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Distinctive   Listen
adjective
Distinctive  adj.  
1.
Marking or expressing distinction or difference; distinguishing; characteristic; peculiar. "The distinctive character and institutions of New England."
2.
Having the power to distinguish and discern; discriminating. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Distinctive" Quotes from Famous Books



... bottom of the box. The last chance was still not gone, for the friendly old postmaster would have given it back to her if she had asked for it, but the mere noise it made in falling—one of the most distinctive and irrevocable sounding in the world—caused her to feel a lightening of the heart that meant satisfaction. She turned and went away down the bare village street, past the last row of whitewashed slate-roofed cottages, with the dark clumps of myrtle ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... shades and degrees of social position, there was a fine breeding among the richer people and a kind of pride among the poorer ones. There were occasions when they mingled with an agreeable courtesy, yet each side kept its proper and distinctive relations; real worth was respected and dignified living held in esteem. From a printer's boy, Benjamin Franklin had stood before kings and added luster to his country. From a farm at Braintree had come one of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... actors of genius. This Cox was the delight of the city, the country, and the universities: assisted by the greatest actors of the time, expelled from the theatre, it was he who still preserved alive, as it were by stealth, the suppressed spirit of the drama. That he merited the distinctive epithet of "the incomparable Robert Cox," as Kirkman calls him, we can only judge by the memorial of our mimetic genius, which will be best given in Kirkman's words. "As meanly as you may now think of these Drolls, they were then acted by the best comedians; and, I may say, by some that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... deeds, yet in aims and feelings; for the luxury which is bought by vice with the one is the thing of all in life most passionately desired by the other, though she is not yet prepared to pay quite the same price. Unfortunately, she has already paid too much, all, indeed, that once gave her distinctive national character. No one can say of the modern English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic. The old fault so often found by keen-sighted Frenchwomen, that, she was so fatally romanesque, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... defense, when Benteen approached. Hearing the firing, the troopers rode toward the sound at a gallop, but when they appeared in view, coming over the hills, the Indians fled in all directions, escaping punishment through their usual tactics of scattering over the Plains, so as to leave no distinctive trail. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... years of his public life in our state. Morrison R. Waite, of Toledo, was perhaps even more Ohioan in those traits of plainness and simplicity in greatness which we like to claim for Ohio, only upon sober second thought to acknowledge that they are the distinctive American traits. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most characteristic quality is its wealth of color; it finds expression for every mood, from the lightest to the most serious, from the most vigorous to the most delicate and tender. Now his words ring like the voice of doom, filled with thunder and ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne

... certainty, that he was not so much sallow as sunburnt. It was more than likely that he had not got a good look at me—in that case he would not know me again, as I flattered myself that there was nothing very distinctive about me. Still, as that marksman behind the rocks must have been taking stock of me for some considerable while, I realised that no definite advantage would accrue from the fact that one of the gang might not be able to identify me. I had no means of ascertaining how ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... the searching party gives ground,—one is almost tempted to say, excuse,—for a close and careful description of each country and of its inhabitants, step by step. Even the lesser incidents of the story are employed to emphasise the distinctive features of each land. The explorers are almost frozen on the heights of the Andes, and almost drowned in the floods of the Patagonian Pampas. An avalanche sweeps some of them away; a condor carries off a lad. In Australia they are stopped by jungles and by quagmires; they hunt kangaroos. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... convenient t discuss the Aragonese, on account of its special character, apart from the rest. The feudal system, which from the days of the Nor mans had survived in the form of a territorial supremacy of the Barons, gave a distinctive color to the political constitution of Naples; while elsewhere in Italy, excepting only in the southern part of the ecclesiastical dominion, and in a few other districts, a direct tenure of land prevailed, and no hereditary powers were permitted by the law. The great Alfonso, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... of the Lateran Council of 1215 the Jews were compelled to wear a distinctive mark on their clothing. In England this was made of cloth in the shape of the two ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... Communist constitution, an admitted obligation to deal with crime without revenge or punishment, and a full assumption by humanity of divine responsibilities, he would have conferred an incalculable benefit on mankind, because these distinctive demands of his are now turning out to be good ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... the advancement of his country. Upon him rests the decision in nearly all the great questions of the empire. Scarcely an edict or document of any kind is issued that does not go over his signature or under his direct supervision. To busy himself with the smallest details is a distinctive characteristic of the man. Systematic methods, combined with an extraordinary mind, enable him to accomplish his herculean task. In the eastern horizon Li-Hung-Chang shines as the brilliant star of morning that tells of the coming of a ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... is almost denuded of original trees, but ornamental species are being planted, and flowers are plentiful. The Maoris had distinctive and expressive names for every bird, tree, and flower, before the white man came. There is a lovely little native daisy called tupapa, and a blue lily known as rengarenga, also a green and yellow passion-flower ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... the conversion of ammonia into nitrous acid; the second, which has only been lately isolated by Warington and Winogradsky, effects the conversion of nitrous acid into nitric acid. Each of these ferments thus has its distinctive function to perform in this most important process, the nitric ferment being unable to act on ammonia, as the nitrous ferment is unable to convert nitrites into nitrates. Both ferments occur in enormous quantities in the soil, and ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... in all these things may not be absent. There is reason: to think that most children possess it, because when they are shown how to observe they usually respond, quickly perceiving, for instance, the differences between one flower and another, quickly, even when quite young, learning the distinctive characters and names of each, enjoying the process of recognising each when they walk along the lanes, as indeed every intelligent child enjoys the exercise of its observing powers. The disproportionate growth of our urban population, a thing regrettable ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... to the people. The Sachems of the tribe pronounced the child to be consecrated and chosen to rule over them by the gods. So it had been decreed, and ever since then, all Tewana women who had ruled over the people had possessed this distinctive mark of their royal lineage and bore the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... Persepolis, whose ruins attest the magnificent palaces of Darius and Xerxes. Persia proper was a small country, three hundred miles from north to south, and two hundred and eighty from east to west, inhabited by an Aryan race, who brought with them, from the country beyond the Indus, a distinctive religion, language, and political institutions. Their language was closely connected with the Aryan dialects of India, and the tongues of modern Europe. Hence the Persians were noble types of the great Indo-European family, whose civilization has spread throughout the world. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... Distinctive and significant as the virtues possessed by the papaw are, yet because of its universality and because it yields its fruits with little labour, it gets but scant courtesy. It is tolerated merely; but if we had it not, if it were as far as that vast shore ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... nor the hollow-eyed sorrow which wastes away in a living death of unavailing expiation: there was neither the clank of chains, nor the yell of execration; but a hardworking body of men were seen, who, though separated by justice from society, were not supposed to have lost the distinctive attribute of human nature: they were treated as rational beings, were operated upon by rational motives; and they repaid this treatment by improved habits, by industry, and submission. They had been ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... bleeding at the forehead where the arrow pierced it, to be borne on a field azure, supported by two greyhounds. The crest to be a dexter arm bearing a naked sword, surrounded by the motto "Fide Parta, Fide Acta," which continued to be the distinctive bearings of the Mackenzies of Seaforth until it was considered expedient, as corroborating their claims on the extensive possessions of the Macleods of Lewis, to substitute for the original the crest of that warlike ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... the standard text-book for high school and elementary college work. The book has been thoroughly revised, enlarged, and improved, while the general and distinctive features of the former work have been preserved. As now published, it combines the results of the life experience and observation of its distinguished author with the latest discoveries and researches ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg

