Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Convert   Listen
verb
Convert  v. t.  (past & past part. converted; pres. part. converting)  
1.
To cause to turn; to turn. (Obs.) "O, which way shall I first convert myself?"
2.
To change or turn from one state or condition to another; to alter in form, substance, or quality; to transform; to transmute; as, to convert water into ice. "If the whole atmosphere were converted into water." "That still lessens The sorrow, and converts it nigh to joy."
3.
To change or turn from one belief or course to another, as from one religion to another or from one party or sect to another. "No attempt was made to convert the Moslems."
4.
To produce the spiritual change called conversion in (any one); to turn from a bad life to a good one; to change the heart and moral character of (any one) from the controlling power of sin to that of holiness. "He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death."
5.
To apply to any use by a diversion from the proper or intended use; to appropriate dishonestly or illegally. "When a bystander took a coin to get it changed, and converted it, (it was) held no larceny."
6.
To exchange for some specified equivalent; as, to convert goods into money.
7.
(Logic) To change (one proposition) into another, so that what was the subject of the first becomes the predicate of the second.
8.
To turn into another language; to translate. (Obs.) "Which story... Catullus more elegantly converted."
Converted guns, cast-iron guns lined with wrought-iron or steel tubes.
Converting furnace (Steel Manuf.), a furnace in which wrought iron is converted into steel by cementation.
Synonyms: To change; turn; transmute; appropriate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Convert" Quotes from Famous Books



... along the lines of the comments given. It will not be necessary for you to point the moral. He will see it for himself, but if you can show a little enthusiasm and delight in the incident he will go away feeling better toward you and will be a convert to poetry, at least to some kinds of it. Later in life the lesson will come back to him and he will seek for more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... who had seen the Virgin in a similar way, amidst all the same childish nonsense! Was it not always the same story, the Lady clad in light, the secret confided, the spring bursting forth, the mission which had to be fulfilled, the miracles whose enchantments would convert the masses? And was not the personal appearance of the Virgin always in accordance with a poor child's dreams—akin to some coloured figure in a missal, an ideal compounded of traditional beauty, gentleness, and politeness. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... consumed (b) in causing the boiling water to disappear as steam. Hence, as coal-gas is assumed for the present purpose to possess invariably the same heating power, it appears that the same quantity of heat is always needed to convert a given amount of cold water at a certain temperature into steam; but inasmuch as reference to the meter would show that about 5 times the volume of gas is consumed in changing the boiling water into steam as is used in ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... convert the king were of no avail. The Jesuits, however, opened schools, and have ever since labored assiduously and with success to introduce the ideas and the arts of ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... escape being provided for him by his friends; but as day by day went by, and he received no intelligence from without, while he remarked that every individual who entered his chamber was fully armed, and that the knives upon his table were not pointed, in order that he should be unable to convert them into defensive weapons, he became somewhat less violent; and he no sooner ascertained that Henry had refused to comply with the petition of his family than he said, with a bitter laugh: "Ha! I see that they wish ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... transit route for Southwest Asian heroin to Western Europe and - to a far lesser extent the US - via air, land, and sea routes; major Turkish, Iranian, and other international trafficking organizations operate out of Istanbul; laboratories to convert imported morphine base into heroin are in remote regions of Turkey as well as near Istanbul; government maintains strict controls over areas of legal opium poppy cultivation and ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... ancient seers of the East, and as part and parcel of the religion of their forefathers. Therefore when the devotees of the Romish faith, probably about the close of the fifth century of the Christian era, attempted to "convert" Ireland, they found a religion differing from their own only in the fact that it was not subject to Rome, and was free from the many corruptions and superstitions which through the extreme ignorance and misapprehension of its Western adherents had ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... work was at this time being done at Everton, the parish of the Rev. John Berridge, and Fletcher made special efforts to see and profit by it. He introduced himself to the noted clergyman as a convert seeking instruction and advice. Berridge, noting his foreign accent, asked him ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... that of a devotee, not of peace but of war—of some forlorn crusade. It had deep enthusiasm, which yet to the trained observer would seem rather the tireless faith of a convert than the disposition of the natural man. It was somewhat heavily lined for one so young, and the marks of a hard life were on him, but distinction and energy were in his look and in every turn of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... still persisted in his determination. His relations perceiving that he was immoveably fixed, resorted to prayer; and, on the following day, they all assembled around him in his mother's house, kneeled down, and cried unto our Saviour that he would convert him. The mother expressed herself thus, "O! my Lord Jesus! behold this is my child, I now give him up to thee! O accept of him, and suffer him not ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... very simple, but a very ingenious arrangement, to disturb the order of society," he said; "and to convert a very modest and unpretending, though lovely girl, into a forward and airs-taking old woman! What