Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Compete   /kəmpˈit/   Listen
Compete

verb
(past & past part. competed; pres. part. competing)
1.
Compete for something; engage in a contest; measure oneself against others.  Synonyms: contend, vie.






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





"Compete" Quotes from Famous Books



... the crowd grew angrier, wilder too. "Hunt her off face of earth!" one shouts anew; "Hunt her to death! 'Tis meet," a thousand tongues repeat, The tempest in the skies cannot with this compete. Oh, then, to see them as they came, With clenched fists and eyes aflame, Hell did indeed its demons all unchain. And while the storm recedes, the night is growing clear, But poison shoots through every vein Of the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... enjoying his pranks ever since, as a frail boy with an unreasonable and dominating male parent, he had discovered that they were one way in which he could compete with hardier souls, at times even surpass them. Never mind the audience, he thought. ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon

... stockings, shoes, laces, and blouses—when it came to these Dorothea was a stranger to such concepts as measure or modesty. She wanted to compete with the wives of the rich people whose parties she attended, and next to whom she sat in the pastry shop or at ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... erects his tail to strut round and round the hens, taking care always to present to them a front view, where the coloration is most gorgeous. And the same is true of all other gaily coloured male birds. During the pairing season they actively compete with one another in exhibiting their attractiveness to the females; and in many cases there are added all sorts of extraordinary antics in the way of dancings and crowings. Again, in the case of all song-birds, the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... as customers, we compel them to become our rivals; and, after supplying their own wants, they will compete with us for the trade of the world, on more than equal terms. Our statesmen may yet employ America to build up the prosperity of our country whilst increasing her own, or they may suffer its rapidly developing and gigantic ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... General Service wagon, and the first things which caught his eye were Sharpie's tennis racket and golf clubs. At Gara munitions of war had to be left behind to find room on the truck for his patent washstand. By the time he got to Palestine Johnnie Smith really could not compete with his belongings, and had to "borrow" a donkey to carry what could not possibly be left at Cox's Go-down—and it took eight months after the Armistice was signed before sufficient shipping could be collected at Alexandria ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... made labor there somewhat costly and difficult to obtain continuously, and the impression was that if the duties on foreign sugar were reduced it would tend to enable those countries which still maintained the slave trade to compete at great advantage with the sugar grown in the colonies by that free labor to establish which England had but just paid so large a pecuniary fine. Therefore the question of free trade became involved with that of free labor; at least, so it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... the various breeds of dogs. But he did know that Chum was by far the best and most beautiful and the wisest dog ever born. If Marden were offering a hundred dollar prize for the best dog, there was not another dog on earth fit to compete with ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... confusion, and the monotony is enlivened by the breaking of bottles and crash of crockery. As some consolation, our Log Book shows that we have made more than half of a thousand miles, within the last forty-eight hours. Land travelling, with all the advantages of railroads, can hardly compete with the continual diligence of a ship before ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... smile. The shoes, which are of some soft material, have a separate compartment for the great-toe, and hook down the heel. The Chief Protector has a similar pair of combination shoes—a gift from "Jimmy"—and is given to smiling; but he does not pretend to compete with his cook in that quality. "Jimmy's" smile is almost a fixture. It is set, yet not professional. It is the smile of a happy man, and of one who is a diplomat as well as a ship's cook. His customary costume is of holland. When on duty he wears an ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... and horses suffered intolerably from heat and thirst. The place on which he fixed for a trading post, was a fine point of land, at the junction of the Pointed Heart and Spokan Rivers. His establishment was intended to compete with a trading post of the Northwest Company, situated at no great distance, and to rival it in the trade with the Spokan Indians; as well as with the Cootonais and Flatheads. In this neighborhood we shall leave him for ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people—they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... were severely hampered. No wool or woollen product might be carried from one province to another. The Bible might not be printed. The making of hats was almost entirely suppressed. The manufacture of iron, on a scale sufficient to compete with English wares, was practically ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... and in the Legislature he was always conspicuous. He knew the people he represented, and could say or do what he pleased; and for any offence he might give, was ready to settle with words, or a fist-fight. Physically powerful, he knew there were but few who, in a rough-and-tumble, could compete with him; and when his adversary yielded, he would give him his hand to aid him from the ground, or to settle it amicably in words. "Any way to have peace," was ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... reasons were sought to support the protective policy. It was contended, therefore, that the high wages paid in the United States would discourage producers from introducing new industries which, without protection, must