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noun
Crippling  n.  Spars or timbers set up as a support against the side of a building.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crippling" Quotes from Famous Books



... become so profitable; and the Washington government attempted to retaliate, first by forbidding the importation of manufactures from England and her colonies, and, when this effort was ineffective, by declaring an embargo in its own ports, which had only the result of still further crippling American commerce at home and abroad. Eventually, in place of this unwise measure, which, despite its systematic evasion, brought serious losses to the whole nation and seemed likely to result in civil war in the east, where the discontent was greatest, a system of non-intercourse with ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... once their spirit and their industry and their need of land. At night we slept at Kofu at "the inn of greeting peaks." In the morning a Governor with imagination told me of the prefecture's gallant enterprises in afforestation and river embanking at expenditures which were almost crippling. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... against us. The slaughter of 900,000 men of ours, the disablement of many more than that, had depleted our ranks of labor, and there was a paralysis of all our industry, owing to the dislocation of its machinery for purposes of war, the soaring cost of raw material, the crippling effect of high taxation, the rise in wages to meet high prices, and the lethargy of the workers. Ruin, immense, engulfing, annihilating to our strength as a nation and as an empire, stares us brutally in the eyes at the time I write this book, and I find ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... down, but as I was aware, from information recently received, that it was defended by three regiments and a battery, I concluded that I could best accomplish the purpose for which I had been detached—crippling the road—by tearing up the track, bending the rails, and burning the cross-ties. This was begun with alacrity at four different points, officers and men vieing with one another in the laborious work of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan

... questions as: How many persons shall constitute the executive? What shall the term be? How shall the executive be chosen? What powers, other than those which are purely executive, shall be vested in this branch? How shall this branch be held responsible, without crippling its efficiency? ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... object in crippling Canada? The question is answered best by another. If Suez were cut off and Canada were cut off, where would England look for her food supply? And if it were to the advantage of a hostile power to cripple Canada, could she be conquered? Any one familiar with Canada will answer without ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... late at night, he made his way to Forty-second Street and there, in the staring headlines of a "Late Extra," read the news that the steamship Saratoga had suffered a crippling engine-room accident and was limping slowly toward port, still something like ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... their support more and more, and the fingers of his right hand, which the gout was now crippling, found it hard to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... in this age of specialties than the dwarfing, crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions. Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the age tends to doom the lawyer ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... hurriedly out of the corral after the liniment. To Jeff's challenge he made no reply whatever. The group around Jeff shooed Smoky gently toward the other side of the corral, thereby convincing themselves of the limp in his right hind foot. While not so pronounced as to be crippling, it certainly was no asset to a running horse, and the wise ones ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... this is an outbreak of that artistic paganism which is so prevalent among the so-called "advanced" Hebrews. The idea that obedience to law is degrading; that conformity to traditional morals is soul-crippling and unworthy of a free spirit; that only by giving sway to passion will the individual attain that joy which is his right, and that self-development which should be his highest aim, has found one of its ablest and most dangerous ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... is a universal right; they maintained that humanity is a unit, with interests and aims indivisible, and that liberty to use to the utmost advantage all natural abilities cannot be denied one-half of the race without crippling both. A few even went so far as to suggest that the assumption of the inferiority of women, and the imposition of disabilities upon them, under the claim of divine authority, is the greatest crime in the great calendar of crime for which the Church has yet ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... conflict. This is on, David. It must clear the atmosphere before men and women realize that their interests are one; that neither can rise by holding down the other; that the present relations of men and women, broadly speaking, are false to themselves, to each other, and crippling to the morality and vitality of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... the monster had sounded, headfirst. I fired a second shot at his tail, in hope of crippling his steering gear, but that was a clean miss, too, and then the ship was up to about five thousand feet. My helper pulled out the partly empty clip and replaced it with a full one, giving me five and ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... splendid qualities of the machine under his control. They included an ability for a quick light ascent. He had no idea of the purpose of the Drifter crowd, but of course their main object was to capture their rival. The question was, failing in this, how, far would they go in the way of crippling or ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood

... which we describe in detail infra at 58-74. One failure of critical importance is that the automated systems that filtering companies use to collect Web pages for classification are able to search only text, not images. This is crippling to filtering companies' ability to collect pages containing "visual depictions" that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors, as CIPA requires. As will appear, we find that it is currently impossible, given the Internet's size, rate of growth, rate of change, and architecture, ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... economic forces which led to the break-up of Roman civilization is important as showing how chattel slavery became modified and the slave to be regarded as a serf, a servant bound to the soil. The lack of adequate production, the crippling of commerce by hordes of corrupt officials, the overburdening of the agricultural estates with slaves, so that agriculture became profitless, the crushing out of free labor by slave labor, and ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... Hence, the great armies which the government of France sent to the aid of Maria Theresa were without spirit, and were not even marshalled by able generals. In fact, the French seemed more intent on crippling England than in crushing Frederic. The war had immense complications. Though France and England were drawn into it, yet both France and England fought more against each other than for the parties who had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... somebody to put the blame on. A new victim! For you are weak, and you can never carry your own burdens of guilt and debt. And so you picked me for a scapegoat and doomed me to slaughter. But when you cut my thews, you didn't realise that you were also crippling yourself, for by this time our years of common life had made twins of us. You were a shoot sprung from my stem, and you wanted to cut yourself loose before the shoot had put out roots of its own, and that's why you couldn't grow by yourself. And my stem could not spare its ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... return the exhortation," answered Cole. "Your studies seem to me tenfold more crippling than mine: mine take all this earth's restraints from me, and yours seem only to remind you that all earth is restraint: mine show me whatever worlds the fondest fancy could desire; yours only the follies ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... need not dwell on the physical and mental suffering caused by war; General Sherman's famous declaration, "War is hell!" sums the matter up. Agonizing wounds, pitiless disease, the permanent crippling, enfeeblement, or death of vigorous men in the prime of life, the anguish of wives and sweethearts, the loneliness of widows, the lack of care for orphans-it is impossible for those who have not lived through a great war to realize the horror of it, the cruel pain suffered ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... of heart, all known sin. It may be the sin which "easily besets," our own bosom sin, near as a right eye or a right hand, but if it causes us to stumble, it must be relentlessly sacrificed. And even if the sacrifice seems like crippling and maiming us, yet Jesus assures us that it is better to enter into eternal life with one eye or one hand, than to be consigned to everlasting death with two eyes or two hands. In the first place, therefore, we are to "reckon ourselves dead, indeed, ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark

... flame—but all indistinct, terrible and indescribable. Solid shot, conical shell and spherical case went humming, hurtling and howling through the air, blotting out rebels and slaying loyalists. The leaden messengers of the sharp-shooters went shrieking to their living targets, killing, crippling and intimidating; buck, ball and Minie bullets missed and made their marks; and the rattling volleys of companies and platoons became at length blended in one general and irregular burst of all destructive ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... employed for many weeks in destroying almost immeasurable quantities of provisions and stores, effectually crippling the resources of the Czar's armies. Private property had invariably been spared, so that the inhabitants of the country did not exhibit any ill-feeling towards the English. The few men who by chance fell into their hands were ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... had not given up the contest yet. She continued to fire her balls and shells with murderous intent until the balls from St. Mark's direction had cut her mainmast down. It fell over on the lee side dragging with it the fore mainstay and crippling the rigging to such an extent that Captain Snipes began to fear he could not get his vessel out of the harbor. The weight of the mainmast hanging over the side of the vessel was so great that the vessel heeled over to leeward. A dozen carpenters with axes flew to cut away the wreck and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... COLONIAL ENTERPRISES.—The crippling of the naval power of Spain left England mistress of the seas. The little island-realm now entered upon the most splendid period of her history. The old Norse blood of her people, stirred by recent events, seemed to burn with a feverish impatience for maritime adventure and glory. Many a story ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... ways of slaying or eluding them. Best of all, he was such a fashioner of weapons as the valley had rarely known, and, because of this, was in great request as a cared-for inmate of almost any cave which hit his fancy. After his crippling he had drifted from one haven to another, never quite satisfied with what he found, and now he had come to live, as he supposed, with his old friend, One-Ear, until life should end. Despite his ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... hamper," resumed Ensal, "the white people of the South nationally, they can trouble us considerably locally. Now, we are not enemies of the South, and take no delight in the crippling of her influence per se, and we would like to see this unarmed strife come to a close. Nothing would give the Negroes greater joy than to see the right kind of a white man from the South made President ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... have indeed been urged against the right of the system of privateering! It is no part of our task either to