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Deform   Listen
verb
Deform  v. t.  (past & past part. deformed; pres. part. deforming)  
1.
To spoil the form of; to mar in form; to misshape; to disfigure. "Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world."
2.
To render displeasing; to deprive of comeliness, grace, or perfection; to dishonor. "Above those passions that this world deform."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deform" Quotes from Famous Books



... be remembered that I and the other Teacups, in common with the rest of our fellow-citizens, have had our sensibilities greatly worked upon, our patriotism chilled, our local pride outraged, by the monstrosities which have been allowed to deform our beautiful public grounds. We have to be very careful in conducting a visitor, say from his marble-fronted hotel to the City Hall.—Keep pretty straight along after entering the Garden,—you will not care to inspect the little figure of the military ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the fight for ever, Number'd with the worse than slain; Weak, deform'd, disabled!—never Can I join the hosts again! With the battle that is won AGNAR'S earthly ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... antique perfection. Shaded by smooth folds of raven hair, which still maintained its jetty dye, her lofty forehead would have been displayed to the greatest advantage, had it not been at this moment knit and deformed by excess of passion, if that passion can be said to deform which only calls forth strong and vehement expression. Her figure, which wanted only height to give it dignity, was arrayed in the garb of widowhood; and if she exhibited none of the desolation of heart which such a bereavement might have been expected to awaken, she was evidently a prey ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... density, you find in the face and other parts which are dark, so viewed, minute transparent specks, scarcely bigger than a pin's point. When the picture is backed with black lacquer, you have consequently small black spots, which deform the positive, especially when viewed through a lens of short focus. A friend of mine {452} cures this defect very easily. After having applied the amber varnish, he stops out the spots with a little oil-paint that matches the lights of the picture; of course the paint is put upon the varnished ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... Everything about him is as he had remembered, or as he had anticipated. Here, at his feet, under his eyes, are the olive gardens and the blue sea. Nothing can change the eternal magnificence of form of the naked Alps behind Mentone; nothing, not even the crude curves of the railway, can utterly deform the suavity of contour of one bay after another along the whole reach of the Riviera. And of all this, he has only a cold head knowledge that is divorced from enjoyment. He recognises with his intelligence that this thing and ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... would not amuse us. When you play with one another you play with your bodies, and that makes you supple and strong; but if we played with you we should play with your minds, and perhaps deform them. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... commonplace, so false to the grand, gracious, mighty-hearted Jesus—that YOU are the cause why the truth hangs its head in patience, and rides not forth on the white horse, conquering and to conquer. You dull its lustre in the eyes of men; you deform its fair proportions; you represent not that which it is, but that which it is not, yet call yourselves by its name; you are not the salt of the earth, but a salt that has lost its savour, for ye seek all things else first, and to that seeking ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... beauty of American women does not lie, as the writer of the 'Post' contends, in an overworking of the physical system which shall stunt and deform; on the contrary, American women of the comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the entire deterioration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take the life of any ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "Ay, whine and deform your throats as you may, ye imps of darkness," she said, with a cracked but scornful laugh; "I know ye; tarry, and ye shall have light for your misdeeds. Put in the coal, Phoebe; put in the coal; your father and the boys shall see that they are wanted at home, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... wear below the knee: if not properly dried these strings cause some inflammation: the strings are ornamental, light, and when worn in small numbers graceful, but when dozens are employed, and all the upper ones loose, they deform the figure much; some of the women, perhaps anxious to restrain the protuberance of their calves, tie two or three ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... Carolina.} The Christian Natives of Carolina are a straight, clean-limb'd People; the Children being seldom or never troubled with Rickets, or those other Distempers, that the Europeans are visited withal. 'Tis next to a Miracle, to see one of them deform'd in Body. The Vicinity of the Sun makes Impression on the Men, who labour out of doors, or use the Water. {Beautiful.} As for those Women, that do not expose themselves to the Weather, they are often very fair, and generally ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... groom-porters) is advertised by the secretary who brings him in, and the electors disputing are bound to acquiesce in his sentence. For which cause it is that the censors do not ballot at the urns; the signory also abstains, lest it should deform the house: wherefore the blanks in the side urns are by so many the fewer. And so much for the lot, which is of the greater art but less consequence, because it concerns proposition only: but all (except the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... delight, for everything around us is lies from beginning to end. But in general everything is lies and the ambitions are all false and the education is no better than the shoes that are put on Chinese female feet to stunt and deform them. What a sweet and perfect simile. How did I happen to fall ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff

