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Uninhabitable   Listen
adjective
Uninhabitable  adj.  See inhabitable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Uninhabitable" Quotes from Famous Books



... all rough characters who had made Lucknow their centre, and had no visible means of subsistence. Large gangs of the lower class population were set to work to bury the dead, which would otherwise have rendered the city uninhabitable. Strong guards were posted at night, alike to prevent soldiers from wandering in search of loot and to prevent fanatics ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... rotation of the earth. In his clear-sightedness on this matter we have specially to admire the sagacity of Copernicus as a natural philosopher. It had been urged that, if the earth moved round, its motion would not be imparted to the air, and that therefore the earth would be uninhabitable by the terrific winds which would be the result of our being carried through the air. Copernicus convinced himself that this deduction was preposterous. He proved that the air must accompany the earth, just as his coat remains round him, notwithstanding ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... . As for ourselves we have hardly done so well—yet well—having enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent us to Fano as "a delightful summer residence for an English family," and we found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched into paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words that no drop of rain or dew ever falls there ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... sick and died. News came of the death of Sir John Popham in England, and presently the weary and disappointed settlers abandoned their enterprise and returned to their old homes. Their failure spread abroad in England the opinion that North Virginia was uninhabitable by reason of the cold, and no further attempts were made upon that coast until in 1614 it was visited by Captain John Smith. [Sidenote: First exploration ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... is so foolhardy as to sleep on the Campagna during its continuance. These marshes, I understand, are increasing; and the malaria is increasing in consequence. That fatal vapour now comes every summer to the gates of Rome: it covers a certain quarter of the city, which, I was told, is uninhabitable during its continuance; and if nothing be done to lessen the malaria at its source, it will, some century or half century after this, envelope in its pestilential folds the whole of the Eternal City, and the traveller will gaze with awe on the blackened ruins of Rome, as he does on those ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... the night was drawing in. The moor was sounding loud and eerie with the call of large birds. Very cold and uncharitable, a breeze came from Cruach-an-Lochain, and in the evening dusk the country seemed most woefully poor and uninhabitable. So it appeared to Gilian for a moment when at last he came to the head of the brae where he should have his first sight of the light that could make that wild as warm and hospitable and desirable as a king's ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... These were the last Esquimaux we should see, and I was sorry, for I had grown to like very heartily and to respect very sincerely this kindly, gentle, industrious, good-humoured race. Surely they are a people any nation may be proud to have fringing its otherwise uninhabitable coasts, and should be eager to aid and conserve. There comes a feeling of impotent exasperation to me when I realise how many white men there are who speak of them continually with the utmost contempt and see them dwindle with entire complacency. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... might add, for the benefit of those who have forgotten their maps of the universe, is a satellite of A-411, which, in turn, is one of the largest bodies of the universe, and both uninhabited and uninhabitable. Antri is somewhat larger than the moon, Earth's satellite, and considerably farther ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... tones of mingled surprise and asperity: "Still at the old song! still harping, harping, harping! Peace, no more of it. Heaven would be insufferable with but one hymn, hell thrice horrible with but one howl, earth uninhabitable with but one evil. Oh, variety, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... and healthy parts, of human nature. For practical purposes all these complaints of man are of as little avail as Johnson found the complaint that of the globe so large a space should be occupied by the uninhabitable ocean, encumbered by naked mountains, lost under barren sands, scorched by perpetual heat or petrified by perpetual frost, and so small a space be left for the production of fruits, the pasture of cattle, and the accommodation ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... end, if only we can conceive it in complete isolation, and be sure that so isolated it remains valuable. Bread is good. Is bread good as an end or as a means? Conceive a loaf existing in an uninhabited and uninhabitable planet. Does it seem to lose its value? That is a little too easy. The physical universe appears to most people immensely good, for towards nature they feel violently that emotional reaction which brings to the lips the epithet "good"; but if the physical universe ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... efforts proved ineffectual to restore the men, and they were soon sent to join a number of their shipmates in their ocean grave. Two or three others, I heard, died in the same manner, when I was not present. The gun-room had become uninhabitable from the water washing through it. We had to move up to the ward-room. The deck below us was fast sinking. The carpenter reported that some of the beams of the orlop deck had fallen into the hold, though they must have done so gradually, for we had heard no sound ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... houses we found nicely polished floors, and simply furnished rooms, of a truly German style, stove included. The poorer abodes were mere hovels made of peat, admitting neither light nor air, and having the roofs covered with grass. One would have thought them almost uninhabitable, and yet I had seen dwellings nearly as ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... the monikinia; since which time a great, salutary, harmonious, and contemplated alteration has occurred. Nature had reserved the polar region for the new species, with divers obvious and benevolent purposes. They were rendered uninhabitable by the obliquity of the sun's rays; and though matter, in the shape of mastodons and whales, with an instinct of its antagonistic destination, had frequently invaded their precincts, it was only to leave the remains of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... heathen known as the head-hunters. Those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence, paralleling the trail of their prey through unmapped forests, across perilous mountain-tops, adown bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable jungles, always near with the invisible hand of death uplifted, betraying their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a gliding serpent might make—a twig crackling in the awful, sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from the screening foliage of a giant tree, ...
