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Blacken   Listen
verb
Blacken  v. t.  (past & past part. blackened; pres. part. blackening)  
1.
To make or render black. "While the long funerals blacken all the way."
2.
To make dark; to darken; to cloud. "Blackened the whole heavens."
3.
To defame; to sully, as reputation; to make infamous; as, vice blackens the character.
Synonyms: To denigrate; defame; vilify; slander; calumniate; traduce; malign; asperse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blacken" Quotes from Famous Books



... up into thick masses at the back of the head, through which a number of gold and silver or ivory arrows are placed, much in the manner of the peasant girls in some parts of Germany. The unmarried women have good eyebrows and beautiful teeth; but when they marry they blacken their teeth and shave off their eyebrows, to show their affection for their husbands, and that they no longer wish to win the admiration of others. The men have a curious way of saluting each other, passing their hands down the knee and leg, when they give ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... (contemptuously). Ah! You take a sentimental view of it! Believe me, the people would be all the better were they to receive a practical—a technical education—say were they to be taught how to sweep chimneys, or to blacken boots! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various

... others by its reddish color, resembling "Socotrine Aloes." The quantity of morphia in this is inferior to the preceding. It has one quality which, when adulterated, ought to be known, that is a musty smell. By keeping it does not blacken like the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... more anxious to regale him with stories about the real or imaginary scandals of the city than to give him spiritual consolation or advice. Yet in later life, when he had definitely separated from the Church and when he was most anxious to blacken the character of Rome and the Popes, it is remarkable that he could point to very little detrimental to them of which he had personal knowledge, and was forced to rely solely on what had been told him ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... be made of Manilla or such other pliable rope as may be directed from time to time by the Bureau of Ordnance. It is prohibited to blacken them or to diminish their pliability. Three-inch rope will be found large enough for the heaviest, and from 2-1/2 to 2-1/4 inch ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... Romans hated, reviled, and persecuted Carthage, the most deadly poison of their hatred they poured upon Hannibal; they did not hesitate to blacken his memory by the most ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... on. The plantation paths now began to blacken with slowly moving figures, but within the Big House there was no confusion. Colonel Blount paced slowly up and down the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... advanced towards Cagatinta, who was rubbing his hands under his esclavina, charmed at the idea of the quantity of stamped paper he would now have an opportunity to blacken. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... squares of men, with spears Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand. And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he came. As some rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, When the frost flowers the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... I have sinn'd; oh! grievously and often; Exaggerated ill, and good denied; Blacken'd the shadows only born to soften; And Truth's own light unkindly misapplied: Alas! for charities unloved, uncherish'd, When some stern judgment, haply erring wide, Hath sent my fancy forth, to dream and tell Other men's deeds all evil! Oh, my heart! Renew once more ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... "Squire Kate—I will be satisfied that this Thorndyke's name is not to blacken yours in the mouths of the people of Market-Sinfield. I shall remain concealed in this house till I can speak to you alone. Remember—my love makes me desperate—one more harsh word from you may bring mischief to another. Gilbert." ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... he could not. To tell her anything of this story would be gall and wormwood! To have to drop a hint that would blacken another man's character would place him in a most awkward position. To think of doing it was like tearing out his heart ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... in this world, after that took to drinking, used to get constantly drunk, and rolled from public-house to public-house, and bar to bar, and as the worst glass of vitrol still cost a penny, he became reduced to undertaking the part which you have seen, to dabble in the water, to blacken himself, and to allow himself to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... done it—oh, it is simple to teach one's soul in theory! But when my eyes saw my own land blacken and shrivel like a green leaf in the fire, and when with my own eyes I saw the best, the noblest, the crown of my country's chivalry fall rolling in the mud of Morsbronn under the feet of Prussia, every drop of blood in my body was French—hot and red and French! And it is now; and ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... their bodies being delivered over to the surgeons for the benefit of science, or exposed on a gibbet, till the crows, eagles and vultures, devour their flesh, and then, even their bones are left to blacken in the winter's blast, as a warning to man, to shun the deeds that led ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... that letter, how joyously, how breathlessly she had anticipated rushing to her lover's breast! It seems incredible that the space of a few minutes should suffice to blight a whole existence—blacken without a ray of hope ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the interference of the officer put an end to the disturbance. It was their parting words taken in connection with what followed, that made a deep impression upon me:—"If it wasn't that you are dying I would blacken your eyes for you," cried the mechanic. "How do you know I am dying? You look as like dying as anybody, you miserable cripple," retorted the other. "Ah! I'm tough stuff, you'll not see me die in a hurry." The cripple who uttered these ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... will a young and inexperienced fellow like Owen do? Will he not be hoodwinked by some specious story or another, framed to last till Manston gets tired of poor Cytherea? And then the disclosure of the truth will ruin and blacken ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... white satin who ought to be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work on his way to a wedding in the chapel or a coronation in the Capitol. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... you of Jezebel, and like her they "paint their faces" before going into public. Not only do they smear their faces freely with white and red, but they also join together their eyebrows by a thick black band of kohl, and with the same pigment blacken the lower lids of the eyes, giving a wicked and peculiar expression to the eyes. The tips of the fingers are stained red with henna; and without these appliances no Eastern woman deems her toilette complete. Many of them would doubtless be exceedingly lovely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. Thunder-clouds empurple the turf and blacken the hangers, but they cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line; rain throws over the range a gauze veil of added softness; a mist makes them more wonderful, unreal, romantic; snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise they are magical, a background for Malory; at sunset they are ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... weather leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves with the coming squall-cloud blacken. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... setting for the shy processes of an honest human mind,—we are all strained to artificiality in the excessive glare of attention that beats upon us there. One does not exhibit opinions at a meeting, one acts them, the very truth must rouge its cheeks and blacken its eyebrows to tell, and to Lady Harman it was the acting chiefly and the make-up that was visible. They didn't grip her, they didn't lift her, they failed to convince her even of their own belief ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... known in history as the Golden Age of China. Because of the relentless native prejudice against a successful woman, in a country where girl babies are ruthlessly drowned, as the quickest way of ridding the world of useless incumbrances, Chinese historians have endeavored to blacken her character and undervalue her services. But later scholars now see that she was a powerful and successful queen, who did great good to her native land, and strove to maintain its ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... found in the black relations of the Jesuits, and some French and Spanish Pasquilers." These slanderers were chiefly, I believe, Parsons or Persons, and Sanders, who scrupled at nothing that would tend to blacken the character and reputation of Elizabeth. Thus besides the above, and other stories of Elizabeth {12} herself, it was stated by Sanders that her mother, Anne Boleyn, was Henry VIII.'s own daughter; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... French have demanded Syria for themselves. The British are pro-Feisul, but the French don't want him anywhere except dead or in jail. They know they've given him and the Arabs a raw deal; and they seem to think the simplest way out is to blacken Feisul's character and ditch him. If the French once catch him in Damascus he's done for and the ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... have gone—Jenkin, Hodgson, and I know not who besides; and of that tide of students that used to throng the arch and blacken the quadrangle, how many are scattered into the remotest parts of the earth, and how many more have lain down beside their fathers in their "resting-graves"! And again, how many of these last have not found their way there, all too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Sir Bernard Burke, it was when she would not yield to Captain Cayley's immoral overtures that the latter vowed to blacken her character, a threat which he so successfully carried out "that not one of her female acquaintances upon whom she called would admit her; not one of all she met in the street would acknowledge her." Desperate at this villainy ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... her colours so lavishly that there should be no one to see her bright handiwork. Yet, sad to tell, there lay the broad sheet of crimson and gold day after day unnoticed and unheeded, till, in despair, it at length began to wither and blacken and die. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Angouleme, and their attendants, had reached the admiral's house. The wounded man was almost alone. Could there be any clearer proof of the rectitude of his purpose, of the utter falsity of the charges of conspiracy with which his enemies afterward attempted to blacken his memory?[983] Guerchy and other Protestant gentlemen had expressed the desire to spend the night with him; but his son-in-law, Teligny, full of confidence in Charles's good intentions, had declined their offers, and had, indeed, himself gone to his own lodgings, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... both of watching and contravening all Flanagan's plans, and, if possible, of drawing him into some position which might justify the "few friends," as he termed them, first in disgracing him, and afterwards of settling their account ultimately with a man whom they wished to blacken, as dangerous to the society of which they were members. The curse, however, of these secret confederacies, and indeed of ribbonism in general, is, that the savage principle of personal vengeance is transferred from the nocturnal assault, or the midday assassination, which may ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the duke would in all likelihood have exchanged his residence in England for Castile, where his ambition, satisfied with the certain reversion of a crown, might have been spared the commission of the catalogue of crimes which blacken his memory. [42] ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... and his wives