defend or to condemn it, yet it would seem evident that, looking at it as a means of crippling an enemy more efficacious than any other that can be devised, thereby hastening a return to peace, it cannot in its broadest sense be deemed unjust or cruel. Private individuals must suffer in every war, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... river, we had a number of set-backs; beginning with the crippling of a wheel while passing through a growth of timber. As we examined the broken spokes, we realized that they would soon have to be replaced by new ones, and that the wise thing to do was to provide for them while in the region ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... a mistake, as I said. I had only thought so. Long before she died I had almost hated her for crippling my ambition. She was swept out of my path. But the child was ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... scratch teams, and letting it be supposed that was the best the School could do. Some of the fellows on strike were no doubt good players, and that made it all the more discreditable of them to try to damage the School record by crippling the team. They no doubt hoped that they would be begged to rejoin on their—own terms. Rather than that, he was in favour of disbanding the club, and letting the fellows devote their energy to running and jumping, and other sports, where ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... enough to comprehend the crippling effect upon McKeith's resources of the calamity, had she allowed her mind to dwell upon that aspect of affairs. But her mind was incapable just now of dealing with practical issues. She felt utterly weak, utterly lonely. Although she was glad ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... party, or the one who is the best "mixer," secures the office regardless of qualifications. Sharing the fortunes of other political offices, the county superintendency frequently has applied to it the unwritten party rule of "two terms and out," thus crippling the efficiency of the office by frequent changes of administration ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts

... was as yet but rudimentary; so soon as the momentary glow was passed, he fell back into a yet darker mood than before, and felt yet more adrift and reckless. To make a sacrifice is well, but does not hinder the need of what is given up from crippling us. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... summer of 1914, the great European war broke out, which has caused the death and crippling of millions, and brought misery untold to the nations engaged in it. Very likely this war is the greatest the world has ever known. Nearly all our missionaries have had to be withdrawn from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson

... end of the rollway the log collided with other logs and stopped with the impact of one bowling ball against another. The men knew that being caught between the two meant death or crippling for life. Nevertheless they escaped from the narrowing interval at the latest possible moment, for it is easier to keep a log ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... the borders of the lake, and, keeping to our right, took cover behind the knoll of rock, whence he watched also all that followed. When Jana advanced to attack us Hans crept forward in the hope, a very wild one, of crippling him with the little Purdey rifle. Indeed, he was about to fire at the hind leg when Marut made his run for life and plunged into the lake. Then he crawled on to lead me away to the camel, but when he was within a few yards the chase ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... is deadening to conversation, and yet the extreme contrary is crippling. Open resentment of any attempt at warmth of speech is paralysis and torpor to talk. When one meets a hostess, or a conversational partner, "whose only pleasure is to be displeased," one is reminded of the ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... the friend and spokesman of Pericles, directed all the force of the popular opinion against this venerable senate; and at length, though not openly assisted by Pericles, who took no prominent part in the contention, that influential statesman succeeded in crippling its ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... and secret agents. They have their work well mapped out. They have men fomenting strikes in the government shipyards and stirring up all kinds of labor troubles. Others are busy making bombs and contriving diabolical methods of crippling the machinery in munition plants. A flourishing trade in false passports is being carried on, enabling their spies to travel back and forth across the Atlantic in the guise of American business men, ambulance drivers, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... traceable perhaps in nearly every one in all the past of mankind who had ever had the vision of God. An excessive solicitude to shield those others from one's own trials and hardships, to preserve the exact quality of the revelation, for example, had been the fruitful cause of crippling errors, spiritual tyrannies, dogmatisms, dissensions, and futilities. "Suffer little children to come unto me"; the text came into his head with an effect of contribution. The parent in us all flares out at the thought of the younger and weaker minds; we hide difficulties, seek to spare ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... that the snow on the divide to the north over the culmination of the various lines of cliffs, where I would have to pass to go to Salt Lake, was very heavy. On the 7th the mail rider failed to get through. We learned also that an epizooetic had come to Utah and many horses were laid up by it, crippling the stage lines. It had been planned that I should go north with our own horses till I could connect with some stage line, and then take that for the remainder of the distance to the Utah Southern Railway, which then had been extended south from ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... down and shot to pieces, her fore-topsail yard shot away, her mizzen mast by the board, all her rigging gone, and her sides bored through and through with our double-headed shot. And near by us stood my old ship the Falmouth, which in the darkness had assisted