is this Mildred Dutton to you, that you should bequeath to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... with this plant a broth which cures from ill effects of either cold or heat as if by enchantment; they also infuse it into white wine, and convert it into a beverage which they call May wine, and which ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... admit of its being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have passed through my head, it is true; but if so, I had forgotten it. In my excited condition of mind there was no course left but to become a convert, and it was in a state of the most painful nervous exaltation that I left the medium's house that evening. She accompanied me to the door, hoping that I was satisfied. The raps followed us as we went through the hall, sounding on the balusters, the flooring, ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... a wine-growing people. From the sparkling juices of her luscious grapes, rich with the breath of an unrivalled climate, is to come in future the drink of our people. By means of her capacity in this respect we are to convert the vast tracts of her yet untilled soil into blooming vineyards, which will give employment to thousands of men and women,—we are to make wine as common an article of consumption in America as upon the Rhine, and to break one more of the links which bind us unwilling slaves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... you to return it; and I'll give you a copy of it upon demand; for I intend to keep it by me, as a guard against the infection of your company, which might otherwise, perhaps, some time hence, be apt to weaken the impressions I always desire to have of the awful scene before me. God convert us both! ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... country was yet ready to agree to the taxation of food required for a preferential tariff, and therefore unwilling to support that scheme; at the same time he encouraged Mr Chamberlain to test the feeling of the public and to convert them by his missionary efforts outside the government. Mr Chamberlain on his side emphasized his own parliamentary loyalty to Mr Balfour. In his pamphlet on "Insular Free Trade" the prime minister reviewed the economic history since Cobden's time, pointed to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... returned to Saint-Mande in no very good humor. Moliere, on the other hand, quite delighted at having made such a capital rough sketch, and at knowing where to find his original again, whenever he should desire to convert his sketch into a picture, Moliere arrived in the merriest of moods. All the first story of the left wing was occupied by the most celebrated Epicureans in Paris, and those on the freest footing in the house—every one in his ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... recently, serious artists like Maurel tried to take it more seriously and restore it to its rightful place. Only, unfortunately, instead of brushing away traditions and going back to the vital conception of Mozart, they sought to modernise it, to convert it into an early Wagner music-drama. The result may be seen in any performance at Covent Garden. The thing becomes a hodge-podge, a mixture of drama, melodrama, the circus, the pantomime, with a strong flavouring of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... me back in pagan night, And take my chance with Socrates for bliss, Than be the Christian of a faith like this, Which builds on heavenly cant its earthly sway, And in a convert mourns to lose a prey. Intolerance. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... teaching was always repugnant to common sense and natural reason. There are many persons yet teaching the old falsehood that man is passive in his conversion, notwithstanding the fact that men are imperatively commanded to convert—turn, that their sins may be blotted out. Men are yet found in some Protestant pulpits who spend a great deal of their time praying the Lord to convert sinners. It is often the case, in their own estimation, that the Lord gives no heed to their prayers; but ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880

... Birch, or Harper, or both. Unused to contention, and really much attached to her kinsman, the feeble objections of Miss Peyton gave way to the firmness of her niece. Mr. Wharton was too completely a convert to the doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, to withstand any solicitation from an officer of Dunwoodie's influence in the rebel armies; and the maid returned to the apartment, accompanied by her father and aunt, at the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or, more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and the real cause of her niece's ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... grouch against garden-parties, so often does he shake his sieve with deliberate intent to spoil the affair, which is after all, merely afternoon tea out of doors. The hostess anxiously consults "the probabilities" as to weather, and if storm threatens must hastily convert her garden fete into an in-door function. If blessed with a bright day, a garden party is a pretty affair. The women wear beautiful light gowns, en train by preference, and their flower-laden hats and gay parasols contribute to the charm ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... greatness. Never in all his history has he seen fit to go to the people direct for anything. In Philadelphia, when he wanted public-franchise control, he sought privily and by chicane to arrange his affairs with a venal city treasurer. In Chicago he has uniformly sought to buy and convert to his own use the splendid privileges of the city, which should really redound to the benefit of all. Frank Algernon Cowperwood does not believe in the people; he does not trust them. To him they constitute no more than a ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... the same purpose of substances previously wasted; inventions like subsoil-plowing or tile-draining, by which the produce of some kinds of lands is so greatly multiplied; improvements in the breed or feeding of laboring cattle; augmented stock, of the animals which consume and convert into human food what would otherwise be wasted; and the like. (2.) The other sort of improvements, those which diminish labor, but without increasing the capacity of the land to produce, are such as the improved construction of