— Options • O. Henry

... floor were slimy, and in the hollows little lakes were gathering: the lowest film of the torrent-water ran down the rock behind, and making its way between rock and roof, threatened soon to render the place uninhabitable. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... by reason of them it is not possible to pass through and proceed further: but to me it seems that when they so speak, they say that which is not probable; for these creatures are known to be intolerant of cold, and to me it seems that the regions which go up towards the pole are uninhabitable by reason of the cold climate. These then are the tales reported about this country; and however that may be, Megabazos was then making the coast-regions of it ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... am not God. Therefore, when we have rid this world of atomics we will leave and you will start all over again. If you really try, you can not only kill all animal life on your planet, but make it absolutely uninhabitable for...." ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... Parian which Don Gonzalo Ronquillo had built was destroyed by fire. At first it seemed absurd to think that human habitations were to be built in that marsh, but the Sangleys, who are very industrious, and a most ingenious people, managed it so well that, in a place seemingly uninhabitable, they have built a Parian resembling the other, although much larger and higher. According to them it suits them better than the other, because on the firm ground where the four rows of buildings are located they have built their houses and the streets leading through ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... proposed to construct the sheets of the map on a scale of 1-250,000, or about four miles to the inch. In the mountain regions of the West the geology is more complex, and the topography more intricate; but to a large extent these regions are uninhabited, and to a more limited extent uninhabitable. It would therefore not be wise to make a topographic or geologic survey of the country on an excessively elaborate plan. Over much of this area the sheets of the map will also be constructed on a scale of 1-250,000, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... comfortable: fine hall, breakfast room, Flemish pictures, Boulton and Watt at either end. After breakfast, at which was Mr. Priestly, an American, son of Dr. Priestly, we went over all the habitable and uninhabitable parts of the house: the banqueting room, with a most costly, frightful ceiling, and a chimneypiece carved up to the cornice with monsters, one with a nose covered with scales, one with human face on a tarantula's body. Varieties of little staircases, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... fire. The imperial guard had not quitted the palace. The army carried their cantonments outside the town. When scarcely fallen into the hands of the conquerors, Moscow succumbed before a more powerful enemy, enrolled for the defence of the country. Palaces and huts were both become uninhabitable, and the hospitals, filled with wounded Russians, had perished in the flames. The emperor quitted Moscow, and took up his quarters at Petrowskoi. For three days the conflagration remained alone ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... big house and the two immense reception-rooms, uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude and of shining things that look as if never beheld by the eye of man? They are cool on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave underground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... in New York. The proportion between surface and inhabitants is not very different between New England and Switzerland, if Maine be excluded. Parts of the cantons are crowded with people, as Zurich for instance, while a large part is uninhabitable rocks and ice. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... had patronized and piqued her. She turned as she spoke and looked up the sad, lonely river. The moon was making its veiled face seen through the gray heaven, and touching the black stream with hints of melancholy light. On either hand the uninhabitable shore rose in desolate grandeur, friendless heights of rock with a thin covering of pines seen in dim outline along their tops and deepening into the solid dark of hollows and ravines upon their sides. The cry of some wild bird ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... rented—were pretty well taken up with promenading and pleasant lounging, to which the delicious climate and novel scenery invited. But this paradisaic condition was suddenly changed as if by magic when at the end of two or three weeks the wet season began and the Son-Vent became uninhabitable. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... there be any fearful roaring of the sea, forbidding the passengers to walk on it; even that will be made easily passable to the just, though it will not be void of moisture. Heaven will not then be uninhabitable by men, and it will not be impossible to discover the way of ascending thither. The earth will not be uncultivated, nor require too much labor of men, but will bring forth its fruits of its own accord, and will be ...
