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Rancorous   Listen
adjective
Rancorous  adj.  Full of rancor; evincing, or caused by, rancor; deeply malignant; implacably spiteful or malicious; intensely virulent. "So flamed his eyes with rage and rancorous ire."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rancorous" Quotes from Famous Books



... him up - a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother's breast in the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had been taught ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... on such of the Egyptians as passed to and fro along the street on their affairs. He muttered, spicing his comments with profanity. The girl's disclaimer of personal interest in Britt's ambitions did not soften his rancorous determination to make the voters of Egypt suffer for the stand they had taken—suffer to the bitter limit to which unrelenting persecution could drive them. He gritted his teeth and raved aloud. "From now on! From now on! Anything short of murder to show 'em! ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... malice fired me to revenge, and supplied me with specious arguments of justification. I am sorry it so happened on many accounts. I forgive him, but I cannot hear him mentioned without giving vent to my opinion of him, which is, that he is a very bad fellow, with a very rancorous heart." ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... facial mask I seem to read all the tale of the long years of desperate waiting, only half sweetened by premature triumphs of pen and person; all the rancorous energies of political strife. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and to pray for their return, though he would firmly have refused to compromise himself by any effort in their favor. He belonged to that class of royalists who ceaselessly remembered that they were beaten and robbed; and who remained thenceforth dumb, economical, rancorous, without energy; incapable of abjuring the past, but equally incapable of sacrifice; waiting to greet triumphant royalty; true to religion and true to the priesthood, but firmly resolved to bear in silence the shocks of fate. Such an ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... of this beautiful girl, her frankness, her ease of manner, her cleverness in repartee, were likely to attract the attention of a man of his character. He reproached himself already for having allowed himself to be influenced by the rancorous hostility of the Desvanneaux, and, as always happens with just natures, the sudden change of his mind was the more favorable as his first opinion had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... never end. Nor could the English Court, with its obsolete provisions on this head, have regarded Muhlen otherwise than as her legal husband—the child of her later union as illegitimate. Bastardy: a taint for life! How well she had done to put herself beyond a rancorous letter of the law; to protect her child and family according to the immutable ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... read the biography of the honest and laborious Germanist Wackernagel to be able to credit the fact that that quiet searcher after knowledge was pursued far into middle life by the most bitter persecution and rancorous injuries, because as a schoolboy—whether in the third or fourth class I do not know—he had written a letter in which was set forth some new division, thought out in his childish brain, for the united German ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... sometimes escape for want of vigorous prosecution, and occasionally, perhaps, by the inefficiency of courts or the prejudice of jurors. It is undoubtedly true that these evils have been much increased and aggravated, North and South, by the demoralizing influences of civil war and by the rancorous passions which the contest has engendered. But that these people are maintaining local governments for themselves which habitually defeat the object of all government and render their own lives and property ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... first to set the example of disdaining to govern by petty larceny; and his great son was alike honest in his administration. While millions of money were passing through Pitt's hands, he himself was never otherwise than poor; and he died poor. Of all his rancorous libellers, not one ever ventured to call in question ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... with the Whigs, over whom they possessed great influence for the services which they had rendered. When the writer next visited his friend he found him very much altered; his opinions were by no means so exalted as they had been—he was not disposed even to be rancorous against the Duke of Wellington, saying that there were worse men than he, and giving him some credit as a general; a hankering after gentility seeming to pervade the whole family, father and sons, wife and daughters, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the trees, and the host was an orchestral conductor well known to Davos. There was no alternative. He took a chair. He was introduced as the celebrated pianoforte-virtuoso to men and women he had never seen before, and hoped—so rancorous was his mood—never to see again. A red-headed girl from Brooklyn, who confessed that she thought Maeterlinck the name of some new Parisian wickedness, further bothered him with questions about piano ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... beyond the mortification of mere self-love. When a rainy day stops a pic-nic, or mars the enjoyment of it, although the disappointment is hardly a serious one, still it is sure to cause so much real suffering, that only rancorous old ladies will rejoice in the fact. It is curious