tools; the introduction of new instruments which spare manual ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... he pressed that hand with an emotion that came from other passions than love, "we, or rather I, have done great wrong. I have been leading you to betray your uncle's trust, to convert your gratitude to him into hypocrisy. I have been unworthy of myself. I am poor, I am humbly born, but till I came here, I was rich and proud in honour. I am not so now. Lucretia, pardon me, pardon me! Let the dream ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... wonderfully attractive and feasible," said Boyd, at last; "but we must weigh the overwhelming odds against success. First, of course, is the question of capital. I have a little property of my own which I can convert. But two hundred thousand dollars! That's a tremendous sum to raise, even for a fellow with a circle of wealthy friends. Second, there's the question of time. It's now early December, and I'd have to be back here by the first ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... is not always built particularly for the purpose. Many times it is a very small farmhouse acquired cheaply and made usable at a minimum of time and money. When the decision is reached to convert it into a home of larger proportions, whether one realizes it or not, the plan of campaign follows the plan of no less a person than George Washington. Mount Vernon was not always a mansion but was the result of consistent enlargement. When Washington ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... abominable sectaries, out of the reach of Recusancy Acts and religious pains and penalties, to set them free in England-in-America; and, raising there a state on the novel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the heathen to all manner of errors, and embark on mischiefs far too large for definition. Taking things as they were in the world, remembering acts of the Catholic Church in the not distant past, the ill-disposed might ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... contradictory meanings to a root. Thus n, like the Latin in, signifies "penetration," "motion towards," or simply "remaining in a place," or, again, "permanence." M, like the Latin ab or ex, indicates "motion from." R expresses "uncertainty" or "incompleteness," and is employed to convert a statement into a question, or a relative pronoun into one of inquiry. G, like the Greek a or anti, generally signifies "opposition" or "negation;" ca is, as aforesaid, intensitive, and is employed, for example, to convert ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... doings; from which I concluded they were a rare parcel of scamps, and resolved, within myself, to try and bag the whole squad. They were all stout fellows enough, most of them seamen. I thought they might be able to 'do the State some service,' and determined to convert them into honest men, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... whether there can be, and he yet remain a slave? We preach the Gospel to arouse men, they to subdue them; we to awaken, they to soothe; we to inspire self-reliance, they submission; we to drive them forward in growth, they to repress and prune down growth; we to convert them into men, they to make them content to be beasts ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... conditions" now in the sense in which it is ordinarily employed: certain it is, that external conditions have a definite effect. You may take a plant which has single flowers, and by dealing with the soil, and nourishment, and so on, you may by-and-by convert single flowers into double flowers, and make thorns shoot out into branches. You may thicken or make various modifications in the shape of the fruit. In animals, too, you may produce analogous changes in this way, as in the case of that deep bronze colour which persons rarely lose ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... feature, does not exist in nature. The lever, with its to-and-fro motion, we find in the limbs of all animals, but the continuous and revolving lever, the wheel, cannot be formed of bone and flesh. Man as a motive power is a poor thing. He can only convert three or four thousand calories of energy a day and he does that very inefficiently. But he can make an engine that will handle a hundred thousand times that, twice as efficiently and three times as long. In this way ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... siphon fizzily murmuring, And lime fruit juice and seltzer water Charm, as a wanderer out in South Street, Where some recruiting, eager Blue-Ribbonites Spied me afar and caught by the Post Office, And crimson-nosed the latest convert Fastened the odious badge ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... the fair and learned Queen and the Highland ecclesiastics and anchorites, carried on by means of her chief convert the warrior King, whom love for her had taught to respect and share in her devotion, must have afforded many picturesque and striking scenes, though unfortunately there was no modern observer there to be interested and amused, but only Theodoric standing by, himself very hot upon the atrocity ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... you could without trouble convert these tongs into a hoop and yonder shovel into ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries of God." But Penance is not conferred by the ministers of Christ, but is inspired inwardly into man by God, according to Jer. 31:19: "After Thou didst convert me, I did penance." Therefore it seems that Penance is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... convert to anything. When he saw the new way, his instinct was for immediate action. "Let's go over to Mr. Drury's," he proposed, "and see if we can't settle this thing to-day. I hope Marcia's right," and he looked into her eyes ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... justified in the physical submission of Ireland to the new force that held her down. With Great Britain cut off and the Irish Sea held by German squadrons, no power from within could maintain any effective resistance to a German occupation of Dublin and a military administration of the island. To convert that into permanent administration could not be opposed from within, and with Great Britain down and severed from Ireland by a victorious German navy, it is obvious that opposition to the permanent retention of Ireland by the victor must come