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Slur   /slər/   Listen
Slur

verb
(past & past part. slurred; pres. part. slurring)
1.
Play smoothly or legato.
2.
Speak disparagingly of; e.g., make a racial slur.
3.
Utter indistinctly.
4.
Become vague or indistinct.  Synonyms: blur, dim.



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"Slur" Quotes from Famous Books



... power, Benedetto. With an anonymous letter you could denounce me to-morrow as an escaped galley-slave and have me sent back to the galleys. I would not care a snap for that, but I most emphatically forbid you to throw a slur upon the reputation of the woman who lives with me under ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... should have brought him much more, if I had known that there was any such person. You have other children; if you leave him anything, you will be taking it away from your own flesh and blood; if you leave him nothing, it will be a slur upon him. I must therefore send you enough gold, to provide for George as your other children will be provided for; you can settle it upon him at once, and make it clear that the settlement is ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... fine player at whist, and piquet, and ombre, and all sorts of card-playing. So you see he could afford to play fair. The first time he came down, he fought three duels about a tipsy quarrel over a pool of Pope Joan. There was no slur on his credit, though; 'twas just a bit of temper. He wounded all three; two but trifling; but one of them—Chapley, or Capley, I think, was his name—through the lungs, and he died, I heard, abroad. I ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... really distressed, when he fixed upon some necessitous and greedy emigrants for his instruments to play on the credulity of the English Ministers in some of their unguarded moments. Their generosity in forbearing to avenge upon the deluded French exiles the slur attempted to be thrown upon their official capacity, and the ridicule intended to be cast on their private characters, has been much approved and admired here by all liberal-minded persons; but it has also much disappointed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adele had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I'll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adele must go to school; and you, Miss Eyre, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... father owned the old homestead while he lived, and I took this as a slur on our branch of the Frost family. This riled me internally, but I couldn't contradict her, and felt myself blushing hotly, rather ashamed of the Frost family. But the truth is, as a race, we are none of us given to much antiquity. No female of our family was ever known to get over ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Flossie occasionally rose to the level of a miniature war. The latter never lost any opportunity of flinging ridicule and contempt on all things Irish, and Honor, who resented a slur on her native land more than a personal injury, could not keep her hot temper within bounds. It was, of course, very foolish to take any notice of Flossie's taunts, and ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... Isabel felt the slur on her husband which the recall involved more acutely than he. Burton, though stung to the quick at the treatment the Foreign Office meted out to him for doing what he conceived to be his duty (and certainly the manner of his recall was ungracious almost ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... over her hymn-book crimson with confusion, but still her sides shook with laughter. She pretended to cough, she pretended to have a crumb in her throat. Fred was gazing up at her with clear blue eyes. She was recovering herself. And then a slur in the strong, blind voice at her side brought it all on again, in a gust ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... affair so lightly that Mr. Harley felt relieved; that latter speculator had been somewhat disturbed in his mind concerning Storri's opinion of what, to give it a best description, evinced niggard distrust of Storri, and cast in negative fashion a slur upon that gentleman. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... implied slur, had no clever words wherewith to reply. She was not gifted in that way, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... good Master Jones, do you intend to cast a slur upon our courage?" demanded Standish, a cold smile upon his lips, while his right hand toyed with Gideon's hilt, and his right foot planted ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... each of his words, but it was quickly, with a queer catch in his voice, that he added—"I ask you to do this, my sister"—he had never before called Madeleine Baudoin "my sister"—"because of Claire's children, of Clairette and Jacqueline. Their mother would not wish a slur ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... was present at this moment, and could not but resent what appeared to be a most unseemly slur cast upon her friends. 'I don't understand it at all,' she said. 'Of course the Emperor is there. Everybody has known for the last month that he was coming. What is the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... could get you to own that you and he"—(indicating my husband by a jerk of his head)—"grew rather sick of each other! Whether you own it or not, I know you did; and it would give me pleasure to hear it. You need not take it personally. I assure you that it is no slur upon him—everybody does. I have talked to lots of fellows who have gone through it, and ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... explanation of the mysterious circumstance which had so long really embittered his existence. Those were truly happy holidays, and he looked forward eagerly to the time when he might return to school, and lift up his head among his companions without a sense of shame, or the slightest slur ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... be put upon Smith's use of the term, even after he had been to Roble two evenings. Their talk was about the opera, nothing further, and when he had taken his high note with just the proper emotional slur, they both laughed. To be honest, there had been one chat on the moonlit steps of the Museum, but all of this went down on the blue fraternity-paper among ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... slur upon the character of the upper classes in this country, by insinuating that abroad a great deal more interest was taken in the working classes than in England. Now I assert, that quite the contrary is ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... nations, both Aryan and Semitic, without any scientific value, because carried out without any of those critical tests which alone keep Comparative Mythology from running riot. This is not intended as casting a slur on Sir W. Jones. At his time the principles which have now been established by the students of the science of language were not yet known, and as with words, so with the names of deities, similarity of sound, the most treacherous of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... in his chair. I thought he was rasped by the fellow's slur, for he is very proud of his ship. But it was something else that rubbed the expression of