— An Extract out of Josephus's Discourse to The Greeks Concerning Hades • Flavius Josephus

... and barren, uninhabitable and desolate; the cold winds of the snow-borne North may blow across it, and freeze it into ice-bound sterility; or the blazing fury of the tropic sun may pour down upon it, and scorch it into a dreary waste of glaring, burning sand; but if ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... inspection. After his choice had been narrowed down by a process of elimination he had to spend several hours in each of two or three hotels, in the room intended for J. P., so that he could detect any of the hundred noises which might make the room uninhabitable to its ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... the Orient are little if any better now than European homes in the Middle Ages. The houses are rude structures and ill-kept. In the villages of India it is not unusual to occupy one house until it becomes so unsanitary as to be uninhabitable, and then to move elsewhere. Even royal courts in mediaeval Europe moved from palace to palace for the same reason. It is a mistake to suppose that the squalid conditions found in the slums are peculiar to them; ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... preferred to do it with her own hands in secret rather than see others do it openly in all its squalor. The business might be more efficiently organized—for example, there was no reason why the sitting-room should be made uninhabitable between breakfast and dinner once a week—but it could never be other than odious. The kitchen floor must inevitably be washed every day by a girl on her knees in sackcloth with terrible hands. She was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... relatively the sharp apex of the triangle, the mere intersection of two lines. This point, this seemingly dimensionless dot, was in reality two score weary miles of sandhills, shapeless, vague, and low; waterless, colorless, and forlorn. Southward the central desert was uninhabitable; opinions differed ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... hour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day would render the place uninhabitable. ...
— Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... rid of these dead bodies, if we can," Stanley said, "or the place will be uninhabitable, ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... chains to the westward, not one partakes of the qualities of the Encantadas or Gallipagos, the isles of St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles Juan-Fernandez and Massafuero. Of the first, it needs not here to speak. The second lie a little above the Southern Tropic; lofty, inhospitable, and uninhabitable rocks, one of which, presenting two round hummocks connected by a low reef, exactly resembles a huge double-headed shot. The last lie in the latitude of 33 deg.; high, wild and cloven. Juan Fernandez ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... to his own servants and different household uses. But the time came when not even this accommodation, poor as it was, could be enjoyed with any degree of comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of airiness and cleanliness, did ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... folly was not any ordinary folly. It was the kind that made the parish which was so aware of it uninhabitable ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... the direction of Blucherberg, and for a while the excitement was intense. However the people reflected that the country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... about three miles. It is a plain intersected by dykes and ditches, and mapped out into innumerable rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies under water, and during the other months exhales a pestilential vapour, which renders it as uninhabitable as the Roman Campagna; yet in springtime this dreary flat is even beautiful. The young blades of the rice shoot up above the water, delicately green and tender. The ditches are lined with flowering rush and golden flags, while white and yellow lilies sleep in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... at the last extremity. All our efforts ought to be directed toward saving the 'Alaska.' Deprived of her, our situation will be a very precarious one on the ice. It is only in case of our vessel becoming uninhabitable that we must desert it. In any case such a movement should be made in an orderly manner to avoid disasters. I therefore expect that you will return quietly to your supper, and leave to your superior officers the task of determining what ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... it is said, they are visible twice as far, so clear and serene is this air. Five hundred miles west is the coast of British Columbia, a region with a different climate, different country, and different problems. It is cut off from the prairies by vast tracts of wild country and uninhabitable ranges. For nearly two hundred miles the train pants through the homeless grandeur of the Rockies and the Selkirks. Four or five hotels, a few huts or tents, and a rare mining-camp—that is all the habitation in many thousands of square miles. Little even of that is visible from the train. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... coldest, windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent period; mostly uninhabitable ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... hot as it is. would be downright uninhabitable if it were not washed by the waters of the Cheliff. The necessities arising from our conquest of the country had made it a revictualling post for our columns, and a trial had just been made there of a new sort of provision, described as rations maigres. These consisted of biscuit and dried ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... to the same process of nature, and it has been pointed out that, unless this provision did exist, the accumulation of such organic wastes since the settlement of this country would be so great as to make the country uninhabitable. Fortunately, however, this inevitable process breaks down the structure of all organic material, partly converting fiber and pulp into gas, partly liquefying the material and converting the remainder into inorganic matter which is of vast importance as food ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... rejoiced on the plain of Meath, the tent of the Abbot of Iona was pitched on the rath of Tara—a fact which would seem to indicate that already, in little more than a century since the interdict had fallen on it, the edifices which made so fine a show in the days of Patrick were ruined and uninhabitable. Either at Tara, or some other of the royal residences, Adamnan on this visit procured the passing of a law, (A.D. 684,) forbidding women to accompany an army to battle, or to engage personally in the conflict. The mild maternal genius of Christianity ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... the experiments that are being made," Singleton went on. "Their summers are hot but short; if they can get a grain that ripens early, they can cultivate vast stretches of land that are now, from economic reasons, uninhabitable, and it would make farming a more prosperous business in other tracts. Crops growing in the favored parts are occasionally frozen. It's a coincidence that a day or two ago I got a letter inquiring about that kind of wheat from a friend in Canada who is, as it happens, farming with a cousin of Lansing's." ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... are of rough unhewn stone. They are divided into large square rooms, always damp, cold, and uninhabitable. Beneath the straw roofs there usually hang long rows of the stuffed skins of foxes; for every Indian who kills an old fox receives, by way of reward, a sheep, and for a young one a lamb. The Cholos are therefore zealous fox-hunters, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... possession of the dome, perches upon it and, for long hours, watches events while polishing her wings. If some claimant puts in an appearance, forthwith the other turns her out with a volley of blows. In this way the old nests are employed so long as they have not become uninhabitable hovels. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... day, and soon had commenced their first route march into the battle-ways of France, and, incidentally, at the first resting place, Mouflers, made cheerily light of what was their first experience of faulty billeting arrangements. One billet, for 150 men, at the Folie Auberge was uninhabitable, and the appearance of the billets in general was greeted with good-natured growls of amazement and disgust. The weather, however, was mild and sunny, and after about eight hours' work all the troops were more or less under cover. When ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... and that you are unable to clamber up trees after the cats who defy you there; to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to sleep and the patches of shade in which you shiver; to remark with stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses, that water is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous, while fire is beneficent at a distance, but terrible when you come too near; to observe that the meadows, the farm-yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant creatures with threatening ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck

... "after having, doubtless, existed for thousands of centuries. Then gradually the atmosphere becoming rarefied, the disc will again be uninhabitable like the terrestrial globe will one ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... are very troublesome, as they are fond of loitering about the table, just like flies in America and other countries. They are a nuisance to which nobody ever gets accustomed, and in some localities they almost render the country uninhabitable. Mosquitoes abound in most parts of the country, especially along the rivers and lakes and in swampy regions, and every traveler who expects to be out at night carries a mosquito net ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... damage done by the great Napoleonic flood was almost impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away. The palaces of two score dynasties had been damaged to such an extent that they had to be condemned as uninhabitable. Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the expense of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire community. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... grey parrot was turned out of the dining-room into the drawing-room. And as Maurice couldn't stand either the noise of the type-writer or the noises of the parrot he found both the dining-room and the drawing-room uninhabitable. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... became aggressive. "What won't you have? There is no sense in what you say. As we have a child we must have a nurse. If I had spoken of nursing the little one myself you would have told me I was a fool. You would have found the house more uninhabitable than ever, if you had seen me with the child always in my arms. But I won't nurse—I can't. As you say, we will take a third nurse; it's simple enough, and we'll do so at ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... Lansing crossed his long legs, glanced nervously about the room, and said, "The world as we know it is done with. Finished. In another week it will be completely uninhabitable." ...
— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas

... Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Most of this country was practically unknown to Americans, and the great stretches of arid land which comprised large portions of it were considered worthless and uninhabitable. But a good many Americans had drifted across the border into the fertile plains of Texas, and settled there. As time went on, the stream of immigration increased, until there were in the country enough American settlers to take a prominent part in the revolt of Mexico against ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... sailor, but also entails a great amount of labour on the light-keepers, and injury to the lantern. The combustion of the oil also produces a large quantity of carbonic acid gas, which is of a very deleterious nature, and in many cases rendered the light-keepers' rooms almost uninhabitable. Under these circumstances, the Trinity House made application to Dr. Faraday to investigate the subject, with a view to the discovery of some remedy. With his usual skill and sagacity, Dr. Faraday instituted a number of inquiries and experiments, and visited some of the ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... in the house, which could be construed into a spiritual visitation. Has such a manifestation occurred?" he eagerly inquired. "Has it? has it? Am I to add her name to the list of those who have found the house uninhabitable?" ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... in the Berkshire Hills was spoken of, and upon examination seemed practicable. Lenox, at that time, was as little known as Mount Desert; it was not until long afterwards that fashion found them out and made them uninhabitable to any but fashionable folks. Moreover, my father had seen something of Lenox a dozen ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... or heard of some house, shut up and uninhabitable, fallen into decay, and looking dusty and dreary, from which, at midnight, strange sounds have been heard to issue—aerial knockings—the rattling of chains, and the groaning of perturbed spirits?