from without, ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... became immediately a power, appearing quarterly and striking its blows anonymously against a sluggish government, lashing the Tory writers, and taking its part, which is of greater consequence, in the promulgation of the Whig reforms which were to ripen in thirty years and convert the old into modern England. In the destruction of outworn things, it was, as it were, a magazine ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... power of Satan to God), there are not only divers thousands, but divers millions, who, by reason of ignorance or scandal, are yet unfit to communicate. If the word do not open the eyes of the ignorant, and convert the scandalous, what marvel that church government cannot do it? Church government is not an illuminating and regenerating ordinance as the word is. But this church government can and will do, yea, hath done, where it ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... the beauty of the mind, only an imperfect beauty, which as to its essence is included in that of the mind. Nor has it ever entered into the mind of any thinker to develop the beautiful in natural objects, so as to convert it into a science and a system. The field of natural beauty is too uncertain and too fluctuating for this purpose. Moreover, the relation of beauty in nature and beauty in art forms a part of the science of aesthetics, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... he observed a memorandum of the minister's concerning himself, fled to St John's Wood, where he was joined by some of his companions, and after disguising himself succeeded in reaching Harrow, where he was sheltered by a recent convert to Romanism. Towards the end of August he was discovered and imprisoned in the Tower. On the 13th and 14th of September he was tried with Ballard and five others by a special commission, when he confessed his guilt, but strove to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... the principal article of export; in fact the only source of wealth of the Yucatecans. As the filament is now much in demand for the fabrication of cordage in the United States and Europe, many of the landowners have ceased to plant maize, although the staple article of food in all classes, to convert their land into hennequen fields. The plant thrives well on stony soil, requires no water and but little care. The natural consequence of planting the whole country with hennequen has been so great a deficiency in the maize ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... is quite obscure, and may perhaps allude to the efforts of the Jesuits at Nangasaki, to convert the Japanese to a new idol worship, under the name ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... and he has answered with a deliberate denial of it. Losing now all mastery over themselves, they pour out a torrent of mere extravagant invective and baseless falsehoods, which in the calmer outset they would have blushed to think of. They know no evil of Job, but they do not hesitate now to convert conjecture into certainty, and specify in detail the particular crimes which he must have committed. He ought to have committed them, and so he had; the old argument then as now.—"Is not thy wickedness ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... steps that led to a spacious first floor, lighted by large, high windows surmounted by grotesque heads. There the long-bearded missionaries came to purchase their cargoes of glass beads or imitation coral rosaries, before embarking for the East, or the Gaboon, to convert the negroes ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... in Charles's hand,—loud shouted all the throng, But tears were in King Charles's eyes—the grip of Rou was strong. "Now kiss the foot," the Bishop said, "that homage still is due;" Then dark the frown and stern the smile of that grim convert, Rou. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that may ever betide thee, fret If at Hell thou art not arrived yet; But thither, I rede thee, in mind repair Full oft, and observantly wander there; Musing intense, after reading me, Of the flaming sea, Will speedily thee Convert by appalling. Frequent remembrance of the black deep Thy soul will keep, Thou ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... It is one of the best pieces that ever was penned by man; and as our adversaries confess it to be of dangerous tendency, the arguments in it must necessarily be very convincing." I promised to peruse this piece, and my Quaker imagined he had already made a convert of me. He afterwards gave me an account in few words of some singularities which make this sect the contempt of others. "Confess," said he, "that it was very difficult for thee to refrain from laughter, when I answered all thy civilities without uncovering ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... controversy,—a band of brethren who held out the hand of fellowship to all in every communion who, without giving up a single distinctive tenet, would unite with them in a union of godly living—which sent out labourers into Christian countries to convert but not to proselytise—whose missionaries were to be found among the remotest heathen savages. That they should fall short of their ideal was but human weakness; and no doubt they had their special failings. They might be ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... friendship at a distance of twenty years, he felt an amused pleasure in the disputatiousness which could be irritating, the intellectual vanity, the irresolution that came from too great subtlety. Chillingworth was always 'his own convert'; 'his only unhappiness proceeded from his sleeping too little and thinking too much'. But Clarendon knew the solid merits of The Religion of Protestants (History, vol. i, p. 95); and he felt bitterly the cruel circumstances ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... the mutton is boiled in, you may convert into good soup in five minutes, (see N.B. to No. 218,) and Scotch barley broth (No. 204). Thus managed, a leg of mutton ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... "The Pilgrim's Progress," a work, which like "Robinson Crusoe," has remained unrivalled amidst a host of imitators. He was too, a wit as well as a preacher. Towards the close of his imprisonment a Quaker called on him, probably to make a convert of the author of the Pilgrim. He thus addressed him:—"Friend John, I am come to thee with a message from the Lord; and after having searched for thee in half the prisons in England, I am glad that I have found thee at last." "If the Lord had sent you," sarcastically ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various