patient resignation from his face; he was staring over the starboard rail with an expression of lively interest. I followed his gaze ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... the servants all left I was again sent for to see Sir Percival. The undeserved slur which he had cast on my management of the household did not, I am happy to say, prevent me from returning good for evil to the best of my ability, by complying with his request as readily and respectfully ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... what is the use of asking what I mean when you know quite well, Noel? Hubert insulted me in his will, and cast a slur on my character by forbidding me to marry you. Freddy—although he did not fire the second shot—certainly lured Hubert to his death by forging that letter. I don't intend to consider my husband's memory any more, nor my ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... profound sense of the need for a judicial aspect in the Christ who is to meet the prophecies written in men's hearts, as well as in Scripture, teach us how one-sided and superficial are representations of His work which suppress or slur over His future ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... continually passing among the spectators, who laughed as they listened to them. And though the Texan could not tell what they said, their laughter "riled" him. He supposed it a slur upon his extraordinary stature, of which he was himself no little proud, while they seemed to regard it sarcastically. Could they have had translated to them the rejoinders that now and then came from his lips, like the rumbling of thunder, they would have felt ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... have no right to judge,' said Mr. Dutton, somewhat tremulously. 'Justice is what we have to look to, and to allow Nuttie to be passed over would be permitting a slur to be cast on ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... on this subject, I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have never sought popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have never made speeches either at public dinners or at the funerals of my friends.... In fact, there is no slur on my learned name, and there is no complaint one can make against it. It ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... what's the differ?" he demanded, with an indignation natural enough to aspiring humanity detecting a slur upon ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... his, thereby to raise his family; and that it was done by indiscreet courses. 6th. As to the breaking-off of the match with Parma, in which he was employed at the very time when the match with Portugall was made up here, which he took as a great slur to him, and so it was; and that, indeed, is the chief occasion of all this fewde. 7th. That he hath endeavoured to bring in Popery, and wrote to the Pope for a cap for a subject of the King of England's (my Lord Aubigny ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... "culture," "cultured," "cultivated" and their antitheses. These are the terms that intimidate the vain, selfish, illiterate rich; for to be described as "rich but uncultivated" is regarded as a greater slur upon the social standing of families than to be reported as having gained wealth by dishonesty or trickery. And then the matter is made all the harder for those willing to acquire a hypocritical polish at any expense if they can only be called "cultivated," from the fact that they do not know ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett

... you had I not Been above measure happy. Now no more Wild words, no more mad words between us two, Who all the while are aching to be friends. O how your hands come waxen once again Within my own: again behind your voice The hesitating tardy bird-like word And the sweet slur of 'r's.' O but to-night Even grandeur palls, the splendid goal: to-night I am a woman and ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... meal, and his guest for some fastidious reason refused to eat. He pointed angrily to the figured bowl. "Dug chop," said he. "Too-much-good. You chop him." This rejection of excellent food was a distinct slur on his menage, and he was working himself up into passion. "You chop dem dug chop one-time," ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... well enough; you only play at not knowing because you regard it as a slur on their characters, instead of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... boy, save the slur upon the girl. Know, Master Edward, that so enthusiastic are women and girls that if we men wax faint hearted in the strife English women and English maidens will take up the battle for ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... it now bears, but in that of felicitous or happy, as was common at that time. So it seems that Shakespeare already had friends in London, some of them "worshipful," too, who were strongly commending him as a poet, and who were prompt to remonstrate with Chettle against the mean slur ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... the pamphlet bears evidence of Malone's revision.[19] It was necessary, of course, to re-orient the essay, which after the formula of the Gentleman's Magazine was addressed to Mr. Urban. At least one passage, which carried a slur upon publishers, may have been changed to suit Mr. Nichols.[20] But more indicative of his carefulness are his revisions of words and phrases. "The whole fabrick" of Chatterton's poems became "the beautiful fabrick" (p.12). The ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... eh?" Mr. Gamely said with a side glance at Pepsy. He was not going to have her witness his discomfiture at the hands of this glib little stranger. Moreover, a slur at his personal splendor was a very grave matter and ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... sufficient to insult him with the names of "foreigner" and "Roman," and to render it impossible that he should be again put forward as monarch by subjecting him to mutilation. The Roman historian supposes that this was done to cast a slur upon Rome but it was a natural measure of precaution under the circumstances, and had probably no more recondite motive than compassion for the youth and inexperience ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than this—he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops to say that they would fight better for such a splendid inducement as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... the endings. 'A-n-d' spells 'and.' You pronounce it 'an'.' 'I-n-g' spells 'ing.' Sometimes you pronounce it 'ing' and sometimes you leave off the 'g.' And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. 'T-h-e-m' spells 'them.' You pronounce it—oh, well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the grammar. I'll get one and show you ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... that doctors are privileged. My controversy with this class of reporters is their generosity, which puts into one's mouth statements that on final analysis may be cold facts, but which, remembering that one is lecturing on work among people whom one loves and respects, it would never occur to me to slur at a public meeting. No one who tries to alter conditions which exist can expect to escape making enemies. I have seen reports of what I have said at advertised meetings, that were subsequently cancelled. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... them. It is interesting to remember that Pepys was sent to prison just when Bunyan came out of it, in the year 1678. The charge against the diarist was indeed a false one, and his imprisonment cast no slur upon his public record: while Bunyan's charge was so true that he neither denied it nor would give any promise not to repeat the offence. Pepys, had he known of Bunyan, would probably have approved of him, for he enthusiastically admired people who were living for conscience' sake, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... very cradle he had been, as it might seem to the superstitious, marked by fate for a destiny peculiarly severe. His real birth was long disputed, without the shadow of a reason, except what was suggested by a base court intrigue. This slur upon his legitimacy, which was afterwards virtually wiped away by the British Parliament, was nevertheless the greatest obstacle to his accession, there being nothing so difficult to obliterate as a popular impression of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... fellows," she said, with the least touch of resentment in her gentle voice, "they might take my things and sell them to buy cigars to smoke." I suspect it was the cigar that grated harshly. It was ever to her a vulgar slur on her beloved pipe. In truth, the mere idea of Mrs. Ben Wah smoking a cigar rouses in me impatient resentment. Without her pipe she was not herself. I see her yet, stuffing it with approving forefinger, on the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... Edinburgh. Of all the works I have seen on the question, this is the most confident, and the sorest. {5} A writer on astronomy said of Mr. Jellinger Symons,[18] "Of course he convinced no one who knew anything of the subject." This "ungenerous slur" on the speculator's memory appears to have been keenly felt; but its truth is admitted. Those who knew anything of the subject are "the so-called men of science," whose three P's were assailed; prestige, pride, and prejudice: this the author tries to effect for ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... inclination I ought to have for my own Country, had almost perswaded me to rest my self there, and to make my native tongue the basis of this universall reduction but then the rest of the Europaean world (which I have no reason to slur or contemne) would have as ill resented the project, as we did it in the Germans, who would long agoe have challenged this honour to themselves. I had in the end no other course to take, but to throw myselfe upon the Latine, ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier

... you become friends—you can reach him through Abba Bey. He hates his brother who is the head of the family and he hates his brother's wife—for family reasons which it is not necessary to waste time in telling you. I knew him in Constantinople. Underneath I believe he hates the English—there is a slur on him." ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... place in 1858, by order of the English Parliament; for though the results of that commission thoroughly exculpated Sir James Brooke from any blame, there was never any amende honourable made for subjecting him to such an indignity. It was never understood by the natives as anything but a slur on the Rajah's character, and was a terrible injury to his prestige for a time. Indeed, it was the seed of the Malay plot; and if we had all been killed, our own English Government would have been the remote cause of our death. It ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... if only the present situation can be turned to advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish Unionists—even those who now most heartily ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... was intended to please; it might have pleased some girls, but it did not please this one. Mary's dignity was offended. Anything approaching a slur upon her beloved uncles, or their place of business, or South Harniss, or the Cape Cod people, she resented with all her might. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Correspondent, who writes himself Peter Ball, or Bell,—for his hand-writing is as ragged as his manners—admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... hereditary honours,—"that in the infliction of all pain the question as to cruelty or no cruelty was one of relative value." Was it "tanti?" Who can doubt that for a certain maximum of good a certain minimum of suffering may be inflicted without slur to humanity? In hunting, one fox was made to finish his triumphant career, perhaps prematurely, for the advantage of two hundred sportsmen. "Ah, but only for their amusement!" would interpose some humanitarian averse equally to fishing and to hunting. Then ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... running down by semitones to a fifth below, and frequently repeating the notes, for the space of a minute, with occasional pauses and slight variations, sometimes ascending as well as descending the scale. The bird does not slur the passages, but utters them with a sort of trembling staccato. The separate notes may be distinctly perceived, with intervals of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... wife, "though I agree with you as to the actual state of society in this respect, I must enter my protest against your slur on the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Germaine's table; and, more amazing still, the husbands had so far approved of the grossly discourteous conduct of the wives as to consent to make the most insultingly trivial excuses for their absence. Could any crueler slur than this have been cast on a woman at the outs et of her married life, before the face of her husband, and in the presence of two strangers from another country? Is "martyrdom" too big a word to use in describing what a sensitive person must have suffered, subjected ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... baritone, soprano, and a bass and tenor, too. I can thrill and slur and frill and whirr and shake you through and through. I'm a Jews' harp—I'm an organ—I'm a fiddle and a flute. Every kind of touching sound is found ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... me of some 'un; but that some 'un—her as mought hev stood up in that shoe—ain't o' that kind as would ever stand in the shoes of her as YOU know at all." The rebuke, if such were intended, lay quite as much in the utter ignoring of Key's airy gallantry and levity as in any conscious slur upon the fair fame of his invented Dulcinea. Yet Key oddly felt a strong inclination to resent the aspersion as well as Collinson's gratuitous morality; and with a mean recollection of Uncle Dick's last evening's scandalous gossip, he ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... drill-shed to entrain for Valcartier. Our friends came to see us off and the band played "The Girl I Left Behind Me," in the traditional manner. On our arrival at Valcartier we marched over to the ground assigned to us, and the men set to work to put up the tents. I hope I am casting no slur upon the 8th Royal Rifles of Quebec, when I say that I think we were all pretty green in the matter of field experience. The South African veterans amongst us, both