how men who have known disappointment themselves, and who describe it well, seem to like to paint lives which in the meantime are all hope and success. There is Mr. Thackeray. With what sympathy, with ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... murder exasperated the Thebans, and all the Boeotians, to the most rancorous animosity against the Romans, for they considered that Zeuxippus, one of the first men of the nation, had not been party to such a crime without the instigation of the Roman general. To recommence a war, they had neither strength nor a leader; ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... telephone that stood mockingly mute at the man's elbow, callous alike to his anxiety and the rancorous regard in which he held it. His call for the house near Queen Anne's Gate had now been in for more than forty minutes; in that interval he had no less than three times pleaded its urgency to the trunk-line operator. And still the muffled ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... it would not have burst out so quickly. There is no hesitation, nor any regret. The ominous cry, which had been heard before, in Sheba's abortive revolt, answers Rehoboam with instantaneous and full-throated defiance. Rancorous tribal hatred is audible in it. Long pent up jealousy and dislike of the dynasty of David has got breath at last: 'To your tents, O Israel! now see to thine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... connection with a review of The Round Table, Hazlitt's first book. The contents of this volume were characterized as "vulgar descriptions, silly paradox, flat truisms, misty sophistry, broken English, ill humour and rancorous abuse."[25] A little later, when the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays seemed to be finding such favor with the public that one edition was quickly exhausted, the Quarterly extinguished its sale by "proving that Mr. Hazlitt's knowledge of Shakespeare and the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... round—came round considerably, there's no doubt of that; because a year or two ago she was terribly unapproachable. If I have mollified her, madam, why shouldn't I mollify you? She realises that I can help her now, and as I ain't rancorous I am willing to help her all she'll let me. The trouble is, she won't let me enough, yet; it seems as if she couldn't believe it of me. At any rate," he pursued, addressing himself more particularly to Ransom, "half an ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... her not forget that when human beings give, as it were, a moral sanction to feelings of hatred or contempt, they unchain a demon in their breasts. We are all oftentimes shocked by anecdotes illustrative of the rancorous spite, and vulgar, unwomanly malignity, cherished by many Southern females against the Union and its defenders. Now were it not well for us, on the other side, to take warning, and, for the sake of our own peace of mind, our own dignity of character, our own Christian virtues, not fall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Mr. Darwin and Professor Whitney; and while trying to show them that I was not entirely unprepared for their combined attack, Ihope I have not been wanting in that respect which is due even to a somewhat rancorous assailant. Ihave not returned evil for evil, nor have I noticed objections which I could not refute without seeming to be offensive. Is it not mere skirmishing with blank cartridge, when Professor Whitney assures me that I have never fathomed ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... His death.] He had gone to his chamber the night before to think over what he should say next day to the people about the position of the country class, and, if he was murdered, it is almost as probable that he was murdered by some rancorous foe in the Senate as by Carbo or any other Gracchan. It was well for his reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla's personal vices he might have played Sulla's part as a politician, and his atrocities ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... celebrated Pontiac, a Chieftain only surpassed by Tecumseh, consigned so many of the European posts to destruction, along this very line of district, about the middle of the last century. It has been held up as a reproach to us, that we have principally subjected ourselves to the rancorous enmity of the Indians, in consequence of having wrested from them their favorite and beautiful hunting grounds, (Kentucky in particular,) to which their early associations had linked them. But to this I answer, that in Pontiac's time, this country was still their own, as well as Ohio, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... action for fear Logan would supersede him in the command; but in reality Todd ranked Logan. McClung's ornate narrative, that usually followed, hangs on the very slenderest thread of truth; it is mainly sheer fiction. Prolix, tedious Collins follows the plan he usually does when his rancorous prejudices do not influence him, and presents half a dozen utterly inconsistent accounts, with no effort whatever to reconcile them. He was an industrious collector of information, and gathered an enormous ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... that the universal fame of Sir Isaac Newton was brought about by his rancorous enemies, and not by his loving friends. Gentle, honest, simple and direct as was his nature, he experienced ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... his wife's leave, agreed to set him at liberty. Chvabrine came to see me. He expressed deep regret for all that had occurred, declared it was all his fault, and begged me to forget the past. Not being of a rancorous disposition, I heartily forgave him both our quarrel