us very much in crippling this great vessel of seventy guns, the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... The whole population was removed, every one being given the choice of going north or south. In his own words, Sherman "had seen Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, and New Orleans, all captured from the enemy, and each at once garrisoned by a full division, if not more; so that success was actually crippling our armies in the field by detachments to guard and protect the interests of a hostile population." In reporting to Washington he said: "If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... only tell you," he said at last, turning round upon her, "that I see no way out. How is that man's claim to be met? I don't know. Even if I could meet it—which I see no chance of doing—by crippling myself for some time, how should I be at liberty to do it? My wife and her needs have now the first ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of human material, this pitiable crushing of joy in the day's work, and this crippling of the economic output is at last to be reduced, indeed nothing is more needed than a careful scrutiny of the various psychophysical functions involved in the work. A mere classification of the industrial occupations according to the classes of manufactured objects would be of no value for this need, ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... the union of 1840, suspicions as to the sincerity of the imperial authorities with respect to the concession of responsible government, a growing antagonism between the two nationalities which then, as always, divided the province. A very serious economic disturbance was crippling the whole trade of the country, and made some persons—happily very few in number—believe for a short time that independence, or annexation to the neighbouring republic, was preferable to continued connection with a country which so grudgingly conceded political ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... apprehended from contaminated drinking-water, and said: "The government should provide itself with heating and distilling apparatus on an adequate scale. Sterilized water is cheaper than hospitals and an army of nurses, to say nothing of the crippling of the service that sickness brings." In an article entitled "Special Sanitary Instructions for the Guidance of Troops Serving in Tropical Countries," published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" for May, Dr. R. S. Woodson described ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... to the great carcase. And for all this, look where you may: up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere: there are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... length from us on the port bow, firing three shots into her with telling effect, when she made a run for it. This vessel was supposed to be the Quaker City. We then engaged a schooner-rigged propeller and a large sidewheel steamer, partially crippling both, and setting the latter on fire, causing her to strike her flag; at this time the latter vessel, supposed to be the Keystone State, was completely at my mercy, I having taken position astern, distant some two hundred yards. I at once gave the order to cease firing upon her, and directed ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... Cling to that name (my mother's was the same Ere her form faded into death's eclipse), Cling lovingly, and loth to let it go. All arts that unto savage life belong She knew, made moccasins, and dressed the game. From crippling fashions free, her well-knit frame At fifteen summers was mature and strong. She pitched the tipi,[2] dug the tipsin[3] roots, Gathered wild rice and store of savage fruits. Fearless and self-reliant, she could go Across the prairie on a starless ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... Scandinavians the most interesting of whom is probably Per Krohg. The career of Krohg, by the way, is worth considering for a moment and watching for the future. Finely gifted in many ways, he started work under three crippling disabilities—a literary imagination, natural facility, and inherited science. The results were at first precisely what might have been expected. Now, however, he is getting the upper hand of his unlucky equipment; and his genuine talent and personal taste, beginning to assert ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... now comparatively few and ineffective. The besiegers scarcely appeared to push forward their bridges with any vigor, and it seemed to him that a coldness had fallen upon them, and that some disagreement must have arisen between the foresters and the earl, completely crippling the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... about blushing.[2] It consists in a sort of transitory crippling of those nerves that end in the walls of small arteries. This causes the relaxation of the muscle-fibers of the blood vessels which are consequently filled in a greater degree with blood. Blushing also may be voluntarily created by some individuals. In that case ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... demon. She smashed up the first attack, sank nine destroyers and two cruisers, one of them was that big chap the Dupleix, before we came on the scene. During the action she wiped out I don't know how many destroyers and torpedo boats, sank the Jeanne d'Arc and saved my ship from being rammed by crippling the Verite just in the nick of time. If we only had a squadron of those boats and made Erskine Commodore, we'd wipe the fleets of Europe out in a month. Now that's my news. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... this time that there was a distinct and deliberate family compact, a secret treaty of alliance, a formal, circumstantial, binding agreement, consigned to written words, between France and Spain, for the promotion of their common desires and for the crippling of England's power? Mr. J. R. Green appears to be convinced that "neither England nor Walpole" knew of it. The English people certainly did not know of it; and it is commonly taken for granted by historians that while Walpole was pursuing his policy of peace he was not aware of the existence of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... dozen instruments equally badly is a musician. It is a psychological impossibility to pass through the apprenticeship stage of learning foreign languages at the age when the vernacular is setting without crippling it. The extremes are the youth in ancient Greece studying his own language only and the modern high school boy and girl dabbling in three or perhaps four languages. Latin, which in the eight years preceding 1898 increased one ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... disappeared below the horizon, and the shades of evening had set in, before this manoeuvre had been accomplished. Several broadsides were poured into the corvette, which had the desired effect of crippling her still more, and her encumbered condition prevented any return. At last the night hid both vessels from each other; and the breeze freshening fast, it was necessary that the remaining masts of the Windsor ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Seventy-two became the maximum, but most mills voluntarily ran sixty-nine or even sixty-six. The employment of children continued, though some individual employers reduced it as much as possible without seriously crippling their forces. This was a real danger so long as there were no legal restrictions on child labor. Children worked upon the farm as children have done since farming began, and the average farmer who moved to the mill was unable to see the difference between working on the farm and working in ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... about his son and the paper and everything that happened, except Ed Sorenson told him lies instead of the truth," Janet put in. "He's terribly angry at all of us. He said he would kill you for crippling Ed." ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... revenues of a fine estate, which is not their own, they have obstructed the improvement of the city. They might possibly be compelled to refund the wasted property of their ward, but they could never compensate for stunting and crippling her as they have done. Fortunately, there is a standard by which we are able to measure this iniquity with tolerable accuracy. Dr. William Brown, of Derry, testified that it was the universal conviction of the people of Derry, of all classes and denominations, that, by the mismanagement of ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... Hauptmann in those days seemed to contain a watchword, a battle call: not only against the unimportant thrones of literature at that time but also against social oppression, prejudices and moral crippling. Hauptmann's first drama, "Vor Sonnenaufgang," had just appeared and been produced by the Free Stage in Berlin; and had operated like an explosive. It was followed by a flood of vicious and vile criticism. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... been working with her. To be sure Mrs. Shih had said to her, "If the Lord gives me a little daughter I shall not bind her feet." But Miss Howe had made so many efforts to induce the women and girls with whom she had worked to take off the crippling bandages, without having been successful in a single instance, that she did not build her hopes on this. One day, when calling in the home and seeing little Maiyue, then five years old, playing about the room, she remarked, "My dear Mrs. Shih, you will not make a good job of ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... employed—is one of the most powerful instruments of social progress. The narrow sea which separates it from Scotland and the geographical conformation of Belfast Lough have, moreover, a great bearing on its prosperity. Independence of Irish railways with their excessive freights, crippling by their incidence all export trade, in a town like Belfast, nine-tenths of the industrial output of which goes across the sea, and the advantage which it has over all other Irish towns in its proximity, again independently of Irish railways, to the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... his "Blood and Iron" policy, made a huge blunder in not perceiving that in the modern world spiritual forces are arising which must for ever discredit the same. He emphasized the blunder by wresting Alsace-Lorraine from France, and again by crippling Russia in the treaty of 1878—thus making enemies where generosity might have brought him friends. The German Executive in July of last year (1914) showed extraordinary want of tact in not seeing that Russia, rebuffed ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... that the British were not only resolved to adopt a selfish course towards the United States, which might have been expected, but that they were consistently pursuing the further distinct design of crippling and destroying American commerce, to the utmost degree which their own extensive trade and great naval authority and power rendered possible. So long as he held this firm belief, it was inevitable that he should be at issue with the Federalists in all matters concerning our policy towards Great Britain. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... little people you spoke of, around you. You know the pain and suspense you have borne have almost driven you insane, and it was because you cared so deeply. Now lie still, and keep quiet! All of us are tired and there's no sense in making us go through this again, besides the risk of crippling yourself that you run. Right here in this house are the papers to prove that your nephew took your money, and hid it in your son's clothing, as he already had done a hundred lesser things, before, purposely to estrange ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... maintaining this great surplus and in paying this high taxation she would be doing herself great harm. She is not performing a great duty, but perpetrating a great injustice. She is injuring posterity by crippling and displacing industry, far more than she is aiding it by reducing the taxes it will have to pay. In the first place, the maintenance of the present high taxation compels the retention of many taxes which are contrary ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... unreasonably, it was at the same time rather afraid that they would do something. To do something but not too much, to meet the popular demands without destroying the economic well-being which the Republican ascendency had undoubtedly promoted, to insure