Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Comparative   /kəmpˈɛrətɪv/   Listen
Comparative

noun
1.
The comparative form of an adjective or adverb.  Synonym: comparative degree.  "'less famous' is the comparative degree of the adjective 'famous'" , "'more surely' is the comparative of the adverb 'surely'"



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Comparative" Quotes from Famous Books



... a royal residence for some time after its completion, for Charles IX clung tenaciously to his well-guarded apartments in the Louvre; for the central structure of the Tuileries, because of its lack of comparative height, was hardly as much of a stronghold ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... need not discount the possibility that a graphic image could have a negative impact on a young child. It must be remembered, however, that children will be exposed to signal bleed under time channeling as well. . . . The record is silent as to the comparative ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... of such a future autopsy might seem a matter of comparative indifference, since meantime the present effect to the republic of those deep emotions was a treacherous desertion. Calvaert, too, who had so long haunted the king like his perpetual shadow, and who had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that," said Mistress Croale, who did not wish to face Mistress Murkison, well known to her in the days of her comparative prosperity. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... and artificial flies. Catch the natural fly, imitate it as closely as possible; put your made fly into a tumbler of clear water, then if the size and the prevailing colours as to body and wings resemble your copy, you are all right. This appears to me the best comparative illustration. ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... governor, who had come home as it were for a holiday, and who was a man hating work naturally, and who, from the circumstances of his life, had never been called on to do much work. A man may govern the Mandarins and yet live in comparative idleness. To do such governing work well a man should have a good presence, a flow of words which should mean nothing, an excellent temper, and a love of hospitality. With these attributes Sir Rowley was ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... childish burst of confidence, she was frightened, as if warned by womanly instinct, which for the moment her ardour had outrun, that she had been too forward to a comparative stranger. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... the arm he lurched up the steps, and the two of us presently found ourselves out in the street again. In the growing light the squalor of the district was more evident than ever, but the comparative freshness of the air was welcome after the reek of that room in which the golden idol sat leering, with blood ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... but the stars were shining brightly, and a thin slice of moon had risen just clear of the treetops that bordered the jungle, so that the young Englishman was able to make out his surroundings with comparative ease. Marching alongside the palanquin, on each side, at a distance of a few feet only, so narrow was the jungle path, was a line of Government troops, their weapons, consisting of flint-locks, match-locks, halberds, old muzzle-loaders, and, in a few cases, modern breechloaders, sloped over their ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... this time life had glided by with comparative ease, but now the real struggle was upon me. My duties were too numerous and varied, and none sufficiently exhilarating or intellectual to bring into play my higher faculties. I suffered with mental ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... old life they often had trapped animals for the agents of European dealers, and had learned from them certain tricks, such as this one, which permitted them to capture even Numa without injuring him, and to transport him in safety and with comparative ease to their village. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... purpose a line of thought which both myself and others have often applied to other purposes. See, above all, Sir Henry Maine's lecture "On Kinship as the Basis of Society" in the lectures on the "Early History of Institutions"; I would refer also to my own lecture on "The State" in "Comparative Politics." ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... to leave it; which I then did most cheerfully, as it is always easier to man to yield to necessity, than to adopt an apparently inconvenient measure by his own free will. The load was removed to pack-horses, and we proceeded with comparative ease to Mr. Campbell's station, enjoying the hospitality of the settlers as we passed on, and carrying ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... was short, however, our heroine, herself, now feeling as if the major could not be secure until he was fairly within the palisades. In vain did Willoughby try to pacify her fears and to assure her of his comparative safety; Maud's nerves were excited, and then she had the dreadful tidings, which still remained to be told pressing upon her spirits, and quickening all her natural ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... outright, not only at the boomerang effect of her grandiloquent description of the professor's industry, but at the absurdity of her position. Above all else, Helen was candid, and there was no reason why she should not enlighten a comparative stranger who seemed to take a friendly ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... goods and lesser goods, meaning by the former those which are more largely contributory to the organism. In our physical being, for example, we may inquire whether sight or digestion is the greater good; and our only means