and my wound. I saw in his slander the irritation of wounded vanity and rejected love, so I generously ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... despised Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition—and, oh, all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the traitor's troubled fancy rack Fear, doubt, and his own native, rancorous mood, That unawares he issued from the track, And found himself within a gloomy wood: Where a rough mountain reared its shaggy back, Whose stony peak above the forest stood; The daughter of Dodona's duke behind, Dogging his footsteps through the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... common praise or censure; that honey-moon is over with me, when a laudatory article in some kindly magazine sent a thrill from eye to heart, from heart to shoe-sole understanding: I no longer feel rancorous with inveterate wrath against a poor editor whose faint praise, impotent to d——, has yet abundant force to induce a hearty return of the compliment: like some case-hardened rock, so little while ago but soft young coral, the surges ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... intention to ruin him by the command of the Channel Fleet, and the public discussion of the Courts-Martial which followed his indecisive action with D'Orvilliers, in July, 1778, assumed a decided and rancorous party tone. His accuser then was his third-in-command, Vice-Admiral Palliser, who had left his place on the Admiralty Board to take this position in the fleet; and popular outcry charged him with having betrayed his chief in the battle. So far was professional feeling moved ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... even more for the salvation of the Colonies to themselves. Separation merely meant mediocrity for Great Britain, but for the Colonies it meant ruin. There would no longer be any check on the spirit of rancorous and virulent faction which was always inseparable from small democracies. The coercive power of the mother country had hitherto prevented the colonial factions from breaking out into anything worse than brutality and insult, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... earnest. There is no time to be lost: every moment is big with danger. Nay, while I am now speaking, the decisive blow may be struck, and millions involved in the dreadful consequences! The very first drop of blood that is drawn will make a wound perhaps never to be healed—a wound of such rancorous malignity, as will, in all probability, mortify the whole body, and hasten, both on England and America, that dissolution to which all ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... exertion he made to repress the rancorous feelings which the sight of the Spanish noble aroused in him, filled the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... is yonder," said Gervase Buckley, "on the hill-top there before us? Beshrew me, Grace, but it hath an evil and a rancorous look." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... girls. Nor was he particularly incensed against her mother, being offended chiefly by the ostentatious and invidious go'od-will shown her by Mrs. Bates. But against Truesdale Marshall he nourished a hot and rancorous grievance. He did not apprehend Truesdale's attitude towards the town at large, and the young man's manner in his own house (regardless of his insolent utterance) seemed to have carried a half-contemptuous curiosity beyond all decent bounds. "That young cockerel—I'll soon find a way ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... upon which the whole matter turned; and for this reason, any rebellion on the part of the instrument must be at once put down; such action on her part was quite unexpected; but Fraisier had put forth all the strength of his rancorous nature, and the audacious portress ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... treaty; and the Legislature of New York actually ordered the punishment of those Loyalists who applied for compensation. At the close of the war, therefore, instead of witnessing, as in the case of all other civilized nations at the termination of a civil war, however rancorous and cruel, a general amnesty and the restoration of all parties to the rights and property which they enjoyed at the commencement of the strife, the Loyalists found themselves exiled and impoverished, and their enemies in possession of their homes and domains. It is true about 3,000 ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... Bishop of Meath, was, unfortunately for himself, influenced by fanaticism. He had served in Cromwell's army,[510] and had all that rancorous hatred of the Catholic Church so characteristic of the low class from whom the Puritan soldiery were drawn. He was determined that the Archbishop should be condemned; and as men could not be found to condemn him in Ireland, he induced Lord Shaftesbury to have him taken to London. The ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... from out her dreadful hair, The infernal worm that with a cruel bite, Has fiercely fastened on my soul, And of my senses, torn the chief away, Leaving the intellect without its guide. In vain the soul some consolation seeks. That spiteful, rabid, rancorous jealousy Makes me go stumbling along the way. If neither magic spell nor sacred plant, Nor virtue hid in the enchanter's stone, Will yield me the deliverance that I ask: Let one of you, my friends, be pitiful, And put me out, as are put out my eyes, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... fame that day When even the serpent soul of Kay Was kindled toward the fiery play As might a lion's be for prey, And won him fame that might not die With passing of his rancorous breath But clung about his life and death As fire that speaks in cloud, and