officers and men, saved the situation. But I know that the cooking arrangements rather "fell down", and I think a little bread ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... what it does for people, and that such a narrow, cowardly life is what we, fellow-handicraftsmen, aim at. I see this taken for granted continually, even by many who, to say truth, ought to know better, and I long to put the slur from off us; to make people understand that we, least of all men, wish to widen the gulf between the classes, nay, worse still, to make new classes of elevation, and new classes of degradation—new lords and new slaves; that we, least of all men, want to cultivate ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... sharp enough to follow the quick movement of his hand. None saw it drop or rise again. There was a slur of movement, and then, in the hand which had been empty, was a long-barrelled Colt. Cherry Bim, taking no notice of the sensation he created, tossed the revolver to the ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... man's voice faltered and stopped. He was going to have made a remark that would have cast a slur on the character of his late partner, so he ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... certainly attack us, I thought it advisable to make a forward movement; but the attitude of the 29th was not encouraging. I addressed them, and expressed a hope that they would now by their behaviour wipe out the slur of disloyalty which the firing of the signal shots had cast upon the regiment, upon which Captain Channer,[7] who was just then in command, stepped forward, and said he would answer for the Sikhs; but amongst the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... called "intoning." It is a plaintive, rhythmical chant, with as strong an unction of the nasal as ever prevailed in a Quaker or Methodist meeting. I cannot exactly understand why Episcopacy threw out the slur of "nasal twang" as one of the peculiarities of the conventicle, when it is in full force in the most approved seats of church orthodoxy. I listened to all in as uncritical and sympathetic a spirit as possible, giving myself up to be lifted by the music as high as ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives, this feature is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts, because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the Papacy. Catholic narrators know perhaps too much ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... have beamed on their hearts, with all the advantages of civilisation, and far greater happiness than they had hitherto enjoyed might have been their lot. No blame can be attached to Columbus, no slur can be cast on his fair fame. He had achieved a glorious undertaking in discovering a new world, but on its inhabitants he had been thus the instrument of bringing the direst of curses, and, instead of promulgating the faith he professed, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... that kindergartens have enormously increased lately. These facts I know very well. I also know how much ignorance and senseless prejudice the pioneers of these educational reforms have had to overcome in the introduction of the newer and better methods. The point I wish to make carries no slur upon the ideal which the best modern pedagogy is striving for; it is, on the contrary, an appeal for the support and furtherance of that ideal on the part of intelligent citizenship generally, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... difficult one. Already we are threatened with a second Fronde. It needs but such events as these to bring my family into prominence and make it the butt for the ridicule that malcontents but wait an opportunity to slur it with. This affair of Andrea's will lend itself to a score or so of lampoons and pasquinades, all of which will cast an injurious reflection upon my person and position. That, Monsieur, is, methinks, sufficient ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... I saw the slur intended—why I fancied I could see The old man shoot the insult like a poison dart at me; And in that heat of passion I swore an inward oath That if Annie pleased her father she could never please ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... Envied in prosperity, she was smugly pitied in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart from the crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form—a slur on society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such literature a "degrading form of vanity" and refused the offer. She ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... committed during the fury of the French Revolution had so entirely cured him of his predilection for the popular part of our Government, that he could not resist the opportunity, however ill-timed, of casting a slur on this nobleman, who was accused of being over-partial to it. In the third Essay, on Parochial Psalmody, he gives the preference to Merrick's weak and affected version over the two other translations that are used in our churches. The late Bishop Horsley, in his Commentary on the Psalms, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... slur did not deter Jordan in his determination to go higher, for at the battle of Manila he was a gunner's mate of the first class, and his record was so conspicuous that it could not go unnoticed ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... thousand men; and Turner gives him, at the most, between six and seven thousand. The latter seems nearer to the truth. We must here regret that Turner's partiality to the House of York induces him to slur over Edward's detestable perjury at York, and to accumulate all rhetorical arts to command admiration for his progress,—to the prejudice of the salutary moral horror we ought to feel for the atrocious perfidy and violation of oath to which he owed the first impunity that secured the after triumph.] ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... have no practical result, the magistrates cut them short by reiterating their demand for admittance; and on this being refused, they reminded the exorcists that they were expressly prohibited from asking any questions tending to cast a slur on the character of any person or persons whatever, under pain of being treated as disturbers of the public peace. At this warning Barre, saying that he did not acknowledge the bailiff's jurisdiction, shut the door in the faces ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was to show us that Cleopatra, a proud woman and scorned queen, could not forget Antony's faithlessness in leaving her to marry Octavia; but she never mentions Octavia, never seems to remember her after she has got Antony back. This omission, too, implies a slur upon her. Nor does she kiss Caesar's "conquering hand" out of fear. Thyreus has told her it would please Caesar if she would make of his fortunes a staff to lean upon; she has no fear, and her ambitions are wreathed round Antony: Caesar has nothing to offer that can ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... the Works Committee were going to foist an assistant on him. Assistant! The very name was a slight upon his capabilities, a slur on his independence. Why had they ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... an emphasis on that feminine, personal pronoun which