of arriving at an answer would be to stop each function and then note the comparative consequence to the organism. Without digestion, life ceases; without sight, it is rendered uncomfortable. If we are considering merely the relative amounts of bodily gain from the two functions, we must call digestion the greater good. In a table, excellence of make is apt to be ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... as many pipes as possible, and as near as he could to the smokers. He said that this kept away the mosquitoes. There he would sit, with the smoke drifting full in his face, both hands in his pockets, talking about Quebec, and debating the comparative merits of a boy or a girl as an addition to ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... we listen to what comparative mythology has to say, it still remains to account for the tendency to shape legends of the earthly appearance of the gods; and we shall have to admit that, while they belong to an early stage of the world's progress, the feelings which they express ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... that this comparative study does not show any considerable differences corresponding to ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent

... illusion," says Yoritomo, "presents certain dangers to the integrity of judgment, which, under such influence, falsifies the comparative faculty, and sways decision to ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... 1797). This map was executed just before the fall of Constantinople (1453), and gives a view of the world as imagined in the 15th century. It is very fantastic and unscientific, but remarkable among its kind for its comparative ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... prototype of Persephone, this goddess is one of much importance for comparative mythology, and there is a legend concerning her of considerable interest. The text is one of those found at Tel-el-Armana, in Egypt, and states that the gods once made a feast, and sent to Eres-ki-gal, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... attached are also the "temporal bones." In the superficial comparison to which Mr. Grant Allen has restricted himself in bearing testimony on a question which perhaps affects our fellow-creatures, in the right sense of the term, more warmly than any other in human and comparative anatomy, the obvious difference just pointed out ought not to have been passed over. It was the more incumbent on one pronouncing on the paramount problem, because the "sagittal ridge in the gorilla," as in the orang, relates to and signifies the dental character which differentiates all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... the open and dragged a wounded gunner into the comparative shelter of the wood. Many more acts ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... sufficient to bring increased supplies from India and other places; but these will, no doubt, come when it is seen that the rise will probably be permanent in consequence of the enlarged consumption, and the comparative deficiency in the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... days before stood the battering we got with comparative calmness, but the taunts and signs of the foe now enraged them beyond ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... us; whereupon our men, with song and chorus, would exert themselves to the utmost to overtake it. Upon observing our efforts, the natives would bend themselves to their tasks, and paddling standing and stark naked, give us ample opportunities for studying at our leisure comparative anatomy. Or we saw a group of fishermen lazily reclining in puris naturalibus on the beach, regarding with curious eye the canoes as they passed their neighbourhood; then we passed a flotilla of canoes, their owners sitting quietly in their huts, busily plying the rod ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... to his clockwork order of mind; and when, in addition, he found himself condemned to eat them sitting cross-legged on the ground, a leaf balanced precariously on one knee, he began to entertain grave doubts as to the comparative values of the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... affairs," and such the small force he had at first to provide for. As we passed out of India, and got further from regions of comparative civilisation, his cares increased: cellar, kitchen, larder, farm-yard, tents, &c. had then to accompany our wandering steps, and the expedition gradually increased in size, until it attained its maximum of nearly forty. From this it again as gradually decreased, and as one by one our retainers ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy. My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... back to all those other people, back moreover to the Vicomte de Vallorbes—whom, by the way, it occurred to him she so seldom mentioned. Well, we don't continually talk about the people we love best, do we, to comparative strangers? She would go back to her husband—her husband.