saith What strong men ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... not reply to the gentleman from Tennessee; and I give notice, once for all, that, whenever any admirer of the President of the United States shall think fit to pay his court to him in this house, either by a flaming panegyric upon him, or by a rancorous invective on me, he shall never elicit one word of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... it is now evident that the conspirators had determined to stake all upon one final throw. Fortunately the very desperateness of the plot has proved its undoing, and from the tremulous lips of the perpetrators themselves comes to-day a froth of vituperation and rancorous abuse that is the surest confession of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous voice raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the man's savage roar of laughter. And, when for want of breath she would flag for a moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting: "Bravo! Go it, my beauty, give it tongue! ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... a few days' rest after the fatigues of the journey. Pembroke himself did not remain at Deddington, but went on to Bampton in the Bush, where his countess then was. Thereupon on June 10, at sunrise, the Earl of Warwick, the most rancorous of Peter's enemies, occupied Deddington with a strong force. Bursting into the bedchamber of his victim, Earl Guy exclaimed in a loud voice: "Arise, traitor, thou art taken". Peter was at once led with every mark ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... special professional training, the same opposition was experienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on the entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners into a trade or profession, those in possession would extend to them the right hand of fellowship, as comrades, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... on the paper; we shall come across him pretty often; he is the chap to follow close on Finot's heels. You would do well to pay him attention; ask him and Mme. du Val-Noble to supper. He may be useful to you before long; for rancorous people are always in need of others, and he may do you a good turn if he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... their nostrils. Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a deadly, rancorous hatred, transmitted from father to son, and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation. Many times a year, in every village, the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are made, the war parade is celebrated, and the warriors go out by ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... "hath a great wit and much learning; but in law showeth to the utmost of his knowledge, and is not deep." The Cecils, we suspect, did their best to spread this opinion by whispers and insinuations. Coke openly proclaimed it with that rancorous insolence which was habitual to him. No reports are more readily believed than those which disparage genius, and soothe the envy of conscious mediocrity. It must have been inexpressibly consoling to a stupid sergeant, the forerunner of him who, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... largely on account of race prejudice engendered and fostered by the working men, who still maintained the old Californian hatred against the industrious Celestials. In the mob, unfortunately near the center of confusion, was a half-drunken miner, rancorous as poison. He was somewhat roughly jostled by ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... them are young, and would be pretty but for the lascivious glare now lighting their faces and the smears of paint which overlay their skins; all of them are poisonous, pitiable creatures, suffering now with the only kind of delirium which their lives afford, rancorous, obscene, filthy beauties, out of the gutter of civilization, gone mad with the licence of music and the contact of men, and beset by crowds of libidinous and unscrupulous ninnies who, anywhere ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... recommended.[48] Up to this point Luis de Leon would seem not to have been officially implicated by name, though he was clearly aimed at, especially by Castro who appeared before the Inquisitionary Commissary at Salamanca, and reiterated Medina's charges with some wealth of rancorous detail.[49] ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people." Meanwhile a writer who styled himself Junius attacked the Government in letters, which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, gave a new power to the literature of the Press by their clearness and terseness of statement, the finish of their style, and the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... to accost him can I find? What cause has he to trust me? In the past I have bee proved his rancorous enemy. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... Whig has said to me, "we and the people at home should soon come together again." This, of course, was before the famous Fourth of July, and that Declaration which rendered reconcilement impossible. Afterwards, when parties grew more rancorous, motives much less creditable were assigned for my conduct, and it was said I chose to be a Liberal Tory because I was a cunning fox, and wished to keep my estate whatever way things went. And this, I am bound to say, is the opinion regarding my ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... taught there that the Christian religion is only one of many, some of them older and superior to it in certain respects; that it itself is eclectic and contains inward contradictions; that it is and always has been divided into rancorous sects; that its position in the world is