compete on equal terms with the products of low waged Europe. Finally, it was pointed out that the owners of great wealth must suffer tremendous loss of capital if protection were withdrawn from certain industries, compelling them ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... is coming to this house certainly the greatest medium in London, if not in Europe. (Of course we cannot compete with the East. We are only children beside them.) Well, this man, Mr. Vincent—I think I spoke of him to you last week—he is coming here just for a talk to one or two friends. There shall be no difficulty if you wish it. I will speak to Lady ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... around us as we write—dim reproachful shadows of an age of unspeakable beauty in constructive art, and of (apparently) unapproachable excellence in design; and the question recurs to us again—Can we ever hope to compete with thirteenth-century buildings whilst we lead nineteenth-century lives? It may not be in our generation, but the time will assuredly come when, as has been well remarked, 'the living vigour of humanity will break through the monotony of modern arrangements ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... to the settlers, determined the question of transportation.[261] The partizans of abolition could assail the system at its foundation. Thenceforth the interests of the colonists, moral and material, were obviously one. The crown was to compete in the market with the farmer and the landowner; and the labor market to be overruled by official contrivance, for the benefit of the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... all of whom exact an unnatural profit of the planters."[82] Chalmers, looking only to the navigation of the kingdom, which these culprits represented, admits that in the principal supplies Great Britain cannot compete with America; but, "whatever may be the difference in price to the West Indians, this is but a small equivalent which they ought to pay to the British consumer, for enjoying the exclusive supply of sugar, rum, and other West India ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... love; justification, not regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was lived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete with the love ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... the relaying of the wooden pavement. I say wooden more particularly, inasmuch as new fangled varieties of pavement, such as Concrete, Nicholson, etc., although they have their day, cannot be said to compete for a moment in public regard with the good ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... which would ruin a foreign apothecary. There are doctors and doctors, of course, as in all countries; but the German-speaking Japanese physician capable of directing a public or military hospital is not easily surpassed in his profession; and the average foreign physician cannot possibly compete with him. He furnishes no prescriptions to be taken to a drugstore: his drugstore is either at home or in a room of the hospital ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... We could not compete against the wealth of our competitors. In our efforts to do this we made losses, small in individual instances, but we knew if continued our little capital would soon be exhausted. Our banking facilities since the liquidation ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... to be married," Steinbock replied, "and I love a woman with whom no other can compete or compare.—But you are, and always will be, to me ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... has been reorienting an agrarian economy dependent on a guaranteed British market to an open free market economy that can compete on the global scene. The government has hoped that dynamic growth would boost real incomes, reduce inflationary pressures, and permit the expansion of welfare benefits. The results have been mixed: inflation is down from double-digit levels, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... southern Autumn's day appear As if 't would to a second Spring resign The season, rather than to Winter drear,— Of in-door comforts still she hath a mine,— The sea-coal fires,[677] the "earliest of the year;"[678] Without doors, too, she may compete in mellow, As what is lost in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... held in readiness, He set upright before her feet— "Now can thy simple charms compete ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... occasion. For the elevator, standing on a switch by the railroad track, was his "proposition." And every one in town knew that the railroad company had made a rate of wheat to Barclay and his associates, so low that Minneola could not compete, even if she hauled her wheat to another station on the road, so Minneola teams lined up at Barclay's elevator. That autumn Minneola, without a railroad, without a chance for the county-seat, and without a grain market, began to fag, and during the last of September, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... dear,"—he replied.—"You see, he might have to compete for his appointment with a dozen others; and, as the examination for the civil service is now pretty stiff in its way, it would not do for him to fail. Frank has received a good sound public school education; but, they ask so many purely-routine questions of candidates, that he had better ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... that Children residing in Great Britain will all be eligible to compete for Prizes ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... steamer that recently had begun to compete with the Indian canoes in the traffic of the river, and the carrying of passengers, did not dare to attempt to ascend it. Navigation was not to be thought of by ordinary boats, or by white men, and was possible only by canoes in the most trusty hands. No land-conveyance could ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete with? You would be unfit to speak to in a week. Besides, I shouldn't go. I don't care to profit by the price of a man's soul,—for that's ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... conditions of Europe. Their superior training and experience enabled them to get positions in most of the trades. Most northern men, moreover, still objected to granting Negroes economic equality. When the supply of labor exceeded the demand, the free Negroes, unable to compete with these foreigners, were driven not only from the respectable positions, but also from the menial pursuits. Measures to restrict to the whites employment in higher pursuits were proposed and where they were not actually made laws, public ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... an election of officers for the school battalion, composed of Company A and Company B. The Rover boys, being freshmen, could not compete for any position, even had they so desired; but there was a good deal of electioneering among the cadets, and the lads got quite a lot of fun out of it. The announcement of who was elected was followed by a parade around the grounds and an unusually good supper in the mess hall. ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... halls were filled with beautiful things for sale, while eight were closed so that no other attractions might compete with the fair. Instead of twenty-five thousand, the women cleared one ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... ask direct questions, to give verbal form to thought, all through the stress of such games—Man and his Shadow, Clumps, Subject and Object, Russian Scandal, the Minister's Cat, I see a Light, Charades, and acting of all kinds. No number of picture talks, oral compositions, or observations can compete in real value with these games, because behind them was a purpose or need for language ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... know what a heavy task I'm facing. And there are the others—what will they do while I am out of the running? I cannot go to her and say, 'Please, may I have a year's vacation? I'll come back next September.' On the other hand, I shall surely neglect my business if she expects me to compete. What pleasure shall I get out of the seven millions if I lose her? I can't afford to take chances. That Duke won't have seven millions next September, it's true, but he'll have a prodigious argument against me, about the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... order. It was planned to have a drill between the two Lakeville companies, to see which could quickest get to a fire from a certain spot, and the one which won in that contest, would enter another in which would compete the departments from Jamesville, Weedsport and Northville Centre. A prize of a silver trumpet had been offered by Mr. Bergman for the company doing the ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster

... in a stuffy room," I began, "to copy, to compete with a typewriter, is shameful and humiliating for a man of my age. What can the sacred fire ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Hindoos. Nivedita[113] thinks that the Hindoos have adopted foreign culture easily. "One of the most striking features of Hindoo society during the past fifty years has been the readiness of the people to adopt a foreign form of culture, and to compete with those who are native to that culture on equal terms." Monier-Williams tells us, however, that each Hindoo "finds himself cribbed and confined in all his movements, bound and fettered in all he does by minute traditional regulations. He sleeps and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... they formerly worked, interfered with honest labour, and when idle got into trouble. City streets had been paved by the municipality; country roads attended to by the farmers, usually very unscientifically. Here was a field in which convict labour would not compete, and an important work could be done. When once this was made the law, every year showed improvement, while the convicts had useful ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... impart to the female physical strength which she does not possess, nor can it open to her pursuits which she does not have physical ability to engage in; and as long as she lacks the physical strength to compete with men in the different departments of labor, there will be more competition in her department, and she must ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... impression which he wants to convey to others, but which cannot be stated as an isolated fact without any surroundings. Then the surroundings must be painted so as to have a natural relation to the main motif; they must lead up to it, but at the same time they must not compete with it. There must be only one definite interest in the picture, and minor details must not be allowed to interfere with it. They are there only because of the main motif, to help to express it. Yet they are not to be ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... whereby men have gained their development. From thousands of women to-day the cry is rising, "Give us free opportunity, and the training that will fit us for freedom." Not, as so many have mistakenly thought, that women may compete with men in a senseless struggle for mastery, but in order first to learn, and afterwards to perform, that work in society which they can do better than men. What such work is it must be women's purpose ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... me that woman's surest path to honor and happiness is that marked out for her by nature, a path which she adorns because so well fitted for it, and that to forsake the home and compete with man for the thousand places in the work of the world would be to cast aside the charm of her womanliness and all that makes her what she is, a solace and comfort to all the world. If she seeks for a pleasurable ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... with himself. This woman understood everything better than he did. He felt that she was his rival, and from this feeling sprang the desire to compete with her. ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... negroes have no subject left for their foreign sympathies, hint at the tortures of the bullfight and the immense consideration to humanity that instead of being speared at Seville, the Andalusian Toro will probably in future be cut up at Smithfield. This cheapness of provisions will permit them to compete with the foreigner in all neutral markets, in time beat them in their own. It is a complete compensation too for the property tax, which impress upon them is a great experiment and entirely for their interests. Ring the changes on great measures and great experiments till it is ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... of the Rhine, each of them practically independent ruler of a tiny state, could not of course compete with Louis or defy him. Nor for a time did they attempt it. His splendor dazzled them. They were content to imitate, and each little prince became a patron of literature, or giver of entertainments, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... head of government cabinet: 12-member Cabinet appointed by the president from among the members of the House of Parliament elections: the House of Parliament chooses the presidential candidates from among their members and then those candidates compete in a general election; president is elected by popular vote for a four-year term; election last held 4 July 2003 (next to be held not later than July 2007); vice president appointed by the president election results: Anote TONG 47.4%, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Rodriguez saw the beauty of that far day, framed all about the beauty of one young girl, just as it had been for years in Morano's memory. How shall I tell with words what spirit sang wordless to spirit? We poets may compete with each other in words; but when spirits give up the purest gold of their store, that has shone far down the road of their earthly journey, cheering tired hearts and guiding mortal feet, our words shall ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... give the meat that remains on the bones of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... established and reliable steam communication and of convenient methods of money exchanges. There can be no doubt, I think, that with these facilities well established and with a rebate of duties upon imported raw materials used in the manufacture of goods for export our merchants will be able to compete in the ports of the Latin-American nations with ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... and Genoa revived in less than thirty years, (Paul Diacon de Gestis Langobard. l. ii. c. 38.) Note: Procopius says distinctly that Milan was the second city of the West. Which did Gibbon suppose could compete with it, Ravenna or Naples; the next page he ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... bear in mind that the form of each depends on an infinity of complex relations, namely on variations, due to causes far too intricate to be followed,—on the nature of the variations preserved, these depending on the physical conditions, and still more on the surrounding organisms which compete with each,—and lastly, on inheritance (in itself a fluctuating element) from innumerable progenitors, all of which have had their forms determined through equally complex relations. It appears incredible that the modified ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... his confidence about his growing anxieties, for even in his days he was beginning to feel the strain of competing with the bigger firms. The day for small men is over, Lilias, and one by one the private manufacturers go under, ruined by the struggle to compete with the great firms who are backed by practically unlimited capital. It was a dying cause which I had to fight, and I became more and more convinced of the folly of holding on until everything was lost; and then, in the very nick of time, as it seemed, our most powerful ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... The moral atmosphere of the House of Commons has never since his death been quite the same, and is now widely different. He had a kind of authority there that was possessed by no one else. Lord John might in some respects compete with, in some even excel, him; but to him, as leader of the liberals, the loss of such an opponent was immense. It is sad to think what, with his high mental force and noble moral sense, he might have done for us in after years. Even the afterthought of knowledge of such a man and of intercourse ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... bricklayer laid a larger number of bricks he would get no more pay for a harder day's work, while the "work" would afford employment to a smaller number of labourers. Look however a little further. The speculative builders round London compete against each other, so that they carry on their trade on ordinary trade profits. Such a builder is building streets, house after house, each house costing him L800, and selling for L1000 say; and this, after paying his interest at the bank, etc., pays him about 10 to 15 per cent on his ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke

... butter and the distressing absence of such hot things as would have been in readiness if Mrs. Venables had been expected for a single moment. It showed the youth of Morna Woodgate that she should harbor a wish to compete with the wealthiest woman in the neighborhood, even in the matter of afternoon tea, and her breeding that no such thought was legible in her ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... of animals, the competition and struggle are more obvious. The vegetation of a given district can only support a certain number of animals, and the different kinds of plant-eaters will compete together for it. They will also have insects for their competitors, and these insects will be kept down by birds, which will thus assist the mammalia. But there will also be carnivora destroying the herbivora; while small rodents, like ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... to the rector, knowing how easy I had found it in life to love and care for other people, I wondered how many things I had left undone, and what examination I could pass if suddenly called upon to compete. Haunted from early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it was not enough to say, "I am doing no harm," I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking what I ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... the people of Amsterdam were apprised that a great treasure had arrived in their city, and could be bought, too. Nobody there felt rich enough to buy the great Orloff