much discomfited. Father Ryan would listen to but one point, which was that Althea was not at liberty to entertain thoughts of marriage until conclusive proof was obtained of her husband's death. Hubert reverting to the other points—"All that comes afterward," was ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... purpose that were with the Provencal maiden through all her enforced round of gay festivals, light minstrelsy, tourneys, and Courts of Love. Thus far had the story gone. Isabel had been writing a wild, mysterious ballad, reverting to that higher love and the true spirit of self-sacrifice, which was to thrill strangely on the ears of the thoughtless at a contention for the Golden Violet, and which she had adapted to a favourite air, to the extreme delight of the two girls. To them the Chapel in the valley, Roland ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flat bands of muscle in his chest, and Onnie worshiped with loud Celtic exclamations, and bade small Pete grow up like Master San. And Sanford grew two inches before he came home for the next summer, reverting to bare feet, corduroys, and woolen shirts as usual. Onnie eyed him dazedly when he strode into her kitchen for sandwiches against ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... took the news to the Hall Farm?" said Adam, his thoughts reverting to some one there; he wondered whether SHE ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... for reverting to original types—that is to say, for obtaining a fresh supply of the indigenous plant from South America, and breeding a new stock, as it were. It is a possible mode of extirpating the disease which ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... you some beauties from London," said Lydia. Then reverting with a momentary curiosity to the subject they had left, "Whatever does this ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... skirts of his priestly dignity, he affected contempt for the weaver by ignoring his remarks; and, turning to those immediately around him, he proceeded with quite unusual warmth to deliver a homily on duty. Reverting to the subject of Ralph Ray's flight from Wythburn, he said that it was well that the young man had withdrawn himself, for had he remained longer in these parts, and had the high sheriff at Carlisle not proceeded against him, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... Then reverting to Moreau, the Emperor talked a great deal respecting that general. "Moreau," he said, "possesses many good qualities; his bravery is undoubted; but he has more courage than energy; he is indolent and effeminate. When with the army he lived like a pasha; he ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... Sylvia, reverting to a chance remark, now said: "I never happened to hear you speak of your mother before. Does she ever ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... withdrawal from Maryland had quieted all apprehensions for the safety of Washington, the orders that had met the advance of the Nineteenth Corps at Hampton Roads were recalled, and, reverting to his original intention, Grant sent the detachments of the corps as they arrived up the James River to Bermuda Hundred to join the right wing of his armies under Butler. Indeed, at the moment of its arrival at Poolesville, the First division had been ordered to take the same ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... his lifetime he made restitution thereof." Herein tradition says was the seed of Raleigh's misfortunes. King Stephen dispossessed the lands, and gave them to the Montagues, who met with grievous disasters, the estate ultimately reverting to the Church. In Edward VI.'s reign Sherborne was conveyed to the Duke of Somerset, but he was beheaded. Again they reverted to the Church, until one day Raleigh, journeying from Plymouth to London, the ancient historian says, "the castle being right in the way, he cast ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... a face must the Blessed Agnes have had," he thought, his mind reverting to his favourite Saint; "she is like the lilies ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... achievement was to make specific man—the portrait; lastly, to achieve what was universal—the type. The progress was from man, to man in particular, and ultimately to man in general. There was a final stage when the typical lost its type without reverting to the specific, to the portrait. The successors of Michael Angelo were among the most skilful craftsmen who ever existed; but their knowledge only bore the fruit of unreality. Donatello did not ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... the way back to Tavistock Square. They mentioned neither Hilaria nor Blanche Grey again that night, but as Ishmael lay for a long time awake staring into the darkness he could not keep his mind from reverting with a sense of deep fear to what he had heard about Hilaria. That such things could lie in wait in life, around the path of people one knew—people like oneself.... To others these exotic misfortunes, not to oneself ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... father or her talented and richly-apparelled brothers ever spent their time flying kites about the city. In spite of a most efficient self-control her colour changed at my words, and her features trembled for a moment, but quickly reverting to herself she replied that she thought not; then—as though to subdue my suspicions more completely—that she was sure they did not, as the kites would certainly frighten the horses and the appointed watchmen ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... serving," said Mrs. Van Alstyne, afterward. "Where did they get such people?