Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Looseness   Listen
noun
Looseness  n.  The state, condition, or quality, of being loose; as, the looseness of a cord; looseness of style; looseness of morals or of principles.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Looseness" Quotes from Famous Books



... In looseness of the bowels we give a teaspoonful of lemon juice in a little hot water and sugar. That has as much effect as is desirable, and it has no bad effect whatever. Or enema injections may be employed. (See Diarrhoea, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... burial-ground?' A few tomb-stones, mostly without inscriptions, are scattered so near the shore that corpses and coffins have been washed away by the waves. If New Orleans be a normal 'wet grave,' this everywhere save near the sea is dry with a witness, the depth and looseness of the sand making the excavation a crumbling hole. Four governors, a list greatly to be prolonged, 'lie here interred.' But matters of climate are becoming too serious for over-attention to such places ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... the shoeman shouted back. "Call it a numba one shoe and then see if you can't find that lost foot in it, some'eres. Or try a little flour, and see if it won't feel more at home. I've hea'd of a shoe that give that sensation of looseness by not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... failure. The disgusting sloughs and discharge, and the fear of an imaginary contagion, make the nurses very unwilling to introduce their fingers into the reluctant little patient's mouth, and without this scrutiny all is in vain. The physician is compelled to set the example, to try the looseness of the teeth with his own fingers, and to ensure the nurse's entire knowledge of the extent ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... was the remark of an aged clergyman, retired from pulpit duties, that if he were a layman he should watch with more anxiety and carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose. Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... finally succeeded in evading it by setting his Siege of Rhodes to music, and producing the first English opera. At the Restoration, when the theaters were reopened, the dramas then produced reflected most vividly the looseness and immorality of the times. Their worst feature was that "they possessed not wit enough to keep the mass ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... compatible with a system of kinship which ignores paternity than with one which makes it all-important. If at the birth of the Latin kings their fathers were really unknown, the fact points either to a general looseness of life in the royal family or to a special relaxation of moral rules on certain occasions, when men and women reverted for a season to the licence of an earlier age. Such Saturnalias are not uncommon at some stages of social evolution. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... belly, so that it can be tightened or relaxed with ease, as a tightish under waistcoat, with a double row of buttons. This is to compress the bowels and increase their absorption, and it thus removes one principal cause of corpulency, which is the looseness of the skin. Secondly, he should omit one entire meal, as supper; by this long abstinence from food the absorbent system will act on the mucus and fat with greater energy. Thirdly, he should drink as little ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... thought was entirely dominated by the ideas and methods of Ricardo, who has been described by Senior, not without justice, as "the most incorrect writer who ever attained philosophical eminence."[152] So far as such a sweeping criticism can be justified by looseness in the use of terms, it is justified by Ricardo's failing in this respect. That he should have attained the eminence he did, dominating English economic thought for so many years, in spite of the confusion which his loose and uncertain ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... known to all Chinamen, operate variously according to their taste, thus:—"All sour medicines are capable of impeding and retaining; bitter medicines of causing looseness and warmth as well as hardening; sweet possess the qualities of strengthening, of harmonising, and of warming; acids disperse, prove emollient, and go in an athwart direction; salt medicines possess the properties of descending; those substances that are hard and tasteless open the orifices ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... I must dearly chide you for this looseness, You have wrong'd a worthy Lady; but no more, Conduct him to ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... considered handsome women in any country in Europe. They rarely intermarry with other tribes. A good deal of affection certainly exists sometimes between husband and wife and between parents and children, but the looseness of the marriage relation leads to ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... honour to him, and lady Margaret the king's daughter, and the countess of Pembroke gave him their warmest patronage as a poet. In his poems called the Romaunt, and the Rose, and Troilus and Creseide, he gave offence to some court ladies by the looseness of his description, which the lady Margaret resented, and obliged him to atone for it, by his Legend of good Women, a piece as chaste as the others were luxuriously amorous, and, under the name of the Daisy, he veils lady Margaret, whom of all ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... beds made up at any time of day, knitting and sewing going on in many rooms—all this was in unforeseen contrast to the rigorous military and educational training and precision. He could but compare the genre picture of looseness in the homes with that of the correct ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... co-exist with a high degree of egoism. It is possible, for example, for the aesthetic instincts, when not kept aglow by the sympathetic, or hardened with an alloy of the scientific, to evolve a peculiar form of selfishness which leads at last to looseness of life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for the scientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the aesthetic and the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of character which is self-centred and selfish owing to its ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... he could watch no longer, the pimento wood serving him both for fire and candle, as it burned very clear, and refreshed him by its fragrant smell. He might have had fish enough, but would not eat them for want of salt, as they occasioned a looseness; except cray-fish, which are as large as our lobsters, and are very good. These he sometimes boiled, and at other times broiled, as he did his goat's flesh, of which he made good broth, for they are not so rank as our goats. Having kept an account, he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... stand hard wear; but they are exceedingly handsome with their gold lustre and silky sheen. In these rugs a number of warp threads are crossed by the metal threads and overspread, so that the lines or ribs are brought out more prominently. This in part accounts for the softness and looseness ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... himself with lewd Comedies? Has he a mind to discharge his Priestcraft, and flesh himself up for a Poet? Yes, this is the consequence, by using to see these smutty things, he'll learn to write 'em. What need I mention the Sham-Oaths, and looseness of Farce, or the Fustian raving against the Gods in Tragedy, were these things really unconcern'd with Idolatry, a Parson, of all Mankind, should not be known to ogle them, for were they not highly Criminal, the foolery of them ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... cannot be too free, prevents them from getting the effects they desire, with that vigor and certainty the public so much admires, and rightly so. The golden mean should be observed; between undue tension, which implies inability to control, whether it be in the larynx or the breathing apparatus, and a looseness inconsistent with neat and certain results, the voice-producer must choose, with that common sense so indispensable to success in all undertakings, but which will never be adequately encouraged till students ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... has generally been enrolled among the Anabaptists, and it is possible to use that name of scorn with such a latitude and looseness that it includes not only Denck but all the sixteenth-century exponents of a free, inward religion. Anabaptism has often been treated as a sort of broad banyan-tree which flourished exuberantly and shot out far-reaching branches of very ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... directly to her room when she reached the house. She wished to investigate the feeling of looseness at her knee. The satin band that belonged there was gone. She felt her cheeks grow hot. Doubtless she had lost it at the corral—the Ramblin' Kid would pick it up! The thought tormented her. Once more she wanted to swear vigorously and with extreme earnestness. Instead she—laughed! It was all ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... conscious of the contrast between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance. Byng's clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who knew their man was not particular, and that he would not "try on." The result was a looseness and carelessness of good things—giving him, in a way, the look of shambling power. Yet in spite of the tie a little crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had touches of that distinction which power gives. His large hands with the square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... an acrobat. We understand more clearly now that what is effective and beautiful in one language is a vice in another. Latin and Eskimo, with their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese. And Chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness that would be too tart, too mathematical, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... women are concerned, the particular type of actress, such as LAURA MURDOCH and ELFIE ST. CLAIR, appeals to him. He likes their good fellowship. He loves to be with a gay party at night in a cafe. He likes the rather looseness of living which does not quite reach the disreputable. Behind all this, however, is a certain high sense of honour. He detests and despises the average stage-door Johnny, and he loathes the type of man who seeks to take young girls out of theatrical companies ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... gentlemen connected with navigation, and very young men who, for the price of a ticket, a cigar, and a glass of beer, purchase the flattering delusion that they are "seeing life," and "going it with a perfect looseness." The performances consist of Ethiopian minstrelsy, comic songs, farces, and the dancing of "beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs"; and these succeed one another with not a minute's intermission for three or four hours. At St. Louis, where gentlemen connected with navigation are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... of heat absorbed by any surface from a hot gas is usually expressed as a product of the difference in temperature between the gas and the absorbing surface into a factor which is commonly designated the "transfer rate". There has been considerable looseness in the writings of even the best authors as to the way in which the gas temperature difference is to be measured. If the