precarious and its future hopeless. On the contrary, everything is so presented as to persuade the innocent student that all that is good or true anywhere is founded on the faith he is preparing to preach, that the ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... wounded man had the presence of mind to plunge his dagger in the side of the wayfarer who preceded him, thus dying, as the people say, in company. One of these events throws the country into confusion, for the vendetta is rancorous and bloody, as in ancient Germany or in modern Corsica. Our Abban enlarged upon the unpleasant necessity of travelling all night towards the hills, and lying perdu during the day. The most dangerous times ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... men of all parties felt this in Clive's case. They could not pronounce him blameless; but they were not disposed to abandon him to that low-minded and rancorous pack who had run him down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord North, though not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in progress, Clive, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... baldness of the statements issuing from her sobering even his rancorous mood. "Senator Brander's child," he thought to himself. So that great representative of the interests of the common people was the undoer of her—a self-confessed washerwoman's daughter. A fine tragedy of low life ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... deprived us of our kingdom, and have also done us many other wrongs! We have passed twelve years in the forest in great affliction. The thirteenth year only, which we are to spend unrecognised, yet remaineth. It behoveth you to permit us now to spend this year in concealment! Those rancorous enemies of ours Suyodhana, the wicked-minded Kama, and Suvala's son should they discover us, would do mighty wrong to the citizens and our friends! Shall we all with the Brahmanas, be again established in our own kingdom? ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of arming the passions of the various members of society against each other,—of making them the engines to accomplish their mutual destruction,—of converting them into agents which embitter their existence, create jealousies among them, and fill with rancorous animosities that association from which, if properly managed, man ought to derive his felicity. Society is commonly so vicious because it is not founded upon Nature, upon experience, and upon general utility; but on the contrary, upon the passions, upon the caprices, and upon the particular ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... master: the carver, house-steward, and humble husband of the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their dreary tables—but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the Times. She was ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that this rancorous extravagance of the religious spirit in Spain had its origin in a political and patriotic struggle; but long and sanguinary as that was, it could not eradicate the primitive type of the nation, nor prevent its characteristic qualities from reflecting themselves ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... expect the Catholic citizens of Munster to join him in the bloody work of persecution. It was, then, the Spanish policy stimulated by the Sovereign Pontiff that was the standing excuse of the cruel intolerance and rancorous religious animosity which have continued to distract Irish society down to our own time. Persecution is alien to the Irish race. The malignant virus imported from Spain poisoned the national blood, maddened the national brain, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... with wills unchained, Advised by sin and unrestrained, Destroy themselves, the king, the state, And leave the people desolate. Rama, in bonds of duty held, Was never by his sire expelled. He is no wretch of greedy mind, Dishonour of his Warrior kind. Free from all touch of rancorous spite, All creatures' good is his delight. He saw his sire of truthful heart Deceived by Queen Kaikeyi's art, And said, a true and duteous son, "What thou hast promised shall be done." To gratify the lady's will, His father's promise to fulfil, He left his realm ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... self-contained of his letters, that the soul of Keats was so far from being "snuffed out by an article," that it was more than ordinarily impervious to hostile comment, even when it came in the shape of rancorous abuse. In all discussion of the effects produced upon Keats by the reviews in Blackwood and The Quarterly, let it be remembered, first, that having wellnigh exhausted his small patrimony, Keats was to be dependent upon literature ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... among their respective flocks; the pulpit became a stage for spiritual attack and defence, and the most illiterate congregations were crazed with discussions of metaphysical divinity, or inflamed with rancorous hatred against the opponents of their peculiar preacher, who might be truly said to preach his own doctrine and defend his own cause, and not the doctrine or cause of his master. Thus the great mass of the community had ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... imbrue one's hands in blood; have no mercy &c. 914a. Adj. malevolent, unbenevolent; unbenign; ill-disposed, ill- intentioned, ill-natured, ill-conditioned, ill-contrived; evil-minded, evil-disposed; black-browed[obs3]. malicious; malign, malignant; rancorous; despiteful, spiteful; mordacious, caustic, bitter, envenomed, acrimonious, virulent; unamiable, uncharitable; maleficent, venomous, grinding, galling. harsh, disobliging; unkind, unfriendly, ungracious; inofficious[obs3]; invidious; uncandid; churlish &c. (discourteous) 895; surly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... thraldom of the Natives more effective, forgetting that the armed forces of the Boers when left to themselves during the temporary British evacuation of Bechuanaland were unable to do it. Notwithstanding this fact, the newspapers, especially the Rand Sunday Press, seem always to have open spaces for rancorous appeals to colour prejudice, perhaps because such appeals, despite their inherent danger, suit the colonial taste. Preceding the introduction of the Natives' Land Act, the clamour of a section of the colonists and most of the Transvaal Boers for more restrictive measures towards the blacks ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... royal patron of the sincerity of his monarchical principles, has belabored that great poet's character with the most industrious cruelty. As a man, he has hardly left him the shadow of one good quality. Churlishness in his private life, and a rancorous hatred of everything royal in his public, are the two colors with which he has smeared all the canvas. If he had any virtues, they are not to be found in the Doctor's picture of him, and it is well for Milton that some ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless of storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they had kept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; they had made the owner of the old Hall ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... north west of the Ohio river, there were many warlike tribes of Indians, strongly imbued with feelings of rancorous hostility to the neighboring colonists. Among the more powerful of these were the Delawares, who resided on branches of Beaver Creek, Cayahoga, and Muskingum; and whose towns contained about six hundred inhabitants—The Shawanees, who to the number of 300, dwelt upon ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... come specially within their cognisance, and where their judgment would, therefore, be more reliable than that of men. It is this, that in the noise and turmoil of party politics, or in the narrow, but rancorous arena of local factions, it must needs fare ill with what may be called the passive virtues of humility, patience, meekness, forbearance, and self-repression. These are looked on by the Church as the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... transactions this last opportunity has been held out to them. In all these points of view I positively assert that the people have nowhere and in no way expressed their wish of throwing themselves and their sovereign at the feet of a wicked and rancorous foe, to supplicate mercy, which, from the nature of that foe, and from the circumstances of affairs, we had no sort of ground to expect. It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... anew in political life. Ultimately he yielded, and was defeated by thirteen votes. The friends of Crawford were now alarmed, and the contest was immediately renewed. The canvass was one of the most rancorous and bitter ever known in the State, but of this I have spoken in a former chapter. At the ensuing election, Troup was again a candidate. Again the contest was renewed, and, if possible, with increased ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... greater part of Europe will share this joy. As to the English government, I do not think it possible for it to avert the blow which this important event will deal it; the national party will finally triumph over the avarice of usurers, the rancorous passions of the ministry, and the bellicose and constitutional fury of their king. All humanity will find repose beneath the laurels of our August Emperor and, after having conquered half of Europe, he will add to his long list of victories the most difficult and most ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... crested heads of a small bird of the lark species, received the popular name of the Alauda (or Lark) legion. And very singular it was that Cato, or Marcellus, or some amongst those enemies of Caesar, who watched his conduct during the period of his Gaulish command with the vigilance of rancorous malice, should not have come to the knowledge of this fact; in which case we may be sure that it would have been denounced ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... best thing would be that the two parties should settle details by direct negotiation with each other, though perhaps with the rancorous hatred now existing between them this might be difficult. But their quarrels in negotiation would do us no harm if they did not lead to a renewal of war. An armistice, if not accompanied by a cessation ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... those excuses for error which may fairly be put forward on Middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our labors by infinite toil on his part; but De Quincey, who has been very rancorous against Cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his denunciation of Cicero's great biographer. "Conyers Middleton," he says, "is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust." The cause of this was that Middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the Church ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... is an end of rancorous feuds and hatreds dividing Scotland; and this calls from him a glowing picture of the land that by union and industry has made itself too powerful to be a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... school-boy—the coward of the play ground, who delights in pulling off the wings of flies. It is such a mouth as we can imagine some remorseless inquisitor to have had—that is, not an inquisitor filled with holy zeal for what he mistakenly thought the cause of Christ demanded, but a spleeny, envious, rancorous shaveling, who tortured men from hatred of their superiority to him, and sheer ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... anxious one—would be, even if less rancorous violence on the part of his enemies were wreaked upon it. The English Tories are using it with the frenzy of despair, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... of unjust reproach, the invectives of an ungoverned tongue, the rancorous accusations of a stubborn heart, these, wretched as they long have made me, to me are now no more. Forgetful man! No more? You I can forsake; but where shall I fly to rid myself of them? You have riveted them upon me, and while I have life they can never die. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... a loss of personal efficiency. Sorrow gave a strong grip to depression on a brooding mind which had always a proneness to melancholy, which was now linked with a sick body, and which lived among disappointments and grief and the sense of rancorous dislike in men who once thought it a privilege to cheer him on ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... hear. Her attention was diverted by the sudden change in the aspect of the padre parroco. It was the dove turned hawk. The fresh face seemed to have lost its youth in a moment, to have grown old, sharp, rancorous. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... rights of the Negroes are at a lower ebb than at any time during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race prejudice more intense and uncompromising. It is not apparent that educated Southerners are less rancorous than others in their speech concerning the Negro, or less hostile in their attitude toward his rights. It is their voice alone that we have heard in this discussion; and if, as they state, they are liberal in their ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... stimulus of danger, in one shape or other, was at that time of life perhaps essential to his comfort, he soon substituted another scheme, which at this day might be accomplished with ease and safety enough, but in the year 1809 (under the rancorous system of Bonaparte) was full of hazard. In this scheme he was so good as to associate myself as one of his travelling companions, together with an earlier friend of his own—an Englishman, of a philosophical ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... political power to the Lesser Arts at the expense of the Greater, and confused the old State-system by enlarging the democracy. The net result of these events for Florence was, first, that the city became habituated to rancorous party-strife, involving exiles and proscriptions; and, secondly, that it lost its primitive ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... respectable Whigs, and strongly opposed by Birch and Maynard, [417] Howe was forced to give way: but he was a man whom no check could abash; and he was encouraged by the applause of many hotheaded members of his party, who were far from foreseeing that he would, after having been the most rancorous and unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distant time, the most ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Carolina there were many Loyalists, and hostilities were carried on between them and their republican neighbors with the most rancorous animosity. The country was thinly inhabited and abounded in woods and swamps. The cultivated parts were laid waste by hostile factions, and no magazines for the army were provided. The troops were almost naked, and Greene ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given by contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own writings subsequent to the Confessions, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... officer and Conway and Lee to displace our chief none know. My aunt insists he had naught to do with it. He was an honourable, honest man, but he was also a good, permanent hater, and sustained his hatreds with a fine escort of rancorous words, where Jack or I would ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... after the convocation of the council of Nice the peace and harmony of the several churches were disturbed by the rancorous discussion of the same old questions of Trintarianism and Unitarianism, the Western church adhering to the former while a majority of the Eastern congregations maintained their faith in the latter; but ultimately the Trinitarian party, gaining the ascendency, and persecuting the adherents ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... to speak of some business in which his interest is involved, he redoubles his gestures in proportion as he knows the necessity of convincing those who hear him, and fears their impassibility. If any rancorous idea agitate him in the course of his narrative; if he endeavour to infuse into his auditors sentiments of jealousy, vengeance, or any violent passion, his features become exaggerated, and the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, in which every infirmity and peculiarity of Hervey are handed down in calm, cruel irony, and polished verses, to posterity. The verses are almost too disgusting to be revived in an age which disclaims scurrility. After the most personal rancorous invective, he thus writes of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... Macaulay. As Prime Minister from 1783 to 1801, and afterwards in 1804-5, Pitt proved himself the greatest statesman, the man more in advance of his age than any of his predecessors or successors; while Fox's career was for the most part one of an opposition so rancorous, and so destitute of all patriotism, that he even exulted over the disasters of Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and afterwards over