—And beautiful serving," she went on, reverting to her favorite axiom, "is, after all, the ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... a gaiety that hardly ever flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money in a singular manner which I don't think I can better explain than by reverting for a moment to our loan ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... more of this infernal Western nonsense that you're always reverting to? No more of this ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... on its beautiful waters. Hudson is a prince among triumphant and adventurous discoverers. And I never sail past the Palisades, by summer or gorgeous autumn, when all the hills are blood and flame, without reverting in thought to Hudson, who gave the stream to our geography and his name to the stream, nor forget that he was set adrift in the remote and spacious sea, which likewise bears his name; though well it may, for it ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... it was as much as to say, "If you miss any wheat, we didn't take it; we are honest birds, and stay at home o'nights, Dr. Percival." The next morning, however, a general decapitation overtook the flock of feathered hypocrites. "It was a curious instance of the domestic goose reverting to its wild habit of nocturnal feeding," remarked my narrator, dwelling characteristically upon the natural-history ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... be to retain "big business," and cure its evils, rather than to turn the hands of the clock backward by reverting to the wasteful competitive system. If this proves possible, we should work for the organizing of the as yet unorganized industries. Half of human effort is still wasted, through lack of such organization. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... Reverting to the Africans who were conveyed to places other than the States, it will be seen that circumstances amongst them and in their favour came into play, modifying and lightening their unhappy condition. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... terribly upset by it," he said, reverting to the play. "It was a wild and wet night, we had to walk every inch, of the way, for there was no late trains in them days, John, and we were drenched to the skin. Your Uncle Matthew never said ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... Thomas gave was a grunt, and a silence of a few seconds followed before he spoke, reverting to the point from ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... only had my oxygen-containing bullets ready!" thought Stern, his mind reverting to an unfinished experiment down there in his laboratory in the Rapids power-house. "They would turn the trick, sure enough! They'd burst and rain fire everywhere. But they aren't ready yet; and even if they were, nobody could venture ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... the Danube, from the Black Sea to Passau, the mountains of Bohemia to Koenigsgratz, and the Elbe to the Baltic, should be their lines of demarcation. Alexander should become the emperor of the north, and he of the south of Europe." Abandoning, subsequently, these lofty ideas, and reverting to Sebastiani's observations on the partition of European Turkey, he terminated the conferences, which had lasted three days, with these words: "You are right, and no answer can be given to that! I give ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... settled, well-organized community, public opinion and convention is a check on such men. They keep within bounds because there's a heavy penalty if they don't. Up here where law and conventions and so on practically don't exist, men of a certain stamp aren't long in reverting to pure animalism. It's natural enough, I dare say. Dad would be the last one to set himself up as a critic of any one's personal morality. But it isn't very nice, especially for preachers, who come here posing as the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... time quite shocked at her own thoughts, and yet they would go on with their freaks. Great vistas of history opened, and she and her aunt were near reverting to the primitive and passionate and entirely indecorous arboreal—were swinging from branches by the arms, and really going on quite dread-fully—when their arrival at the Palsworthys' happily checked this play of fancy, and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... though, no doubt, a government so situated is in the condition called in mechanics unstable equilibrium, like a thing balanced on its smaller end, which, if once disturbed, tends more and more to depart from, instead of reverting to, its ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... equatorial Africa is almost as short as the snuffing of a candle. The stars were popping out. Dusky forms were circling round the yellow of the fire which threw pale flickers on the figure of Corporal Inyira, revealing the beginning of the hysterical gleam in the yellows of his eyes as, reverting to habit, he squatted on his haunches in the chair. They might make a rush for the victims at any moment. The sentry, excitement overcoming discipline, was, rifle still in hand, dancing round the outskirts ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... Zeno, however, who