a better distribution of wealth without crippling the production of wealth—this was the problem of a President who had had only two years in public life, and most of whose assistants would have to be chosen from men ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... warfare, your system was liable to periodical convulsions, overwhelming alike the wise and unwise, the successful cut-throat as well as his victim. I refer to the business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation, prostrating all weak enterprises and crippling the strongest, and were followed by long periods, often of many years, of so-called dull times, during which the capitalists slowly regathered their dissipated strength while the laboring classes starved and rioted. Then would ensue another brief season of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... things have, after all, gone less smoothly than he had imagined. There were withered carcasses scattered through the coulee bottoms and upon side hills that had some time made slippery climbing for a poor, weak cow. The loss was not crippling, but it was greater than he had expected. He remembered certain biting storms which had hidden deep the grasses, and certain short-lived chinooks that had served only to soften the surface of the snow so that the cold, coming after, might freeze ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... Kronprinz Wilhelm, which in April, 1915, put in at Newport News, in Virginia, with over a hundred men seriously stricken with acidosis. The crew had enjoyed an abundance of food from the ships they had raided and destroyed, but a mysterious disease, pronounced to be beri-beri, was crippling the crew. As the patients failed to respond to the usual treatment, the ship's chief surgeon consented to try the alkaline treatment which Mr. McCann suggested to him. The patients rapidly recovered on a diet consisting of fresh vegetable soup, potato-skin liquor, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... adventurous deeds! Oh, of late how weak and worn out I have felt myself to be, and longed to withdraw into solitude and retirement, to rest from all labor! I believed it was old age creeping upon me, and by its abominable touch unnerving my arm and crippling my activity. But now I feel that it was only secret grief about you which thus enfeebled me and robbed my arm of vigor. Now I am quite well again and strong; now I will dare everything that you have so ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... certain honesty, "that's not quite the only thing that has some weight with me. You see, I'm not altogether disinterested. I get a certain percentage—on the margin—after everything is paid, and I want it to be a big one. Things are rather tight just now, and the wretched mortgage on my place is crippling me." ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... herd had passed we could only find a few scraps of poor Cal's clothing, and the horse he had been riding was reduced to the size of a jack rabbit. The buffalo went through our herd killing five head and crippling many others, and scattering them all over the plain. This was the year that the great buffalo slaughter commenced and such stampedes were common then. It seemed to me that as soon as we got out of one ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... the huge leathern mainsails dropped on to the decks, doubtless "covering the ship as with a pall," as in the like misfortune to the Elizabethan Revenge in her heroic defence against the Spanish fleet, and hopelessly crippling the vessel, whether for sailing or rowing. The Romans were at last able to board, and the whole Venetian fleet fell into their hands. The strongholds on the coast were now stormed, and the entire population either slaughtered ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... Hornet being in Boston, and the Essex in the Delaware, it became necessary to appoint for the three a distant place of meeting, out of the usual cruising grounds of the enemy, in order that the ships, whose first object was to escape crippling, could pass rapidly through the belt of British cruisers then girding the coast of the United States. The brilliant record made by United States ships in their single combats with the enemy during this war should not be allowed to blind our people ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people—but of course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a cent—but no, the minute he saw that buffalo bull ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Factor in Health. Few more ingenious instruments of crippling and torture have ever been invented than fashionable tight shoes ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... essentials of commercial success—imagination to conceive schemes, common sense to correct them, and energy to push them through. Common sense, indeed, so far from being wanting, is in most cases too much in evidence, perhaps, crippling the soaring mind and robbing the idea of its early radiance; in quieter language, she makes the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom ventures on a daring policy. And yet his ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... Happy Jack, crippling painfully on the stones, fled fruitlessly after, still shouting threats. Then, as Stranger, galloping wildly, disappeared over a ridge, he stood and stared stupidly at the place where the horse had last been seen. For the moment his ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... Though France had, by a secret treaty in 1762, made over to Spain the province of Louisiana, she was not unmindful of the Bourbon motto, "He who attacks the Crown of one attacks the other." And she saw her chance to deal a crippling blow at England's prestige ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... Eastern states. This big scheme, according to Mormon accounts, was upset by one of the hated Missourians, Senator Thomas H. Benton, whose Macchiavellian mind had designed the plan of taking from the Mormons 500 of their best men for the Battalion, thus crippling them while in the Indian country. All this part of their account is utterly unworthy of belief. If 500 volunteers for the army "crippled" the immigrants where they were, what would have been their condition if 1000 of their