gas varies in temperature across the section of the channel through which it is assumed to flow, and most of them seem to consider that this would be the case, ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... reassuring. She was dressed, if we might so far discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one—had an old one been supposable to Strether as so committed to vanity; the complexities of her hair missed moreover also the looseness of youth; and she had a mature manner of bending a little, as to encourage and reward, while she held neatly together in front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands: the combination of all of which kept up about her the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... passed, I was so filled with nervous agitation that I could not control myself, but ran ceaselessly about my cell, like a mouse in a cage. Every moment I thought that the warder would detect the looseness of the bar, or that the sentry would observe the unmortared stone, which I could not conceal outside, as I did within. As for my companion, he sat brooding upon the end of his bed, looking at me in a sidelong fashion from time to time, and biting his nails like one who is ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... turning yellow on many of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were very loose in the ground. At first I thought that planting operations and heaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but in testing the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pull it out of the ground easily. There I saw what appeared to be the marks of an axe. I was completely convinced that I had personal enemies who went around nights chopping ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... prepaired and drank with milk and water) strengthenth the inward parts, and prevents consumption; and powerfully assuageth the pains of the bowels, or griping of the guts, and looseness. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness and limpness of the act,—not that he often shook hands with his pupil, for though that pupil was only a boy made of ordinary flesh and blood like other boys, he was nevertheless heir to a Throne, and in strict etiquette even friendly liberties were not to be too frequently taken with ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... be discussed by abler hands. Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose. And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to thoughtful and experienced minds. By a process of gradual abbreviation, the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the unsound steed was himself a screw. By a bold transition, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... probably very soon attend the parochial meetings of Lord John Townshend's Committee in Westminster. Notwithstanding all this, the Parliament still continues steadily to Mr. Pitt, which, considering the looseness of morals and of the times, does the members great credit. * * * The Duke of York never misses a night at Brookes's, where the hawks pluck his feathers unmercifully, and have reduced him to the vowels I. O. U. The Prince likewise attends ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... where perhaps more Christians have failed to do what was required of them than at any other; and consequently experience less joy and power than formerly. There are many things employed by Satan to weaken this consciousness of God. Looseness of thought, moments of idleness, or yieldings to self, serve to weaken the reverential feeling in our hearts toward him. A little attention to the world, a little thought for the morrow, a little anxiety, a little too much talking,—these things destroy ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... or two and he would be within striking distance, but a glance at his hook showed that, perhaps from looseness in its socket, the point was turned too ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... in the presence of facts which no one seeks to deny, we shall find that the socialists themselves are among our most interesting witnesses, affording in what they assert a solitary and signal exception to that looseness of thought and observation which is otherwise their distinguishing characteristic. The motive here in question as ascribed to the exceptional wealth-producer, the director, the man of business ability—the motive which in his ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... is so much to refresh one in the reasonable transparency of Hooker, representing thus early the tradition of a classical clearness in English literature, anticipated by Latimer and More, and to be fulfilled afterwards in Butler and Hume. But then, in recompense for that looseness and whim, in Sir Thomas Browne for instance, we have in those "quaint" writers, as they themselves understood the term (coint, adorned, but adorned with all the curious ornaments of their own predilection, provincial [126] or archaic, certainly unfamiliar, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... that seemed to yearn fer companions. After that, the sisters drove her in to town to school in the old buggy which their father had brought from England. However, she managed to see me quite often, and I encouraged her, although, mind ye, I never let her know the looseness o' the ways o' a tavern. The sisters had the Methodist parson picked out fer her, an' he, poor man, was fair crazy fer her heart, too, but she had the givin' o' it herself, and this it was ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... of unity, or the preponderance of a single idea; symmetry, or just proportion of parts; and variety, the proper relief and introduction of new material. If the principal idea is repeated too much, monotony ensues; if there are too many accessory ideas, in place of variety we have