... and that if she came down of a morning looking so trim and neat, without a single hair out of place, it must be because she looked perfectly hideous when in dishabille. Then La Normande would raise her arm a little, and say that there was no need for her to wear any stays to cramp and deform her figure. At these times the lessons would be interrupted, and Muche gazed with interest at his mother as she raised her arms. Florent listened to her, and even laughed, thinking to himself that women were very odd creatures. The rivalry between the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... and though the space which had intervened between our parting and reunion was but brief, yet at the period of life at which we were, even a shorter interval than that of three years has frequently served to form or DEform a character. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... present unpopular and generally regarded as unscientific. The so-called philosophic materialism of the present day seems to be in general far nearer to pantheism than to the old form of materialism which recognized only atoms and mechanism. Atheism as a power to deform the lives of men has, for the present, lost its hold, and even agnosticism is respectful. The materialism against which we have to struggle is not that of the school, but of the shop, of society, of life. There are comparatively few ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... all very strange circumstances," said Mr. Utterson, "but I think I begin to see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate recovery—God grant that he be not deceived! ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... ither poets, much your betters, Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters, Hae thought they had ensur'd their debtors, A' future ages; Now moths deform, in shapeless tatters, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... mentioned in print—the danger to society of exclusive friendships between man and man, and woman and woman. No two persons of the same sex can complement each other, neither can they long uplift or benefit each other. Usually they deform the mental and spiritual estate. We should have many acquaintances or none. When two men begin to "tell each other everything," they are hiking for senility. There must be a bit of well-defined reserve. We are told that in matter—solid steel for instance—the ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... ask thy love, Look not into his words, but into his sleeve; If thou canst learn what language his purse speaks, Be ruled by that; that's golden eloquence. Money can make a slavering tongue speak plain. If he that loves thee be deform'd and rich, Accept his love: gold hides deformity. Gold can make limping Vulcan walk upright; Make squint eyes straight, a crabbed face look smooth, Gilds copper noses, makes them look like gold; Fills age's wrinkles up, and makes a face, As old as Nestor's, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... clouds, in mass deform, Were frowning; yet a moment's calm was there, As it had stopped to breathe awhile the storm. Their white feet pressed the desert sod; they shook From their bright locks the briny drops; nor stayed Zophiel on ills, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... O how vile an idol proves this god! Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame. In nature there 's no blemish but the mind; None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind. Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks, o'erflourish'd ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... came a chariot on the silent storm Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape So sate within, as one whom years deform, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... quickly out again. Bartlett's "Dictionary of Americanisms" is full of words of this kind—locofoco, for example—which lived their short lives, and then passed not only out of use, but out of memory. While they are in vogue, however, they deform our speech, and they tend to increase our habits of looseness in language; and they bring reproach upon us such as that with an allusion to which we began this item. For our reputation's sake we should stop this; it subjects us with some reason to ridicule. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... the ancient Grecians made The soul's fair emblem, and its only name: But of the soul escaped the slavish trade Of earthly life! For in this mortal frame Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame, Manifold motions, making little speed, And to deform and kill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... at the first glance, how the influence of this theosophy made itself felt in this sensitive character, full as it was of surprises. Delsarte was born good, generous, above the petty tendencies which deform and degrade the human type. On these diverse points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also declared himself to be irritable and violent—he confessed to a dangerous fickleness—still, he would ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... in the end. The great democratic deluge will not after all be able to effect what the invasion of the barbarians was powerless to bring about; it will not drown altogether the results of the higher culture; but we must resign ourselves to the fact that it tends in the beginning to deform and vulgarize everything. It is clear that aesthetic delicacy, elegance, distinction, and nobleness—that atticism, urbanity, whatever is suave and exquisite, fine and subtle—all that makes the charm of the higher kinds of literature and of aristocratic cultivation—vanishes ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... eyes," returned the scout; "and he who owns it is not a niggard of its use. I have heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform his works in the settlement, as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests. If any such there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun, through the windings of the forest, he ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... beggar to follow him, but cannot get him to wait near enough. 