Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Obliterate   Listen
verb
Obliterate  v. t.  (past & past part. obliterated; pres. part. obliterating)  
1.
To erase or blot out; to efface; to render undecipherable, as a writing.
2.
To wear out; to remove or destroy utterly by any means; to render imperceptible; as, to obliterate ideas; to obliterate the monuments of antiquity. "The harsh and bitter feelings of this or that experience are slowly obliterated."






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





"Obliterate" Quotes from Famous Books



... however, still strong in his desire for change. The desire was even so far stronger that he now burned to put it into execution; to get away to some fresh sphere of action, and deliberately set himself to obliterate from his memory all past ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... the one weak spot in Savine's scheme, but Geoffrey rose to the occasion, and there was a wondering hush when he said, "In answer to the first question—Julius Savine and I are the 'we.' Secondly, we will, if necessary, obliterate the lake. It ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerome, in the presence of the historian Orosius. "In the full confidence of valor and victory, I once aspired (said. Adolphus) to change the face of the universe; to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... not the worst. You should not see him in that state. You might find him literally in the gutter. He might be a sight you never could forget. No matter what you made of him you never could obliterate such a hideous memory. And he might say things to you that your ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... sometimes coalition of the labia and nymphae, which may be so firm and extensive as to obliterate the vulva. Debout has reported a case of absence of the vulva in a woman of twenty upon whom he operated, which was the result of the fusion of the labia minora, and this with an enlarged clitoris gave the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... world did you ever see a child cry over a broken toy? Did the sight pain you to any extent? Did you not know that a new toy could be purchased that would quite obliterate all thoughts of the other? Did the simple griefs of childhood carry any deep and lasting consternation to the mind of a grown-up man? Of course it did not. You are sensible enough to know that. Well, ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr

... lecture, dialect *Lex, legis law privilege, illegitimate, legislature *Liber book libel, library *Liber free liberty, deliberate Ligo bind obligation, allegiance, alliance *Linquo, lictum leave delinquent, relict, derelict *Litera letter illiterate, obliterate Locus place collocation, dislocate Loquor, locutus speak soliloquy, elocution Ludo, lusum play prelude, illusory /Lux, lucis light lucid, luminary Lumen, luminis / *Magnus great magnate, magnificent *Malus bad, evil malaria, malnutrition Mando order mandatory, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... head drop upon his bosom: the last arrow had sunk to the feather. "It's a' havers, ony gait," she quickly resumed. "I div not believe ye hae ae drap o' her bluid i' the body o' ye, man. But," she hurried on, as if eager to obliterate the scoring impression of her late words—"that she's been sayin' 't, there can be no mainner o' doot. I saw her mysel' rinnin' aboot the toon, frae ane till anither, wi' her lang hair doon the lang back o' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... himself growing gradually stronger and stronger in the estimation of 'the plain people' whose voice was more potent than all the Warwicks, his ambition painted the rainbow of glory in the sky, while his morbid melancholy supplied the clouds that were to overcast and obliterate it with the wrath and ruin of the tempest. To him it was fate, and there was no escape or defense. The presentiment never deserted him. It was as clear, as perfect, as certain as any image conveyed by the senses. He had now entertained ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... have; but you are the man who has been carrying out the plans, and you are the man the courts will recognize. But we're wasting time sitting here jawing at each other like a pair of old women. It's up to us to obliterate Lidgerwood; after which it will be up to you to get his job and cover up your tracks as you can. If he lives, he'll dig; and if he digs, he'll turn up things that neither of us can stand for. See how he hangs onto that building-and-loan ghost. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... complete celibate and depends on Gentiles to populate the earth. The Dunkard quotes Saint Paul and marries because he must, but regards romantic love as a thing of which Deity is jealous, and also a bit ashamed. The Oneida Community clung to the same thought, and to obliterate selfishness held women in common, tracing pedigree, after the manner of ancient Sparta, through the female line, because there was no other way. The Mormon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... incursions of the Algerine pirates were made as far north as England, Ireland, and Iceland, and through them an iniquitous slave trade was developed. The law of nations did not place its ban upon this slave traffic until by statute England and the United States attempted to obliterate this ineradicable blot upon our civilization, and only a half century ago Austria, Prussia, and Russia declared it ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... them in youth; there were strongly-marked lines about her mouth, and her face when in repose bore traces of the warfare of past years. The heart has a writing of its own, and we