was his pupil, advocated the same rigid tenets in a more open and dogmatic form,[149] the Academy at length took the alarm, and a reaction ensued. Arcesilas, who had succeeded Polemo and Crates, determined on reverting to the principles of the elder schools;[150] but mistaking the profession of ignorance, which Socrates had used against the Sophists on physical questions, for an actual scepticism on points connected with morals, he fell into ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... to himself, as he passed on out of hearing. The name and fame that had meant so little to him back on the prairie ranges might stand him in good stead out here west of the Rockies. He strode swiftly, his thought reverting to his father. He wanted to run. Remorse knocked at his heart. Desertion! He had gone off, like so many cowboys, forgetting home, father, mother, duty. They had suffered. Never a word of ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... meet and contemplate any of these far-flung fragments of Napoleon's mighty empire without reverting with renewed interest to the founder of so much unlooked-for though brief greatness. Sheltered beneath his Titan aegis these new-made monarchs flourished, and ruffled it with the best of Europe's princes; until, grown vain of their fancied power, they deserted their shield ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... that remote and desolate littoral which he had so often himself declared to be impregnably secure behind its web of sands and shallows. My mind went back to my question at Bensersiel, 'Can this coast be invaded?' to his denial and our fruitless survey of the dykes and polders. Was he now reverting to a fancy we had both rejected, while shrinking from giving it explicit utterance? ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... dictum, only observing, that there was a point in our language where delicacy became indelicate; that I thought the noble river had a priority of claim over a contemptible vessel; and, reverting to the former part of his discourse, I said that we in England were not ashamed to call things by their proper names; and that we considered it a great mark of ill-breeding to go round about for a substitute to a common word, the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... for the most flagrant violations of civil rights and good order, they deem it a sufficient disgrace and infliction to cast out the guilty person from all further communion, the property of the exile being given to his heir; or, in lack of an heir, reverting ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... back up the stairs, her mind, which had been held captive by a young caller, reverting with some anxiety to the small person whom she had left, as she thought, shut up in the safe bath-room. She expected to hear Ellen crying, as was likely to be the case when left alone without sufficient means of amusement; but the silence, as she flew up-stairs, alarmed her. Silence ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... and dissensions followed another breach of the Admiral's wise regulations; they no longer cared to remain together in the fort, but split up into groups and went off with their women into the woods, reverting to a savagery beside which the gentle existence of the natives was high civilisation. There were squabbles and fights in which one or two of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed a faction of revolt against ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... lost,' said Bunyip Bluegum. 'Without reverting to violent measures, I will engage to have the ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... replied Tom Hunter, his thoughts reverting involuntarily to a former invention of the Hon. J. T. Maston, by which, at its first trial, he had succeeded in killing ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... Reverting to the dynamical principle, that the product of every particle of matter in a fluid vortex, moving around a given axis, by its distance from the centre and angular velocity, must ever be a constant quantity, it follows that ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... henceforth only two candidates should be put in nomination, one an alderman and the other a commoner.(1976) Even this number was found too many, and within three years was reduced to one commoner,(1977) thus reverting to the primitive custom of the city before it was enacted, temp. Richard II, that two (commoners) at least should be ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... Reverting to those stirring days, it will be recalled that the Queen Regent of Spain declared war against the United States on April 24, 1898, to which we replied that war had begun three days earlier, when the Madrid government ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... two or three years she had entirely lost her memory, and for the last few months the use of her mental faculties. And she did not suffer much. The last words she uttered were "Poor Cecilia!"—her mind reverting in her latest moments to the child whose loss had been the most recent. She had for years entertained a great horror and dread of the possibility of being buried alive, in consequence of the very short time allowed by the law for a body to remain unburied after death; and she had exacted ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... Brest-Litowski).—CROWN PRINCE, taking the Przaritczow-Blokhod-Strypovitchi line, puts long-range shot into the Pripet Marches. MEHMED, after undermining greater part of the Bukowina, reports progress from the tee. FRANCIS-JOSEPH, reverting to clubs, misses tee-shot twenty-four times and retires exhausted to bath-chair. FERDIE's wind-cheater, badly sliced, trickles into the Warsaw whins and is lost. C.P., arrived at edge of Pripet Marshes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various