'Tis Asotus, the heir of Philargyrus; but first I'll give ye the other's character, which may make his the clearer. He that is with him is Amorphus, a traveller, one so made out of the mixture of shreds of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus. He speaks all cream skimm'd, and more affected ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... bodies and their material environment, how should it not reveal to us something of the very essence of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to speculate or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it—as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an intellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... so deform, what Heart of Rock could long Dry-eyed behold? Adam could not, but wept, Tho' not of Woman born; Compassion quell'd His best of Man, and gave ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... self-confident people; they are taller than the Chinese, but wear Chinese dress with fur caps on their heads. The women seldom appear out of doors; they wear their hair gathered up in a high knot on the crown, and, in contrast to the Chinese women, do not deform their feet. Among the swarming crowds one sees Chinamen, merchants, officers, and soldiers in semi-European fur-lined uniforms, policemen in smart costumes with bright buttons, Japanese, Mongols, and sometimes a European. Tramcars drawn by horses jingle through the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... treat of that part of Poetry, which (to use Quintilian's words,) by reason of its Clownishness, is affraid of the Court and City; some may imagine that I follow Nichocaris his humor, who would paint only the most ugly and deform'd, and those too in the meanest and most frightful dress, that real, or fancy'd Poverty could put ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... the traces of the Indians, who chose the most beautiful sites for their dwellings, and whose habits do not break in on that aspect of nature under which they were born, we feel as if they were the rightful lords of a beauty they forbore to deform. But most of these settlers do not see it at all; it breathes, it speaks in vain to those who are rushing into its sphere. Their progress is Gothic, not Roman, and their mode of cultivation will, in the course of twenty, perhaps ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... meet with his first difficulty. As soon as the glass gets soft he will find that he no longer rotates the glass at the same speed by the right and left hand, and, moreover, he will probably unconsciously bend the tube, and even deform it, by ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... monster-breeding power, Prest from pernicious roots, within the waves; And mutter'd thrice nine times with magic lips, In sounds scarce audible, her well-known spells. Here Scylla came, and waded to the waist; And straight, with barking monsters she espies Her womb deform'd: at first, of her own limbs Not dreaming they are part, she from them flies; And chides them thence, and fears their savage mouths. But what she flies she with her drags; she looks To find her thighs, and find her legs, and feet; But for those limbs Cerberean ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... Scripture pure and sincere, not swerved or altered, I laid it to the touchstone, the native tongue. I weighed it with the Chaldee Targum and the Septuaginta. I desired to jump so nigh with the Hebrew, that it doth erewhile deform the vein of the English, the proprieties of that language and ours being in some speeches so much dissemblable." But with Horace Drant pursues a different course. As a moralist it is justifiable for him to translate Horace because the Latin poet satirizes ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... proportionals, still extant, offers ample evidence; and it is only of late years that the fragments remaining of his Chronicles of the Theban Kings have been properly appreciated. He hoped to free history as well as geography from the myths that deform it, a task which the prejudices and interests of man will never permit to be accomplished. Some amusing anecdotes of his opinions in these respects have descended to us. He ventured to doubt the historical truth of the Homeric legends. "I will believe ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... amputation of the breasts, one or both, the third by diverse gashes, chiefly across the breast, and the fourth by resection of the nymphae or of the nymphae and clitoris, and the superior major labia, the cicatrices of which would deform the vulva. Figure 232 represents the appearance of the external genital organs of a male Skoptzy after mutilation; Figure 233 those ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... consistent, but they need not grow. Here Mr. James will recognise the note of much of his own work: he treats, for the most part, the statics of character, studying it at rest or only gently moved; and, with his usual delicate and just artistic instinct, he avoids those stronger passions which would deform the attitudes he loves to study, and change his sitters from the humorists of ordinary life to the brute forces and bare types of more emotional moments. In his recent "Author of Beltraffio," so just in conception, so nimble and neat in workmanship, strong passion is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... alluded to, separating himself from the throng, galloped up to the speaker, and displayed a person which excited the envy even of the manly looking Forrester. He was a man of at least fifty years, but as hale as one of thirty, without a single gray hair to deform the beauty of his raven locks, which fell down in masses nearly to his shoulders. His stature was colossal, and the proportions of his frame as just as they were gigantic; so that there was much in his appearance of