—Richard repeated the words over to himself sternly, trying to drive them home, to burn them into his consciousness ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... I sank down softly, and crept under the table, hidden as I hoped, by the great, deep table-cover, with its heavy fringe. I had not recovered my swooning senses fully, and was trying to reassure myself as to my being in a place of comparative safety, for, above all things, I dreaded the betrayal of fainting, and struggled hard for such courage as I might attain by deadening myself to the danger I was in by inflicting intense pain on myself. You have often asked me the reason of that ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... not say to Mr. Gilman, "By the way, Mr. Gilman, how old are you?" She could properly ascertain his tastes about all manner of fundamental points, such as the shape of chair-legs, the correct hour for dining, or the comparative merits of diamonds and emeralds; but this trifle of information about his age could not be asked for. And he did not make her a present of it. She might have questioned Madame Piriac, but she could not persuade herself to question Madame Piriac either. However, what did it ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... is Spanish, and the comparative purity with which it is spoken is remarkable when the long period of isolation of the country and the extended duration of Haitian rule are considered. In this particular Haiti offers a contrast, for though ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... miles farther down the road Reuben was holding in his horse, in order to cross a river, when he thought that, in the comparative silence of his springless wagon, he heard Robbie ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... bids under two totally dissimilar conditions. The Dealer of necessity has declared and, either by a call of one Spade, shown comparative weakness, or, by an offensive declaration, ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... planned each by itself. Whereas in Shakspeare, the play is 'syngenesia;' each character has, indeed, a life of its own, and is an 'individuum' of itself, but yet an organ of the whole, as the heart in the human body. Shakspeare was a great comparative anatomist. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... certain information, and cannot procure it. Now what is a serious doubt? It is a doubt founded on a positive opinion against the existence of the law, or its applicability to the case in point, an opinion fraught with probability, solid, comparative, practical probability. The doubt must not be mere negative doubt, or ignorance that cannot tell why it doubts; not a vague suspicion, or sentimental impression that defies all intellectual analysis; not a mere subjective inability to make up one's mind, but some counter-reason that admits ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... seemed to Robert to grow much fresher. Tayoga, with his infallible eye and his wonderful gifts, both inherited and improved, would have known just how fresh they were, but Robert was compelled to confine his surmise to the region of the comparative. Nevertheless, he knew that he was gaining upon the moose and that was enough. But as it was evident by his frequent browsing that the animal was going slowly, he controlled his eagerness sufficiently to exercise great wariness on his own part. It might be that while he was hunting he could ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... earlier date. The first church of Negro Baptists, so far as authentic and trustworthy writings of the eighteenth century establish, was constituted at Silver Bluff,[3] on Mr. Galphin's[4] estate, a year or two before the Revolutionary War. It continued to worship there, in comparative peace, until the latter part of 1778, when the vicissitudes of war drove the church into exile[5]—but only to multiply itself elsewhere.[6] The work at Silver Bluff began anew with the cessation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... came to her own rooms, Carrie saw their comparative insignificance. She was not so dull but that she could perceive they were but three small rooms in a moderately well-furnished boarding-house. She was not contrasting it now with what she had had, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... boys and girls, on their business of beggary, theft and the enticement of the weak and unwary into crime. In it congregate human vultures and harpies who absorb most of the plunder that is gained outside, and render more brutal and desperate the wretches they rob in comparative safety. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... carried safely out, surrounded by an armed party, to the rear of the house. Not until they had been placed in comparative safety did the rest of the men withdraw from their now almost untenable position. At length the whole front of the house was in flames. The fire soon caught the rest of the building, and scarcely had the last defender ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... yellow "frame" cottage where she had hung on the fence, kicking her toes against the broken palings and exchanging moist chewing-gum and half-eaten apples with Indiana Frusk. Later on, she had returned from her boarding-school to the comparative gentility of summer vacations at the Mealey House, whither her parents, forsaking their squalid suburb, had moved in the first flush of their rising fortunes. The tessellated floors, the plush parlours and organ-like radiators of the Mealey House had, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... Christians, had wives and children of their own, that they did not want to kill any one, and would fire in the air when forced to fire, were keen to renew the Christmas "pour-parlers." Our men claimed that it was comparative peace when the Saxons were in the trenches opposite, and they made friendly overtures as often as they dared. They were capable of attributing honour to others, and those who came over into our lines asserted that hundreds were anxious to do so, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... for the gentlemen had supplied the discourse with some variety—the variety of politics, inclosing land, and breaking horses—but then it was all over; and one subject only engaged the ladies till coffee came in, which was the comparative heights of Harry Dashwood, and Lady Middleton's second son William, who were ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... Willie's portrait, surely!" the mother at length said, mournfully. "We cannot give that up. It is of no comparative value to others, and is all in all ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... Christian writers looked on the worship of the