was all the bitterer slur on the rest of womankind in that neighborhood, that he was so unconscious of the reflection it conveyed. The cook and the stable-boy also came running to the kitchen door, on hearing the hostler's exclamation; and they, too, stood gazing at the unconscious ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... and laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder. "You ought to have been an admiral, Joe," he said, gratefully, without intending any slur ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... Mr. Chillingworth, "we're your guests; we come here at your invitation to partake of a meal. You have wantonly attacked both of us. I need not say that by so doing you cast a far greater slur upon your own taste and judgment than you can ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... points that did not, after all, so ill accord with the Doctor's purblind vision; and he knew quite enough of the petty ills of life to judge of the merit of our poet's descriptions, though he himself chose to slur them over in high-sounding dogmas or general invectives. Mr. Crabbe's earliest poem of the Village was recommended to the notice of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds; and we cannot help thinking that a taste for that sort of poetry, which leans for support ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... authentic. Livingstone felt keenly on the subject of these rumors, not on his own account, but on account of the Geographical Society and of Sir Roderick who had introduced him to it; for nothing could have given him more pain than that either of these should have had any slur thrown on them through him, or even been placed for a time in ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... me should suffer shame. Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, And maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, And yet not dare to tell him what I think, And how men slur him, saying all his force Is melted into mere effeminacy? O me, I fear that I am no ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... take no notice at all of the medium's own account of how he or she attains results, but to substitute some complicated and unproved explanation of their own, is as insulting as it is unreasonable. It has been alleged as a slur upon Mrs. B's results and character that she has been twice prosecuted by the police. This is, in fact, not a slur upon the medium but rather upon the law, which is in so barbarous a condition that the true seer fares no better than the impostor, and ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... be taken down." As if to live up to the lucrative berth, Mr. Forquer had finished a frame-house—Springfield still had log houses, and not only in the environs, either!—and to cap the novelty, had that other new feature, a lightning-rod, put upon it. The object of the slur at youth had listened to the diatribe, flattering only so far ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... stiffly withstood the party that was not his, and upon some slur and insolence took from a man his office. Followed a week of glassy smoothness. Then suddenly, by chance, was discovered the plot of Bernal Diaz de Pisa—the first of many Spanish conspiracies. It involved several ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... Julius II. into his Feast of the Rosary, some ten years later. There has perhaps been a tendency to read the intention of these designs too much in the light of after events: and by so doing a great slur is cast on Duerer's consistency; for, had these designs the significance read into them, he must be supposed an altogether convinced enemy of the Church; and the tremendous salaams which he afterwards made to her in far more important ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... our commercial age is largely responsible for the invidious slur cast upon any genuine critical psychology; upon any psychology which frankly recognises the enormous influence in literature exercised by normal or ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... bring in the Devil playing at push-pin with the world, or like Domitian, catching flies,—that is to say, doing nothing to the purpose,—this is not only deluding ourselves, but putting a slur upon the Devil himself; and I say, I shall not dishonor Satan so much as to suppose anything in it; however, as I must have a care to how I take away the proper materials of winter-evening frippery, and leave the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... continued Butler, taking no offence at the slur cast on his grandfather's faith, "we must use human means. When you call in a physician, you would not, I suppose, question him on the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the manager came himself, with four horses and the big trap. The manager of Mulfera said his horses had something else to do, and his neighbors backed him up with some discreet encouragement on their own account. It was felt that a slur would be left upon the whole district if his lordship actually met with the only sort of reception which was predicted for him on Mulfera. Bishop Methuen, however, was one of the last men on earth to shirk a plague-spot; and on this one, warning ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... a reprehensible way of letting her servants talk to her, she soon heard of him. "He is such a respectable young man, ma'am," said Jane, "you don't know." Ignoring the slur cast on her acquaintance, my wife inquired further ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... more energetic than her husband, and had made out quite a plan of the manner in which George should proceed. She discussed the matter with him at great length. The one difficulty she was, indeed, obliged to slur over; but even that was not altogether omitted in her scheme. "Whatever incumbrances there may be, free yourself from them at once," she ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... refrained from speaking of her midnight fright to Flukey; for he would but tell her that, like all girls, she was afraid, and a slur from her brother was more than ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... on Brereton, as he stretched himself flat on the floor, "that I might then kiss that of Venus— and over hers I did not hurry, lads. Therefore, gentlemen, my present taste is, despite Gibbs' slur, most excellent, and I expect sweet dreams till his Excellency wants ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... highest caste, English and Indian. I admit no slur in the conjunction; and I take no insults from any man...." He made another forward move, purely for the pleasure of seeing Chandranath jerk backward. "If my cousin was in danger, we are grateful to you. But I told you, she wishes to be alone. So I must ask ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... were, in clusters. To some extent this may be because they draw one another by links more or less subtle. But there is more in it than that. It happens so. Life is an intermittent fever. Now all narrators, whether of history or fiction, are compelled to slur these barren portions of time or else line trunks. The practice, however, tends to give the unguarded reader a wrong arithmetical impression, which there is a particular reason for avoiding in these ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... side of a stall. Whistle, guitar, and voice now attacked the thing in differing keys and at varying points. Jimmie might be said to prevail. There was a fatuous tenderness in his attack and the thudding currycomb gave it spirit. Nor did he slur any of the affecting words; they clave the air ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... been made to an atrocious slur cast without a shred of evidence on her moral character. There is as little foundation for more general though milder charges of laxity. It is admitted that she had little love for her first husband, and it seems to be probable that her second had not much love for ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... assistance, sir," said he, "but I never could add up pounds, shillings, and pence; far less divide them except amongst the afflicted." "Take no notice of the cads," said Dr. Fynes. But Beresford represented meekly that a clergyman's value and usefulness were gone when once a slur was thrown upon him. Then Dr. Fynes gave him high testimonials, and they ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... this word, and which it had gained in French itself by the time of Talleyrand's famous double-edged sarcasm on person and world (Il n'est pas parvenu: il est arrive), was not quite original. The parvenu was simply a person who had "got on": the disobliging slur of implication on his former position, and perhaps on his means of freeing himself from it, came later. It is doubtful whether there is much, if indeed there is any, of this slur in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from hackerdom as one can get and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See {Real World}, {suit}. 2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique, rule-boundedness, {brute force}, and utter lack of imagination. Compare {card walloper}; contrast {hacker}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... succession from father to son, that it was not till late in the seventeenth century that one man could manage the working of a frame. The man who was considered the workman employed a labourer, who stood behind the frame to work the slur and pressing motions; but the application of traddles and of the feet ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... child's box of tin soldiers sent by post would have been just the thing for the Dardanelles landing! No; it's not the advice that riles me: it's the fact that people who have made a mistake, and should be sorry, slur over my appeal for the stuff advances are made of and yet continue to urge us on as if ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... prisoner was dismissed from the Bar. He slowly retired, like a man in deep grief: his head sunk on his breast—not looking at any one, and not replying when his friends spoke to him. He knew, poor fellow, the slur that the Verdict left on him. "We don't say you are innocent of the crime charged against you; we only say there is not evidence enough to convict you." In that lame and impotent conclusion the proceedings ended at the time. And there they would have remained ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... petitions for the welfare of Grannie and father and brother Tom, and for a time, with the perfunctoriness of childhood, which attaches more weight to the act than to the meaning of it, she allowed that to pass with a stickle and a slur. But very soon brother Tom was ruthlessly dropped out of the ritual, and neither threats nor persuasion could induce her ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... had long suspected Tompkins of entertaining a sneaking admiration for Edith, and resolved to tell her of this slur at the first opportunity. I didn't have a chance to answer him; a dozen men rushed into the room, threw their hats and coats on the bed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... was a deed of wonderful courage, and no man denied it, but it is curious that so stern a supporter of discipline as Havelock did not see that his son had put himself in a position where he had no right to be, and in so doing had thrown a slur on the bravery of the major, who except for the accident of his horse being shot would have led the men himself. But Havelock, full of pride in his son's action, insisted, to the great mortification of the 64th, on recommending him for the Victoria Cross, though the young ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... arriving till midnight. Among the latest, when Dan had lost himself far from Boston in talk with a young lady from Richmond, who spoke with a slur of her vowels that fascinated him, came Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley. He felt himself grow pale and inattentive to his pretty Virginian. That accent of Mrs. Brinkley's recalled him to his history. He hoped that she would not see him; but in another ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "Thomasin thinks, and I think with her, that she ought to be Wildeve's wife, if she means to appear before the world without a slur upon her name. If they marry soon, everybody will believe that an accident did really prevent the wedding. If not, it may cast a shade upon her character—at any rate make her ridiculous. In short, if it is anyhow possible ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... king, and really meant no harm whatever to his peace of mind concerning his Henrietta; and, if the worst came to the worst, everyone knew that out of France there was no swordsman fit to meet, even with a rapier, the foil of Aubyn Auberley. Neither was it any slur upon his loyalty or courage that he was now going westward from the world of camps and war. It was important to secure the wavering De Wichehalse, the leading man of all the coast, from Mine-head down to Hartland; so that, with the full ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... rapidly, "let us thresh out the matter ourselves. We will save Sir Frank's name from a police court slur at ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... Phaddhy, considering that it was a first station; and if the dinner goes as well off as the breakfast, they'll be biting their nails: but I should not wish myself that they would have it in their power to sneer or throw any slur over you about it.