number had been hurried ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... so long suspended, fell! The troops at Boston had been augmented to about four thousand men. Goaded on by the instigations of the tories, and alarmed by the energetic measures of the whigs, General Gage now resolved to deal the latter a crippling blow. This was to surprise and destroy their magazine of military stores at Concord, about twenty miles from Boston. It was to be effected on the night of the 18th of April, by a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... works dreadful wrong, and is of benefit to only one class of people—the lawyers. When a workman is injured what he needs is not an expensive and doubtful lawsuit, but the certainty of relief through immediate administrative action. The number of accidents which result in the death or crippling of wageworkers, in the Union at large, is simply appalling; in a very few years it runs up a total far in excess of the aggregate of the dead and wounded in any modern war. No academic theory about "freedom of contract" or "constitutional liberty ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... pretty good idea from the first visit that Daniel, not yet 30, was going to take some time to get well. He already had a degenerative condition not usually seen until middle age—crippling gout and arthritis. He had badly distorted joints, walked with considerable pain, lacked a full range of movement, had enormous fatigue and consequently, a well-justified depression. Daniel was about to give up working as no longer ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... can any rational man, suppose that, at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to which we belong?'—26th ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... meanwhile, had been ranging to windward in a vain endeavor to bring her guns to bear upon the Frenchman without crippling her own mate, and—as the Francois drifted away from the lurching Falcon—she bore down to within twenty yards, luffed, and spanked a rakish broadside ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... Circuit House will only be used by His Majesty should bad weather prevail. The native rulers of every grade are going to make such a display of Oriental magnificence as was never seen before. To many it will be their ruin, or at least a serious crippling of their resources; but it is a chance for display that does not often occur and they seem determined to make the ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... activity in America of transforming her into a pro-German country, and it is certain that no one else could have done it in his place. But he succeeded to a great extent, and within a comparatively short time, in more or less crippling the enemy propaganda, and at least in gradually rendering ineffective the grossest misrepresentations of our enemies. By his own writings and other methods of spreading the truth, and particularly by the numerous ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... Indies, but the key of the Mediterranean she must not and would not surrender. Neither would she relax her maritime code as the Emperor of Russia now insisted; for experience had shown it to be necessary for the equipment of the British fleets and the crippling of the enemy's naval construction. In the maintenance of these fleets lay the only hope of assuring the salvation of Europe. A more convincing exposition of the importance of Sea Power has never gone forth from a ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the little Chinese girl are bound by her mother and her nurse—but it is not for woman's pleasure that this crippling torture was invented. The Oriental veil is worn by women, but it is not for any need of theirs that ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... very friendly with Russia of late; and as England has spies all over the world, doubtless her Government knew before the speech was made that it was coming; so the police appear to think that the whole resources of the British Government were set at the task of crippling ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... Sanuto (Journal i. 171) describes with details the "Mal Franzoso." The scientific "syphilis" dates from Fracastori's poem (A.D. 1521) in which Syphilus the Shepherd is struck like Job, for abusing the sun. After crippling a Pope (Sixtus IV.[FN189]) and killing a King (Francis I.) the Grosse Verole began to abate its violence, under the effects of mercury it is said; and became endemic, a stage still shown at Scherlievo near Fiume, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... Harbour. They will then press forward towards the York River Railroad, closing upon the enemy's rear, and forcing him down the Chickahominy. An advance of the enemy towards Richmond will be prevented by vigorously following his rear, and crippling and arresting ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... on battle fronts of unexampled length, by night as well as by day, and in stormy and wintry as well as moderate weather, make possible, has proved to be beyond all power of computation, and could not have been imagined in advance. Never before has there been any approach to the vast killing and crippling of men, the destruction of all sorts of man's structures—buildings, bridges, viaducts, vessels, and docks—and the physical ruin of countless women and children. On the seas vessels and cargoes are sunk, instead of being carried ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... womanly and religious instincts outraged, and the probability of worse in future. Jellicoe, his wife, and O'Leary had no pity, and her mother very little, and no principle; and she had no hope, except that release might come by some crippling accident. Workhouse or hospital would be deliverance, since thence she could ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... South, would again check and drag down the robust expansion of manufactures and commerce in all other parts of the Land, and destroy the glorious prosperity of farmers, mechanics, and laborers, while at the same time crippling Capital, in the North ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan



Words linked to "Crippling" :   disabling, unhealthful



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