looseness and want of unity. And in carrying out these principles in compositions of different lengths and in different styles, the composer has practically ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... through—perhaps, five per cent. These are called "salted horses," and are very valuable; as, although they are not proof against the disease, they are not so liable to take it. A salted horse may be known by the peculiar looseness and roughness of his skin, and also by a certain unmistakable air of depression, as though he felt that the responsibilities of life pressed very heavily upon him. He is like a man who has dearly bought his experience; ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... garden, has this morning buried his father or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweeten and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never keep their beds ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... assured their superior that entire reliance might be placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men in Leyden "as firm as trees and fierce as lions," whom they would engage—a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two other mechanics. The looseness and utter recklessness with which this hideous conspiracy was arranged excites amazement. Van Dyk gave the two brothers 100 pistoles in gold—a coin about equal to a guinea—for their immediate reward as well as for that of the comrades to be engaged. Yet it seems almost ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being guilty of manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... these scattered ashes must have dropped to the dust through gaps in the Creator's fingers, to be blown hither and thither by the wind. They had become heaped up, but were never before united. Yet in this day which had come to Bengal, even this collection of looseness had taken shape, and proclaimed in a thundering voice, at our very ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... figure, as he swung against the blackened wall, his scarecrow clothes hanging on him, their once decent material making their pinning together of buttonless places, their looseness and rents showing dirty linen, more abject than any other squalor could have made them. Antony Dart's blood, still running warm and well, was doing its normal work among the brain-cells which had ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... say 'aye!' I am na weak! She that worked evil and looseness, harlotry, strife, and shame, shall she na have her hire? As, Sunday by Sunday, I wad ha' set her in kirk, before the congregation, for the stern rebuking of her sin, so, mak no doubt, the Lord pursues her now! Aye, He shakes His wrath before her eyes! Wherever she turns she sees ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... result of the individual's inherited disposition, with the addition of his, or her, own experience; and of these it is the former that, as a rule, determines to prostitution. Every kind of moral and intellectual looseness and dullness can, for the most part, be traced to this cause. At all events it is the strongest among many. Not alone for the prostitute's sake must this subject be seriously approached, but for society's sake as well. As things stand with us ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... cloth is formed by running, not cord, but fine picture wire, over the tips of the sticks, notched to hold it in place, in the ordinary way. Then, with a thin, clear paste made of starch, the paper may be laid on, care being taken to paste the edges so as to leave a certain amount of slack or looseness in the part of the kite below the cross-stick, so that each of the lower faces will present concave wind surfaces. To preserve the required equilibrium, it is important that the amount of looseness in the paper be equal on the two sides; and in order to keep it so, it is necessary to measure ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... a handful of the plant—stems, flowers and leaves—an [19] excellent gargle may be made for a relaxed throat; and a teacupful of the same infusion may be taken cold three or four times in the day for simple looseness of the bowels; also for passive losses of blood. In France, Agrimony tea is drank as a beverage at table. This herb formed an ingredient of the genuine arquebusade water, as prepared against wounds inflicted by an arquebus, or hand-gun, and it was mentioned by Philip de Comines in his account ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... are narrower and shorter in women than in men; but it must be noticed that they are more intertwined and contorted than in men, and shrink together by reason of their shortness that they may, by their looseness, be better stretched out when necessary: and these vessels in women are carried in an oblique direction through the lesser bowels and testicles but are divided into two branches half way. The larger goes to the stones and forms a winding body, and wonderfully inoculates the lesser branches where ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... anile friend, in the very looseness of her prating has let out the truth. Or rather—a common custom with her—she has talked in her sleep. Her very weakness has, however, given a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... dance. They are all plain Wiltshire rustics who talk a broad vernacular, but at the end a shepherd and shepherdess enter and sing a duet in a more courtly strain. The author of this slight production is not known, but it is regarded by the latest authority on masques as an imitation, in the looseness of its construction, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... religiously inclined, and will it not go into sin the same as unbaptized children? Give one text showing what is effected by infant baptism. Thousands are having