sparkler. So the English and Russian governments sent bidders to compete for the gem. The Empress Catharine offered the highest sum; and her agent, the Count Orloff, paid for it in her name four hundred and fifty thousand roubles, cash down, and a grant of Russian nobility! The size of this diamond is that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... been maintained in two forms. Some have regarded protection as the best permanent policy for a nation to adopt. Others have defended it as a provisional policy, to shield manufactures in their infancy, until they grow strong enough to compete, without help, with foreign products. After the repeal of the corn-laws in England (1846), the free-trade doctrine prevailed in England. Since Comte published his exposition of Sociology (1839), the tendency has arisen ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... wages and the greater cost of maintenance of American officers and crews make it impossible to compete on equal terms with foreign ships. The scale of living and the scale of pay of American sailors are fixed by the standard of wages and of living in the United States, and those are maintained at a high ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... the lecture. I can give you a much better reason than that, one even you can't quarrel with. It's a matter of ecology. The number of humans destroyed by these predators annually is negligible but they do themselves destroy an enormous number of small creatures with which the humans compete for their food. If we exterminated the hunters the small animals would multiply so rapidly that the ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton

... To-day agriculture has to compete in the labour market against other, and to many men more attractive, industries, and a marked elevation in the whole standard of life in the rural world is the best insurance of a better supply of good farm labour. Only ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... enforcement of the existing tenement-house laws. D. O. Mills, the philanthropic banker, declared his purpose to build hotels which should prove that a bed and lodging as good as any could be furnished to the great army of homeless men at a price that would compete with the cheap lodging houses, and yet yield a profit to the owner. On behalf of a number of well-known capitalists, who had been identified with the cause of tenement-house reform for years, Robert Fulton Cutting, the president of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... large consumer of the products of Northern farms and manufactories. The cheap rate at which her citizens can be furnished with food, tools, and machinery will make it necessary that the contiguous islands should have the same advantages in order to compete in the production of sugar, coffee, tobacco, tropical fruits, etc. This will open to us a still ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... respectively in the "Calcutta Review" and in the "Bengal Magazine." These are interesting, but a little rude in form, and they have not the same peculiar value as the rhymed octo-syllabic ballads. In these last we see Toru no longer attempting vainly, though heroically, to compete with European literature on its own ground, but turning to the legends of her own race and country for inspiration. No modern Oriental has given us so strange an insight into the conscience of the Asiatic as is presented ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... party to keep silence, with the other he took hold of Curzon, but with no peculiar or very measured respect, and introduced him as Mr. MacNeesh, the new Scotch steward and improver—a character at that time whose popularity might compete with a tithe proctor or an exciseman. So completely did this tactique turn the tables upon the poor adjutant, who the moment before was exulting over me, that I utterly forgot my own woes, and sat down convulsed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... and he who empties the greatest number of goblets, is held in highest esteem. As the Turks drink no wine, their presence was some restraint that day on their usual bacchanalian contests, and as we neither could nor would compete with them, we were held in great contempt. The king was about forty years old, and of large make, with a strong resemblance to the Tartar countenance. We parted from the king of Georgia next day, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... Equilateral ship in operation, Greg felt his heart sink. Here was a huge, powerful organization, with all the equipment and men and know-how they could ever need. How could one man, or two or three in a team, hope to compete with them? For the independent miner, the only hope was the Big Strike, the single lode that could make him rich. He might work all his life without finding it, and then stumble upon it by ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... subsistence, it will be proper to resolve the question into the consideration of the elements of production, viz. Labour, Capital and Land, and to enquire in what way we can give to those constituent parts of production, the facilities and encouragement they require, to compete with other branches which are obviously under the ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... who were soon to pass away; and now, as skilled laborers from foreign countries, with not only educated hands but trained brains, begin to come into the South and take these positions once held by us, we are gradually waking up to the fact that we must compete with the white man in the industrial world if we would hold our own. No one understands his value in the labor world better than the old colored man. Recently, when a convention was held in the South by the white people for the purpose of inducing white settlers from the North and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... condition of their art was a question to be threshed out among themselves, and while, they extended all kind of friendly tributes to Christophe, they could not admit him as one of themselves.