... obligations to him, and of his son, my friend, both lying together in Colinton churchyard; and of Dr. Dick, who was minister before him, of the Coventrys, and of Stitchel and Sprouston, of his mother, and of himself,—his doubts of his own sincerity in religion, his sense of sin, of God—reverting often to his dying friend. Such a thing only occurred to me with him once or twice all my life; and then when we were home, he was silent, shut up, self-contained as before. He was himself conscious of this habit of reticence, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... he was not thinking of Deans or Seniors just then; his thoughts were reverting to his father's implacable anger, and to Julian's forbidding him to hope for the love of Violet Home. Weary of the talking, and careless of explaining anything to them, and with a short return of his old contempt, he wished to cut short the discussion, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational slang-spiced Parisian. "Too bad you don't speak Spanish, too," he added, reverting to English. "Except for a Mexican accent you could cut with a machete, I'm even better there than in French. And I know some German, ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper

... Reverting, to old BOURGUEVILLE, I cannot take leave of him without expressing my hearty thanks for the amusement and information which his unostentatious octavo volume—entitled Les Recherches et Antiquitez de la Ville et Universite de Caen, &c. (a Caen, 1588, 8vo.) ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... and disturbed for a while after this event; but her sensations were again reverting to their ordinary channel when one morning she awoke in a fearful trepidation. She said that the figure of a human hand was visible, in her slumbers; that it led the way, pointing to an old house like a fortified mansion, with a moat and gatehouse ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... Thought is itself the source of tormenting cares in this earthly slavery, yet the sense of power makes it invincible, firm in its purpose to endure all sufferings, to be superior to all events; assured of future freedom, and always on the way to achieve it by reverting to the grandeur of its innate perfection; finally attaining to this happy state, by shaking off all the enslaving bonds and anxious cares of the kingdom of Zeus, and by obtaining a perfect life through the inspirations of wisdom, when the revolutions ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... in reverting to the subject of our visit. Gradually I let Kennedy take the lead in the conversation so that our position might ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... an' the kid had a little piece of money ahead," Dextry resumed later, reverting to the thought that lay uppermost in his mind, "'cause we'd be up against it right if we hadn't. The boy couldn't have amused himself none with these court proceedings, because they come high. I call 'em luxuries, like brandied peaches an' ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... other. As one instance I may mention the Anonaceae or custard-apple tribe, which are certainly an advance from the Ranunculaceae; yet in the genus Polyalthea the fruit consists of a number of separate carpels, each borne on a long stalk, as if reverting to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... and Honduras abandoned the joint compact, each resuming its former independent sovereignty. This was followed by the reception of Minister Merry by the Republics of Nicaragua and Salvador, while Minister Hunter in turn presented his credentials to the Government of Honduras, thus reverting to the old distribution of the diplomatic agencies of the United States in Central America for which our existing statutes provide. A Nicaraguan envoy has been accredited ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... playing the pranks their grandfathers enjoyed. If seed is gathered indiscriminately from all the heads which appear in the crop, succeeding generations will keep reverting until they return to the wild type, or something near it. If there is a clear idea of what is the best type (one great head or several heads, placed in a certain way) and seed is continually taken from such plants only for planting, more and more plants will ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... Reverting to the early life of the Poet—he studied at Ferrara, but losing his tutor, who was called from thence, and appointed preceptor to the son of Isabella of Naples, Ariosto was left without the present means of gaining instruction in Greek. To this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... (the Rev. A. J.) his expenses and all law charges, and also L500 down, the balance to be invested in the names of trustees, and the present trustee to enjoy the interest during his lifetime, the capital at his decease reverting to Jerusalem." J. M. B. promised to communicate the offer to his friend. The solicitor informed Mr Montefiore that this gentleman's attorney had returned to England, and would lose no time in giving an