sun and the elements with comparative indulgence. Justin Martyr and Clemens of Alexandria admit that God had appointed the stars as legitimate objects of heathen worship, in order to preserve throughout the world some tolerable notions of natural religion. It seemed a middle point between Heathenism and Christianity; and to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... a wonderful thing that the red-headed man could be so quiet about it, and most wonderful of all that Perris could look at anything in the world rather than the big Colt which hung in the hand of the victor. And then, realizing that it was his own comparative cowardice that made this seem strange, the foreman gritted his teeth. Shame softens the heart sometimes, but more often it hardens the spirit. It hardened the conqueror against his victim, now, and made it possible for him to look down on ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... Haweis sent his carriage, and we drove in the Park. In the afternoon we went to our Minister's to see the American ladies who had been presented at the drawing-room. After this, both of us were glad to pass a day or two in comparative quiet, except that we had a room full of visitors. So many persons expressed a desire to make our acquaintance that we thought it would be acceptable to them if we would give a reception ourselves. We were ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... satisfaction, I found, not only the final link that completed the chain of evolution from Pagan Mystery to Christian Ceremonial, but also proof of that wider significance I was beginning to apprehend. The problem involved was not one of Folk-lore, not even one of Literature, but of Comparative Religion in ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... talking, or even being looked at by humans of a different gender. The higher classes, of course, suffer most from the enforcement of this strict etiquette, for in the very lowest grades of society the woman enjoys comparative freedom. She can talk to men as much as she pleases, and even goes out unveiled, being much too low a being to be taken any notice of; the upper classes, however, are very punctilious as to the observance of their severe rules. The Corean woman is a slave. She is used for pleasure and work. ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... spent in comparative ease and idleness. Our cows had been left upon our old place during the winter. The ground had to be cleared before it could receive a crop of any kind, and I had little to do but to wander by the lake shore, or among the woods, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... facts may serve to give my readers a clearer insight into the cost and profits of grape-growing, and also the comparative varieties. In every case, the figures given can be ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... is almost entirely exempted; and on this account it is considered that an infant population constitutes, as it were, a delicate barometer, from which we may derive more early and more certain indications of the presence and comparative force of local causes of mortality and disease than can be obtained from the more general methods ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... of a London police station is a compromise between the comparative luxury of a waiting-room and the harshness of a cell. Like a waiting-room it is furnished with chairs and tables, and like a cell its door is provided with a strong, self-acting lock. The Princess Petrovska gritted ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... uncertain voice, dictated to him what he must do. In those days he was seldom in doubt. He did not have to search. There was no vagueness in his life. The Bible, that inexhaustible mine of great literature, prompted him to music. But, then, he was living in comparative solitude. Quiet days stretched before him, empty evenings. He could give himself up to what was within him. Even now he could have quiet days. He had recently passed not a few with the French Revolution. But the evenings of course were not, could not be, empty. He often went out with Charmian. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... wrote a Latin treatise "On the congeniality of languages," showing how by the comparative study of languages many deep truths for the introduction of Christ's peaceable Reign or of the universal Republic of Truth and Justice would be unravelled. Before I was qualified to write such a treatise, I had to study many ancient and ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar

... thus causing her to ride to the wreckage by a sort of slip- line. The other apprentices meanwhile lost no time in taking in and stowing the canvas; and in a few minutes the launch was riding at her floating anchor in perfect safety and in comparative comfort; still tossing wildly, it is true, but no longer shipping a drop of water excepting the spray which blew over her from the seas as ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... must be supposed to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to the applications of their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquy. The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have posed him. What was it then? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... within the reach of a much greater proportion of the people on account of its small comparative cost, and the ease with which payments can be made in small amounts. More than sixteen hundred thousand of the citizens of this country are now availing themselves of its advantages, as against about six hundred thousand in level premium companies ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... such a horrible law or such a feeble administration of it, and such callousness to human suffering that it will not save these innocent victims from its outrageous injustice. When to this brutality are added the comparative safety of the criminal, and the vile jails and the vile inmates with whom young boys and girls and honest men and decent women are thrown for the crime of witnessing a crime, it convicts the civilization of the age with a combination of stupidity ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... There is no doubt that his first expectation was to found an independent state within the borders of California. His loyalty to the Americans was, however, never questioned, and the fact that his lands were gradually taken from him, and that he died finally in comparative poverty, is a striking ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... test of the scale by all the workers of all countries. The result was a large sheet of tabulated data for each individual test, including percentages passing the test at various ages, conditions under which the results were secured, method of procedure, etc. After a comparative study of these data, and in the light of results we had ourselves secured, a provisional arrangement of the tests was ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... Baxter dogged him the whole way, sprinting silently in his wake and dodging into the shadows whenever the light of an occasional electric bulb made it inadvisable to keep to the open. Then abruptly he gave up the pursuit. For the first time his comparative impotence in this silent conflict on which he had embarked was made manifest to him, and he perceived that on mere suspicion, however strong, he could do nothing. To accuse Mr. Peters of theft or to accuse him of being accessory to a theft ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... experience, plans for a larger navy were projected. By the close of the year 1907 there were about 300 vessels in the navy manned by 35,377 men. In comparative strength it ranked second only to that of Great Britain. Not only was there an increase in the number of vessels but there was great improvement in marksmanship and in the handling of ships. In the battle of Santiago it has been estimated that about five per cent of the shells struck ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... thought to myself. Positive, the old woman; Comparative, his master; Superlative, the orchid tribe. Those were his degrees of affection. Honest and brave and a ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... that which is least known. External appearances having been studied, the form and function of internal organs were investigated. Physiology and comparative anatomy were born and developed; researches abounded and observers abandoned the field ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... the dinner proceeded in comparative silence, Agnes sobbing under breath. The room was small and very hot; the table was warped so badly that the dishes had a tendency to slide to the center; the walls were bare plaster grayed with time; the food was poor and scant, and the flies absolutely swarmed upon everything, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... him at the Dragon court and made him part of the establishment might have seemed the most obvious way, but the dogged English hatred and contempt of foreigners would have rendered this impossible, even if Abenali himself would have consented to give up his comparative seclusion and live in a crowd ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... my next leave of Chicago I had passed through all the phases of doubt, in which I deeply questioned my own heart, seeking there the solution of why I had inspired an interest in this stranger. Ever since my sickness in Philadelphia I had been a comparative invalid, devoting much of my time to the restoration of health, and above all the recovery of that sight which was still so dear to me, and so hard to relinquish without a struggle. So with my depleted strength, moderate means and somewhat darkened hopes, I seemed to myself a very unattractive ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... successful, but a great many varieties produce so many suckers that the graft is liable to be choked or crowded out if not constantly watched, and it should not be expected of the average person to know the difference between the graft and the wild shoot, and consequently, in a comparative short time, he would have a wild or common hazel. For that reason grafted plants should not be used for the trade until our people get better acquainted with hazel plants. I, therefore, should recommend layering, thereby having the plants on their own roots, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... needed escape; this was one party too many, and not even the presence of Claire with her trim ankles could hold him there. He felt an angry desire to go home—not to his hotel, but home to Chicago and to the comparative peace of the Board of Trade. But he was leaving ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... who had been always first in this kind of composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at her defeat that she would not speak to her for a week. On the other hand Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were moved to tears when the "Study on the comparative merits of Three Poems, 'Le Lac,' 'Souvenir,' and 'La Tristesse d'Olympio,'" signed "Mademoiselle de Nailles," received the honor of being read aloud. This reading was followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses which may ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... afterwards some coarse provisions were served out, and then we learnt, to our great delight, that we were immediately to set out for the mines. It would be thought that this could be no great cause for exaltation; we were about to go to pass the rest of our lives in bondage; but all misery is comparative, and sooner than have remained another night in that dreadful hole, I would