... collected and written down by different musicians—Balakireff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Prokoudin, and Lisenko amongst others. The variety of these folk-songs is astonishing. They never become monotonous, each song having its distinctive climax, and the air always suits the words. Often the untutored singer has one melody in his repertoire, but intuitively he modifies its strains according to the sentiment ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... "settled gipsies" in Transylvania. Of course they are legally free, but they attach themselves peculiarly to the Magyars, from a profound respect they have for everything that is aristocratic; and in Transylvania the name Magyar holds almost as a distinctive term for class as well as race. The gipsies do not assimilate with the thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble: they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... unmistakable detectives stood about the various entries, and little knots of people, evil-looking and unclean for the most part, lurked in the background or sat on benches and diffused through the stale, musty air that distinctive but indescribable odour that clings to police vans and prison reception rooms; an odour that, in the present case, was pleasantly mingled with the suggestive aroma of disinfectants. Through the unsavoury throng we hurried, and up a staircase to a landing from ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... and names of the various tribes are also subjects of difficulty and uncertainty. As far as my researches have yet extended upon this point, it appears to me, first, that groups of natives have a distinctive or a local appellation, derived from the particular place they belong to, as Barmerara maru, the natives frequenting the lake called Barmera: Moolyoolpero maru, the natives frequenting the lagoon called Moolyoolko, and so on. Secondly, a general or tribal name, as Narwijjerook, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... Murillo. Naples, too, might enjoy the same privilege, from the names of Spagnoletto, Calabrese, Salvator Rosa, and Luca Giordano. Genoa, likewise, from Castiglione, Strozzi, Castelli, and Cambiasi. But the want of a general distinctive character prevents their being ranked under the general schools, and the masters are, for the most part, placed separately in that one or other of the acknowledged schools to which their manner approaches most nearly, or to which their master ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... strangers stood in the presence of America's now illustrious artist, George L. Brown. But one seeing him then, as he stood almost scowling at the two strangers, would hardly have idealized him into the artist whose pencil has done so much of late years to give American art a distinctive name through his poetical delineations of the rare, sun-tinted atmosphere that hovers over Italian landscapes. However, our apology for him must be that the day was raw and blustering, and that he had no sooner caught sight of the men through his window, as they hesitatingly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... the first turn, or the order of rotation in which all shall play, as who shall be the first back in leapfrog, etc. In still other games, such as Prisoners' Base, Black and White, and many ball games, opposing sides or teams have to be chosen. Some games have their own distinctive methods of assigning parts, but in most cases any method may be used. A few of the most popular, practical, and useful methods are given here. (See also ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... Queen Anne, and remember Madame de Maintenon's complaint that health was sacrificed to symmetry. Not far from this oldest portion were some broken bits of wall and stumps of columns, remnants of the chapel, and prettily wreathed with ivy and clematis. We rejoiced in such a pretty and distinctive ornament to our garden, and never troubled ourselves about the desecration; and certainly ours was one of the most delightful gardens that ever existed, what with green turf, bright flowers, shapely shrubs, and the grand beech-trees enclosing it with their stately white pillars, green ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... own marked and distinctive peculiarities. It is tropical. It has passion deep and pervasive, slumbering within a rounded form and in deep dreamy eyes. It is ductile and plastic, ready to receive impressions and to be shapen by them. It does not posses the hard, aggressive ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman

... wanted to know was, whether there was really a peculiar style to every man whatever, as there is certainly a peculiar handwriting, a peculiar countenance, not widely different in many, yet always enough to be distinctive:— ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... acquainted with the various Indian nations, was struck by the appearance of their features, which were those of the Blackfeet, although they wore none of the distinctive ornaments of that tribe, and introduced themselves as Peagons, whose territory lies to the southward. Their chief, a plausibly mannered man, stated that they had been induced to come to Fort Duncan by hearing that better value was given for peltries there than was to be ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston

... one of those bold and distinctive characters, whose sterling piety and ardent zeal shining forth from under a rude exterior, gave such peculiar lustre to the age of early Methodism; and indicated an agency, specially raised by God, to break up the fallow ground and clear away ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... Since a particular Church is no older than her distinctive confession, the Lutheran Church is more than thirty years older than the Roman Catholic Church; for the Augsburg Confession was adopted in 1530, while the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, which are the ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... the thing which one wishes most to see, yet a church in such a case as Saint Cross at Saint-Lo teaches one less than the smaller churches at Coutances. Both of these, Saint Peter and Saint Nicolas, aim at reproducing on a smaller scale the most distinctive feature of the episcopal church. This is the grand central octagon, with its quasi-domical treatment inside. But in both of the smaller churches it is coupled with a single western tower. This arrangement of a central and western tower is rare in England, because ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... I describe as Modern History that which begins four hundred years ago, which is marked off by an evident and intelligible line from the time immediately preceding, and displays in its course specific and distinctive characteristics of its own 10. The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... prejudices. These must be studied—as one would study a subject like zoology. And as in zoology, to acquire a useful knowledge, it is necessary to classify. The press divides itself naturally into a few distinctive groups, an acquaintance with whose characteristics will form the best, indeed the only, foundation for that wide, detailed erudition ultimately to be obtained through years of experience and observation. Of these groups I will briefly mention the ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... sacrificed to the practical requirements of the library or to the convenience of the department in the college. As in every scheme, many minor subjects have been put under general heads to which they do not strictly belong. In some cases these headings have been printed in a distinctive type, e. g., 429 Anglo-Saxon, under ENGLISH PHILOLOGY. The rule has been to assign these subjects to the most nearly allied heads, or where it was thought they would be most useful. The only alternative was to omit them altogether. If any such omission occurs, ...