answer to the messenger's Amendment Bill in the Court of Chancery. Some time afterwards ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... that battle long before I knew you. There is absolutely no danger of my reverting. I am going to spend the rest of my life among the whites even if you shouldn't marry me, Rhoda. Rhoda, I wish I had had time to let ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... Reverting to the point under consideration: even in those love-lyrics in which Heine does not wilfully destroy the first serious impression by the jingling of his harlequin's cap, as he himself styles it,[211] he does not succeed,—with the few exceptions just referred to,—in convincing us very ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... John dear,' she said, cheerily reverting to their former conversation, 'that I hope I may safely be trusted in great things. And it surely cannot be a little thing that causes you so much uneasiness. It's very considerate of you to try to hide from me that you are uncomfortable about ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... he, reverting to his lady love, as he eyed himself intently in the glass while performing the critical operation, "I'll just sound the old gentleman after dinner—one can do that sort of thing better over one's wine, perhaps, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... and listens. He is surprised to find himself accused of fraud; but the law gives him no power to show his own innocence. The Judge of the Sessions was competent to decide the question now raised, and to have prevented this reverting to a "special jury"—this giving the vindictive plaintiff a means of torturing his infirm victim. Had he but listened to the old man's tale of poverty, he might have saved the heart of that forlorn girl many a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... conjectured, the southern shore of Richards's Bay. The land on our left or to the southward proved an island, five miles and a quarter in length, of the same bold and rugged character as the rest of this numerous group, and by far the largest of them all. To prevent the necessity of reverting to this subject, I may at once add, that two or three months after this, on laying before Ewerat our own chart of the whole coast, in order to obtain the Esquimaux names, we discovered that the island just mentioned was called ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... Benton on his return from a round-up, found his thoughts reverting to the past. The spring day was like another that he remembered when he first caught sight of the frontier town more than a dozen years before. He noted the smoke of a railroad locomotive as it trailed into nothingness, and involuntarily ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... among woodsmen. Most of his fellows had been tamed by civilization; they had lived beneath roofs instead of the canopy of heaven, and they had almost forgotten about the moon. Ben, on the other hand, was a recurrence of an earlier type, inheriting little from his immediate ancestors but reverting back a thousand centuries to the Cave and the Squatting Place. His nature was that of prehistoric man rather than that of the son of civilization; and in this lay the explanation for all that had set him apart from the great run of men and had made him the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... mournfully, in reluctant admission that it did not, and clambering up to the old nail took down the cage and set himself to clean it and to feed the bird. His thoughts reverting from this occupation to the little old gentleman who had given him the shilling, he suddenly recollected that that was the very day—nay, nearly the very hour—at which the little old gentleman had said he should be at the Notary's house again. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... impervious to these national considerations at this moment was New England; but it was President Madison, and not New England, who defeated the Bonus Bill. On the day before he left office, Madison sent to Congress a notable veto message. Reverting to his earlier faith, he pronounced the measure unconstitutional. Neither the express words of the Constitution nor any fair inference could, in his judgment, warrant the exercise of such powers by Congress. To pass the bill over his veto was impossible. ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... Reverting to the specific question as to the earliest divergence of man from the apes, we can readily see how the superior development of the ape-man's brain gave him a great advantage over his nearest competitors, and how truly human ingenuity enabled the earliest men to employ weapons and crude instruments ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... apostrophe to the tender passion none was more lavish in offerings than those matrons and maids in the vicinity of the king. A satirical smile again marred Caillette's face, but he kept his reflections to himself, reverting to ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... object of a training discipline is to raise a safeguard against any military body reverting to crowd form under trial by fire, history shows that paralysis both of leadership and of the ranks, obliviousness to orders, forgetfulness of means of communication, disintegration and even panic are the not uncommon reactions of military ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... of with more avidity by the others than by