have welcomed any change. About an hour afterwards a guard of dirty-looking soldiers came in; we were all handcuffed to a long chain, at about two feet apart, one on ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... nothing of its almost inevitably mischievous concomitants, brings into play chiefly that part of the body which is already in comparative vigor, and which, besides, has little to do directly with the size, position, and vigor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... on the water, proved very heavy to start, especially as the blacks knew not how to handle the sweeps, having evidently never touched one before; but, once fairly started, the craft was kept moving with comparative ease at a speed of about three and a half knots per hour. But it was cruel work for the unhappy blacks, who, naked as when they were born, were remorselessly kept at it by the boatswain and his mate, both of whom paced the deck, fore and ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... said, "that, according to your code, any demonstration of affection toward a comparative ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... friends that they can apply full speed ahead, Joe, if they want to," directed the young motor boat captain, briefly, as he reached the comparative safety of the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... to Purchase Point Buoy. It was an unfavourable time of the year for such an unprecedented feat of natation, but the Hatfield Champion was confident of success. He is a perfect whale at long-distance immersions, and has been heard to talk of 'twenty years of resolute' swimming against stream as a comparative trifle. His 'pal and pardner,' SMIFF—more commonly known as the Sanguine Old 'Un—was equally confident. Two boats accompanied the Champion, in one of which was his trusty Pilot, SMIFF, and in the other a Party of their 'Mutual Friends.' One thing, indeed, was in the Hatfield ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... resources, which should of right belong to persons of rank, was the radical objection to his people. At the town house there was no money, at Mount Dunstan there was no money. There had been so little money even in his grandfather's time that his father had inherited comparative beggary. The fourteenth Earl of Mount Dunstan did not call it "comparative" beggary, he called it beggary pure and simple, and cursed his progenitors with engaging frankness. He never referred to the fact that in his personable youth he had married a wife whose fortune, if it had not been ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... weaving of such heavy fabrics of glass for ornamental purposes and for curiosities is no new thing; nor, in our estimation, does comparative success in such experiments warrant the enthusiastic claims of the Pittsburg manufacturers touching the adaptability of glass for wearing apparel. Unless it is in their power to change the nature of glass absolutely and radically, it does not seem possible for them so ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... difference of latitude is no determinate rule for calculating the level to which the line of perpetual snow descends. There are other influences to be taken into the account, such as the duration and intensity of summer heats, the comparative dryness of climate, the extent of the snow-clad surface in the system generally, and more especially the height and exposure of particular mountains.[17] Thus the snow-line on the southern slope of the Alps is in some cases as high as 9500 ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... fatuous good looks! Crumb, by dogged perseverance and indifference to many things, would probably be successful at last. But what chance was there of success for him? Ruby, as soon as want or hardship told upon her, would return to the strong arm that could be trusted to provide her with plenty and comparative ease. But Hetta Carbury, if once her heart had passed from her own dominion into the possession of another, would never change her love. It was possible, no doubt,—nay, how probable,—that her heart was still vacillating. Roger thought that he knew that at any rate she had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... the little world of the Institute assumed a new and no less attractive aspect. Everybody was dressed for Sunday, as at home. Classes were over; and games also; the dining room became for the first time a place of comparative quiet, with now and then the singing of a great old hymn, just to voice ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... powder rifles."[*] Secretary Alger believed, mistakenly, that I had made public the round robin, and was naturally irritated, and I suddenly received from him a published telegram, not alluding to the round robin incident, but quoting my reference to the comparative merits of the cavalry regiments and the National Guard regiments and rebuking me for it. The publication of the extract from my letter was not calculated to help me secure the votes of the National Guard if I ever became a candidate for office. However, I did not mind the matter ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... a favoring breeze, a few hours sufficed to bear the vessel to its destined harbor; and that night, sheltered, in comparative comfort, beneath the hospitable roof of Mr. Williamson, Ellen's father, Agnes sank into deep and ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... the Navy yielded her to me with a somewhat bad grace, and her slim fingers on my arm guided me through the throng to a deep curtained window recess, and in this comparative seclusion she turned and faced me, and I saw that she was ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... comparative potency of snake poisons, there are apparent contradictions. In the order of recorded fatalities, the rattlesnake ranks easily first, with the