can see it on the countenance; time has no power to obliterate it, but generally deepens the expression. There was at times too a sternness in her voice and manner, yet it left no unpleasant impression; her general refinement, and her fine sense and education made ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... every feature of public life. Any protest was treated as "incitement against the Magyar State Idea" and was made punishable by two years' imprisonment. It was as though a narrow-minded English Administration should set itself to obliterate all traces of Scottish, Welsh, and Irish national feeling; or as though the Government of India should ignore the existence of all save one race and language in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... anguish of M. Madeleine that night. He had done all that man could do to obliterate the past, and now it seemed another was to be taken in his place. The torture and torment ended. In the morning M. Madeleine ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... up in drifts on the window-ledges, he seemed to catch the inspiration of their law of structure, and drew sheet after sheet of crystalline shapes; some so delicate and filmy that it seemed as if a jar might obliterate them; some massive and strong, like those in which the earth keeps her mineral treasures; then, at last, on a round charcoal disk, he traced out a perfect rose, in a fragrant white powder, which piled up ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... is impossible. If you find yourself losing your friendship for a person, there must be some reason for it. If the former dear name is becoming indistinct on the tablet of your heart, the attempt to re-write it will entirely obliterate it. It is said that a sure way to obliterate any writing, is to attempt to re-write it.... But it is not true that 'hot love soon cools.' With all my faults—and to say that I am an O'Molly is to admit that I have faults, and I am not sure that I would wish to be without them. To speak paradoxically, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... self-conscious; the final stage is self-forgetful. No man can enter the final stage without passing through the initial stage; no man can enter the final stage without leaving the initial stage behind him. One must first develop intense self-consciousness, and then one must be able to forget and obliterate himself. One must first accept the most exacting discipline of the school, and then one must forget that schools exist. The apprentice is the servant of detail; the master is the servant of the idea: the first accepts methods ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... to the exhibitions in Africa but in a more secret, servile and abject manner. Oh Heaven! I am full!!! I can hardly move my pen!!! As I expect some one will try to put me to death, to strike terror into others, and to obliterate from their minds the notion of freedom, so as to keep my brethren the more secured in wretchedness where they will be permitted to stay but a short time (whether tyrants believe it or not,) I shall give the world ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... either to assimilate us to your own, or wholly to subdue us. In those parts of the country, where the population is small, in time, no doubt, the Spanish race might be absorbed, and your sway established; but ages of war would be necessary entirely to obliterate our usages, our language, and our religion from the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... within sound of the gentle, healing rain. Sommers noticed that Alves had changed her dress from the black gown she had worn in the afternoon to a colored summer dress. The room had been rearranged, and all signs of the afternoon scene removed. It was as if she willed to obliterate the past at once. How ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... conjunction with the new minister of public instruction, Mr. Waddington, who is a Rugby and Cambridge man, have some effect in arousing his countrymen to the study which they have heretofore so strangely neglected of a tongue which threatens to obliterate in time the inconveniences occasioned by the Tower of Babel. English is every day more and more spoken, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... by defeat in battle; its natural resources gave it great recuperative powers, and the native population was ever so intensely patriotic that centuries of alien sway could not obliterate their national aspirations. A conqueror of Babylon had to become a Babylonian. The Amorites and Kassites had in turn to adopt the modes of life and modes of thought of the native population. Like the Egyptians, the Babylonians ever achieved the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... every pit is full. They are so careful in covering up the eggs, that, when they quit the spot, the only marks distinguishable are those which they make when returning to the water—as they go round and round the nest several times in succession to obliterate all traces. The sand, however, remains so loose, that it gives way under foot, and thus the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Roman craft had planned, which Roman hands had fashioned, lived almost in its integrity in the days of King Robert the Good. He had girdled it with gardens; he had sought to obliterate the memories of its old-time brutalities, its old-time bloodshed, by the institution of kindly sports and gentle pastimes. A populace had laughed innocently, had contested healthily in the place where man had fought with man, where man had fought with beast, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... thousand of their countrymen; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to