their children baptized, and they do not know the reason why any more than that it is a custom. Thus we behold the meaninglessness, looseness, and carelessness of professed Christians. Just doing things because others do them. They have no conviction from God nor the Bible. God wants us to be able to give a Scriptural reason for all we do ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... lost a certain pliability, or perhaps I ought to call it looseness of disposition," he admitted. "There are many things connected with the past which I find it almost impossible to associate with you. For a trifling instance," he went on, with a slight smile, inclining his head towards his host's untasted glass. "You don't ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... too often excluded from the specialist by his habit of thought. "A few years of journalism," said Mr. W.B. Yeats on one occasion, "is an invaluable discipline for the man of letters." No one is more fully alive to the defects of journalism than Mr. Yeats—its frequent looseness, prejudice, obviousness, and dissipation of interest. But, in spite of that, he saw that the good journalist's faculty of addressing himself directly to the subject in hand, of stating it clearly ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... however, is what specifically appeals to an aesthetic nature; it is equally removed from the crudity of formless stimulation and from the emotional looseness of reverie and discursive thought. The indulgence in sentiment and suggestion, of which our time is fond, to the sacrifice of formal beauty, marks an absence of cultivation as real, if not as confessed, as that of the barbarian who revels in ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... walls of the throat and are all covered with a mucous membrane. This portion of the resonator passage can be enlarged to a slight degree by traction upon the larynx below (sterno-thyroid muscle), by looseness of the pharyngeal muscles, and still more by the forward placement of the tongue; the converse is true as regards diminution in size. The horizontal portion of the resonator tube (the mouth) has for ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... least, are genuine," laughed Crochard. "The Prince was most indignant at having to remove them. My heart bled for him—but there was no other way. Beyond a little tightness across the shoulders, and a little looseness about the waist, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... a carriage, then, this niece of the doctor?" interrupted Porthos, one of whose faults was a great looseness of tongue. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of pressure, decreasing the resistance to the passage of the electric current;" and, also, "the jolting motion would be a make-and-break, and the articulate sounds would be impaired. There can be no virtue in a speaking telephone having a jolting motion." "Delicacy of contact is a virtue; looseness of contact is a vice." "Looseness of contact is a great virtue in Hughes' microphone;" and "the elements which work advantages in Hughes' are detrimental to the good working of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... extravagant to an extreme degree; he played equally with nature and with his colors. Light, with all its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief object of his studies; individuality of form or color he was wholly indifferent to. The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... at last able to roar out as he crossed his arms and shook his head. "For this do I preach to you the whole morning, savages! Here in the house of God you quarrel and curse, shameless ones! Aaaah! You respect nothing! This is the result of the luxury and the looseness of the age! That's just what I've told ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... visible phenomena of Induction and Conduction; and he tries by the strong light of his imagination to see the very molecules of his dielectrics. It would, however, be easy to criticise these researches, easy to show the looseness, and sometimes the inaccuracy, of the phraseology employed; but this critical spirit will get little good out of Faraday. Rather let those who ponder his works seek to realise the object he set before him, not permitting his occasional vagueness to interfere with their appreciation ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... think that Richard could scarcely have found a worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he most required some right principle and purpose he should have this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced in the world and forced to contemplate the miserable ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... sometimes to an actual betrayal or desertion, visible to all eyes, as, for instance, when Ferri left the movement in Italy, or Briand and Millerand in France. That such desertions must inevitably result from the looseness taught by "reformist" tactics is evident. Yet all through Briand's early political career, Jaures was his intimate associate, and even after the former had forsaken the party, the latter confessed that, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... saw that his hopes were futile. He must even take her to supper, shamming. He finally went about and asked how she was getting along. The actors were all dressing, talking, hurrying about. Drouet was palavering himself with the looseness of excitement and passion. The manager mastered himself only by a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... and Artists in England, vol. ii., p. 151. The other characteristics which Dr. Waagen discovers in Turner are, "such a looseness of treatment, such a total want of truth, as I never ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... drawbacks of the short couplet, besides monotony, are the