water moccasin a rather distant second, and the copperhead a very poor third. Yet experiments upon animals indicate that moccasin venom is five times ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... were periods when comparative peace reigned on the frontier, and the missionary, like many others of his sacred calling, found little trouble in passing back and forth among the Shawanoes, Wyandots, Pottawatomies, Delawares and other tribes. Indeed, many converts were gained, as was shown ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... p. 52; Moniteur (Seances du 29 Octobre, 5 Novembre, 1792); Moore (ii. 178), &c.) The convention, eager for public business (with that first articulate emergence of the Trial just coming on), dismisses these comparative miseres and despicabilities: splenetic Louvet must digest his spleen, regretfully for ever: Robespierre, dear to Patriotism, is dearer for ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... cannot work in them, because He has not the mastery of their inner life. His personal indwelling and fellowship, the rest of His Holy Presence, His Holiness reigning and ruling in the heart and life,—to all these they are comparative strangers. It has been rightly said that work is the cure for spiritual poverty and disease; to some believers who had been seeking holiness apart from service, the call to work has been an unspeakable blessing. But to many it has only been an additional blind to cover up the terrible want of heart-holiness ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... fighting, which he declared to have left a stain upon the whole profession of arms. For, by a movement unusually and unconsciously dramatic, he chose that moment to salute across the long stretch of years the comparative chivalry and nobility of his dead enemies of the Soudan, and to announce that in the heart of Europe, in learned academies and ordered government offices, there had appeared a lunacy so cruel and unclean that the maddest dervish dead ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... in ready words; she was not to be made meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that recalled the old days of fondness; and in times of comparative calm would often recover her sweet woman's habit of caressing playful affection. But such days were become rare, and poor Janet's soul was kept like a vexed sea, tossed by a new storm before the old ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... the Aryan tribes were passing from a purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incipient agricultural stage, somewhat like that which characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in the seventeenth century. The comparative study of institutions leads to results in harmony with this view, showing us the mark-community of our Teutonic ancestors with the clear traces of its origin in the more primitive clan; though, with Mr. Kemble, I do not doubt that by the time of Tacitus ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... too friendly to the Indian. *39 Yet the spirit of independence could hardly be strong in a people who had no interest in the soil, no personal rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the Spanish invader - after every allowance for their comparative inferiority - argues a deplorable destitution of that patriotic feeling which holds life as little ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... mind are as impressively manifested in the constant daily life he lived as in the few severe crises he resolutely faced. For the twenty years of his excommunication he lived in comparative retirement, if not isolation. The frugality of his life bordered on asceticism. All his free time and energy Spinoza dedicated with unusual single-hearted devotion to the disinterested development of a philosophy he knew would not be very ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... under Ban of the Empire, and reduced to depend on Louis XIV. for a living,—till times mended with him again; till, after the Peace of Utrecht, he got reinstated in his Territories; and lived a dozen years more, in some comparative comfort, though much sunk in debt. Well, our Karl Albert is the son of that Anti-Marlborough Kurfurst Maximilian; eldest surviving son; a daughter of the great Sobieski of Poland was his mother. Nay, he is great-grandson of another still more distinguished Maximilian, him of the Thirty-Years ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... One word more on comparative manners. The Mantis goes in for battle and cannibalism; the Empusa is peaceable and respects her kind. To what cause are these profound moral differences due, when the organic structure is the same? Perhaps to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... who was a veterinary surgeon of some prominence in Schweigert, had reared his children in comparative comfort, and had provided them ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... yearn over them that they might grow into His ideal for them. "Now," He says, "I am going away, but I will send you another one who will be to you all that I have been—and more." And more! That comparative more, either spoken or implied, runs all through this last long confidential talk. "More, much more, because I go unto the Father." Jesus crucified, risen, glorified can do much more by far in us by His other self, the Holy Spirit, than He could in person ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon



Words linked to "Comparative" :   farthest, comparison, furthermost, more, better, best, utmost, adverb, nigher, farthermost, closer, worse, absolute, finer, adjective, earliest, more than, comparative anatomist, comparative psychology, fewer, furthest, compare, comparative anatomy, nearer, comparative degree, less, relational, earlier, uttermost, relative



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com