Abdallah, [139] the son of Said and the foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the merit of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy. The early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had recommended him to the important office of transcribing the sheets of the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... industrialism that for the last twenty years has swelled to obliterate landmarks, to bring all the world to the same level of nickel-plated dullness, the theatre in Madrid has been the refuge of lo castizo. It has been a theatre of manners and local types and customs, of observation and ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... improper design with regard to her, I enjoyed her gratitude, and felt pleased at the idea she evidently entertained of my kind attentions. I had no other purpose in view but to restore calm to her mind, and to obliterate the bad opinion which the unworthy Steffani had given her of men in general. I never thought of inspiring her with love for me, and I had not the slightest idea that I could fall in love with her. She was unhappy, and her unhappiness—a sacred thing in my eyes—called all the more for my most ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Athens were not the only ones which ran with blood. At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned its edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and presented a scene of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all the external devastations. I intended, my lord, to have proceeded in a sort of method in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... with an earnestness almost startling, and as he looked up his eyes glistened with tears, "because all my efforts sink to nothing beside hers. I deemed myself becoming worthy; that the conquests over inclination I made would obliterate the past; but what are my sacrifices compared to hers? Weak, frail, sensitive creature as she is, thus secretly, laboriously to earn that sum which, because it required one or two petty sacrifices of inclination, I deemed that ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... of the expression he could remember his mother wore when she looked at him long, long ago. It was a vague, haunting look that always brought back the one great tragedy of his life—a tragedy he was even now working night and day at his chosen profession to obliterate from his memory, lest he should be forever ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... were almost fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to make ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... politicians of the type of M. Deschanel, an ex-President of the Chamber of Deputies, who declared that these coalitions entirely falsify the character of the popular verdict. Again, M. Yves Guyot, an ex-Minister, asserts that "the second ballots give rise to detestable bargainings which obliterate all political sense in the electors." M. Raymond Poincare, a Senator and a former Minister, condemns the system of second ballots in equally forcible language. "It will be of no use," he says, "to replace one kind of constituency by another if we do not, ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... had he the power to lay them on the altar of his cause. He pitted the perfection of details against the wily strategy of his own colour and the pompous superiority of the white man's tactics. On the trail care was taken to cover up or obliterate his footprints. When a fire became necessary he burned fine dry twigs so that the burning of green boughs would not lift to the wind an odour of fire, nor carry a trail of smoke. He conceived and carried out a wonderful deception in dress. In winter a band of warriors were painted white. They rode ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... homestead, as a boy who had wandered over every part of it, far better than you, Gabriel, or any one. The elder Gunn had only heard of it through the criminal disclosure of his relative, and only wished to absorb it through his son in time, and thus obliterate all trace of Flint's outrage. I recognized the room perfectly—thanks to our dear Kitty, who had taken up the carpet, which thus disclosed the loose plank before the closet that was hidden by the partition. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... had done little to obliterate the Ambassador's grave fears for the future, and he communicated at once in code and in full with the Home Government. He lost little time upon the following day in setting in motion all the devices he possessed for obtaining secret ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... view taken by the author leads towards the conclusion that the safety of the future lies in a progressive movement of social control alleviating at least the misery it cannot obliterate, and based upon the broad general principle of equality of opportunity, and a fair start. The chief immediate opportunities for social betterment, as the writer sees them, lie in the attempt to give every human being in childhood, ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... is not permitted to obliterate, among Christians, the distinction of caste, or to rescue the lifeless form of the colored man from the insults of his white brethren. In the porch of a Presbyterian Church, in Philadelphia, in 1837, was suspended a card, containing the form of a deed, to be given ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... rebellion many of the houses were razed by the rioters, books and parchments were carried away and fed to bonfires, and it was the intention of the rebels to destroy the precinct and the lawyers