—a house that people have thought it unsafe to pass ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... speaks with the bitterness of a bachelor shut out of paradise. It is my experience that if women did not destroy the rubbish that men bring into the house, it would become uninhabitable, and need to be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... touched flesh, the light was quenched, Mrs. Pat Dearman having realized that the stuffy, hot cabin was positively uninhabitable until the port-hole could be opened, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... sight of land, at this extremity of both the inhabitable and uninhabitable world, our peopled frigate, echoing with the voices of men, the bleating of lambs, the cackling of fowls, the gruntings of pigs, seemed like Noah's old ark itself, becalmed at ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... experts. The first time I ever saw one he came into my mountain hut. Knowing only that he was "varmint" I endeavoured to kill him quickly with a spade. Alas! the spade fell just a moment too late and henceforth that hut was uninhabitable for a month. The only way to get one out of the house is to pour buckets of cold water on it. That keeps the tail down (unlike a horse, which cannot kick when his tail is up); but when his tail goes up, then look out! The skunk is also more dreaded by the cowboy ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... hold the eternity of the world hold that some region was changed an infinite number of times, from being uninhabitable to being inhabitable and "vice versa," and likewise they hold that the arts, by reason of various corruptions and accidents, were subject to an infinite variety of advance and decay. Hence Aristotle says (Meteor. i), that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... because of fires, many of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886, an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented roof. It ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... in the outskirts of Timber Town stood a dilapidated wooden cottage. Its windows lacked many panes, its walls were bare of paint, the shingles of its roof were rotten and scanty; it seemed uninhabitable and empty, and yet, as night fell, within it there burned a light. Moreover, there were other signs of life within its crazy walls, for when all without was quiet and dark, the door opened ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... produced living creatures, the world out of its own propensity made an inclination toward the south. Perhaps this may be attributed to a wise Providence (they affirm), that thereby some parts of the world may be habitable, others uninhabitable, according as the various climates are affected with a rigorous cold, or a scorching heat, or a just temperament of cold and heat. Empedocles, that the air yielding to the impetuous force of the solar rays, the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... giving them more than they need. Other parts have been left with little. We shall also discover what wonderful things men are doing to make up for the failures of Nature, and to make habitable many of those places which she left uninhabitable. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... apartments, straggling over a surface of ground, about fifteen acres in extent, were neither sufficiently numerous to lodge the suite, nor to contain the presents and our baggage; and were moreover so miserably out of repair and in so ruinous a condition, that the greater part was wholly uninhabitable. The officers were accordingly told that these were not accommodations suitable to the dignity of a British Embassador, and that he would not on any consideration put up with them; that it was a ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... in Rome itself, and in A.D. 15 it was proposed to divert part of its waters into the Arnus, a project which was abandoned owing to the opposition of the Florentines (Tac. Ann. i. 76, 79). In the middle ages the whole of its valley from Arezzo to Chiusi was an uninhabitable swamp; but at the end of the 18th century the engineer Count Fossombroni took the matter in hand, and moved the watershed some 25 m. farther south, so that its waters now flow partly into the Arno and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... engineers are planning to do. The Seer and I rode over there once and he told me about it. I'll show you, if you like. New! Why the West was ages old before the East was discovered! The Seer says that if Columbus had come first to the western coast New England to-day would still be an uninhabitable, howling wilderness." ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... construction highly useful in a river peculiarly liable to floods from sudden thaws; which sometimes occasion such an increase of the waters, as to render the lower stories of the houses in the adjacent parts of the city uninhabitable. The bridge itself was destroyed by a similar accident, in 1709, for want of a timely removal. Its plan is commonly attributed to a monk of the order of St. Augustine, by whom it was erected in 1626, about sixty years after the stone bridge, built by the Empress ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... loneliness of his room, or on his frequent long walks after office hours, he was wont to brood over them until his mind became surcharged and found relief only in emptying itself into this journal. And often on summer days, when the intense heat rendered his little room in the dormitory uninhabitable, he would take his books and papers to some one of the smaller parks lining the Tiber, and there would lose himself in study and meditation and the recording of the ceaseless ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... we reached the (Prison). It was about 10 p.m. when we got there. Things then became much livelier; shells were bursting all round. We found the building uninhabitable. The casualties there during the last few days have been very heavy. One shell buried a party in the debris; it took four hours' solid digging to get them out! So it has been decided to abandon the ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... among themselves, and—what scarcely amounted to warfare—there were the raids on all sides of pillaging bands, who, although too feeble to constitute any serious danger to large cities, were strong enough either in numbers or