Dawn, whose mind was constantly reverting to the words which ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... of their lonely detachment from their kind, of their isolation, crept through Durkin's mind. He felt momentarily depressed by a sense of friendlessness. It was like reverting to primordial conditions, wherein it was ordained that each life, alone and unassisted, should protect and save itself. He wondered if primitive man, or if even wild animals, did not always walk with that vague consciousness of continual ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... her husband, Tatsu, should be awakened a recognition of his duties, and of the household needs. Kano visited the temple, also, and spent long hours in conference with his personal friend, the abbot. Even old Mata, abandoning for the moment her Protestantism and reverting to the yearning (never entirely stifled) for mystic practises, went to an old charlatan of a fortune-teller, and purchased various charms and powders for driving the demons from the unconscious Tatsu. Ume-ko soon discovered this, and the fear that Tatsu would be ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... bending her head forward, "My dear lord," said she, with a soft, tender air, "what do you do at the door? You have been out of bed a long time. I was strangely surprised when I awoke in not finding you by me." Buddir ad Deen was enraptured; he entered the room, but reverting to all that had passed during a ten years' interval, and not being able to persuade himself that it could all have happened in the compass of one night, he went to the place where his vestments ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... of the radical element of either the people or the Plutocrats. His conspicuous action at Wilkes-Barre is an incontestible proof of his sincerity, and also demonstrates that the masses are not desirous of reverting to an appeal to force in order to regain their rights. If the man whom the public hails as a deliverer can be elected, all the evils of the Trusts and monopolies, it is ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... a month, Edo, fired at a hundred points will lie in ashes. Then...." He stopped a little frightened. But she feigned the greatest indifference, teased him into opposition. Sitting down before the wine she got out of him the whole affair. Reverting to the accident—"But yourself, an accident has been deigned. Has another Yoshi encountered Kuro[u]ji Dono?" To the tender solicitude half laughing he made jesting answer. "A Yoshi with beard and wearing two swords. To-day the contract was signed ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... the corridor leading to the room where she would find the special exhibit. She stopped before many of the pictures—reverting to that joy of the spirit in dominance. There was exultation, almost rapture, in this quick, firm rush of understanding; deep joy in just knowing the good from ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... about that medicine;" then, his mind reverting to the conversation at the gate, he added, "I wasn't goin' to tell her about that horse; let him tell her himself. Blamed fool! I think I headed off his issuing orders about that sick-bed too. Poor little girl! Now if she'd ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... trying to do so, Cora, but every time I try to begin my narrative by reverting to the hour of my flight, I seem spellbound to that hour and cannot escape from it. But I will try again," he said, and he began ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... respect, but not in another," Cyril put in, anxious to prevent the conversation reverting to the question of his bravery. "I put down this wound in my shoulder to it, for if I had been myself I don't think I should have got hurt. I guarded the blow, but I was so shaky that he broke my guard down as if I had been a child, ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... Tippet at once sought to draw attention from the child, by reverting to Mrs Denman; and Matty created a little opportune confusion by stumbling into the room with ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... confessed that in refusing to acknowledge what one may call an outside deity, an "absentee god," who pays periodical visits to his creation and acts only at the instant request of prayer, we are reverting to religious ideals that had their home in the land of the Indus and the Ganges, a thousand years before Christianity was heard of. It is the knowledge of this fact that fills one with stupefaction when we think of Exeter Hall ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... in the sun, which made his face as red as his hair, for he gave her to understand that such was not his usual complexion. His red locks, very dark and handsome, which lent him a distinction and endeared him to me, were such a sensitive point with him that his mind was continually reverting to them, and that ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset, and the horses' feet are on the "Boston Road"—or rud, according to the authorized pronunciation of that land. Hardly, indeed, in many places, a "rud" to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with upcountry produce to the sea. They were not a people who sought the easiest way, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill



Words linked to "Reverting" :   regressive, failure, recidivism, revert



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