together, for thus, they said, they would obliterate both unjust laws and corrupt law-makers. The "No-Popery" rioters in 1780 marched to attack the Temple, but were awed into flight by the apparently determined front presented by the lawyers and students, who were really ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... vegetation this point boasted of, and from what we saw of the interior, it appeared scarcely more inviting. The sterility however which apparently prevailed over this part of Australia, could not obliterate those feelings of deep interest, which must pervade everyone, as the eye wanders for the first time over a ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... author of the Report, than whom no one of the critics at home or abroad has shown a keener or a better cultivated liturgical instinct, is afraid that a free use of all the liberties permitted by the new rubrics of the daily offices would so revolutionize Morning and Evening Prayer as practically to obliterate the line of their descent from the old monastic forms. If there were valid ground for such an expectation the alarm might be justifiable; but is there? The practical effect of the rubrics that make for abbreviation ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... strongly than as many of the latter who were thought most like one another."[40] It would, therefore, seem that the action of unconscious imitation, arising from constant contact, is capable of producing a remarkable change in the features, the acquired expression frequently tending to obliterate inherited family resemblances. According to Piderit, physiognomy is to be considered as a mimetic expression which has become habitual. The criminal type of face, so conspicuous in old offenders, is in many cases merely a prison type; it is not congenital; ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... worship, perpetrating a crime of high treason against the God of heaven, while they themselves believed they were performing an act of merit,—excited ideas and feelings in my mind which time can never obliterate." ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... again be by the working in common of the soil that the enfranchised societies will find their unity and will obliterate the hatred and oppression ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... brute and then a bore. Albert is none of these (except perhaps the last), but he is madder than the Mad Hatter and the March Hare put together, and as depressing as they are delightful. He has hallucinations which obliterate the sense of time in him; he thinks himself one of his ancestors of the days of Ziska; he has second sight; he speaks Spanish to Consuelo and calls her by her name when he first sees her, though he has not the faintest sane ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... was entered on this side by a stone stile, over which having clambered, you remained still on the wild hill, the within not being so divided from the without as to obliterate the sense of open freedom. A delightful place to be buried in, postulating that delight can accompany a man to his tomb under any circumstances. There was nothing horrible in this churchyard, in the shape ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... the window and for some space beyond it. The tracks had been followed to the river, the eager searchers keeping well away from the tell-tale footsteps in order not to obliterate them. Sandy knelt in the snow and held his lamp close to the single trail. The print was narrow and long and ended in a tapering toe. Ricks's broad foot would have covered half the space again. He jumped to his feet and started for the house, then ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... whom Lopez had become acquainted at Gatherum, and old Lord Mongrober. But the barrister, who had dined out a good deal in his time, perceived the effort. Who, that ever with difficulty scraped his dinner guests together, was able afterwards to obliterate the signs of the struggle? It was, however, a first attempt, and Lopez, whose courage was good, thought that he might do better before long. If he could get into the House and make his mark there people then would dine with him fast enough. But while this ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... to be told that I desire your happiness above all earthly things," he said: and the lady shrank back, and made an effort to recover her footing. Had he not been so careful to obliterate any badge of the Squire of low degree, at his elbows, cuffs, collar, kneecap, and head-piece, she might have achieved it with better success. For cynicism (the younger brother of sentiment and inheritor of the family property) is always on the watch to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... somebody else will obliterate the existing number, and I shall be summoned to appear before a Justice ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... and that tender passion which was apparently none the less genuine for having been expressed in the slang of a humorous period? Had they been permanently separated by judicious guardians, and had she been obliged to obliterate his image from her lightly-beating little heart? Bernard had felt sure at Baden that, beneath her contemptuous airs and that impertinent consciousness of the difficulties of conquest by which a pretty American girl attests her allegiance to a civilization in which young women ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... gaslight disappears, and the sober, grey morning breaks in upon our reason. If the sunshine only ripened one-half the good resolves and high purposes formed at night over the social glass, what a harvest of good deeds there