... to do this in a becoming manner. It occurred to me now that if Francis could only see through that little glass window in my breast, she would have the best of the argument in future on the subject of the conventionalities of society; for I confess to you, dear William, I had become a convert to Aunt Sophia's opinions with regard to this same General von Zwenken, and now I admired her prudence in preventing her fortune from falling ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... weary hours when I cannot see you. I confess to you I have very little hope for the latter one, and I look beforehand on this unfortunate bulb as sacrificed to my selfishness. However, the sun sometimes visits me. I will, besides, try to convert everything into an artificial help, even the heat and the ashes of my pipe, and lastly, we, or rather you, will keep in reserve the third sucker as our last resource, in case our first two experiments ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... agreed to convert, at exorbitant interest, our rouble notes into "sheis" and kerans, negotiations for horses were then opened by Gerome, and, as the patois spoken in Astara is a mixture of Turkish and Persian, with a little Tartar thrown in, his task was no easy one, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... moderation was more dangerous for Caesar than the renewal of the Cinnan and Catilinarian fury would have been; it did not convert enemies into friends, and it converted friends into enemies. Caesar's Catilinarian adherents were indignant that murder and pillage remained in abeyance; these audacious and desperate personages, some of whom were men of talent, might be expected to prove cross and untractable. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... sages of Portugal having undertaken to convert those of Melinda, gained as much upon them by wine as by reason, which, in the end, facilitated the ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... first tempted man to trust himself to its dangerous surface; but their rewards were slight in comparison with the wealth of experiences and influences to which he fell heir, after he learned to convert the barrier of the untrod waste into a highway for his sail-borne keel. It is therefore true, as many anthropologists maintain, that after the discovery of fire the next most important step in the progress of the human race was the invention of the boat. No other ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... of the effect of the existing balance upon our position in Europe. The danger is now, as it was 100 years ago, and still more 120 or 130 years ago, that you may be tempted by these understandings, which are good, to convert them into something very near, but not quite, an alliance, and to pursue a policy in support of the balance of power which will keep you in permanent hot water all round with everybody, and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... captains on half-pay! hear this, port-admirals and captains afloat! I have often heard that the service was deteriorating, going to the devil, but I never became a convert to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... peaceably and quietly, marching with order and regularity, they advanced into the heart of the country, showing, by the most irrefragable proof, the astonishing evidences of a discipline which, by a word, could convert the lawless irregularities of a ruffian soldiery into the orderly habits and obedient ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Leo, even though the Lesser Brother could by his preaching convert all the unbelievers to the faith of Christ, write down that not therein ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... to the new regimen, he must thoroughly clear it of the old."—Rand manuscript. This is a very naive and curious Indian conception of moral reformation. It appears to be a very ancient Eskimo tale, recast in modern time by some zealous recent Christian convert.] ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... answered her. "I know so little of your charming sex that I need to be instructed. But I instinctively feel that YOU must be right, whatever you say. Your eyes would convert an infidel!" ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... agitating for complete abolition, or at least compulsorily early closing, of all men's clubs. It seems sadly ridiculous that women should want their husbands compelled by Act of Parliament to return to them at a fixed hour. Let me endeavour to convert these misguided wives, if any of them should deign to ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... of the first of the long train of mesmerists, magnetizers, spiritualists, charlatans, cheats, and humbugs who subsequently appealed to the notice and practised on the credulity of London society. Mr. Chauncy Hare Townsend was an enthusiastic convert to the theory of animal magnetism, and took about with him, to various houses, this German boy, whose exhibition of mesmeric phenomena was the first I ever witnessed. Mr. Townsend had almost insisted upon our receiving this visit, and we accordingly assembled in the drawing-room, to witness ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... religious ardour. Pepys had his own foundation, sandy enough, but dear to him from practical considerations, and he would read the book with true uneasiness of spirit; for conceive the blow if, by some plaguy accident, this Pen were to convert him! It was a different kind of doctrine that he judged profitable for himself and others. "A good sermon of Mr. Gifford's at our church, upon 'Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.' A very excellent and persuasive, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... socialism is nothing but a proposal for certain kinds of economic reform. A man has just as much right to declare himself a socialist as he has to call himself a Seventh Day Adventist or a Prohibitionist, or a Perpetual Motionist. It is, or should be, open to him to convert others to his way of thinking. It is only time to restrain him when he proposes to convert others by means of a shotgun or by dynamite, and by forcible interference