tendency to diffuseness of language and looseness of grammatical structure (as in Chaucer and Scott, for instance), and rime-padding, i. e., the insertion of phrases and sometimes even irrelevant ideas, for ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... by every artful blandishment to engage his attention, and rivet his partiality. They exerted themselves to suppress the grossness, inelegance and sensuality to which they had commonly been habituated, and to cover the looseness of the passions with the veil of simplicity, delicacy, and softness. As the music ceased, the master of the spectacle came forth from his retreat. But his figure was no longer that which bespoke the magician, and which Edwin ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... animals are of a constitution extremely cold: that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm. And that what we vulgarly call rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle these creatures from their hamated station in life; or give them vigour ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... the absurd embellishments in which the latest compilers muffled them up, express the heart of the people itself. They mark a poetic interval between the gross communism of the primitive villa, and the looseness of the time when a growing ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... targets, and Thracian bucklers and quivers of arrows, lay huddled amongst horses' bits, and through these there appeared the points of naked swords, intermixed with long Macedonian sarissas. All these arms were fastened together with just so much looseness that they struck against one another as they were drawn along, and made a harsh and alarming noise, so that, even as spoils of a conquered enemy, they could not be beheld without dread. After these wagons loaded with armor, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... defective in its action, it was resplendent with sublime thoughts perhaps superior to any in Virgil or Homer, and full of incomparable and exquisitely moving passages. In spite of his belief that Milton's blank verse was a mistake, making for looseness and incorrectness, he borrowed lines and images from it, and in Bk. IV of The Life of Our Blessed Lord he incorporated a whole passage of Milton's blank verse in the ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley

... soon as they are set up; and the reason they give for it is, the wickedness of the age, that youth are drawn in a hundred ways to ruinous matches or debaucheries, and are so easily ruined by the mere looseness of their circumstances, that it is needful to marry them to keep them at home, and to preserve them diligent, and bind ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... Looseness That hamper faith and works, The Perseverance-Doubters, And Present-Comfort shirks, With brittle intellectuals Who crack beneath a strain— John Bunyan met that helpful set In Charles ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling

... single incident of the journey has come down to us: that of the chastisement inflicted in the isle of Cyprus on Brother Barbaro, who had been guilty of the fault which the master detested above all others—evil-speaking. He was implacable with regard to the looseness of language so customary among pious folk, and which often made a hell of religious houses apparently the most peaceful. The offence this time appeared to him the more grave for having been uttered in the presence of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... from hunger and exposure. For nearly a year he lived among these people, adapting himself to their mode of life, and gaining a certain amount of respect; for in addition to being a naturally hard-working man, he had no taste for the gross looseness of life that characterised nine out of every ten white men who in those days lived among the wild people of the ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness and yet play; Play on the stage—where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour? In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em. The difference ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... career left to woman, but a general looseness of grammar, and a conscious insecurity in the matter of spelling, stand in the way of literary expression of the burning thoughts within her. All she can do is to moan over her lot and to take refuge in the works of Miss Hominy. There she learns the great theory of the equality ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... forty-eight hours the patient is conscious of a sensation of chilliness, or may even have a rigor. At the same time he feels generally out of sorts, with impaired appetite, headache, and it may be looseness of the bowels. His temperature rises to 100 or 101 F., and the pulse quickens ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... nothing, in particular, of our aunt Elizabeth, who had been Miss Bay of Albany, who was the mother of the fair and free young waltzing-women in New York, and who floats back to me through the Rhinebeck picture, aquiline but easy, with an effect of handsome highbrowed, high-nosed looseness, of dressing-gowns or streaming shawls (the dowdy, the delightful shawl of the period;) and of claws of bright benevolent steel that kept nipping for our charmed advantage: roses and grapes and peaches and currant-clusters, together with turns of phrase and scraps of remark that fell as by ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... therefore, that the person, if indeed a human being it was that bore the light he had seen, had passed up the tower. After a momentary hesitation, he determined to ascend the stair-case, but its ruinous condition made this an adventure of some difficulty. The steps were decayed and broken, and the looseness of the stones rendered a footing very insecure. Impelled by an irresistible curiosity, he was undismayed, and began the ascent. He had not proceeded very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had just quitted, loosened by his weight, gave way; and dragging with them ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... also mentions a fact which shows where the responsibility of all this looseness of morals belongs. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... without any of the rewards of progress. By the best information I can get, the country is substantially poorer now than when the war closed, and Southern securities have become simply a catchword. The looseness of thought among our people, the unspeakable rascality of corporations like M—— — how long is it going to take us to remedy these things? Whatever is to be done, you and I can do our part of it far better here than ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... approximation is not guesswork, not looseness, and not error. The process of approximation is as exact and correct at every point as that by which an absolute result is secured; the result only fails of exactness because of some inherent difficulty ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... House's suggestion that I consider a way to modify it so that it would harmonize with my views. The more I studied the document, the less I liked it. A cursory reading of the plan, which is printed in the Appendix (page 281), will disclose the looseness of the language and the doubtful interpretation of many of the provisions. It showed an inexpertness in drafting and a fault in expression which were chargeable to lack of appreciation of the need of exactness or else to haste in preparation. This fault in the paper, which was very apparent, ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... evidence on record against Philip is the accusation of one Sausaman, a renegado Indian, whose natural cunning had been quickened by a partial education which he had received among the settlers. He changed his faith and his allegiance two or three times with a facility that evinced the looseness of his principles. He had acted for some time as Philip's confidential secretary and counsellor, and had enjoyed his bounty and protection. Finding, however, that the clouds of adversity were gathering round his patron, he abandoned ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly[2]; nothing but a cold, dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was shooting; a dwarfish thought, dressed up in gigantic words, repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles; the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into ten; and, to sum up all, uncorrect English, and a hideous mingle of false poetry, and true nonsense; or, at best, a scantling ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... Plautus and Terence comes from Anne Dacier,[8] and Echard's footprints can be tracked in the snows of Cicero, Scaliger, Rapin, Andre Dacier, the Abbe D'Aubignac, and Dryden. Having set the Ancients against the Moderns, Echard is able to attack the looseness of English double plots by pointing to Terence's success within a similar structure. He is also able to praise Terence's genteel style. Against this, Echard admits, along with his precursors, Plautus' superiority in point of vis comica, which he defines, ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... this little work it is proper that I should warn the younger members of the race against despondency, and against the looseness of character and habits that is singularly consequential of a despondent spirit. Do not be discouraged, give up, and throw away brilliant intellects, because of seeming obstacles, but rather resolve to BE SOMETHING AND DO SOMETHING IN ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... quite unsuccessful and practically starved for six years. If I had mentioned this act on the first page of this book it would have seemed to have either the simplicity of a mere fanatic or else to cover some ugly escapade of youth or some quite criminal looseness of temperament. But Bernard Shaw did not act thus because he was careless, but because he was ferociously careful, careful especially of the one thing needful. What was he thinking about when he threw away his last halfpence and went to a strange place; what was he thinking about when he ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... and who had in a manner attached himself to me, by a degree of attention that was engaging. I thought indeed that I discovered contradictory qualities in him; but the sprightliness of his imagination, and the whimsicality of his remarks, compensated for a looseness of principle, which was too apparent to be ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... of names and other words of Oriental languages the Editor has 'endeavoured to strike a mean between popular usage and academic precision, preferring to incur the charge of looseness to that of pedantry'. Diacritical marks intended to distinguish between the various sibilants, dentals, nasals, and so forth, of the Arabic and Sanskrit alphabets, have been purposely omitted. Long vowels ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... begets irregularity in the meal hours, and thus promotes bad health; and the absence of the restraints which the table of a family at home, or even the public board of a hotel, imposes, is the beginning of a looseness of manners, which is generally sure to be followed by a similar defect in morals. The cooking, at the majority of restaurants, is unhealthy, and intoxicating liquors are sold, to an extraordinary extent, as a part of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... Napo. An account of this journey was sent by D'Aguirre, in a letter to the King of Spain, from which Humboldt has given an extract in his narrative. As it is a