would be! Yes, and if the evening dissipations did not obliterate the good resolves of the morning, which we so often form as a protection against sin and sorrow, what happy ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... conducted himself towards me with unbounded kindness, and one unkind act, no, nor twenty, can obliterate the grateful remembrance of it. By indolence, and frequent breach of promise, I had deserved a severe reproof from him, although my present brain-crazing circumstances, rendered this an ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... of what had happened. Apparently, its destruction would be the destruction of a substance, which is a very different thing from the destruction of a mode of motion. In the latter, only the form of the motion need be destroyed to completely obliterate every trace of the atom. In the former, there would need to be the destruction of both substance and energy, for it is certain, for reasons yet to be attended to, that the ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear

... carnage of his soldiers."[4] He stipulated the tribute which the country was to pay, demolished the walls of the city, and nominated Hyrcanus to the priesthood, though without the royal diadem. The magnanimity of Pompey, in respecting the Treasures of the Temple, could not obliterate the deeper impression of Jewish hatred excited by his profanation of ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... highwayman. Such a thing might appeal as a romantic tale, but in the real world it meant disgrace. In another land love might be hers, such love, perchance, as few women have ever had, but could it obliterate the past? Would she ever be able to forget that the man beside her, his face hidden behind the brown mask, had waited, pistol in hand, upon the high road, to rob passing travellers? All men were not cowards, nor did they travel unprepared for danger; ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... Queen Jadwiga, in Christian virtues, in caring for the sick and to redeem with her merits her father's soul; she therefore did not omit any opportunity to make the old Christian country appear no worse than others, and by this means to obliterate the remembrance that she was born in a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Britain, the Picts broke through the Wall of Antoninus, and wrested almost the entire island from the hands of the Romans. In Africa, the Moorish and other tribes, issuing from the ravines of the Atlas Mountains and swarming from the deserts of the south, threatened to obliterate the last trace of Roman civilization occupying the narrow belt of fertile territory ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... folded sail had been rigged so as to form sides, and to act as a protection in case he were seen by the enemy and made a mark for their arrows; but nothing particular occurred. All around looked very beautiful, for nature was beginning to rapidly obliterate the devastation caused by the eruption and the earthquake wave. There was heat and there was moisture, with plenty of rich soil washed up in places, and these being three of her principal servants in ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... glare, were to flash the tidings from mountain to mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to steeple, from city to hamlet, from valley to hill-side, till the whole Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of Protestantism ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... some fifteen or eighteen low-roofed adobes, the most pretentious being the saloon. These all faced a straggling road which ran east and west, disappearing at either end of the town as though anxious to obliterate itself in the clean sand of the desert. The environs of Showdown were garnished with tin cans and trash, dirt and desolation. Unlike the ordinary cow-town this place was not sprightly, but morose, with an aspect of hating itself for existing. Even the railroad swung many miles to ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... Yet notwithstanding the conspiracy which had led to such deplorable results, De Soto treated him with great kindness, giving him a seat at his own table, and endeavoring in all ways to obliterate the remembrance of the conflict. De Soto was in search of gold. He had heard of mountains of that precious metal far away in the interior. The natives had no wealth which he desired to plunder. Their hostility he exceedingly deprecated, as it deprived him of food, of comforts, and ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... Confucius that he had acquired the "art of sitting and forgetting." Asked what that meant, Yen Hui replied, "I have learnt to discard my body and obliterate my intelligence; to abandon matter and be impervious to sense-perception. By this method I become one with the All-Pervading."—Chuang Tzu, ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... way of an actual revival must always be impossible. Such vain antiquarianism in a waste of the poet's power. The composite experience of all the ages is part of each one of us: to deduct from that experience, to obliterate any part of it, to come face to face with the people of a past age, as if the Middle Age, the Renaissance, the eighteenth century had not been, is as impossible as to become a little [224] child, or enter again into ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... if distress and suffering can ever entirely obliterate all sense of natural grandeur and magnificence. Lost in the wonder and admiration inspired by this vast world of beauties, I nearly forgot to improve the few moments of remaining sunshine to obtain fire. With a lighted brand in my hand, ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts

... centuries, a Jewish imperialistic program; that Jews in all lands have been and are united in a highly organized and subtly directed secret movement to bring about the overthrow of all non-Jewish governments, to substitute therefor a Jewish world government, to obliterate all national boundaries, and to destroy all religions other than Judaism. This, it is alleged, is the concrete form in which the Jews visualize their destiny as the Chosen People. In order to attain this grandiose ideal, every ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... such consummate skill, no power of prejudice could keep him from rising like a star of the first magnitude. Alas! how soon that star has been obscured and by what ignoble means! But, against great odds, its brief existence was characterized by a brilliancy that no prejudice or hatred can ever obliterate. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Justin in order that we should stamp out the whispers against her that followed her death. He had made it seem an accidental death due to an overdose of the narcotic she employed, but he had not been able to obliterate altogether the beginnings of his divorce proceedings. There had been talk on the part of clerks and possible witnesses. But of all that I need not tell you here; what matters is that Justin and I could meet without hatred or violence. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... or the good Younge felt forcibly his weakness to bring to justice the rich and great-for the law is weak where slavery makes men great-so as to make him disgorge the ill-gotten treasure he might have concealed, but the proof of which nothing was easier than to obliterate. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... crag or glen or aged tree untouched with some ideal hue of legend It was here that Wordsworth learned that homely humanity which gives such depth and sincerity to his poems. Travel, society, culture, nothing could obliterate the deep trace of that early training which enables him to speak directly to the primitive instincts of man. He was apprenticed early to the difficult ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... no regret that all relation between them was broken forever. He was not sorry for the meeting. He needed such a meeting to measure the parallax of his progress and her stagnation. He needed this impression of Helen to obliterate the memory of the row-boat. She was no longer to remain in his mind associated with the blessed memory of little Kate. Hereafter he could think of Katy in the row-boat—the other figure was a dim unreality which might have ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... victims of a war which all Englishmen sought to bury in oblivion. Those who remained in the United States ultimately regained standing and fared better than the exiles, but not until new {128} domestic issues had arisen to obliterate the memory of ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... considerable strength once lent it protection. Its old castle, its towers, and the walls by which it was surrounded, have all been swept away by the busy crowds that now throng its thoroughfares. Even the former names of places have in most instances been altered, as if to obliterate all recollections and associations connected with its early history. Thus a row of houses, which a few years ago bore the not very euphonious name of Castle Ditch, from its having followed a portion of the line of the moat by which the fortress ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... God's footstool has any queen such a monument, and it is even more beautiful in the silver dress of moonlight than in the golden robes of the midday sun. By day or night alike it makes an impression on the mind that time can never obliterate. Shah Jahan erected the Jami Masjid mosque at Delhi, and the costly Muti Masjid mosque in Agra Fort, as well as the splendid Khas Mahal, the Diwan-i-ain, and the Diwan-i-khas, likewise in the fort—but more satisfying art is represented in ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... apprehension of God is clear, and distinct, and more deeply engraven on the soul, so is this notion of man's duty of worshipping God clear and imprinted on the soul, and whenever the actions of men do prove that the conception of the worship of God is obliterate or worn out,—whenever their transgressions do witness that a man hath not a lively notion of this duty of God's worship,—that doth also prove that the very notion of a godhead is worn out, and cancelled in the soul, for how ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... extinct, become extinct &c adj.; die out; disappear &c 449; melt away, dissolve, leave not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c 756; destroy &c 162; take away; remove &c (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent^, nonexistent &c 1; negative, blank; missing, omitted; absent &c 187; insubstantial, shadowy, spectral, visionary. unreal, potential, virtual; baseless, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubstantial &c 4; vain. unborn, uncreated^, unbegotten, unconceived, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... of course," Sir Timothy said drily, "I shall do my best to obliterate all traces of my various crimes. Still, you are a clever detective, and you can give Mr. Ledsam a few hints. Take my advice. You won't get that search warrant, and if you apply for it none of you will ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... ten times a slave, it would not obliterate the mark of the omniscient God! It could not alter the beauty of the features or the character. I should be proud of such