real native majesty. Nothing, in fact, could be well imagined ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... Dekker's works, "The Honest Whore" comes nearest to some reasonable degree of unity and harmony in conception and construction; his besetting vice of reckless and sluttish incoherence has here done less than usual to deform the proportions and deface the impression of his design. Indeed, the connection of the two serious plots in the first part is a rare example of dexterous and happy simplicity in composition: the comic underplot ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... in earliest youth are seen— But would they live, with armour more deform, Their love—o'erflowing breasts must learn to screen: "The bird that sweetest sings can least endure ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... perhaps—the hanging gardens of delight that adorn the Babylon of his orphic imagination. The hill-side is no unapt emblem of his intellectual habit, which garnishes the arid commonplaces of life with a cold poetic aurora, forgetting that it is the inexorable law of light to deform as well as adorn. Treating life as a grand epic poem, the philosophic Alcott forgets that Homer must nod or we should all fall asleep. The world would not be very beautiful nor interesting if it were all one huge summit of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... much the same; it always goes ill with the mind. True, knowledge is power; but in order to feel at home with it, we must be constitutionally qualified. And if we are not, it is likely to give the soul such a wrenching as to deform it forever. Indeed, how many of us go through life with a fatal spiritual or intellectual twist which could have been avoided in our youth, were we a little less wise. The young philosophes, the products of the University ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... careless Lines plain Nature's Rules obey, Like Satyrs Rough, but not Deform'd as they. His Sense undrest, like Adam, free from Blame, Without his Cloathing, and without his Shame, True Wit requires no Ornaments of skill, A Beauty naked, is ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... faults, I love thee still, My country! and, while yet a nook is left Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'd With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost, I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies And fields without a flower, for warmer ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... also entirely neglect for the present the tides produced by the sun, and we shall also make the further assumption that friction is absent. What friction is capable of doing we shall, however, refer to later on. The moon will act on the ocean and deform it, so that there will be high tide along one meridian, and high tide also on the opposite meridian. This is indeed one of the paradoxes by which students are frequently puzzled when they begin to learn about the tides. That the moon should pull the water up in a heap on one ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... noisy terror that these first years have wrought Seem but the soft arising and prelude of the storm That fiercer still and heavier with sharper lightnings fraught Shall pour red wrath upon us over a world deform. ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

... laid under the imputation of occasioning those strumous swellings in the neck which deform the inhabitants of many of the Alpine vallies; but this opinion is not supported by any well-authenticated indisputable facts, and is rendered still more improbable, if not entirely overturned, by the frequency of the disease in Sumatra[12], ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... fairies haunt our verdant meads, No grinning imps deform our blazing hearth; Beneath the kelpie's fang no traveller bleeds, Nor gory vampyre taints our holy earth, Nor spectres stalk to frighten harmless mirth, Nor tortured demon howls adown the gale; Fair reason checks these monsters in their birth. Yet have we lay of love and horrid ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... called Comprachicos. They bought children, and understood how to mutilate and deform them, thus making them valuable for exhibition at fairs. But an act of parliament had just been passed to destroy the trade of the Comprachicos. Hence this flight from Portland, and the forsaking ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... about the order named: Side worms, scab, stippin, curculio or red-bug, skin punctures, bruises, stem pulled, russet (not typical for variety) and limb rub. The extent of scab spots should be considered. Minute spots are not as serious as some other blemishes, while spots which deform the apple should disqualify ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... good Milo, and come help me dress; that is the matter now in hand. Unclasp these trunks and find something that shall not deform me.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... he can to deform this lovely region. The most horrible places we have yet met with are Itri and Fondi, which look like recesses of depravity and dirt, and the houses more like the dens and kennels of wild beasts, than the habitations of civilized human beings. In fact, the populace of these towns consists ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... certain element of truth. But the fact remained that women and men are different, that the difference is based in fundamental natural functions, and that to place one sex in exactly the same position as the other sex is to deform its outlines and to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... pride of their heart instead of the laws of health expose the bodies of their children to disease. In public gatherings, in order to make a show of their rich clothing, they will not wrap them sufficiently to protect them from cold: they will deform the feet of their little ones and bring them pain in after life, because of the pride of their heart. By lacing they will mold and shape the bodies of their daughters after the fashion of the world, entailing