was regulated solely with reference to the succession question, and by his desire to preserve the peace of his kingdom, we believe that few men would be disposed to condemn most of those of his acts that have been long admitted to blacken his memory, and which have placed him almost at the very head of the long roll of heartless tyrants. That the end justifies the means is a doctrine which everybody condemns by word of mouth, but the practice founded upon which almost all men approve in their hearts, whenever it applies to their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of the injustice with which all religions are pleased to blacken the Divinity, men can not consent to accuse Him of iniquity; they fear that He, like the tyrants of this world, will be offended by the truth, and redouble the weight of His malice and tyranny upon them. They listen, then, to their priests, who tell them that ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... first faction fight in ould Ireland, they say, Was all on account of Saint Pathrick's birthday, Some fought for the eighth—for the ninth more would die. And who wouldn't see right, sure they blacken'd his eye! At last, both the factions so positive grew, That each kept a birthday, so Pat then had two, Till Father Mulcahy, who showed them their sins, Said, "No one could have two birthdays ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... replied the Saxon, folding his immense arms across his breast, and relaxing the menace beginning to blacken ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... consummate eloquence, that this same Quintianus, supposing him to have dined off some birds or, as they assert, killed them for magical purposes, should have had no slave to sweep up the feathers and throw them out of doors! Or further that the smoke should have been strong enough to blacken the walls and that Quintianus should have suffered such defacement of the room in which he slept, while it was still in his occupation! Nonsense, Aemilianus! There is no probability in the story, unless indeed Crassus on his return went not ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... Currie, Ferguson, and Smith of Newburn &c. who, in order to palliate and extenuate the evil of the present backsliding courses, seem to have left no stone unturned to expose or blacken ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... proceeding for a Democrat, elected to the highest place in the Government, and fellow Democrats in another high place, where they have the right to speak and legislate generally, to join with the commune in traducing the Senate of the United States, to blacken the character of Senators who are as honorable as they are, who are as patriotic as they ever can be, who have done as much to serve their party as men who are now the beneficiaries of your labor and mine, to taunt ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... caravanserai, where rival proprietors of rows of little chowkees contend for the privilege of supplying me char-poy, dood, and chowel, and where thousands of cawing rooks blacken the trees and alight in the quadrangular serai in noisy crowds, and I enter ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... themselves on teeth of pearly whiteness; but many Asiatic nations regard them as beautiful only when of a black color. The Chinese, in order to blacken them, chew what is called "betel" or "betel nut," a common masticatory in the East. The Siamese and the Tonquinese do the same, but to a still greater extent, which renders their teeth as black as ebony, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... Haddon tell me all, and I know that they left you to drown; and now for my sake you would save him, run the risk of being discovered assisting him to escape from justice—and the risk is great, dear. Think what it would mean if that became known, how it would blacken poor Frank's case. People would say they had all been in league to rob the mine; you would be despised, your mother's heart would break. Harry, that must not be. The shame is mine now; you and yours have borne enough. I cannot drag you into it again. I cannot have your ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... grown, but not too hard; pour boiling salt and water on them; let them be covered with it nine days, changing it every third day; then take them out on dishes, and put them in the sun to blacken, turning them over; then put them in a jar and strew over them pepper, cloves, garlic, mustard seed and scraped horse-radish; cover them with cold strong ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... that they should be far better neighbors and that their housekeeping expenses would be lessened. The Fuller replied, "The arrangement is impossible as far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would immediately blacken ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... left even after severe frosts; sometimes they seem to shrivel or blacken, and may not perhaps be palatable then. Missel-thrushes and wood-pigeons eat them. Last winter in the stress of the sharp and continued frosts the greenfinches were driven in December to swallow the shrivelled blackberries still on the brambles. ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... ground, and begun to beat his drum, the warriors advance, one after another, brandishing their war-clubs, and striking the red post a violent blow, while the mystery man sings their death-song. When the warriors have struck the post, they blacken their faces, and all set to dancing around it. The shrill war-whoop is screamed aloud, and frantic gestures and frightful yells show, but too plainly, that there will be very little mercy extended to the enemy that ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... realize all the bearin's of the case. The town is down on you. Respectable people won't have nothin' to do with you, any more than they would walk arm in arm with the charcoal-man in their Sunday toggery. I aren't respectable, so you can't blacken me. I've showed you I'm not afraid to trust you. You can't sleep in the streets, you can't eat pavin'-stuns and mud, and you won't go home. This brings me to the question again: Can you stand me? I warn you I'm ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... day