discipline to render the country districts uninhabitable, and to destroy national prosperity. The banks of the Nile already bristled with citadels, where the monarchs lived and kept watch over the lands subject to their authority: other fortresses were established wherever any commanding site—such as ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... These settlements at first were made on the bluffs projecting through the alluvial swamp to the river's brink, and at or near the mouths of the small streams debouching into the river from the eastern shore. The west bank was deemed uninhabitable in consequence of the spring floods sweeping over the alluvial formation, extending from forty to seventy miles west of the river; and there being no highlands or bluffs approaching the river from the west, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... eviction, was the order of the day. They rushed to Malone's house, and, with his consent and assistance, tore off the roof, smashed the windows, and demolished the doors. The place was thus rendered uninhabitable. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... certain that the occupation of the left bank of the Rio Grande, without an attempt at an understanding, would bring about a collision. The country lying between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was then entirely uninhabited, and was thought uninhabitable, though subsequent years have shown the fallacy of that belief. The occupation of the country extended no farther than the Nueces, and the Mexican farmers cultivated their corn and cotton in peace in the fertile ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... miles off was speedily rendered uninhabitable, and was destroyed by the falling stones; but two others—Herculaneum and Pompeii—which already had suffered from the down-pour of ashes, were gradually filled with a flood of water, sand, and ashes, which came down the side of the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... walks with which this part of the suburbs abounded, we have now a number of square brick-dust tubs, miscalled cottages ornee, and a strange-looking Turkish sort of a prison called a Penitentiary, which from being judiciously placed in a swamp is rendered completely uninhabitable. Cumberland-gardens, on the opposite side, was, in former times, in great vogue; here the cits used to rusticate on a summer's evening, coming up the water in shoals to show their dexterity in rowing, and daring the dangers ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... myself, I shall live abroad during the greater part of the year. London has become to me uninhabitable, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... he observed of the country, on both these occasions, he was led to infer that beyond the limits of his advance the interior had a uniform level, and was, for the most part, uninhabitable and under water. Its features must have been strongly marked to have confirmed such an opinion in the mind of the late Surveyor-General. It stands recorded on the pages of his journal, that he travelled over a country of many miles in extent, after clearing ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... that the building was only, so to speak, standing on sufferance, and would have to be entirely reconstructed. On arriving at King's House, we found the main building still standing, but so damaged that it might collapse at any moment, and therefore uninhabitable. The handsome ballroom, which formed a separate wing, was nothing but a pile of rubbish, a formless mass of bricks and plaster. The dining-room, making the corresponding wing, was built entirely of wood, and had consequently escaped injury. This dining-room was a very lofty hall, paved with ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... Rico do, probably, powerfully contribute to purify the atmosphere and render it more salubrious to Europeans than it otherwise would be. In the mountains one enjoys the coolness of spring, but the valleys, were it not for the daily breeze which blows from the northeast and east, would be almost uninhabitable for white men during part of the year. The climate of the north and south coasts of this island, though under the same tropical influence, is nevertheless essentially different. On the north coast it sometimes rains almost the whole year, while on the south coast ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... think it an evil that the globe is no larger than it is. As much as we shall ever need is evidently assigned to us for our dwelling-place; the rest, covered with rolling waves or drifting sands, fretted with ice or crested with fire, is set before us for contemplation in an uninhabitable magnificence; and that part which we are enabled to inhabit owes its fitness for human life chiefly to its mountain ranges, which, throwing the superfluous rain off as it falls, collect it in streams or lakes, and guide it into given places, and in given directions; so that men ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... The room into which I was ushered, corresponded well with the exterior of the house. It was large, bleak, and ill furnished; the ample, uncurtained windows; the cold, white pannelled walls; the uncarpeted floor; all giving it an air of uninhabitable misery. A few chairs of the Louis-quatorze taste, with blue velvet linings, faded and worn, a cracked marble table upon legs that once had been gilt; two scarcely detectable portraits of a mail-clad hero and a scarcely ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... places uninhabitable," the professor replied. "Where a market is near enough, the dead fish are collected and sold ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... had been made for the rugged nature of the country, and consequently the magnificent street was located over hills whose proportions prevented its use as a public highway, while some of the lots were uninhabitable. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... regarded the Dismal Swamp, as they called the morass, as utterly uninhabitable and impassable; he had never heard any sounds of life from within; he thought the place haunted; it abounded in quagmires, and corpse lights and baleful fires were seen ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... as to admit of being called constant and permanent. The predominant influence of the blacks in the Cotton States is already (even putting aside the results of slavery) exhibiting itself in the lowering of the whites. These States are becoming uninhabitable for the whites,—not by reason of climate, or of slavery as an institution, but by reason of the operation of the inevitable increase of the slaves. They must have the land, and the stronger race will be driven out by the weaker, on account of the preponderance ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... not navigated the rivers of equinoctial America can scarcely conceive how, at every instant, without intermission, you may be tormented by insects flying in the air, and how the multitudes of these little animals may render vast regions almost uninhabitable. Whatever fortitude be exercised to endure pain without complaint, whatever interest may be felt in the objects of scientific research, it is impossible not to be constantly disturbed by the mosquitos, zancudos, jejens, and tempraneros, ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... quitted this savage and uninhabitable region, where for four months we had been in constant danger of shipwreck, where in the height of summer the weather is foggy, cold, and stormy, where almost all the valleys are without verdure, and the mountains without woods, in short ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... made Berlin almost uninhabitable to Mrs. March had such an effect with General Triscoe at Weimar that under the orders of an English-speaking doctor he retreated from it altogether and went to bed. Here he escaped the bronchitis which had attacked him, and his convalesence ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... one human dwelling-place in sight As far as the eye could sweep, range after range of uninhabitable hills covered with the skeletons of dead forests; ledge after ledge of ice-worn granite thrust out like fangs into the foaming waves of the gulf. Nature, with her teeth bare and her lips scarred: this was the landscape. And in the midst of it, on a low hill above the murmuring river, surrounded ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... think communication was not possible. Later it cleared and the flood abated; a lively bombardment was then commenced, on the assumption, probably, that the Mafeking trenches were filled with water and uninhabitable. It was trying to the nerves to sit and listen to the six or seven guns all belching forth their missiles of death on the gallant little town, which was so plainly seen from my windows, and which seemed ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... masons at any minute," said I, contemplating the unstable stone crest of the northeast turret with some uneasiness. My face brightened suddenly. "That particular section of the castle is uninhabitable, I am told. It really doesn't matter if it collapses. Ah, Britton! Here you are, I see. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... atmosphere in that locality, resulting in masses or sheets of water, which would be so ruinously destructive by the mere weight and impetus of their fall that it is doubtful whether they would not render the earth almost wholly uninhabitable. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... suffocating gases without risking the lives of the police," answered Garrick. "In spite of the fragility of the bombs that I have here, it has been found that they will penetrate a wooden door or even a thin brick partition before the fuse explodes them. One bomb will render a room three hundred feet off uninhabitable in thirty ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... They found a level and fertile country, receding to the very base of the mountains, and a practicable pass, of less altitude than those at the head-waters of the Missouri; but in winter the snow is deep and the climate severe. That section of Canada north of Superior is an unbroken, uninhabitable wilderness. The character of the region is thus set forth by Agassiz. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... developments in relation to the volcano and on public sector construction activity. The UK has launched a three-year $122.8 million aid program to help reconstruct the economy. Half of the island is expected to remain uninhabitable for another decade. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... huts on the Vlamertinghe road had now been allotted us instead of our bivouac field, and as on the following day it rained hard, we were not sorry. Our satisfaction, however, was short-lived, for the hut roofs were of wood only, and leaked in so many places that many were absolutely uninhabitable and had to be abandoned. At the same time some short lengths of shelter trench which we had dug in case of shelling were completely filled with water, so that anyone desiring shelter must needs have a bath as well. This wet weather, coupled with a previous shortage of water in ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... these substances cannot be evaporated, they would accumulate to such a degree as to render the ocean uninhabitable by living creatures, had not God provided against this by the most beautiful compensation. He has filled the ocean with innumerable animals and marine plants, whose special duty it is to seize and make use of the substances thus swept from ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... stripped the building of all the lead, wood, and glass they could lay their hands on, and sold the wreck to make up their back pay. At the Restoration, when Bishop Duppa came to the See, he found the castle almost uninhabitable. It cost him more than two thousand pounds to make it fit to live in, and his successor, Bishop Morley, spent even more. He actually laid out ten thousand pounds in improvements, only to meet with John ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... of the Canary Islands we have the description of a peculiar tree in the Island of Hierro, which is the means of supplying the inhabitants, man as well as inferior animals, with water; an island which, but for this marvellous adjunct, would be uninhabitable and abandoned. The tree is called Til by the people of the island, and has attached to it the epithet garse, or sacred. It is situated on the top of a rock, terminating the district called Tigulatre, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various