upon them disorder and disease, weakness ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... hath these, and more. A mind exempt From every low-bred passion, where contempt, Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found A harbor yet; an understanding sound; Just views of right and wrong; perception full Of the deform'd, and of the beautiful, In life and manners; wit above her sex, Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; A noble nature, conqueror in the strife Of conflict with a ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... the day, Host moved toward host in terrible array, Before the van, impatient for the fight, With martial port he strode, and stern delight: Heaps strew'd on heaps beneath his falchion groan'd, And monuments of dead deform'd the ground. The time would fail should I in order tell What foes were vanquish'd, and what numbers fell: How, lost through love, Eurypylus was slain, And round him bled his bold Cetaean train. To Troy no hero came of nobler line, Or if of nobler, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... of bye-ends was in that service; no sidelong glances at possible advantages of influence or reputation or the like, which so often deform men's philanthropies and services to one another. No more than the sunbeam shines for the sake of collateral issues which may benefit itself, did Jesus Christ seek His own advantage in ministering to men. There was no speck of black in that lustrous white robe, but all was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... that deceive the eye, Dark-working sorcerers, that change the mind, Soul-killing witches, that deform the body] ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... entirely from the curve of the poem of Schiller which he was pretending to transmute. The variations in which he reproduced Lamartine's verse are stereotyped enough. When was there a time when composers did not deform their themes in amorous, rustic and warlike variations? The relation between the pompous and somewhat empty "Lament and Triumph" and the unique, the distinct thing that was the life of Torquato Tasso is outward enough. And even "Mazeppa," in which Liszt's virtuosic genius ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... according to the ability of the wearer to purchase them, and on the ankles they have silver, brass, copper or iron shackles. A pair of silver ones were seen, which weighed one hundred and twenty-eight ounces, but these ponderous ornaments produce a callous lump on the leg, and entirely deform the ankle. The poorest people have only the jereed and sandals. Both men and women have a singular custom of stuffing their nostrils with a twisted leaf of onions or clover, which has a very disgusting appearance. The men, not using oil, are much cleaner than ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... Britain's Pastorals, it being for a Subject of an amorous and rural Nature, worthily deserving commendations, as any one will confess who shall peruse it with an impartial eye. Take a view of his abilities, out of his Second Book, first Song of his Pastorals, speaking of a deform'd Woman. ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... had any direct agency in inducing woman to spoil or deform her own beauty, it must have been in tempting her to use paints and enamelling. Nothing so effectually writes memento mori! on the cheek of beauty as this ridiculous and culpable practice. Ladies ought to know that ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Every work is to be esteemed mean, and every art and every discipline which renders the body, the mind, or the understanding of freemen unfit for the habit and practice of virtue: for which reason all those arts which tend to deform the body are called mean, and all those employments which are exercised for gain; for they take off from the freedom of the mind and render it sordid. There are also some liberal arts which are not improper for freemen to apply to in a certain degree; but to endeavour to acquire a ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... fail to rise, Heedless when Morning calls thee to the skies! Then now exult, O Sun! and gaily shine, While Youth and Strength and Beauty all are thine. For Age is dark, unlovely, as the light Shed by the Moon when clouds deform the night, Glimmering uncertain as they hurry past. Loud o'er the plain is heard the northern blast, Mists shroud the hills, and 'neath the growing gloom, The weary traveller shrinks ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... despair, Thus vents his anguish to the fleeting air: "Dear native hills, amidst whose woodland maze, I pass'd the tranquil morning of my days, On whose green tops malignant planets scowl, Where hell hounds ravage, and the furies howl; Though chang'd, deform'd, still, still ye meet my view, Ye still are left to hear my last adieu! My friends, my children, gor'd with many a wound, Whose mangled bodies strew the ensanguin'd ground, To parch and stiffen in the blaze of day, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... jeers at him for having begun life as a nobleman's Private Tutor, called by the "endearing but unmajestic name of Dick." It is only fair to say that these aberrations from good taste and good feeling became less and less frequent as years went on. That they ever were permitted to deform the splendid advocacy of great causes is due to the fact that, when Sydney Smith began to write, the influence of Smollett and his imitators was still powerful. Burke's obscene diatribes against ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... out from us either the ancient world, or other European poetry, as important almost as our own. When our reading, however deep, runs wholly into "pockets," and exhausts itself in the literature of one age, one country, one type, then we may be sure that it is tending to narrow or deform our minds. And the more it leads us into curious byways and nurtures us into indifference for the beaten highways of the world, the sooner we shall end, if we be not specialists and students by profession, in ceasing to treat our books as the companions ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... promise. He knows that in me He is able to restore to more than pristine beauty all which I, by my sin, have destroyed; to reconsecrate all which I, by my profanity, have polluted; to cast out the evil deities that desecrate and deform the shrine; and to make my poor heart, if only I will let Him come in to the ruined chamber, a fairer temple ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... poisonous plant.