with their own rights. When he does this he ceases to be a socialist pure and simple and becomes a criminal as well. The ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... railroad money? Ash, I tell you, these young fellows have hit me hard! First, they broke up my games. Next, they talked their men out of going into Paloma and spending money for drink. Why, Ash, next thing you know, they would have brought missionaries to Paloma to convert men and to ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... been a traveller in his younger days, and at Paris had become a convert, in great measure, to the doctrines of Mesmer. It was altogether by means of magnetic remedies that he had succeeded in alleviating the acute pains of his patient; and this success had very naturally inspired the latter with a certain degree of confidence in the opinions ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... silver tribute-offerings of conquered nations in the form of coin. When the gods had received their share of the booty, there was no alternative but to melt the rest down into ingots, fashion it into personal ornaments, or convert it into gold and silver plate. What was true of the kings held good also for their subjects. For the space of at least six or eight centuries, dating from the time of Ahmes I., the taste for plate was carried to excess. Every good house was not only stocked with all that was needful for the service ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... of the new faith, together with the adhesion of a powerful convert like Taiwhanga, were bound to tell upon the people around. Evidences began to multiply of a serious attention to the teaching of the missionaries. Here and there in unexpected quarters signs appeared of coming change. To use the picturesque native simile, "the fire ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... patent is significant to the present study because his application for an American patent, based on similar specifications, led to the interference of William Kelly and to the subsequent denial of the American patent.[16] In British patent 2321 Bessemer proposed to convert his steel in crucibles, arranged in a suitable furnace and each having a vertical tuyere, through which air under pressure was forced through the molten metal. As Dredge[17] points out, Bessemer's association ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop

... I, with a smile. "And never let Pere Silas know where I live, or he will try to convert me; but give him my best and truest thanks when you see him, and if ever I get rich I will send him money for his charities. See, Dr. John, your mother wakes; you ought to ring ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... of the in-rushing water was to cool the upper surface of the boiling lava and convert it into a thick hard solid crust at the mouth of the great vent. In this condition the volcano resembled a boiler with all points of egress closed and the safety-valve shut down! Oceans of molten lava creating expansive gases below; no outlet possible underneath, and the neck ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... mankind had imitated the destructive work of nature. When a maritime republic conquered a rival republic, the first thing that it thought of was to obstruct its harbor with sand and stones in order to divert the course of its waters so as to convert it into an inland city, thereby ruining its fleets and its traffic. The Genoese, triumphant over Pisa, stopped up its harbor with the sands of the Arno; and the city of the first conquerors of Mallorca, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... we were nearing Kiangan. Presently we turned a low spur to the left, and the Ifugao town burst upon our view. It was the headquarters of a Spanish Comandancia in the old days, and here Padre Juan Villaverde lived and worked, seeking to convert the people, and to teach them to grow coffee and to plant European vegetables. The mission, however came to naught, leaving behind no trace visible to the casual traveller, save a few lone cabbages: the garrison maintained here was massacred to a man, the native who surprised and cut down ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so, as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or prepare himself thereunto."[201] Forgiveness of sin must come from God. There is nothing in nature or in human experience to warrant hope of pardon. Nature never forgives a trespass against her law. The opportunity that is lost does not return. The mistake by which a life ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... but that some unlooked for and unexpected enterprise must be attempted, which, in its commencement, might cause no less dread among their countrymen than their enemies, but which, when accomplished, might convert their great fear into great joy, sent the letter of Hasdrubal to Rome to the senate; and at the same time informed the conscript fathers what his intentions were; and recommended that, as Hasdrubal had written to his brother that ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... generated by the machine is reversed by a reversal of the direction of rotation, as well as by a shifting of the position of the collectors from one side to the other of their neutral point, and concludes his most interesting communication by describing experiments made with it in order to convert it into a magneto-electric machine. "I brought," he says, "near to the coiled armature the opposite poles of two permanent magnets, and I also excited by the current from a battery the fixed electro-magnets (see Figs. 3 and 4), and by mechanical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... whose instructions he would be happy to receive on the 15th of July, and he sent the same invitation to several other prelates. On the 16th of May, he declared to his council his resolve to become a convert. Next day, the 17th, the Archbishop of Bourges announced it to the conference at Suresnes. This news, everywhere spread abroad, produced a lively burst of national and Bourbonic feeling even where it was scarcely to be expected; at the states-general of the League, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists. It draws to itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle, would fain convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to mere automatism. It would fain immobilise the intelligently varied movements of the body in stupidly contracted grooves, stereotype in permanent grimaces ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... been told that there are two ways of reading this text. The first is as we have it in the King James version; the second would make it read thus: "Verily, I say unto you, except ye convert yourselves and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Those who hold to this second reading say that there is a difference between regeneration and conversion—that ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... there."