and told mother and daughter the rest, excusing himself characteristically for not letting Cornelis and Sybrandt hear of it. "It is not for me to blacken them; they come of a good stock. But Gerard looks on them as no friends of his in this matter; and I'm Gerard's comrade and it is a rule with us soldiers not to tell ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... philosopher, deprive him of public confidence, ridicule and misrepresent his labors, hold him up by name to public obloquy and contempt, destroy or lessen the circulation of his books, and, in general, to blacken and break down his literary reputation by any and every means, even to the extent of aspersing his personal reputation, although there had never been the slightest personal collision. Its bitter and invidious spirit was not ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward, I have pass'd a life of frights and horrors with him, And ever to the brink of some abyss With dizzy headlong violence he bears me. Nay, do not weep, my child. Let not my sufferings Presignify unhappiness to thee, Nor blacken with their shade the fate that waits thee. There lives no second Friedland: thou, my child, Hast not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... hapless idiot's and the slave's, Sweet children smile in their nurses' arms, And clap their hands in innocent glee; While, unrebuked by the heavenly charms That beam in the eyes of infancy, Oaths still blacken the lips of men, And startle the ears of womanhood! On either hand The churches stand, Forgotten by those who yesterday Went thronging thither to praise and pray, And take of the Holy Body and Blood! Their week-day creed is the law of Might; Self is their idol, and Gain their right: ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... assailed private characters, and wilfully perverted history to blacken the reputation of public men. I ask, was any one of these men in Bengal in the year 1803? Was any single conductor of any one of these paltry prints ever in Bundelcund or the Rohilla country? Does this ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thirty-seven years old, she bore so close a resemblance to the Venus of Milo that all who knew her recognized the likeness when the Duc de Riviere sent the beautiful statue to Paris. In a few months sorrows were to dim with yellowing tints that dazzling fairness, to hollow and blacken the bluish circle round the lovely greenish-gray eyes so cruelly that she then wore the look of an old Madonna; for amid the coming ruin she retained her gentle sincerity, her pure though saddened glance; ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... news was unimportant. A skirmish or two, leaving a few more women's lives maimed and hearts desolate. A lie or two of continental manufacture, tending to blacken the fair fame of the most humane and good-tempered army which, in all probability, ever took the field. A shriek or two from soft-handed sentimentalists at home, who—for reasons best known to themselves—are ardent patriots of every country save their ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... Calvin and Servetus, in which the latter figured to-day like a Christian Confessor and martyr, and the former as a diabolical persecutor; many moving incidents being introduced not found in history, and many ingenious inferences and suppositions tending to blacken the Reformer's character. Judging from the frequency of the deep groans, loud amens, and noisy hallelujahs of the congregation during the narrative, had Calvin suddenly thrust in among us his hatchet face and goat's beard, he would have been hissed and pelted, nay possibly been lynched ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... particular satisfaction upon the many fine things which Satan, rummaging his inexhaustible storehouse of slander, could set down to blacken the characters of good men, and load the best Princes of the world with infamy ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... was Ann Rutledge; but then Mr. Herndon's story must be looked upon as a pleasant piece of fiction. When it appeared, Mrs. Lincoln felt shocked that one who pretended to be the friend of her dead husband should deliberately seek to blacken his memory. Mr. Lincoln was far too honest a man to marry a woman that he did not love. He was a kind and an indulgent husband, and when he saw faults in his wife he excused them as he would excuse the impulsive acts of a child. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... try to blacken the character of your opponent as it invariably places one's own under the spotlight and they'll find spots you were sure were ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... no good money, not they. The kind they do have would blacken and burn Hatton's hands to touch. Thy father ran the whole kith and kit of the Naylors out of Hatton village the very year of thy birth. He wouldn't have them in his village if he was alive and while I am ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the early history of the Loyalists of America has never been written, except to blacken their character and misrepresent their actions; they were represented as a set of idle office-seekers—an imputation which has been amply refuted by their braving the forests of northern countries, and converting them into fruitful fields, developing trade ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken nine, and ten, and eleven, and all between, with the color of twelve. Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace. So when the dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness. The best ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... firelight shining on the panes as the outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light, into ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... more These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded: Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... you will try and blacken her character and have her sent out of the post, and so rob us of the last relic I have of my home and f-f-friends," and Mrs. Forrest began to ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... top of the tall building, reach beams stretching across for the reception of the tobacco-sticks, thick pine laths, from which are suspended the heavy plants. Safely housed and beyond all danger of the frost, whose slightest touch is sufficient to blacken and destroy it, the crop is now ready for firing, and through the late autumn days blue clouds of smoke hover over and around the steep roofs of the tall tobacco-barns. A stranger might suppose the buildings on fire, but not a blaze is within, the object here, as in bacon-curing, being ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... do; ascend it, and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell. Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to belong to them—to be subjected to their will—and that is capricious; for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences" which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigious mountains; ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... triumph by a winged demon. It is singular how legends of this nature should attach themselves to certain localities and persons; but the occupants of Pengersick appear to have had differences with the clergy in old times, and the priests generally contrived to blacken the characters of those who became obnoxious to them. It was a terrible power, the making or ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... springing to his feet, "if that man be you, a thousand times, yes! Go; do your worst; cast forth my name like waste-paper on the winds, scourge it, brand, blacken it; do what you will. Though you curse me to the confines of purgatory, my ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... blacken your face and hands at one of the slack dumps and pass yourself for a miner quitting his job," was Blount's parting suggestion; but the hollow-eyed fugitive had a last word to say, too, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... operation. The wicked lying of previous campaigns no doubt cannot be repeated: bigotry will make no further experiments in Pigottry. But a resolute attempt, lavishly financed and directed by masters of the art of defamation, will be made to blacken Ireland. Every newspaper in every remotest country-town in England will be deluged with syndicated venom. The shop-keeper will wrap up his parcels in Orange posters, and the working-man will, I hope, light his pipe for years to come with pamphlets of ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... Crimes, He Rails at Wedlock in confused Rhimes, Calls Woman Faithless, 'cause she woun't consent, To humour what his Brutish Thoughts invent; No wonder then, if with his poisonous Breath, He strives to Blacken the Brightest thing on Earth: Woman! by Heaven her very Name's a charm, And will my Verse against all Criticks Arm; She Comforts Man in all his Sweats and Toils, And richly pays his Pains, with Love and Smiles. 'Tis Woman makes the ravish'd ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... careful to keep back the sediment, which scrape into the soap-grease. In this way you can fry in the same fat a dozen times, while if you are not careful to strain it each time, the crumbs left will burn and blacken all the fat. Occasionally, when you have finished frying, cut up two or three uncooked potatoes and put into the boiling fat. Set on the back of the stove for ten or fifteen minutes; then set in a cool place for fifteen minutes longer, and strain. The potatoes ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... Citizens! will you see this nameless crime Brand the clean earth, blacken the crystal heaven? Why, no man stirs! God! with what thick strange fumes Hast thou, o' the sudden, brutalized their sense? Or am I mad? Is this already hell? Worshipful fiends, I have good store of gold, Packed in my coffers, or loaned out to—Christians; I give it you as free as night bestows ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... ruinous conflict which has been raging for seven years in the neighboring island of Cuba. The same disregard of the laws of civilized warfare and of the just demands of humanity which has heretofore called forth expressions of condemnation from the nations of Christendom has continued to blacken the sad scene. Desolation, ruin, and pillage are pervading the rich fields of one of the most fertile and productive regions of the earth, and the incendiary's torch, firing plantations and valuable factories and buildings, is the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... Duke of York, or was merely a country landowner, can never be decided. The charges made against him after his death were not supported by a shred of evidence, but it was necessary then for the Government to blacken the character of the Captain of Kent for the utter discouragement of his followers. All we know of Cade is that by the Act of Attainder he must have been a man of some property in Surrey—probably a squire ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... it is by marriage with a man who is neither a dotard nor a fortune-seeker, and who remains constant and does not tempt her, by neglect, to forbode offense and to inflict anticipative reprisals—yet her purity goes uncredited, as her guilt would go unpunished; scandal makes haste to blacken her name to the prevailing hue; and whether she has sin or not, those with sin will cast, not the stone that breaks and kills, but the filth that sticks and stinks. The wife must continue the long social exile of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... by doom, Dido prays for death, and is weary of gazing on the arch of heaven. The more to make her fulfil her purpose and quit the light, she saw, when she laid her gifts on the altars alight with incense, awful to tell, the holy streams blacken, and the wine turn as it poured into ghastly blood. Of this sight she spoke to none—no, not to her sister. Likewise there was within the house a marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and fastened with snowy fleeces and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... no more. Thus, if eternal Justice rules the ball, Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall; On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent herses shall besiege your gates. There passengers shall stand, and pointing say (While the long fun'rals blacken all the way), 'Lo! these were they whose souls the Furies steel'd And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.' Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day! So perish all whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow For others' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... dark, defiant look in Ethelyn's face as she applied the match to this letter, and then watched it blacken and crisp upon the hearth. How well she remembered the day when she received it—the dark, dismal April day, when the rain which dropped so fast from the leaden clouds, seemed weeping for her, who could not weep then, so complete was her humiliation, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... blacken—wounds await— The grave grows sunlight to his darker fate. All now is gall and bitterness within, And thoughts, once sternly pure, half yield to sin. His sickened soul, in all its native pride, Swells 'neath the breast that tattered vestments hide Disdained, disdaining; while men flourish, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... prayers, expended here without sense of conscious virtue, perhaps served her unexpectedly in the end, when before her, hopeless one, a golden gate swung slowly open, and she entered that land where the wretched deeds of her later life could blacken her thoughts no more.—At the time, certainly, she might have been impatient at the formality of her companion's manner, his unfailing deference to her faintest wish. And yet she was conscious that the days spent in this gay resort were happy: happier than any she ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... Secondly, this doctrinal system seems to us equally irreconcilable with history and with ethics: it seems to trample on the surest convictions of reason and conscience, and spurn the clearest principles of nature and religion, to blacken and load the heart and doom of man with a mountain of gratuitous horror, and shroud the face and throne of God in a pall of wilful barbarity. How can men be guilty of a sin committed thousands of years before they were born, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... stand gazing down in sorrowful reproach upon what you regard as my unpardonable impiety, little dream of the fiery ordeal that consumed my childlike, beautiful faith, as flames crisp and blacken chaff. I am alone, and must ever be, while in the flesh; and I hoard my pain, sparing the world my moans and tears, my wry faces and desperate struggles. I tell you, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... do, should they fall in with a party of soldiers: he answered, 'Fight, to be sure!' Having asked Malcolm if he should be known in his present dress, and Malcolm having replied he would, he said, 'Then I'll blacken my face with powder.' 'That, said Malcolm, would discover you at once.' 'Then, said he, I must be put in the greatest dishabille possible.' So he pulled off his wig, tied a handkerchief round his head, and put his night-cap over it, tore the ruffles from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... now reproach him with natural deformities; but he malignantly sympathises with him, that he now no more is in possession of that beauty which rendered him so amiable during his residence in Italy. He speaks more plainly in a following page; and, in a word, would blacken the austere virtue of Milton with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... countries. But, not content with this, the women of Egypt wish their eyes to be still larger and blacker. To attain this Mussulmans, Jewesses, and Christians, rich and poor, all tint their eyelids with galena. They also blacken the lashes (as Juvenal tells us the Roman ladies did) and mark the angles of the eye so that the fissure appears larger." (Sonnini, Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, 1799, vol. i, p. 290.) Kohl is thus only used by the women ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... it in particular as being quoted quite seriously by certain anti-Napoleonic writers in the endeavour to bolster up a feeble case. Prejudice and distorted vision prevented them from seeing the absurdity of such attempts to blacken the character of ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... were expressed, though not in words so plain, and at length. But the Government would not take this view; he had represented virulent partisans as being supreme in the Queen's counsels, and his design was manifest "to blacken the Church party as men of a persecuting spirit, and to prepare the mob for what further service he had for them to do." Finding that they would not listen to him, Defoe surrendered himself, in order that others might not suffer for his offence. He was indicted on the 24th of February. ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... realise the human ideal; to put muscle there, to straighten that vertebra, to parallel more perfectly those dorsal and ventral lines, to lengthen or shorten those bones; to flesh the leg only to such a joint, and wool or unwool it below; to horn or unhorn the head, to blacken or blanch the face, to put on the whole body a new dress and make it and its remote posterity wear this new form and costume for evermore. All this shows how kindly and how proudly Nature takes Art into partnership with her, in these new structures of beauty and perfection; both ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... them back generously," muttered the bell-boy. "I've a score to settle with them for trying to blacken good old Saunders! But see here! Up to date, at least, they're guests of the hotel, and I'm an employe there. Now, if they get too much the better of matters in a scrimmage, I'll sail in with you boys, even though I have to resign my hotel job. But, if I see that you can handle ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... Genius of the Lake! He heard the groaning of the oak, And donn'd at once his sable cloak, As warrior, at the battle-cry, Invests him with his panoply: Then, as the whirlwind nearer press'd He 'gan to shake his foamy crest O'er furrow'd brow and blacken'd cheek, And bade his surge in thunder speak. In wild and broken eddies whirl'd. Flitted that fond ideal world, And to the shore in tumult tost The realms of fairy ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... professors, always infatuated with their own particular opinions, have frequently been extremely lavish in their accusations of atheism, against all those whom they felt a desire to injure; whose characters it was their pleasure to paint in unfavourable colours; whose doctrines they wished to blacken; whose systems they sought to render odious: they were certain of alarming the illiterate, of rousing the antipathies of the silly, by a loose imputation, or by a word, to which ignorance attaches the idea of horror, merely ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... heat of August Swims along the valley's bed. The tall reeds burn and blacken, While the gray elm droops its head, And the smoky sun above the hills is ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts

... remarked that the truffles produced from these are larger but less regular than those of the evergreen oak, which are smaller, but nearly always spherical. The truffles are gathered at two periods of the year; in May only white truffles are to be found, which never blacken and have no odour; they are dried and sold for seasoning. The black truffles (Tuber melanosporum) commence forming in June, enlarging towards the frosty season; then they become hard, and acquire all their perfume. They are ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... aristocratic place be so ill-kept, not to say dirty? The town is no centre of industry. Tall factory chimneys do not disfigure its silhouette or blacken its walls. Handsome equipages enliven the streets. But the municipality, like certain saints of old, seem to have taken vows of perpetual uncleanliness. Alike the scavenger's broom and the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... do you continue to side with these damn'd Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price." "The governor," says I, "has not yet blacked them enough." He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his colouring as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... this uprushing tide. The whalers went out into the Greenland seas full of strong, hopeful men; but the whalers never returned as they sailed forth. On land there are deaths among two or three hundred men to be mourned over in every half-year's space of time. Whose bones had been left to blacken on the gray and terrible icebergs? Who lay still until the sea should give up its dead? Who were those who should come back to ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... blacken the sky and the sullen sea (not yet lashed to fury) is ridged in deep, advancing breakers, the mariner's eye discerns these stormy petrels flying about or momentarily perched on the masts of ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... campaign of 1912, his enemies resorted to all sorts of slanders, calumnies, lies, ignoble always, and often indecent, to blacken him. On October 12th, the Iron Ore, a trade paper edited by George A. Newett at Ishpeming, Michigan, pubished this accusation: "Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting way; he gets drunk too, and that not infrequently, and all of his intimates know about it." When he was ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Mr. John Hookham Frere, Mr. Jenkinson (afterward Earl of Liverpool); Mr. George Ellis, Lord Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward Marquis Wellesley), Lord Morpeth (afterward Earl of Carlisle), Baron Macdonald, and others. These gentlemen spared no means, fair or foul, in their attempts to blacken their adversaries. Their most distinguished countrymen, if opposed to the Tory government of the time being, were treated with no more respect than foreign adversaries, and were held up to public execration ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... about half the book to come, but no more abstract can be necessary. The way in which Jean is delivered from his Adelaide and rewarded with his Caroline, if not quite probable (for Adelaide is made to blacken her own character to her rival), is not without ingenuity. And the narrative (which has Paul de Kock's curious "holding" quality for the hour or two one is likely to bestow on it) is diversified by the usual duel, by Jean's ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... the tattlers, to blacken a man from behind! Evidently they were spreading all sorts of lying rumors about him, while he had placed all that he possessed at their disposal. Now Pelle was furious; the leader could go to hell! He gave the fellow a few sound boxes on the ear, and asked him ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... you have spoken well, and your speech has been that free, open-hearted speech that wins its way alike among the Hyperboreans that dwell in frozen twilight near the northern star, and those dwarfed and swarthy intelligences that blacken in the fierce sunlight of that fearful axle we call the equator. Therefore, I will make return to you of speech no less frank ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... mother as she vigorously scrubbed the small boy's face with soap and water, "didn't I tell you never to blacken your face again? Here I've been scrubbing for half an hour ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... to the Corporation Debate on Repeal, has a single bold course been proposed for Ireland, that folly, disorder, and disgrace has not been foreboded. Never has any great deed been done here that the alien Government did not, as soon as the facts became historical, endeavour to blacken the honour of the statesmen, the wisdom of the legislators, or the valour of the soldiers ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... Aerssens owed much to the Advocate, but he attributed his removal from his post at the French court to the decision of Oldenbarneveldt to replace him by his son-in-law, Van der Myle. He never forgave his recall, and alike by subtle insinuation and unscrupulous accusation, strove to blacken the character and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... had a second string to her bow, so the edict went forth that Beatrice was to be allowed to be happy in her own way, and the shadow of that fatal sunshade was no longer to be suffered to blacken the moral ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... name—was Clarke. Man, I am about to speak plainly of that stranger—his character and his fate. And yet—yet you are his son! I would fain soften the colouring; but I speak truth of myself, and I must not, unless I would blacken my name yet deeper than it deserves, varnish truth when I speak of others. Houseman joined, and presented to me this person. From the first I felt a dislike creep through me at the stranger, which indeed it was easy to account for. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... properties of this product, but enough experience has been gained in a few weeks I have experimented upon it to say that it does possess some remarkable properties in many respects. It withstands excessively high degrees of heat, it is little deteriorated by molecular bombardment, and it does not blacken the globe as ordinary carbon does. The only difficulty which I have found in its use in connection with these experiments was to find some binding material which would resist the heat and the effect of the bombardment as ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... the fate of human beings to live on. And it is the fate of clouds that seem nothing but bits of vapour slowly to pile up, to pile up and fill the heavens and blacken the ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... he's treated Emma, and last night they up an' spoke—you should just a' 'eard them. Then someone set it goin' as the fault wasn't Dick's at all. See what I mean? I don't know who started that. I can't think as he'd try to blacken a girl's name just to excuse himself; that's goin' ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... summit the tree. This cannot be here. The march of peaceful is scarce less wanton than that of warlike invasion. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day, whose bivouac fires blacken the sweetest forest glades. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or defame. On the contrary, while I will not be so obliging as to confound ugliness with beauty, discord with harmony, and laud and be contented ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... of the earth can see it without glasses, though at a distance of 240,000 miles! Imagine, then, its intensity to the eye of observers placed at a distance of only fifty miles! Seen through this pure ether, its brilliancy was so intolerable that Barbicane and his friends were obliged to blacken their glasses with the gas smoke before they could bear the splendor. Then silent, scarcely uttering an interjection of admiration, they gazed, they contemplated. All their feelings, all their impressions, were concentrated in ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... their goal, Our name will blacken Heaven's scroll, A thing of scorn, all men to warn; A country that has lost ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... to them. He saw a shell land on and another beside one of the enemy gun positions—115-mm's from the Lester Dawes, he supposed. He continued to cling to the stanchion, and the Goblin shot straight up, and he was expecting to see the sky blacken and the stars come out when the gunboat leveled and started circling down again. The mountainside, he saw, was sending up a lightning-crackling tower of smoke and dust that swelled ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live; you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your splendid ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... into her good opinion, and knowing me to be in the way of the accomplishment of his wishes, he has prejudiced her against me, and done so in such a manner as to induce the belief in her mind that I am his bitterest enemy, and would use any means to do him an injury or blacken his character. Hence, if she were to know that anything came through me, she would at once set it down as false and slanderous, which would drive her farther from me and nearer to the other, thereby hastening the very calamity we ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... barn, and sought the wood; Behind her ran her infant train, Collecting here and there a grain. "Draw near, my birds," the mother cries, "This hill delicious fare supplies; Behold the busy negro race, See millions blacken all the place. Fear not: like me, with freedom eat; An Ant is most delightful meat. How blessed, how envied were our life, Could we but 'scape the poulterer's knife! But man, cursed man, on Turkeys preys, And Christmas shortens all our days. Sometimes with oysters we combine; Sometimes ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... tint at last ought at least to be as close and even as that in b, Fig. 1. You will find, however, that it is very difficult to get a pale tint; because, naturally, the ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper more than you want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by leaving the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine, lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last, passing ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... fused with two parts of soda, and one part of borax, upon charcoal, the sulphide of sodium is formed. This salt, if moistened and applied to a polished silver surface, will blacken it. The borax serves no other purpose than to prevent the absorption of the formed sulphide of sodium by the charcoal. As selenium will blacken silver in the manner above indicated, the presence of this substance ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... of Japan hardly finds words wherewith sufficiently to praise the simplicity of her pre-Meiji civilization. No furniture brings confusion to the room; no machinery distresses the ear with its groanings or the eye with its unsightliness. No factories blacken the sky with smoke. No trains screeching through the towns and cities disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simple bed on the floor, the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of knives and forks, the small variety of foods and of cooking utensils, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick



Words linked to "Blacken" :   cooking, nigrify, color, preparation, singe, discolour, discolor, blacken out, scorch, black, swinge, burn, whiten, melanize



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