[1] A few wooden buildings and a certain extent of wire fencing represented most of the initial expenses of the pioneer. Pastoral settlement speedily overran such a land, followed more slowly and partially by agriculture. The settler came, not with axe and fire to ravage and deform, but as builder, planter and gardener. Being in nineteen cases out of twenty a Briton, or a child of one, he set to work to fill this void land with everything British which he could transport or transplant His gardens were filled with the flowers, the vegetables, the fruit trees ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... consummate artifice of the great poet. It is ostensibly a symbol of grief; but not the less a most efficient ally of the aforesaid magnanimity. "In mourning," says Aristotle, "sympathising with the dead, we deform ourselves by cutting off our hair." And ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... hold to be fortunate. He got up to preferment on the wrong side, and sits as untoward in it. He is raised rather above himself than others, or as base metals are by the test of lead, while gold and silver continue still unmoved. He is raised and swells, like a pimple, to be an eyesore and deform the place he holds. He is borne like a cloud on the air of the Prince's favour, and keeps his light from the rest of his people. He rises, like the light end of a balance, for want of weight, or as dust and feathers do, for being light. He gets into the Prince's ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... basket, and moving thus a little behind the huckster, so as not to be seen, points him out with his index finger, and lays his left forefinger under his eye, pulling down the skin slightly, so as to deform the regularity of the lower eyelid. This is a warning against a cheat, shown more clearly in Fig. 91. This sign primarily indicates a squinting person, and metaphorically one whose looks cannot be trusted, even as in a squinting person ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... precept could better become him, at whose birth peace was proclaimed to the earth. For, what would so soon destroy all the order of society, and deform life with violence and ravage, as a permission to every one to judge his own cause, and to apportion his own ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... answered Endicott. "It may be a chicken, if you please, or a hawk, or whatever else your learnings may call it, but I do declare and manifest my dislike and detestation of such wearing of long hair, as against a thing uncivil and unmanly, whereby men deform themselves, and offend sober and modest persons, and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... Ecclesiastical Cyclopedia, New York, 1891, ii. 805. The beautiful synagogue which the Jews began to erect in Moscow at the cost of half a million rubles was declared by Pobyednostsev to be "too high and imposing," and they were compelled to destroy the cupola and deform the interior. Nevertheless it had to remain a "dead" synagogue, until Nicholas II was pleased to give permission ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... that church and the relationship of its separate parts. We cannot accept what we have inherited in the form in which we inherited it. Our inheritance in many ways is precious and wonderful, but our human response can deform it. Our church can be a means of fulfilling our discipleship, but it can also be an obstacle to it. Therefore, our membership and participation in a denomination needs to be kept under the constant judgment of God in order that we as members may serve ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... too little of common purpose, too little of mutual support, too little of distinct and steadily pursued intellectual object. We do not believe that they are one whit more jealous than the followers of other professions. But they are less forced to be together, and the little jealousies which deform the natures of us all have in their case, for this reason, freer scope, and tend more to isolation. Here, at last, we have a school, ignorant it may be, conceited possibly, as yet with but vague and unrealised objects, but working together ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... attain, May in a little moment quit, And abdicate the throne of Wit, And leave, a vacant seat, the brain, For Folly to usurp and reign. Should you but discompose the tide, On which Ideas wont to ride, Ferment it with a yeasty Storm, Or with high Floods of Wine deform; Altho' Sir Oracle is he, Who is as wise, as wise can be, In one short minute we shall find The wise man gone, a fool behind. Courage, that is all nerve and heart, That dares confront Death's brandish'd dart, That dares to ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... parts by means of long, very slender, tube-like beaks, which they thrust through the skins of the affected organs into the soft tissues beneath. They weaken the blossom buds by removing the sap; they dwarf and deform the apples so that varieties of ordinary size frequently fail to grow larger than small crab apples, and the fruits have a puckered appearance about the calyx end; they suck the juice from the growing shoots, dwarfing them; and they ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... were not merely close copyists of extreme French modes, but that they exaggerated even the most extravagant, and hunted after the newest styles with the national energy which their countrywomen of a nobler class expended upon nobler objects; and were more ready to deform or ignore nature, and swear allegiance to the despotic rule of the Crinoline Sovereign, than any Parisian ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... suck 345 To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, Rewarding her with their pure perfectness: The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad: Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 350 Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream; No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the undecaying trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 355 And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... more deform— His garments, made of beaver, deer, and rat, Are now exchanged for woollen doublets ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... worth while to state that at these meetings the sons of farmers, and even of lairds, did not disdain to make their appearance, and mingle delightedly with the lads that wore the crook and plaid. Where pride does not come to chill nor foppery to deform homely and open-hearted kindness, yet where native modesty and self-respect induce propriety of conduct, society possesses its own attractions, and can ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... storm! One beam of grace display, And the fierce tempests that deform My soul, shall ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... yet the trembling year is unconfirmed, And winter oft, at eve, resumes the breeze, Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets Deform ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... him, who, while he charms our fancy and warms our heart, strengthens our souls, ennobles our views, and bears us, on the wings of his pure imagination, to the gates of heaven. We are ready to accord him the highest rank among our living poets. No affectations deform his lines, no conceits his thoughts, no puerilities his descriptions. His 'Huskers,' should be graven on every American heart; his 'Andrew Rykman's Prayer' on that of every Christian. We regard this poem as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... see that in progress which will disfigure and deform the Constitution. While these territories remain territories, they will be a trouble and an annoyance; they will draw after them vast expenses; they will probably require as many troops as we have maintained during the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... telescopes of moderate dimensions in view, was obliged, in order not to sacrifice any of the light, to place the great mirror so obliquely, that the image formed by its surface should fall entirely outside the tube of the instrument. So great a degree of inclination would certainly deform the objects. The front view construction is admissible only in ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... youth on his side, could we give him fresh sea air, good diet, cod oil, etc., we might very likely obtain anchylosis; true, but he may die while trying for this anchylosis, and also this anchylosis, when got, may so lame or deform him that resection may still ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... yet had reach'd the other bank, We enter'd on a forest, where no track Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns Instead, with venom fill'd. Less sharp than these, Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide Those animals, that hate the cultur'd fields, Betwixt Corneto and Cecina's stream. Here ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... rush in, and crimes and woes Deform that peaceful bower; They may not mar the deep repose Of that immortal flower. Though only broken hearts be found To watch his cradle by, No blight is on his slumbers sound, No touch of ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues. Moreover, from the common sympathies of our nature, souls that have struggled and suffered are dear to me. Willingly do I recognise their brotherhood. Scars upon their foreheads do not so deform them, that they cease to interest. They are always signs of struggle; though alas! too often, likewise, of defeat. Seasons of unhealthy, dreamy, vague delight, are followed by seasons ofweariness and darkness. Where ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... didst not know in that thy young day the things pertaining to thy peace. Thou didst not suspect in thy innocence how the black brand of poverty can deform the finest face, and dim the brightest intellect in the eyes ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... long so nauseated by the incessant inhalation of spices and flowers, condiments and kisses, that if a musk-rat had run over the page it could hardly be less endurable to the physical than it is to the spiritual stomach. The fantastic and the brutal blemishes which deform and deface the loveliness of his incomparable genius are hardly so damaging to his fame as his general monotony of matter and of manner. It was doubtless in order to relieve this saccharine and "mellisonant" monotony that he thought fit to intersperse these interminable droppings of natural or ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... habit of remaining bent. The Flathead Indian binds a board on the skull of his child, and its head forms the habit of remaining flat on the top. Wrong bodily postures produce curvature of the spine, and pernicious modes of dress deform the bones of the chest. The muscles may be trained into the habit of keeping the shoulders straight or letting them droop; those of the back, to keep the body well up on the hips, or to let it sag; those of locomotion, to give us a light, springy ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... Delia, to the main Runs the sweet tide without a stain, Unsullied as it seems; The nymphs of many a sable flood Deform with streaks of oozy mud The ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams



Words linked to "Deform" :   morph, twist, granulate, modify, start, roll, extend, change shape, furl, come out, point, gnarl, protrude, contort, unbend, wrench, bug out, convolute, crank, alter, flatten out, dinge, bulge out, incurvate, stretch out, pouch, pop out, taper, indent, change form, sharpen, batter, shape, flatten



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