— A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library [Dewey Decimal Classification] • Melvil Dewey

... I have seen many examples much earlier and later, but those given are merely in reference to the theory of your Lewes correspondent. Even they are surely inconsistent with the idea of the practice being peculiar to any locality or distinctive of any class. My recollection would lead me to assign the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries as the period of its use. But still the question remains—Has it any, and what signification? I have always considered it to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... Parsee priest who assisted him in his Hindustani. Even in these early days we find him collecting material of the kind that was to be utilised in his Arabian Nights. He was struck, for example, with the fine hedges of henna whose powerful and distinctive odour loaded the atmosphere; and with the immense numbers of ravenous kites and grey-headed crows that swooped down on dead ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... require detection on clothing, on cutting instruments, on floors and furniture, etc. The following are the distinctive characters of blood-stains: ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... not scriptural unity. Union of sects is far from the scriptural unity of believers. A union consists upon a human basis and may consist of a union of sects, or a union of individuals, without any conditions of spirituality whatever. Each individual or body retaining its distinctive and separate division. Scriptural unity is based upon the inner-wrought grace of sanctification, where everything non-spiritual is entirely destroyed and the Holy Spirit has the right of way in every respect according to ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... her. A green field spread itself on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the other being a part of the land attached to the manor-house adjoining. On the vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the distinctive and altogether exceptional feature of which consisted in its being only about ten yards long; it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... more like Martin perhaps though far less profound in his sense of mystery; Fuller being more the romanticist and Ryder in my estimation the greatest romanticist, and artist as well, of all of these men. But Alden Weir failed to carry off any honor as to distinctive qualities and invention. A genial aristocrat if you will, but having for me no marked power outside of a Barbizonian interest in nature with a kind of ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... must accordingly have been themselves red. That military men at this period did wear feathers of particular colours as distinctive badges, is further evident from the testimony of Llywarch Hen, who describes himself as having ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... woman to dream of crossing a mountain in company with her cousin and dead brother, who was smiling, denotes she will have a distinctive change in her life for the better, but there are warnings against allurements and deceitfulness of friends. If she becomes exhausted and refuses to go further, she will be slightly disappointed in not gaining quite so exalted a position as was ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... wrinkled, her face was nobly redeemed by a remarkably beautiful, patient mouth; and her angular, wiry figure, by small feet and very slender hands, where the veins rose like blue cords lacing ivory satin. Over the shoulders of her gray flannel dress was worn the distinctive badge of her office, a white mull handkerchief pleated surplice fashion into her girdle, whence hung by a silver chain a set of tablets; and the folds of mull were fastened at her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... his dramatization and performance of Biblical stories, such as "The Good Samaritan," "The Prodigal Son," and "Tobias and the Angels," accompanied with music written by his friend Giovanni Animuccia, that the term "Oratorio" came to be accepted as the distinctive title of these sacred musical dramas. His productions were very crudely and hastily arranged, his only purpose having been to render his service attractive. After his death, however, in 1595, his work was continued by Emilio del Cavaliere, a Roman composer, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... masterpieces, "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." More than one, while otherwise unique, has some burden or refrain which haunts the memory,—once heard, never forgotten, like the tone of a rarely used but distinctive organ-stop. Notable among them is Buerger's "Lenore," that ghostly and resonant ballad, the lure and foil of the translators. Few will deny that Coleridge's wondrous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" stands ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... constitutional pyramid we find the Doge. The Doge also had his distinctive functions in the State; his duties were ornamental rather than administrative. Though all the acts of the Government were executed in his name, laws passed, dispatches sent, treaties made, and war declared, yet it is not in these departments that the Doge stands pre-eminent; ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... square from the city, and the nearest to the country, of any then existing in the north-western suburb of London. But, by the time fourteen years more had elapsed—that is to say, in the year 1851—Baregrove Square had lost its distinctive character altogether; other squares had filched from it those last remnants of healthy rustic flavor from which its good name had been derived; other streets, crescents, rows, and villa-residences had forced themselves pitilessly between ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... activity of invention in the field of reclaiming rubber dates from 1870, since which year 37 patents have been granted for processes more or less distinctive from those which had for their object only the devulcanization of rubber. Prior to that time the use of rubber reclaimed from fibrous wastes had been confined practically to one large factory in Boston and one near New York. One concern, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... know the camel fairly well during the succeeding months, and he proved a study, perhaps more interesting than his caretaker, a member of the Egyptian Camel Corps' distinctive in his long blue garrabea. When a company was on duty at a distant outpost the time for the arrival of the ration camels was also the signal for the ration fatigue to fall in. Then the string of animals would leisurely wend their way through the gaps in the barb wire, their noses held high in an ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... helped him in these earlier years of editorial effort, among whom were a dozen of the most distinguished public men of his day. After the North Star had been in existence several years, its name was changed to Frederick Douglass's Paper, to give it a more distinctive designation, the newspaper firmament already ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... defect which may reside in a government, that of not bringing into sufficient exercise the individual faculties, moral, intellectual, and active, of the people, has been exhibited generally in setting forth the distinctive mischiefs of despotism. As between one form of popular government and another, the advantage in this respect lies with that which most widely diffuses the exercise of public functions; on the one hand, by excluding fewest from the suffrage; on the other, by ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... were all our own countrywomen, as we see them at home and abroad. I have already spoken of their diligence in sewing, and of their enthusiasm in shopping. Their other distinctive features are too familiar to us to require illustration. Yet upon one trait I will adventure. A group of them sat peaceably together, one day, when a file of newspapers arrived, with full details of a horrible Washington scandal, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... had risen up over her shoulder, for no reason whatever, the sleek pale face of the manicure girl, who wore emeralds in her ears. And when she had clipped them on she was thrilled; they gave her a distinctive, a resolute charm. She could smile at herself again in that glass, at the colour and light and verve which had come back to her. The face pictured there had all the roundness, the softness and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... the case on the north, where the Flinders River and its tributaries drain country that bears all the distinctive growth of the interior. On the south coast, west of the Murray, this is also the case, and in these parts, through the depression of the range, the climate is much