a sister, even did she wear the shackles. But you! No, no, there is ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... certain' and 'quite certain' in two consecutive sentences, silently vanishes to make room for the new. But why does the author allow himself to spend nine octavo pages over the discussion of this one passage, freely altering sentence after sentence to obliterate all traces of his error, without any intimation to the reader? Had not the public a right to expect more distinctness of statement, considering that the author had been led by this error to libel the character of more than one writer? Must not anyone reading the apology to Dr Westcott, contained ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... were engaged in almost incessant wars. Even the religion of Jesus, whose great mission was to bring peace on earth and goodwill to man, has not yet been able to obliterate these sanguinary propensities from the human heart. England, France, Germany, are great slaughterhouses, where millions of men have hurled themselves upon each other in demoniac strife. What, then, could be ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... can be that so infatuates me. I see a hand she cannot see—forms, faces, happenings not registered on the camera; places where linger the invisible spirits of joyful or painful experiences; playmates, companions, whole families now dust, a thousand events recalled only when time begins to obliterate those ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... another point, and the body must be bathed three hundred and sixty-five times a year. It may be considered almost supererogatory to remark that not any amount of cerates, washes or powders will cover or obliterate blotches, pimples and blackheads caused by unwholesome food or uncleanly habits. We may not be able to afford elegantly-appointed bath-rooms, but we all can indulge in a ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... the agelong duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, such as might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which would obliterate all mean peculiarities; for, if the original were unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, the English face and form are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... about our ears and the singing and whizzing of those big shells was bizarre, to put it mildly. One did not know whether to get up or efface one's self in the blankets. I remember having the utmost confidence in the headboard of my bed, which was toward the window. But that did not obliterate the siren whistle of those big shells and the moment of suspense between the lightning and the thunder. After each deafening burst I kept reiterating to myself, "Saved again," as one would repeat a chronological table of ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you touch them—the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to Cotenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... by the corn-stores and hay-barns which had been the headquarters of his business. She knew that he ruled there no longer; but it was with amazement that she regarded the familiar gateway. A smear of decisive lead-coloured paint had been laid on to obliterate Henchard's name, though its letters dimly loomed through like ships in a fog. Over these, in fresh white, spread the name ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... call them," said he, "have been laid for forty years or more. They are now ruts. I cannot obliterate ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... of the merry monarch's reign he presented himself at Whitehall, and was received by Charles with a graciousness that served to obliterate the memory of his late misfortune. Nor were the courtiers less warm in their greetings than his majesty. The men hailed him as an agreeable companion; the ladies intimated he need not wholly abandon those tender diversions for which he had shown such natural talent and received such high reputation ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... make little of Ephie's sobbed and hazy version of the story; she herself could not remember clearly now; the impressions of the last few hours had been so intense as to obliterate much of what had gone before. "I thought I would drown myself ... but the water was so black. Oh, why did you take me to that dreadful woman? Did you hear what she said? It wasn't true, was it? Oh, it ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... forbidden me to see you," she wrote. "He hopes that time will obliterate your image; but that is impossible. Trust to me, as ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... blameless life, and joins the pious sisterhood who have gone before her; dying where she has lived, surrounded by her companions, her last hours soothed by their prayers and tears, sure of their vigils for the repose of her soul, and above all, sure that neither pleasure nor vanity will ever obliterate ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... the Rebellion, were very extensive, and there was great destruction of property in consequence. Large numbers of houses and other buildings were burned, and many farms laid waste. It will require much time, capital, and energy to obliterate the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... staggered into the room, haggard, blear-eyed, muttering to himself savagely. The sight of his mother and sister seemed partially to sober him, for the spirit within him bowed instinctively before the beauty of holiness, which neither poverty nor terror could obliterate from the face of those whom he used to love so dearly. But the spell was ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson

... frankly melodramatic novels like "A Terrible Temptation" are among the best of their kind, and in "The Cloister and the Hearth" he performed the major literary feat of reconstructing, with the large imagination and humanity which obliterate any effect of archeology and worked-up background, a period long past. And what reader of English fiction does not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those very different yet equally lovable women, Christie Johnstone and Peg Woffington? To run over his contributions ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... events, it's worth trying," said Ralston. "For it's the only chance left to try. If we could sweep away the effects of the last few years, if we could obliterate his years in England—oh, I know it's improbable. But help me ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... is not only one of the most elegantly-formed, but one of the most beautifully-coloured fishes, when taken out of the sea, that we have. Death, in some degree, impairs the vivid splendour of its colours; but it does not entirely obliterate them. It visits the shores of Great Britain in countless shoals, appearing about March, off the Land's End; in the bays of Devonshire, about April; off Brighton in the beginning of May; and on the coast ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... not hope that I shall forgive this outrage—ever—as long as I live. You may have had motives which from your point of view were good and justifiable—but you must not expect me to agree with you. You have done something that no love on earth could obliterate; you have robbed my memory of a sweet confidence, of the one glorious thing that made me look upon you as the best of men—your nobility. I recognize you as the leader in this cowardly conspiracy, but what must I think ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... succeed him in Landaff, of which church he has always been esteemed the principal patron. His great learning, piety, and pastoral zeal, especially in the choice and instruction of his clergy, have procured him a high reputation which no age can ever obliterate, says Leland.[1] His authority alone decided whatever controversies arose in his time. When the yellow plague depopulated Wales, he exerted his courage and charity with an heroic intrepidity. Providence preserved his life ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... the danger of being bewildered in its labyrinths. A servile and bigoted education was the source of this dread; this had impressed frightful images upon his tender brain, which, during the remainder of his life, he was never able wholly to obliterate. Religious melancholy was an hereditary disorder in his family. The education which he and his brothers had received was calculated to produce it; and the men to whose care they were entrusted, selected with this object, were also either ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... manner. His name was Beaton—Angus Beaton; but he was not Scotch, or not more Scotch than Mary Queen of Scots was. His father was a Scotchman, but Beaton was born in Syracuse, New York, and it had taken only three years in Paris to obliterate many traces of native and ancestral manner in him. He wore his black beard cut shorter than his mustache, and a little pointed; he stood with his shoulders well thrown back and with a lateral curve of his person when he talked about art, which would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the panic of revulsion that had excited it. That was a feeling that had happened to her. What she did blame herself for was that, seeing them both now, as the victims of a regrettable accident (did she really regret it? Were it in her power to obliterate the memory of it altogether, as a child with a wet sponge can obliterate a misspelled word from a slate, would she do it? She dismissed that question unanswered.), she had allowed him to go away with his burden of guilt unlightened. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... well-dissembled applause of the courtiers, which, however, failed to make the impression on the mind of the Saxon that had been designed. He was not naturally acute of perception, but those too much undervalued his understanding who deemed that this flattering compliment would obliterate the sense of the prior insult. He was silent, however, when the royal pledge again passed round, "To Sir Athelstane ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... seen enough of camping out to know how to make herself fairly comfortable, and she set about it methodically, eagerly. It was something to occupy her mind and keep out a little of that burning sense of shame. One picture it could not obliterate, and that was the scene of Jacqueline and Pierre le Rouge laughing together over the love affair with the silly girl ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... adventure. That is, he would. "I'm not at all curious in the matter," some persistent voice kept telling him, "and I haven't any interest in knowing what irrational whim drove her to my cabin." But he smoked viciously and smiled grimly as the voice kept at him. He would have liked to obliterate Rossland from his mind. But Rossland persisted in bobbing up, and with him Mary Standish's words, "If I should make an explanation, you would hate me," or something to that effect. He couldn't remember exactly. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood



Words linked to "Obliterate" :   veil, take out, efface, mystify, take away, obliterable, change, eliminate, do away with, hide, alter, destroyed, modify, blur, obliteration, blotted out, slur, obliterated



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com