good specimen of the quaintness of style and looseness of statement exhibited by these early narrators of adventures in South America, I will give ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... writing on trifling matters brings on a certain looseness of style and thought; but the public will have it, and the demand creates the supply of a flimsy, pleasant, literary article. The best leaders are now written by fine scholars. In travelling over the country I have been amused by simple people ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... through the barriers within which prudence, reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine the actions of lesser men. And it must be remembered that the admitted great stain upon Nelson's fame, which it would be wicked to deny, lies not in a general looseness of life, but in the notoriety of one relation,—a notoriety due chiefly to the reckless singleness of heart which was not ashamed to own its love, but rather gloried in the public exhibition of a faith in the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which never wavered to the hour of his death.[14] ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... a variable, and not a formula in Davies which suited the purpose. Unfortunately, these perplexities were quite as apt to end in relaxation as in rigor, so that the regiments thus commanded sometimes slid into a looseness of which a resolute volunteer officer would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... if it is the custom, though I think that the conceding of a privilege to a burglar which is denied to a bishop is a conspicuous sign of the looseness of the times. But waiving all that, what business have you to be entering this house in this furtive and clandestine way, without ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... again to my proper place the Grand Lunar asked how we sheltered ourselves from heat and storms, and I expounded to him the arts of building and furnishing. Here we wandered into misunderstandings and cross-purposes, due largely, I must admit, to the looseness of my expressions. For a long time I had great difficulty in making him understand the nature of a house. To him and his attendant Selenites it seemed, no doubt, the most whimsical thing in the world that men should build houses when they might descend into excavations, and an additional ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... treachery of Germany's false professions, we had no monopoly of illusion. Germany made the huge mistake of believing that we would stand out—that we dared not support France in face of our troubles and divisions at home. She counted on the pacific influences in a Liberal Cabinet, on the looseness of the ties which bound us to our Dominions, on the "contemptible" numbers of our Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War; the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... floundering in the morass of a new language, always with something that he wants to say but can only suggest. Here, for example, is a personal statement, line by line more or less inarticulate, but as a whole clear enough. With all the mental incompleteness, the verbal looseness, the fumblings and gropings of the traditional Baboo, it is a genuine piece of irony. Seldom can a convert to ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... but pure caprice can determine the mind to form it; and that principle being fluctuating and uncertain, it is impossible it can ever operate with any considerable degree of force and constancy. The mind forsees and anticipates the change; and even from the very first instant feels the looseness of its actions, and the weak hold it has of its objects. And as this imperfection is very sensible in every single instance, it still encreases by experience and observation, when we compare the several instances we may remember, and form a general rule against ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... had pretended to take from his old authorities were to be found in them, even if the authority of every one of these authors were beyond question, the looseness with which they are used to prove whatever Hahnemann chooses is beyond the bounds of credibility. Let me give one instance to illustrate the character of this man's mind. Hahnemann asserts, in a note annexed to the 110th paragraph of the "Organon," ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... make it their ordinary, and boarde here very cheape. Of all such places it is least troubled with hobgoblins, for if a ghost would walk here he could not." Of "the singing men" he draws a most unfavourable picture, accuses them of drunkenness and shameful looseness of life; says that they are earnest in evil deeds and that their work in the cathedral is their recreation. Bishop Pilkington also speaks of the profanity and worldliness of the daily frequenters. The carrying merchandise into the building seems to have been the custom in many of the cathedrals, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... need of quiet and leisure to get my report straightened out in my mind ready for delivery. The largeness and looseness of my commission left everything to my discretion, with the vexatious result that I had discovered nothing. I had, indeed, carried out my orders. I had been so far west of Derby that I had seen the famous spires of Lichfield cutting into the sky like three lance-heads, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough



Words linked to "Looseness" :   looseness of the bowels, self-indulgence, wiggliness, intemperateness, symptom, Montezuma's revenge, diarrhoea, movableness, play, intemperance, profligacy, slackness, movability, dissolution, the shits, slack, the trots, inaccuracy, dissipation, loose, licentiousness, unrestraint, fixedness



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com