drier. On the eastern coast, however, the distinction between ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... in the lyrics which abound in the plays of John Fletcher, and yet it cannot be said that Fletcher's sweet melody is more classical than Elizabethan. His other distinctive quality is the tone of somewhat artificial courtliness which was soon to mark the lyrics of the other poets of the Cavalier party. An avowed disciple of Jonson and his classicism and a greater poet than Fletcher is Robert Herrick, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... Greeks and Romans, in which the distinctive notes were clear intelligence, love of beauty, and practical force, gradually broke away altogether from the popular mythology, and sought to find in reason an explanation of the universe and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... sing, and a dwindling jar of cider for the purposes of the ceremony. The divided choirs clashed their music, heard from a distance; the guns fired at intervals, each sending forth its own particular detonation and winning back a distinctive echo; then the companies separated widely and decreased to mere twinkling, torchlit points in the distance. Accumulated smoke from the scattered discharges hung in a sluggish haze between earth and moon, and a sharp smell of burnt powder tainted the sweetness of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... (as will be explained hereafter), that the circumstances had arisen which had rendered it necessary for Julian Home to enter Saint Werner's as a sizar and since that necessity had arisen, he had been far from happy. A peculiar sensitiveness had been from childhood the distinctive feature of his character. It rendered him doubly amenable to every emotion of pleasure and pain, and gave birth to a self-conscious spirit, which made his nature appear weaker, when a boy, than it really was. While he was at Harton, this self-consciousness made him keenly, almost tremblingly, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... principal Spanish settlement, was moved to the island of Luzon—the largest island, and that one nearest and opposite to Great China and Japon—I shall treat of it first; for much that will be said of it is similar in the others, to each of whose particulars and distinctive details I ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... in silver or wood, should be of one distinctive style and material. Tooth and nail brushes should never have silver handles, but hair and clothes brushes with silver backs are very smart. They should be kept polished with a chamois cloth, and occasionally a little silver polish or whiting. Your ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... include specific gravity (weight of mineral compared to the weight of an equal volume of water), optical properties and crystal form, color and luster. Minerals differ in cleavage and fracture (how they come apart when cut). They leave distinctive streaks on unglazed porcelain. Some are magnetic, some have electrical properties, some glow under ultraviolet or black light, some are radioactive, some fuse under a low flame while others are unaffected. ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... by the people of Hayti, was known to exist at the same time among the Caribs of the islands and those of the continent. From the word Carina, or Calina, has been formed Galibi (Caribi). This is the distinctive denomination of a tribe in French Guiana,* who are of much more diminutive stature than the inhabitants of Cari, but speaking one of the numerous dialects of the Carib tongue. (* The Galibis (Calibitis), the Palicours, and the Acoquouas, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... society would make no progress; the other the ballast, without which there would be small safety in a tempest. But, during the forty-six years which followed the accession of the House of Hanover, these distinctive peculiarities seemed to be effaced. The Whig conceived that he could not better serve the cause of civil and religious freedom than by strenuously supporting the Protestant dynasty. The Tory conceived that he could not better prove his hatred of revolutions than by attacking a government ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... has been so indiscriminately applied to very diverse departments of our intellectual domain, that it has ceased to have any distinctive or well-defined signification. Meaning, appropriately, that which is certainly known, as distinguished from that which is matter of conjecture, opinion, thought, or plausible supposition merely, its application to any special branch ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... thought to the subject; but I suppose I have asserted my individuality. If I have, however, I have done it indefinitely. Everybody about me having some definite purpose in life, and I having none, I am, in a negative way, a distinctive individual. It is a pity I am so ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton

... designed by shoe artists who watch every turn in the smart productions of fashionable New York and London bootmakers and combine the most favored lines with model comfort into distinctive model designs. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... this proprietorship. Every other kind of possession, which might be named imperfect proprietorship, was called "in bonis habere." It was not till after the time of Cicero that the general name of Dominium was given to all proprietorship. It was then the publicity which constituted the distinctive character of absolute dominion. This publicity was grounded on the mode of acquisition, which the moderns have called Civil, (Modi adquirendi Civiles.) These modes of acquisition were, 1. Mancipium or mancipatio, which was nothing but the solemn delivering over of the thing in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every intention to please, he is usually ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... deaf or blind person, Miss Keller depends on her sense of smell to an unusual degree. When she was a little girl she smelled everything and knew where she was, what neighbour's house she was passing, by the distinctive odours. As her intellect grew she became less dependent on this sense. To what extent she now identifies objects by their odour is hard to determine. The sense of smell has fallen into disrepute, and a deaf person is reluctant to speak of it. Miss Keller's acute sense of ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... appeared to have been previously rehearsed. No sooner had Bell appeared on the stage than his supporting players, each in his turn, received his cue and took part in the action of the drama. There was not one of these men who could have done the work of any other. Each was distinctive and indispensable. Bell invented the telephone; Watson constructed it; Sanders financed it; Hubbard introduced it; and Vail put ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... Creeds or Confessions, which are accepted by the various Churches and Denominations as their distinctive confessions. ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... which the selections for this volume have been made, it needs only to be said that, in general, the editor has aimed to include those letters which exhibit most fully the writer's distinctive charm and quality. This plan leaves, of course, a residue of considerable biographical and critical value; but it is believed that to all who really love and appreciate him, Charles Lamb's "Best Letters" are ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... some sections on account of the exhaustion that followed dependence upon these large amounts as a manure. Queerly enough, these original limestone soils have latterly been going into the acid class through loss of their distinctive elements, and they, too, have become dependent upon means for the correction ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... has penetrated so far into the moral being of nations they can hardly be expected to produce great men. A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive, luminous character; if he is to dominate things, something must be dominant in him. We feel him to be great in that he clarifies and brings to expression something which was potential in the rest of us, but which ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... often bizarre and sometimes very effective. Certainly originality in expression adds much to the interest of newspaper stories, and many a good piece of news is ruined by a bald, dry recital of facts. Just as the good reporter is always one who can give his yarns a distinctive flavor, great newspaper stories are seldom written under the restriction of rules. But no young reporter can hope to attain success through originality and defiance of rules until he has first mastered the fundamental principles of newspaper writing. He can never expect to write "the story ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... the rising ground on each side had protected them from the prevailing winds. The effect on the eye, in comparison with the nakedness of the surrounding country, was forcible, and John Hardy was impressed by the natural and distinctive beauty of the place. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... at the stranger who sat between her stepmother and Hope, and the first look told her that she had found a friend, one who would be true and loyal as a man could be. There was nothing especially distinctive about Archie Holden. He was tall and blond and athletic, sufficiently good-looking, and with easy, off-hand manners. But his keen blue eyes, the curve of his little blond mustache, above all, the grip of his hand and the ring of his voice suited Theodora, and, long before supper ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... produced by the action of injurious conditions are usually so distinctive in situation and character that by the examination of the body after death the cause of death can be ascertained. The lesions of diseases may be very obvious to the naked eye, or in other cases only the most careful microscopic examination can detect ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... dictation, the Prefect of Police wrote the two distinctive names of the missing man, there came a look of frowning perplexity and indecision ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... citizen of this republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas, each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central America; and heaven knows how many "United States" may spring up under the Proteus changes ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... partly but conceives beside, Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, And in this striving, this converting air Into a solid he may grasp and use, Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. Such progress could no more attend his soul Were all it struggles after found at first And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, Than motion wait his body, were all else Than it the solid earth on ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... some seventeen hundred miles it mingles its cloudy waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth eleven hundred feet wide, but such is its vigorous influx that many a mile has to be completed before those waters lose their distinctive character. Hereabouts the ends of both its banks trend off and form a huge bay fifteen leagues across, extending to the islands of Anavilhanas; and in one of its indentations the port of Manaos is situated. Vessels of all kinds are there ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... twentieth century happens to coincide with a very interesting phase in that great development of means of land transit that has been the distinctive feature (speaking materially) of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century, when it takes its place with the other centuries in the chronological charts of the future, will, if it needs a symbol, almost inevitably have as that symbol a steam engine running ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... continent—there is not to be found a single "Northern" hotel, steamer, railway, stage-coach, bar-room, restaurant, school, university, school-book, or any other "Northern" institution. The word "Northern" is no master-key to patronage or approval. There is no "Northern" clannishness, and no distinctive "Northern" sentiment that prides itself on being such. The "Northern" man may be "Eastern" or "Western." He may be "Knickerbocker," "Pennamite," "Buckeye," or "Hoosier;" but above all things, and first of all things in ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... eight nominative forms and the seven objective forms given above are the only distinctive nominative and objective forms in the English language. Let the pupils become ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... which Washington sought to promote by his latest labors and final bequests, and which he, in common with Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, believed to be necessary "to the security of a free constitution," and to the welfare of the government and people of the United States. Its distinctive purposes are succinctly set forth in ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... peasants of the north of Ireland. This love of industry did much to break down the national prejudice in favour of idleness, and cast doubts on the social orthodoxy of the idea then so popular with the squirearchy, that those alone who were able to live without employment had any rightful claim to the distinctive title of gentleman.... A patrician by birth and a merchant by profession, Crommelin proved, by his own life, his example, and his enterprise, that an energetic manufacturer may, at the same time, take a high place in ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... London railway station, and the publicity achieved by their charming charge be as big as the globe itself. All the machinery was ready, the platform laid; the facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, the roaring, deafening newspaperism of the period—its most distinctive sign—were waiting for her, their predestined mistress, to press her foot on the spring and set them all in motion. Gabriel brushed in a large, bright picture of her progress through the time and round the world, round it and round it again, from continent to continent and clime to clime; with populations ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... and poplars, and creeks of clear water flow through the hollows in the shadow of thick bluffs. There are many ponds, and here and there a shallow lake shines amidst the sweep of grass. The clear air and the distance the view commands give the landscape a distinctive charm. One has a sense of space and freedom; all the eye rests ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... they started off to inspect the wedding present, a beautiful pair of tall silver candlesticks. Madeline had ransacked New York to find them, and every one but Babe, who clung to her turtle as far superior to any "musty old antiques," thought them just odd and distinctive enough to please Ethel's fastidious taste. And after that there was barely time to catch the train they had arranged to take ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... field chaplain. In those corps in which there is a large admixture of the Catholic element, there is a cleric of that denomination to each division as well as a Protestant chaplain. The former is known as a Feldgeistliger, a word which in itself means nothing more distinctive than a "field ecclesiastic," while the Protestant chaplain has usually the title of Feldpastor. Of the priest I can say but little. The pastors, for the most part, are young and energetic men. They may be divided into two classes: those who have at home no stated charges, and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... she scarcely knew the woman again, for she had put off her distinctive dress, and was habited like a simple countrywoman. Her face, too, had lost its brilliant colouring, and her eyes were softer than of yore. She told the astonished Lady Humbert that her mother Miriam ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... To him it was only despotism that degraded man. Remove the evil conditions and the common man would quickly display his inherent goodness and amiability; tenderness to our fellows, or fraternity, was therefore the distinctive trait of manhood. The irrepressible exuberance of Rousseau's kindliness overflowed from his novels and essays into a great stream of fashionable sensibility. During the years of {20} terrific stress that followed, during the butcheries of the guillotine and of the Grande ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... to him, checking, his breath in the dark, listening with every nerve taut, it was as though he saw her, the serene poise of her body as she walked, the pathetic confidence of her high-held head, so distinctive and personal was even the noise of her tread on the boards. Presently, when she had sent the policeman away, he would see her and make her the gift of his request and watch her face as she received ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... they always seem to keep the beautiful charming coquetry that belongs to every woman. I often arrived without warning. I never saw hair disarranged or dress neglected. This exterior perfection is, I may say, a distinctive ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Or, "was distinctive of the 'beautiful and good.'" For the phrase see below, ii. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... mission staff. But there was one doubt which agitated the minds of a certain circle of English society, and that was as to the churchmanship of the New Zealand mission. Its agents were good men, and had achieved astonishing success; but had they kept up the distinctive tone and system of the mother Church? Were they distinguishable from the Methodists by whose side they laboured? No treatment of the subject can be considered complete which omits this feature of ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... which was one of the distinctive characteristics of his organization, he resolved to ask an audience of the governor, meantime requesting the keeper ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... the sun and breeze, she was new to him again, and he found himself searching his consciousness for his lost acquaintance with her, and feeling as if he knew her less and less. Perhaps, indeed, she had no very distinctive individuality; perhaps at her age no woman has, but waits for it to come to her through life, through experience. She was an expression of youth, of health, of beauty, and of the moral loveliness that comes from a fortunate combination of these; ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... right," cried Mr Brooke, shading his eyes and gazing hard at the scene on the high poop, where, in the last rays of the setting sun, we could see men holding up their captain, who was distinctive from his gay attire and lacquered hat, which now hung forward as the scoundrel's ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... is not for this reason destitute of an interest of its own. By reason of its exceptional history and character it is the best point in Spain to study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits itself, but it is a patchwork of all Spain. Every province of the Peninsula sends a contingent to its population. The Gallicians hew its wood and draw its water; the Asturian women nurse its babies at their deep bosoms, and fill the promenades with their brilliant costumes; the Valentians ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, and Moravian ancestry was expressed in their orderly and diligent lives; but the general prosperity had so far relaxed the stringency of their several creeds that their distinctive public rite had come to express a mutual toleration. The different sects had their different services; their ceremonies of public baptism, their revivals, their camp-meetings; but they gathered as one Christian people under the roof of the log-built edifice, thrice the size of their largest ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... condemnation and a refractory collar-button. These words seem to come at times charged with the very marrow of the mind, and, if the letters of a man who occasionally indulges in them be wholly purged of them, the letters lose one of their most distinctive characteristics. The point to be made is, that the personal word is all-important, that till the fact is related to the writer, it is dead. If we want news, we can consult the dailies; but in letters facts are little, ideas about facts everything. That is to say, all events, especially the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... was nothing very noteworthy in this. Many men had followers marked by some distinctive badge, and the sombre little contingent excited small notice. They all looked remarkably fine soldiers, and appeared to be under excellent discipline. More than that was not asked of any man, and the Gascons ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... distinguishable, dissimilar; varied, modified; diversified, various, divers, all manner of, all kinds of; variform &c. 81[obs3]; daedal[obs3]. other, another, not the same; unequal &c. 28. unmatched; widely apart, poles apart, distinctive, characteristic, ; discriminative; distinguishing. incommensurable, incommensurate. Adv. differently &c. adj. Phr. il y ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... according to our powers; but beyond interpretation we cannot go. And now (for you know I am as full of speculations as an experimental philosopher) I will tell you another conclusion I have come to with regard to this subject; and that is that national types were less distinctive in mediaeval times than in ours. The French, English, Flemish, and Dutch of the Middle Ages, as we see them in their portraits, are curiously alike in all outward characteristics. The courtiers of Francis the First and their (James, and the lords and ladies of the court of Henry the Eighth, resemble ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... he is working in a different literary field. More than one librarian has told us of the confusion caused by reason of Anna Katharine Green's title, "The Woman in the Alcove," having been used later by another popular woman novelist. Again, such a unique and thoroughly distinctive title as Gouverneur Morris's "It" has been used for a very different type of short-story by another writer. Occasionally, we will admit, this happens by the merest chance—although not when a certain motion picture concern puts out a picture showing life in an American ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... a member of the Committee on Resolutions, wrote the following ode for the funeral obsequies, on the 25th day of April, 1865, at New York City. The Athenaeum Club participated, bearing an appropriate banner, the members wearing distinctive badges of mourning and under the leadership of their Vice-President, Henry E. Pierpont; the President, William T. Blodgett, being at that time absent acting as ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... in such a way that we recognize in him our own or others' qualities; or begin with the qualities shared by classes of people, embody these in a person who stands for the greatest common measure of the class, and finally—and only then—let him take on his distinctive traits: these are methods which are not confined to the drama, and at all stages of our literature have lived in helpful rivalry. Long before France had her La Bruyere, England had her Hall, Overbury, and Earle.[15] ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... the walls of the town. But still, as the Cagots were good- looking men, and (although they bore certain natural marks of their caste, of which I shall speak by-and-by) were not easily distinguished by casual passers-by from other men, they were compelled to wear some distinctive peculiarity which should arrest the eye; and, in the greater number of towns, it was decreed that the outward sign of a Cagot should be a piece of red cloth sewed conspicuously on the front of his dress. In other towns, ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... and reduced to the conventional 5x7 page, opens with Mrs. Jordan's pleasant lines on "The Duty." While the general sentiment of this piece is by no means novel, the powerful and distinctive touch of the authoress is revealed by such highly original ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... their uproar to the period immediately antecedent to their meal, and perform the actual process of deglutition with silent attention, and only such suckings, lappings, and crunchings, as illustrate their industry and content. It is the distinctive privilege of man to exert his voice during his repast, and to indulge also in those specially human cachinnations which no lower creature, except that disreputable Australian biped known as the 'laughing jackass,' presumes to imitate; and to these ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... the Mariposa big tree region as of the valley. Indeed, more care is needed for the trees than for the great chasm, for man cannot permanently injure the distinctive features of the latter, while the destruction of the sequoias will be an irreparable loss to the State and to the world. The Sequoia gigantea differs in leaf, and size and shape of cone, from the great Sequoia semper ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... considered the case where two conceptions in the dream having something in common, some point of contact, are replaced in the dream content by a mixed image, where the distinct germ corresponds to what is common, and the indistinct secondary modifications to what is distinctive. If displacement is added to condensation, there is no formation of a mixed image, but a common mean which bears the same relationship to the individual elements as does the resultant in the parallelogram of forces to its components. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... the transformations of idioms, and we have only cleared the ground. True history begins when the historian has discerned beyond the mists of ages the living, active man, endowed with passions, furnished with habits, special in voice, feature, gesture and costume, distinctive and complete, like anybody that you have just encountered in the street. Let us strive then, as far as possible, to get rid of this great interval of time which prevents us from observing the man with our eyes, the eyes of our own head. What revelations do we ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... that mighty conqueror. His grandfather is called Rhameses Meiammun by Manetho (15th King of the 18th dynasty) and that name appears in the great palace of Medinet Abu and some other buildings in the ruins of Thebes, but the one is always named Ramses Ammon-mei and has distinctive titles different from those of the other. This is alone sufficient to identify them; for as the Ptolemies were distinguished by their surnames Philadelphus, Epiphanes, Soter &c., so were the ancient Egyptian Kings by their peculiar titles, as is manifest ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... hesitated about exchanging the beloved and accustomed name upon their cards for their own signature. This, however, in many cases, is a necessity, especially where there is a son bearing the father's name. This is sometimes thought to be avoided by the use of the distinctive "Senior" or "Junior," a custom obviously wrong, since after the death of Francis Brown, Senior, Francis Brown, Junior, becomes at once Francis Brown, and his wife, Mrs. Francis Brown. Hence, while we have no such convenient title as "Dowager," the widowed Mrs. Francis Brown will be obliged ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... rivals; and when to our excited sensibility there is a taint in the moral atmosphere, and we long to escape if only to breathe more freely. This is more than a mood with Shakespeare, and is present in those slight but distinctive touches that mark the unconscious intrusion of character in an artist's work; and is frankly confessed in ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... livelihood of the people entirely independent of private Capitalism. The Fabian Society endeavours to pursue its Socialist and Democratic objects with complete singleness of aim. For example: It has no distinctive opinions on the Marriage Question, Religion, Art, abstract Economics, historic Evolution, Currency, or any other subject than its own special business of practical Democracy and Socialism. It brings all the pressure and persuasion in its power ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... were drawn from youth and womanhood, it was not because he did not understand the purely masculine. The AEneas of the Borgo fresco, the Paul of the Cecilia altar-piece, and the Sixtus of the Sistine Madonna show, in three ages, what is best and most distinctive in ideal manhood. ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... through that clear, sun-illumined atmosphere, and how pronounced and distinctive were the varied colors spread to the full vista of the eye, contrasts of shine and shadow no human brush, however daring, would venture to depict on canvas. A primitive land this, idealized by distance, vast in its wide, sweeping plains, its boundless ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... suggest again a uniform for women as the solution of the high cost of dressing. The number of dainty devices of gold braid and red stars and silver tassels that those same staid uniforms developed made plain forever that the woman who chooses can make even a uniform distinctive and striking and altogether costly. In short they went into the war with the same superficial flightiness formerly employed in the social realms. They went dashing here and there in their high-power cars on solemn errands, with all the nonchalance of their ignorance ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... possesses the loving unction of real conviction and nothing to which he put his well trained hand failed of the baptism of genius. Through this mark, therefore, it will live forever. Nor should any work require more than this for continuous life. Each age should be distinctive. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... whose genius in art has long been recognised. His father, Alexander Nasmyth of Edinburgh, was a landscape-painter of great eminence, whose works are sometimes confounded with those of his son Patrick, called the English Hobbema, though his own merits are peculiar and distinctive. The elder Nasmyth was also an admirable portrait painter, as his head of Burns—the best ever painted of the poet—bears ample witness. His daughters, the Misses Nasmyth, were highly skilled painters of landscape, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... this flight from Egypt was the prophet Moses. The Martian decides to investigate the character and deeds of this influential figure at another time. It is probable that the exodus gave the proper stimulus for the beginnings of a distinctive Hebrew religion, and was the reason for their finally establishing themselves in Canaan, with Jehovah as their chief deity. It has often been proclaimed that the value of Judaism has been in first establishing a religion ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... not only their 'cloth.' That long surtout, and nicely adjusted white tie, and general smoothness and trimness, is all very distinctive and proper; but I refer quite as much to that peculiar self-containedness of aspect and that air of propriety and polish which surrounds them ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... the misfits. What did it avail me to believe that when the Goths overran the north of Spain the Vandals overran the south, and when they swept on into Africa and melted away in the hot sun there as a distinctive race, they left nothing but the name Vandalusia, a letter less, behind them? If the Vandals were what they are reported to have been, the name does not at all characterize the liveliest province of Spain. Besides, the very next history ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... is a prominent hill on the right bank of the Modder, four miles W.S.W. of the battle centre, Cronje's laager at Vendutie Drift, and lies on the extreme edge of the elliptical arena on which the battle was fought. It seems to have been chosen as the official word because the hill was the only distinctive physical feature shown on the banks of the river in the incomplete surveys of the time, and because the alternative would have been Stinkfontein, a farm near the field of battle. The Battle of Vendutie Drift would have been a ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... Nobunaga lay largely in his wise choice of men. Under him were four generals, so admirable yet so diverse in military ability that the people gave them the distinctive nicknames of "Cotton," "Rice," "Attack," and "Retreat." Cotton, which can be put to a multitude of uses, indicated the fertility in resources of the first; while the second made himself as necessary ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... The distinctive, preeminent, official business for the next four years, of making small things in this country look small and of gently, quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... half the girls at the school. Dorothy Knerr used to say that "Mary Louise's clothes always looked as if they grew on her," but that may have been partially accounted for by the grace of her slim form and her unconscious but distinctive poise of bearing. Few people would describe Mary Louise Burrows as beautiful, while all would agree that she possessed charming manners. And she was fifteen—an age when many girls are ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... describing it as "sympathetic imitation" or "absorption;" others of the aesthetic pleasure. But, according to our definition of the aesthetic experience as a combination of favorable stimulation with repose, this state, as involving "a distinctive feeling-tone and a characteristic trend of activity aroused by a certain situation," can be no other than an emotion. This view is confirmed by introspection; we speak of aesthetic activity and aesthetic pleasure, but we are conscious of a complete ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... of the ova of different species must be the same; otherwise, however ripened into a mature being, whether the birth be advanced or postponed, the individual must still belong to its parents' species, of which it possesses the distinctive peculiarity. Now, this point of the identity of germs is a mere assumption; not only is it destitute of proof,—the whole evidence is against it. There is a degree of outward resemblance, but there is no sameness. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... uniform, such novel activities as knot-tying, hiking, signalling and drilling, the chance for leadership, the laws to which they voluntarily subscribe and the recognition of ability by the system of giving badges are the distinctive elements of Scouting. They succeed in bringing about improved health, approved standards of behavior towards others, a general arousing of the imagination as ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous

... board, which, among many Indian tribes of both North and South America, is a customary substitute for a cradle. It is probable, however, that even this configuration was intentional, and may have formed a distinctive badge of some particular caste of these singular people, among whom a perfectly natural cranium ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton

... In its Hebrew form Joshua, Jehoshua, Hosea it had been borne by others. We read of one Jesus in the New Testament[036] and of many in the pages of Josephus. In this respect, as in other particulars, Jesus was "made like unto his brethren" and bore a human distinctive name. "Jesus" was accordingly the name given to Him at His circumcision, by which He was to be known in His family and among the people of Nazareth. During His ministry He was described as "Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee";[037] ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... various parts of the Northern States, principally in New England, who have recently come out of the various religious denominations with which they were connected;—hence the name. They have not themselves assumed any distinctive name, not regarding themselves as a sect, as they have not formed, and do not contemplate forming, any religious organization. They have no creed, believing that every one should be left free to hold such opinions on religious ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... dreaded, as detracting from the calm enjoyment of the philosophic life. This acceptance of the world's suffering, from which every other spiritual religion and philosophy promise a way of escape, is perhaps the most distinctive feature of Christian ethics. In practice, it thus achieves a more complete conquest of evil than any other system; and by bringing sorrow and sympathy into the Divine life, it not only presents the character and nature of the Deity in a new light, but opens out ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... other Gods was represented by a special detachment of ten Myrmidons, each contingent wearing the distinctive shoulder patch of the God it served: the thunderbolt of Zeus, the blazing sun of Apollo, the pipes of Pan, the sword of Mars, the hammer of Vulcan, the poppy of Morpheus, the winged foot of Mercury, the trident of Neptune, the ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the ground of a great many cooks. They're apt to look respectable when they're off duty and they're not in liquor, and they're apt to be perfect butter-balls. Any other distinctive traits?" ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells

... Serbia has come to know Scotland, for I must confess that formerly it was not recognized by our people as a distinctive part of the British Isles. Her name, as that of the Serbian mother from Scotland (Srpska majka iz 'Skotske'), has become legendary throughout the land, and it is not excluded that at a future date popular ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren

... of the unknown submerging the personage, the bishop, or the martyr; the most touching equality—that springing from modesty—prevailing amidst all that dust, with compartments ever similar and slabs destitute of ornament, so that rows and rows of the sleepers mingled without distinctive sign. The inscriptions seldom ventured on a word of praise, and then how prudent, how delicate it was: the men were very worthy, very pious: the women very gentle, very beautiful, very chaste. A perfume of infancy arose, unlimited human affection spread: ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... thickly covered with wood, impenetrable clumps of ferns, and luxuriant grass, while down the slopes dance lively brooks to the lagoon separated from the sea by the breakwaters of the coral master-builders. On the strand grow the ever-present cocoa palms, as distinctive of the islands of the southern sea as the date palms are of the desert regions of the Old World. Here the weather is beautiful, a warm, equable, tropical sea climate with only three or four degrees difference between winter and summer. The south-east ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... object, person or scene; for instance, the physical objects may be a piece of clothing, a bit of stone, a coin, a bit of jewelry, etc., which has been closely associated with that which the clairvoyant desires to sense psychically. The distinctive feature of this class of clairvoyant phenomena is this CONNECTING LINK of physical objects. A writer has cleverly compared this connecting link with the bit of clothing which the keen-scented bloodhound is given to sniff in order that ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... imparted to his creations an individual character, a distinctive physiognomy. We saw him a very few days ago—a few hours ago, I might say—bring an episodical character into powerful relief. The author of the play was struck by the performance. Chevalier was on the verge of ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... knightly title of Headbreaker, hereditary in the original Mauprat stock. As for the elder branch, it had turned out so badly, or rather had preserved from the old feudal days such terrible habits of brigandage, that it had won for itself the distinctive title of Hamstringer. [I hazard "Headbreaker" and "Hamstringer" as poor equivalents for the "Casse-Tete" and "Coupe-Jarret" of the French.—TR.] Of the sons of Tristan, my father, the eldest, was the only one who married. I was his only child. Here ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... Muette everybody was at liberty to see him. The Dauphin was dressed plainly, like a sailor; there was nothing to distinguish him from other children in external appearance but the cross of Saint Louis, the blue ribbon, and the Order of the Fleece, decorations that are the distinctive signs of his rank. The Duchesse Jules de Polignac, his governess, scarcely ever left him for a single instant: she gave up all the Court excursions and amusements in order to devote her whole attention to him. The Prince always manifested a great ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... view, royal personages were exalted above other people, "because they possessed a distinctive excellence, imparted to them at the hour of birth by the silent rulers of the night." In view of this belief, it was natural that sovereigns should be invested with extraordinary healing powers, and that they should be enabled, by a touch of the hand, to communicate to others an infinitesimal ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... volume is very different from an ordinary sketch of travel over a well-beaten road. He writes with singular condensation. His power of observation is of that intuitive strength which catches at a glance the salient and distinctive points of every thing he sees. He has shown rare cleverness, too, in mingling throughout the work, agreeably and unobtrusively, so much of the history of India, and yet without ever suffering it to clog ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... sacrifices that the English-speaking peoples were permitted the satisfaction of hearing their speech used universally. The language was shorn of a number of grammatical peculiarities, the distinctive forms for the subjunctive mood for example and most of its irregular plurals were abolished; its spelling was systematised and adapted to the vowel sounds in use upon the continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... look; the people on them, that is. Wives, elderly stout husbands, nurse-maids, and children predominate, of course, in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive marks of the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three of such groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a number of young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... it is conceivable that they might be. On the contrary, the first and most firmly established law of Palaeontology is, that particular kinds of fossils are confined to particular rocks, and particular groups of fossils are confined to particular groups of rocks. Fossils, then, are distinctive of the rocks in which they are found—much more distinctive, in fact, than the mere mineral character of the rock can be, for that commonly changes as a formation is traced from one region to another, whilst the fossils remain unaltered. It would therefore be quite possible for the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... is one for the commander himself to solve, i.e., it cannot properly be delegated to a subordinate for solution, because its solution is necessary as a basis for the commander's detailed plan. For these reasons the new problem is, by definition (page 106), a subsidiary problem, of the type distinctive ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College



Words linked to "Distinctive" :   typical, distinctive feature, identifiable, distinctiveness, classifiable, characteristic



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