... commerce have been extended, and the spirit of enterprise has carried our adventurous countrymen into countries which had never yet been indented by a European foot; and which, in the great map of the world, appeared as barren and uninhabitable places, destitute of all resources from which the traveller could derive a subsistence. It must, however, on the other hand, be admitted, that design has frequently had little to do in the discovery of those countries, however well it may have been conceived, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... seemed more terrible than even the bleak expanse of ice and snow that lay behind, for nothing could be seen except a vast and drear accumulation of lava-blocks of every imaginable shape, without a trace of vegetation—uninhabited, uninhabitable, and unpassable to man. But just where the ice ended and the rocks began there was a long, low reef, which projected for more than a quarter of a mile into the water, affording the only possible landing-place within sight. Here we ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... waist-deep, and if they venture beyond the shelter of the bank the whirling eddies threaten to sweep them away. The fords are treacherous, with shifting bottom and changing currents. The poets and prophets of the Old Testament give us a true idea of this uninhabitable and unlovable river-bed when they speak of "the pride of Jordan," "the swellings of Jordan," where the lion hides among the reeds in his secret lair, a "refuge of lies," which the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... stab, poison, and extort money; thus violence and lust went hand in hand, and to this profligate lower stratum of society may be ascribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered Rome under Innocent VIII. almost uninhabitable. Venice, praised for its piety by De Comines,[2] was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... England produces so many; one of those good and insupportable old maids who haunt the tables d'hote of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias their manners of petrified vestals, their indescribable toilets and a certain odor of india-rubber which makes one believe that at night they are slipped into a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... their trout-stream and kitchen-garden, but any interest beyond that would have been heathenish and dangerous. Whilst to the ancients the earth had value only as enjoyable, inhabitable, the earlier Christian ages valued it only as uninhabitable, as a wilderness repelling society. In the earliest mediaeval landscapes, the effort to represent a wilderness that is there only for the sake of the hermits leads to the curious contradiction of a populous hermitage, every part of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... residence being distributed by the authorities, each soldier went to seek his borrowed home. They were received by their hosts with a very ill grace and assigned the most atrociously uninhabitable parts of the houses. The girls of the city were not indeed among those who were most dissatisfied, but a strict watch was kept over them, and it was considered not decent to show pleasure at the visit of such rabble. The few soldiers who were natives of the district only were treated like ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... village of the Samburu—a nomad people dwelling farther south. Here they found not only cattle, sheep and goats, but herds of camels, which were kept for their milk and hair alone. These villagers knew nothing of what lay beyond, save that it was desert and uninhabitable. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... and at points in the southern regions of the Balkan Peninsula. It is suggested that these various finds are scattered evidences of early racial drifts from the Central Asian areas which were gradually being rendered uninhabitable. Among the Copper Age artifacts at Anau are clay votive statuettes resembling those which were used in Sumeria for religious purposes. These, however, cannot be held to prove a racial connection, but they are important in so far as they afford evidence of early trade relations in ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... Diano Castello; while other places, such as Oneglia, Bussana, Baiardo, Pompeiana, and Vallecrosia, suffered only a little less severely. At Mentone about 155 houses, and at Nice about 61 houses, were rendered uninhabitable, and ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... on the island. He must have found discomfort and privation enough to satisfy even him, for it is said that there was neither water nor vegetation upon the island, which was then altogether barren and uninhabitable. Besides that, it had the reputation of being haunted by malignant demons, which took up their abode there. The saint, however, was not afraid of evil spirits, nor anything else, and the spot became ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... doubtful esteem, inasmuch as the French word diamant, minus its first syllable, signified a "lover"; the beryl, of uncertain hue, made sure the love of man and wife; and Marbodus is authority for the statement that "the emerald is found only in a dry and uninhabitable country, so bitterly cold that nothing can live there but the griffins and the one-eyed arimasps ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... settled mind and happy life can consist in such motion, the least degree of which would be troublesome to us. Why, therefore, should it not be considered troublesome also to the Deity? For the earth itself, as it is part of the world, is part also of the Deity. We see vast tracts of land barren and uninhabitable; some, because they are scorched by the too near approach of the sun; others, because they are bound up with frost and snow, through the great distance which the sun is from them. Therefore, if the world is a Deity, as these are parts of the world, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... lectularii potens remedium contra quartanum est, si ab inscio aegro cum vehiculo congrua potentur; mulierum morbis medentur et uterum prolapsum solo odore in mum locum restituunt.] Let him note that most of the inns of this region are quite uninhabitable, for this and other reasons, unless he takes the most ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... or second kingdom of Syria, was very large, and went from Asia Minor to the borders of India, and it had two great capital cities, Antioch in Syria, and Seleucia upon the Tigris, where the Babylonians went to live when their city became deserted and uninhabitable. Both these places were named after the Greek Kings of Syria, who were by turns ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... pension for the widow; but it was charity—hardly enough to pay the rent. Fortunately Louise, who already looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and more than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket with their chromatic scales. Louise's earnings constituted the surest part of their revenue. What a strange paradox is the social life in large cities, where Weber's Last Waltz will bring the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee



Words linked to "Uninhabitable" :   unlivable, unliveable



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