—What could he do? He could not compete with them and dispute with them their meager place in the sun, where they were by ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... can see you—any man would—but you don't love him, because you haven't seen him. You're not a woman to him at all, but an abstraction. He's not a man to you at all, but an imagination. That's not love of man and woman. But when you have back your eyes,—then you're in shape to compete with the best women in the world for the best man in the world. That's love! That's marriage! That's right! Nothing ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... was opened, in 1852, it was confidently expected that the steamboat trade on the river would be destroyed, and the friends and enemies of Mr. Drew alike declared that he might as well lay up his boats, as he would find it impossible to compete with the faster time of the railroad. He was not dismayed, however, for he was satisfied that the land route could not afford to carry freight and passengers as cheap as they could be transported by water. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... may be hoped will not be thrown away upon the American public—is, that whereas our cousins on the other side of the water used to build almost all the American "liners" of wood, they now find that, with their excessive duties against the importation of iron and steel from England, they cannot compete with English iron and steel ship-builders and marine engineers. This is one of those damaging effects naturally produced by excessive protective duties; which, while they enable American ironmasters quickly to realize enormous fortunes, drive the American merchants to purchase ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... the hands of the Irish Parliament. Mr. Chamberlain argued this with his tongue in his cheek—professing to dread the unequal competition in which poor England would be placed if wealthy Ireland were allowed to compete unfairly by longer hours. He urged this in a speech directed to every absurd prejudice and alarm which the ignorant or the timid could feel—altogether made a most unworthy contribution. John Burns—breezy, outspoken—not friendly to all things done ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... so truly delighted by the beauty of the structure, which had arisen under his auspices, that he determined to grace it with the largest bell in France; and such was afterwards cast at his expence.—Even Tom of Lincoln could scarcely compete with Georges d'Amboise; for thus the bell was duly christened. It weighed thirty-three thousand pounds; its diameter at the base was thirty feet; its height was ten feet; and thirty stout and sweating ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... if every eating-house should date everything, and be square with the public, it would be an old story and wouldn't pay; but as it is, no one trying to compete with me, I do well out of it, and people come here out of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... the rate of ten miles an hour. The conditions required a run of seventy miles. Five months were allowed for building the engines. Ericsson heard of the project only seven weeks before the appointed time of trial, and at once determined to compete. He hastily built the "Novelty," assisted by Braithwaite, and when the exhibition came off his was practically the only locomotive which disputed for the supremacy with Stephenson's "Rocket." But a portion of the railroad had yet been finished; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... Vegetable Foods; Economy of Production.—Animal foods can never compete in cheapness of the nutrients with cereals and vegetables, as it takes six to eight pounds or more of a cereal, together with forage crops, to make a pound of meat. Hence the returns in food value are very much larger from the direct use of the cereals as human food, than from the feeding ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... participant in the game itself. He was elected to the committee responsible for organizing the Lowwood Annual Games, but resigned because having taken up racing as his pet pastime for the time being, he wanted to compete in some of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... whale fishery of New Zealand is EXCLUSIVELY* (* Note 33: Underlined in original.) assured to them. No European nation can henceforth, according to the general opinion, compete with them for ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... dream of a system of perfect housekeeping, Where mistress and helper together compete In excellent management, quiet and neat; And though in the bosom of earth I am sleeping, Shall somebody live to whom life will be sweet And home ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... fed, the crow then, alighting in the midst of those swans capable of traversing great distances, desired to enquire as to who amongst them was their leader. The foolish crow at last challenged him amongst those birds of tireless wings whom he regarded their leader, saying, 'Let us compete in flight.' Hearing those words of the raving crow, the swans that had assembled there, those foremost of birds endued with great strength, began to laugh. The swans then, that were capable of going everywhere at will, addressed the crow, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... said Eileen, laughing contemptuously. "The ridiculous idea of her trying to compete in a man's age-old occupation! As if she ever could learn enough about joists and beams and girders and installing water and gas and electricity to build a house. She should have had the sense to know she couldn't ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... of Draupadi, many rajahs flocked to the tournament to compete for her hand, and the five Pandavs betook themselves thither in Brahman garb. After the preliminary exercises, the beautiful princess—to whom all her suitors had been duly named—gave the signal for the contest to begin. The mere ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... the deaths of Sergeant Wrangham (d. March 1869) and Mr. John C. Talbot, Q.C. (d. 1852), may be said to have had no rival in reputation or practice until the present Sir E. B. Denison 'gradually began to compete with him on not unequal terms.' Mr. St. George Burke, Q.C., Mr. Merewether, Q.C., and Mr. Rodwell, Q.C., were other contemporaries of his, who all had a large practice