—Go along, Dolan," exclaimed his Reverence to a countryman who came in from the street, where those stood who were for confession, to see if he had gone to his room—"Go along, you vagrant, don't you see I'm ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... overtures of Pius IX.; in the studied sensationalism of his funeral arrangements, and in many other minute points, we are made sensible that if his life culminated in a tragedy, the tragic aspect of it was not altogether displeasing to him. Still it would be a grievous slur on so great a character to suppose that such a weakness could have had any considerable part in his steady and deliberate refusal to see a priest at the last. This is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that he believed ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... Frankfort, so soon as they learned his departure, had forwarded their accounts to the care of the Amsterdam firm; and, although his father had not the remotest intention of paying them, he was incensed in the extreme at the slur thus cast upon his house and name. In short, the unlucky artilleryman at once saw he had no chance of a single kreuzer, or of the slightest countenance from his father. His applications to his brothers, and one or two to more distant relatives, were equally unsuccessful. All ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... moved by Mrs. Dampier's youth, her beauty, her evident, if subdued bewilderment and distress. She told her story very clearly and simply, but to the Senator's excited and yes, it must be admitted, suspicious fancy, she seemed to slur over, as of no importance, the extraordinary discrepancy between her own and the Poulains' account of what had happened on the night of her own and her ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... she was no longer the self-conscious schoolgirl, paid for at a lower rate than her companions, stinted in dress, pocket-money, and education, and fiercely resentful at every turn of some real or fancied slur; she was no longer even the half-Bohemian student of these past two years, enjoying herself in London so far as the iron necessity of keeping her boarding-house expenses down to the lowest possible figure would allow. She was something altogether different. She was Marcella Boyce, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... for a share of the congratulations. Although the faithful creature had retreated on each occasion of his being attacked, no one thought of casting a slur upon his canine courage. He had only exhibited a wise discretion: for what chance would he have stood against such a formidable adversary? He had done better, therefore, by taking to his heels; for had he foolishly stood his ground, and got ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... people to cucumbers. Why is celery more aristocratic than potato? Is "them" the right word in the sentence: "I do not pull them up"? Explain what is meant by the paragraph on salads. Why is the tomato a "parvenu"? Does the author wish to cast a slur on the Darwinian theory? Is it true that moral character is influenced by what one eats? What is the catechism? What do you think of the author's theories about scarecrows? About "saving men from any particular vice"? Why does raising ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... down. 'But allow me to ask you, Signor de Tsanin, will not your duel throw a slur on the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... Reston? In Priorsford it's considered rather a slur on your character to care for poetry. Novels we may discuss, sensible people read novels, even now and again essays or biography, but poetry—there we have to dissemble. We pretend, don't we, Jean?—that poetry is nothing to us. Never a quotation or an allusion escapes us. We listen ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... mention this, my lord," said the counsel, "had not a certain magistrate, in another place, at an earlier stage of this inquiry, used language—in my humble opinion harsh and unwarranted— calculated to cast a slur on that gentleman's character, if not to interfere seriously with his future prospects. I merely wish to say, my lord, that my clients, and those of us who have gone fully into the case, and may be expected to know as much about it even as a north- country magistrate, are fully convinced ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... Centrals are here yet, why don't they come out of the crowd and receive us?" inquired Martin rather pompously. His insinuation that Dick's fellows might be mixed with the crowd was a slur on the Central boys ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... soft white muslin or soft red material, so ingeniously disposed as to drape the bust and lower limbs, and form a girdle at the same time. One shoulder and arm are usually left bare. The part which may be called a petticoat—though the word is a slur upon the graceful drapery—is short, and shows the finely turned ankles, high insteps, and small feet. These women are tall, and straight as arrows; their limbs are long and rounded; their appearance is ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... the test of time. He contradicted Wesley's evidence flatly. "I cannot but observe," he wrote to his friend Jacob Rogers, curate at St. Paul's, Bedford, "what a slur you cast upon the Moravians about stillness. Do you think, my brother, that they don't pray? I wish you prayed as much, and as well. They do not neglect prayers, either in public or in private; but they do not perform them merely as things that must be done; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you—every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... mountain man or woman would have you know, is one born of the mountains who has got above his raising, ashamed to own his origin, one who holds his own mountain people up for scorn and ridicule. To mountain folk the word hill-billy is a slur of the worst sort. A slur that has ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... reviling me, and my sister (then already dead of a broken heart), by name. That Dutch bottle was found by my noble benefactor and yours, after he entered on possession of the estate. That Dutch bottle distressed him beyond measure, because, though I and my sister were both no more, it cast a slur upon our memory which he knew we had done nothing in our miserable youth, to deserve. That Dutch bottle, therefore, he buried in the Mound belonging to him, and there it lay while you, you thankless wretch, were prodding and poking—often very near it, I dare say. His ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... to cast any slur, sir, upon the courage and conduct of his Catholic majesty's soldiers?" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... "Al-malikhulya," proving that the Greeks then pronounced the penultimate vowel according to the acute accenta; not as we slur it over. In old Hebrew we have the transliteration of four Greek words; in the languages of Hindostan many scores including names of places; and in Latin and Arabic as many hundreds. By a scholar-like comparison of these remains we should find little difficulty in establishing the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... tried to write— in verse as well as in prose. He will then know how to put himself in the place of the poet, and will not be so likely to mar the poet's verses by "reading them ill-favoredly." He will know the value of words that have been so far sought, and may not slur over them; he may feel the sound of a line formed to suggest a sound in nature. He will know that a meter has been carefully worked out, and that, in the reading, that meter is of the spirit of the poem; it is not to be disregarded. Likewise he will appreciate the place of rhyme, and may ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... was within her reach. Then she began to ask herself various questions. Would the Queen refuse to accept her in her new rank? Refuse! How could any Queen refuse to accept her? She had not done aught amiss in life. There was no slur on her name; no stain on her character. What though her father had been a small attorney, and her first husband a Jew banker! She had broken no law of God or man, had been accused of breaking no law, which ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... the child was about to be kissed by