the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in 1800, avowedly because the Austrians were our allies, and it was a heavy blow ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... Rabbinical, rancorous, rapacious, ratiocination, rational, raucous, recalcitrant, recant, recapitulate, recession, reciprocal, reciprocate, recluse, recondite, recreant, recrudescence, rectilinear, rectitude, recumbent, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... obsessed by the theme. "His enemies—ah! the fools, fools. What a joy to see their astonished faces! Did you notice the critics, did you notice Mille in particular? He was in despair; for years that man pursued with his rancorous pen every opera by M. Patel." She paused. "But now he is conquered at last. Ah! Chardon, ah! Robert, Patel loved you, trusted you—and you helped him so much with your experience, your superior dramatic knowledge, your poetic gifts. You have been a noble ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... and more unkind things are said, in a sultry than in a temperate season. In the restless night-watches people have time to brood over small wrongs, and wax indignant over tiny slights and unoffered invitations. Perhaps politics, too, are apt to be more rancorous in a "heated term." Man is very much what ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... in a great satire, he bent all his energies, with the utmost seriousness, to writing 'The Dunciad' on the model of Dryden's 'Mac Flecknoe' and irresponsibly 'dealt damnation 'round the land.' Clever and powerful, the poem is still more disgusting—grossly obscene, pitifully rancorous against scores of insignificant creatures, and no less violent against some of the ablest men of the time, at whom Pope happened to have taken offense. Yet throughout the rest of his life Pope continued with keen delight to work ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... years old when his father was murdered, and succeeded to a kingdom beset on all sides with great dangers, and rancorous enemies. For not only the barbarous nations that bordered on Macedonia, were impatient of being governed by any but their own native princes; but Philip likewise, though he had been victorious over the Grecians, yet, as the time had not been sufficient for him to complete his conquest and accustom ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Brock's speech to the provincial parliament, on his meeting it for the first time; the session, although obstructed by party dissensions and unlooked-for opposition, terminated better than was anticipated, as the rancorous spirit of many was subdued by his frank and conciliatory demeanour; and laws were passed which enabled him to organize the flank companies of the militia, unaccompanied, however, by the desired oath of abjuration, so as to exclude settlers ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... to be your method!" She flashed back at me. "You can say what you please about my character, now that I know yours. Thank God I am too well known to fear your rancorous tongue!" ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... particular should endeavour to recommend himself to her favour, by speaking against Edmund, to whom she was under great obligations? He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... Galenists were bitterly decrying his refusal to accept Galen on many points, and both of these works would have added fuel to the flame of controversy. He deemed it wiser, then, not to give any further opportunities for rancorous criticism, and, feeling presumably that in his new and important post it was not worth while to bother further over the matter, he burnt them. He tells the reason in his letters to Joachin Roelant: "When I was about to leave ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... me an' Tutt,' says Boggs; 'an' cut her short, 'cause it's the opinion of our gent this rancorous Thompson infests the earth too long, an' he's ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... far better to share the superstitious opinions of a virtuous and benignant priest, like the Bishop in Victor Hugo's Miserables, than to hold these good opinions of Chaumette, as he held them, with a rancorous intolerance, a reckless disregard of the rights and feelings of others, and a shallow forgetfulness of all that great and precious part of our nature that lies out of the domain of the logical understanding.... In every family where a mother sought to have her child baptised, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... This avenging God, rancorous torturer who burns his creatures in a slow fire! When they tell me that God made himself a man, I prefer to recognize a man who made ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... allowable for a man to trick a woman in that way, without the smallest damage to his self-respect, that sticks so in my throat. What does it imply as regards his attitude towards all women? Ah! it is that which makes me feel so rancorous. And I resent Hubert's calm assumption that he had a right to judge what was best for me, and even to force me, by fraud, into following his view, leaving me afterwards to adjust myself with circumstance as best I might: to make my bitter choice between unconditional ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... covered with sweat which had rundown from their powdered locks. Nevertheless, these ruddy, lusty Englishmen marched stoutly, as men that needed only a half-hour's rest, a good breakfast, and a pot of beer apiece, to make them ready to face the world. Nor did their faces look anywise rancorous; but at most, only heavy, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Rancorous" :   rancor, resentful



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