[5] The precedent thus established, was speedily seized upon and extended; lands were everywhere set apart for the repair of the sacred edifices[6], and eventually, about the beginning of the Christian era, the priesthood acquired such an increase of influence as sufficed to convert their precarious eleemosynary dependency into a permanent territorial endowment; and the practice became universal of conveying estates in mortmain on the construction of a wihara or the dedication ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... reminded of the railway superintendent who kept the wires hot with fault-finding messages bearing his initials "H. F. C." until he came to be known along the road as "Hell For Certain." People of a resentful turn of mind, whose every sentence is a wager, and who convert every word into a missile, are fit for polemical squabbles, but not for polite discussion. Those raucous persons who, when their opponents attempt to speak, cry out against it as a monstrous unfairness, ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... modes of thought. He was as well qualified to judge of early Hinduism as Paul was of Judaism, and for the same reason. And from his Hindu standpoint, as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, though afterward a Christian convert, he did not hesitate to declare his belief, not only that the early Vedic faith was monotheistic, but that it contained traces of that true ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... the wires from the battery up and down outside the pile of helices, it was clear that an upward and downward movement of the rod would follow, 'and that a shackle-bar attached from this oscillating rod, and to a crank, would convert this reciprocating motion into a continuous one.' To this contrivance the name of 'Jumper' was given, of which one was exhibited, the helices weighing 800 lbs., and the rod 526 lbs.; and by the means ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... regular bearer. I recognized its possibilities as soon as I saw it, and getting all the grafts I could collect, and they were very scarce at the time, I had the branches of some of my old worthless trees cut off, and set my old grafter to convert them into Worcester Pearmains; they soon came into bearing and produced ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... But what do you think his answer was? Why, with his usual Gothic vivacity, he said I only wanted him to throw off his wig, to convert it into a tete for my ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith

... preaching at once and our first convert was a lady who was saved in our home. (Sister Hendricks, now Myhre, who is a minister). Our first case of healing was when the Lord healed me of blood poisoning in my left arm, caused from the scratch of a rusty nail. I caught cold in it and it swelled so fast that when I got into the house ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... from her home. An officer who tried to kiss Anastasia was struck blind. Under torture, the purity of the virgins is always powerful; from their exquisite white limbs, torn by instruments, milk flows instead of blood. Ten different times the story is told of the young convert who, to escape from her family, who wish her to marry against her will, assumes the garb of a monk, is accused of some misdeed, suffers punishment without indicating herself, and at last triumphs by announcing her name. Eugenia is in this way brought before a judge, whom she recognises as her ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... justice for the poor. That is what they need at the hands of the nation, and what they do not receive. But though few can have the knowledge of the poor I have, many could do something, if they would only set about it simply, and not be too anxious to convert them; if they would only be their friends after a common-sense fashion. I know, say, a hundred wretched men and women far better than a man in general knows him with whom he claims an ordinary intimacy. I know ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... tell the Abbess that thou art a new convert," said Bruno. "They may very likely attempt to ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... dinner wasn't red and blistered you wouldn't have been unhappy," Juliet returned lightly. "But you mustn't think that she who entertains may read my ingenuous face, my dear. It isn't necessary that I attempt to convert the world to my way of thinking. And I haven't told you that when Auntie Dingley goes abroad with father again this winter I'm to have Mary McKaim for eight whole months. I can assure you I know how to appreciate the comfort ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... In other words, as it can pass no direct law "impairing the obligation of contracts," while it can regulate descents, it has enacted, so far as one body of the legislature has power to enact anything, that on the death of a landlord the tenant may convert his lease into a mortgage, on discharging which he shall ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... entire winter campaigns, without either formal suspensions of hostilities, or even partial relaxations, had entered professedly as a point of policy into the system of warfare which now swept over Germany in full career, threatening soon to convert its vast central provinces—so recently blooming Edens of peace and expanding prosperity—into a howling wilderness; and which had already converted immense tracts into one universal aceldama, or human shambles, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... to be seen in the parlor at Cliveden, its fireplace opening partly closed up to convert it for use with the coal grate shown by the accompanying illustration. In this instance the carved consoles support the shelf rather than the panel of the overmantel, which engages neither the shelf nor the cornice with its prominent double denticulated ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... certain bonds during this life, they shall, as a reward, change their form after death and return to earth as men. This distinguished traveler also says that he was one day talking with a certain Master Ting, a very shrewd Chinaman, whom he was endeavoring to convert. "But," said Ting, "what is the special object of your preaching Christianity?" "Why, to convert you, and save your soul," said the Abbe. "Well, then, why do you try to convert the women?" asked Master Ting. "To save their souls," said the missionary. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the business of abolition into its own hands, and from the day she did so, we hear no more of abolition in Virginia. This was but the natural effect of the cause. Now, we can never coerce the Southern States into abolitionism. It is not the way to convert them to our views by saying that we abhor their institutions. But these northern men will not listen to reason. They keep on making eloquent speeches—their pulpits thunder against the sin of slaveholding. All grades of speech and thought are made ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... comma after meoto and reads (with B.) sige-hr-secgum, disclose thy thought to the victor-heroes. Others, as Krner, convert meoto into an imperative and divide on sl think upon happiness. But cf. onband beadu-rne, l. 501. B. supposes onsl meoto speak courteous words. Tidskr. viii. 292; Haupts Zeitschr. xi. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... I nervously changed the subject. (If he is still alive I am sure he is an Anti-Suffragist!) I was glad to display my school room to an intelligent workman, and a half hour's explanation of the kindergarten occupations made the carpenter an enthusiastic convert. This gave me a new idea, and to each craftsman, in the vicinity, I showed the particular branch of kindergarten handiwork that might appeal to him, whether laying of patterns, in separate sticks and tablets, weaving, drawing, rudimentary efforts ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and so on. For all that some laughed at him, he was an able politician, and was perfectly honest in all his political transactions, which is something of a paradox. So he came up to Herculaneum to convert the doubting. The laboring party greeted him en masse, and stormed ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... had married a Leipzig lawyer, was very anxious about the vocation he should choose, and wished her son to make a fine career in the law, as she was not at all disposed to favour his poetical gifts. And it was to her attempts to convert me to her view, in order that by my influence I might avert the calamity of a second poet in the family, in the person of the son, that I owed the specially friendly relations that obtained between herself and me. All her suggestions succeeded ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... routine; the same flames rage; glass is the same mystery, beyond all conjuring, so ductile and malleable here, so brittle and rigid everywhere else. There you sit, or stand, some score of visitors, while the wizards round the furnace busily and incredibly convert molten blobs of anything (you would have said) but glass into delicate carafes and sparkling vases. Meanwhile the sweat streams from them in rivulets, a small Aquarius ever and anon fetches tumblers of water from a tap outside or glasses of red wine, and a soft voice at your ear, in whatever ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... neither moral virtue nor civil rights, and from whom no good could come until they were converted. He therefore required that all crimes should be most cruelly punished and that the secular arm should be employed to convert where it did not destroy. The idea of mercy tempering justice he denounced as a ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... was not then a convert to the BIBLIOMANIA! Now, I will certainly devote the leisure of six autumnal weeks to examine minutely some of the precious tomes ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... these Manila Chinese and established a settlement where those who became Christians might live with their families. Writers of that day suggest that sometimes conversions were prompted by the desire to get married—which until 1898 could not be done outside the Church—or to help the convert's business or to secure the protection of an influential Spanish godfather, rather than ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... there are many who have cause to remember it," returned Gibbons, with a smile; "but bear a little to the leeward, unless you have a mind to convert yonder papists, by a few rounds ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... say that Mary Prying, the innocent, good girl, and the admirer of Paul, became a convert, and is now a ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... of his wonderful hearing what his eyes failed to do for him. And the marvel of it was that he faced accurately, first toward Tresler, then toward Jake. He stood like some tall, ascetic, gray-headed priest, garbed in a dressing-gown that needed but little imagination to convert into a cassock. And the picture of benevolence he made was only marred by the staring of his ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum



Words linked to "Convert" :   opalise, rack up, dress, conversion, mortal, somebody, lignify, decimalize, rasterize, hay, keratinise, compost, reclaim, exchange, latinise, Converso, transcribe, Islamise, metricate, encode, fossilise, fictionalise, feudalize, person, Christianise, commute, Islamize, nitrify, reconvert, mineralize, receive, launder, replace, break, decimalise, utilize, novelise, diazotize, transition, ferment, metricise, sulfate, evangelise, metricize, bowling, proselyte, verbalise, disarm, alter, catholicise, score, keratinize, melanise, latinize, proselytise, novelize, convince, work, ozonise, win over, chemistry, change over, capitalise, float, cutinize, rectify, metrify, switch, duplex, immobilise, Christianize, fossilize, humify, evangelize, tan, immobilize, chemical science, melanize, flour, catholicize, scrap, change, opalize, persuade, caramelise, verbalize, malt, convertible, individual, hit, proselytize, modify, slag, caramelize, transduce, deaden, converter, shift, someone



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com