a knickerbockered admirer who failed to measure up to Aunt Sharley's jealous requirements touching on quality folks; and, following this, had engaged in a fight with the disappointed little boy's coloured attendant, who resented this slur upon the social standing of her small charge. Aunt Sharley had come off victor in the bout, but the picnic had been spoiled for at least three youngsters. So much for Aunt Sharley's virtues—for her loyalty, her devotion, her unremitting faithfulness, her championship of their destinies, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... it went to Bristowe. But those people in East Somerset know nothing about wrestling. Devon is the headquarters of the art; and Devon is the county of my chief love. Howbeit, my vanity was moved, by this slur upon it—for I had told her my name was John Ridd, when I had a gallon of ale with her, ere ever I came upstairs; and she had nodded, in such a manner, that I thought she knew both name and fame—and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... of my second refer, And spell that backward, my third behold— A hero of monstrous strength. They aver He held up a temple its fall to defer, And ate forty pounds (but I hope 'tis a slur) Every day for his ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... "Never do anything that you need be ashamed of, Algernon, and then you never need be ashamed of anything you do," and, beaming mildly at him, seems surprised at the clearness of her own logic. The boys tell him that he's "worse than a girl," and the girls repudiate the implied slur upon their sex by indignantly exclaiming that they are sure no girl ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... You're a liar, When you say he's set me free! When you met him there at Mingo's He had gone to hunt for me. Don't you dare to touch me, scoundrel! Don't you dare to slur his name! You're a cur—a thief—Jim Johnson! You have jumped my sweetheart's claim. Don't you dare to venture near me! Or you'll wish you'd not begun. All your schemes and double dealings, All your hatched-up plans ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker

... my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the Heathen Chinee, I state but facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... it best at this stage to transpose the story from the first to the third person. Any narrative, unless it is negative in its material, is hard to give in the first person; for where the narrator has played an active, positive part, he must either curb himself or fall under the slur of braggadocio. Yet, the world wants the details exactly as they happened; hence ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... with his dogship—and cursing him for a misbegotten wolf, Big Black Burl would be all afire in the flash of a gun-flint, and ready to pulverize the false muzzle that dared dab the fair name of his four-footed chum with a slur so foul. Sometimes, though, the white hunters, also, would curse Grumbo—denouncing him as a dog too wanting in the milk of human kindness to be allowed a place in human society, unmuzzled, excepting ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... men seeing this Have ta'en their cue and think it now their time To slur me with their coward disrespects, Unworthy usages, who, while John lov'd And while one breath'd That thought not much to take the orphan's part, And durst as soon Hold dalliance with the chafed lion's paw, Or play with fire, or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... then he handed over the gun and picked up the pheasant and began on Borlase most forcible. He pleaded their future relationship, the disgrace, the slur on his character and the shame to his girl; and Samuel listened very patient and granted 'twas a melancholy and most misfortunate affair; but he didn't see no way out for either ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... moste heavie; thei made for every one of them, a poste to be set up in the ground, which should be in height twoo yardes and a quarter, and in soche maner, and so strong, that the blowes should not slur nor hurle it doune, against the whiche poste, the yong man with a targaet, and with the cudgell, as against an enemie did exercise, and some whiles he stroke, as though he would hurte the hedde, or the face, somewhile he retired backe, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... is horrible, and brutal, and most ungentlemanly. Even a common man wouldn't have behaved in that way. Of course, it doesn't matter to you, but it means the ruin of Mary's whole life. How can she get a husband now when she's wasted her best years? You've spoilt all her chances. You've thrown a slur upon her which people will never forget. You're a cruel, wicked man, and however you won the Victoria Cross I don't know; I'm sure ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... not worm-like subtlety that suggested that reply. It was positive inspiration. By those simple words Juliana had done something to remove the slur she was always casting on a certain character. Tollington Moon had not managed his nieces' affairs so badly after all if one of them could afford herself extravagances of that sort. The blouse therefore might be taken as a sign and symbol of his innermost integrity. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... the notes. For instance:—[Music: three notes, decrescendo on second note]. The ties to be just as they are now placed. It is not synonymous to write [Music: three notes, slurred] or thus [Music: three notes, slur over first two notes]. Such is our will and pleasure! I have passed no less than the whole forenoon to-day, and yesterday afternoon, in correcting these two pieces, and I am actually quite hoarse from stamping ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... me for?" pursued Swing, disregarding the slur. "Hell's bells, if you'd bit Luke I wouldn't have a word to say, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... its teachings? As a matter of fact, there is wide disagreement, among those who accept the Bible as authoritative, over its real teachings. A text is available for every variety of belief. Christians usually emphasize those texts that make for what they hold true, and slur over others. "Look not on the wine when it is red" is preached in every Sunday School, while "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake" is seldom quoted save by brewers. The Bible, the work of a hundred hands during a span of a thousand years, represents a great ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... my class-room and laboratory, and thus pleasantly began our lifelong acquaintance. I was much struck, not only with his brightness and ability, but with his resolution to understand everything spoken of, to see if possible thoroughly through every difficult question, and (no if about this!) to slur over nothing. I soon found that thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the moral ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Slur" :   inkblot, obliterate, splodge, defect, refer, utter, blotch, verbalize, spiel, verbalise, efface, musical notation, fingerprint, focus, weaken, disparagement, fingermark, depreciation, mar, music, derogation, splotch, play, talk, mouth, speak, blemish, denote, tie, smudge



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