and great reputation, but were, I believe, as seldom as possible pitted against ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... the world shall co-operate and not compete. The paradox of history is that every struggle leads to firmer unity. Wars cemented France, unified the British Empire, consolidated ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... being by nature cruel and brutal, he gave himself up to amusing the soldiers and corrupting them, so that he might indulge his rapacity upon the people; on the other hand, not maintaining his dignity, often descending to the theatre to compete with gladiators, and doing other vile things, little worthy of the imperial majesty, he fell into contempt with the soldiers, and being hated by one party and despised by the other, he was conspired against ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... your products, if you can produce, and if you do not possess the implements necessary for that purpose but have only your arms to sell, sell them, sell your labour to the highest bidder, the State will not interfere! Compete among yourselves, contractors! No favour shall be shown, the law of natural selection will take upon itself the function of killing off those who do not keep pace with the progress of industry, and will reward those ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin

... of those will he compete. Satire is his element, and there he proclaims himself to be an humble follower of his great predecessor. But while he bows to Lucilius as his master, and owns him superior in polish and scholarly grace to the satirists who ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... suffers from the reproach that it is vague and general, unable to compete with the attractions of political history either for the student or for the general reader, because of its lack of outstanding personalities. In point of fact there is often as much material for reconstructing the life of some quite ordinary ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... practical farmer would have told them that this could not be done and make both ends meet at the close of the year. Any political economist would have told them that a community which disregards the advantage of division of labor, could not compete with one which recognizes that advantage. The principles of Fourier, if generally adopted, would produce general starvation and soon reduce the population of Europe to one fourth of its present numbers. London, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... Beck with attention. He was anxious to learn how powerful a rival he had to compete with. What he heard did not alarm him, but rather ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... good-will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all legitimate and useful extensions of the commerce of a manufacturing and commercial nation may be procured through the policy of the "open door"—which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed to compete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether backward or advanced in civilization. No American Administration has accepted a "concession" of land in China. They also believe that peaceable extensions of territory and trade will afford adequate relief from the economic pressure ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... eye-witness who sat with Brant at one of these games has told of the excitement which the match aroused. On this occasion a great company of Senecas had come all the way from New York state in order to compete for the mastery with their kinsmen, the Mohawks. The contest lasted for three days before the Senecas finally won the valuable stakes which ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... the marvellous destruction of life which is constantly going on in nature. For every species of living thing, as for man, "Eine Bresche ist ein jeder Tag."—Every species has its enemies; every species has to compete with others for the necessaries of existence; the weakest goes to the wall, and death is the penalty inflicted on all laggards and stragglers. Every variety to which a species may give rise is either worse or better adapted to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... part she was required to fill; she has maintained the pure doctrine of the English Church against all opponents; she has reared her Students as faithful children of that Church; she has given them an education that enables them to compete successfully with all rivals in the walks of literature and science; and it cannot be fairly alleged against her as a fault that she has not provided for the educational wants of Irish Catholics; she was never intended ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton

... Lucie, eying with admiration the noble lines of a figure with whose perfect proportions her own could never hope to compete. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... the want of sunlight during the short days of the winter months. Were it not for the short winter days of the higher latitudes limiting the hours of sunshine, tomatoes could be grown under glass in the northern states to compete in price, when the better quality of vine-ripened fruits is considered, with those from the Gulf states. Growers are learning that tomatoes can be profitably grown under glass during the longer spring days, and consumers are beginning to appreciate the superior quality ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... portion for a second in apparent wonderment at its size caused it gently and suddenly to disappear. I was no sluggard as a rule, but found myself outclassed by minutes—which, said I to myself, is not to be worried over since 'tis sheer vanity to compete with the supernatural. But (even as I lugged the last spoonful of luke-warm greasy water to my lips) this ghost turned to me for all the world as if I too were a ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... introduce a new style and spirit into their art. This was the case even with Raffaello, who, in the frescoes he executed at S. Maria della Pace, showed his immediate willingness to learn from Michelangelo, and his determination to compete with him. Condivi and Vasari are agreed upon this point, and Michelangelo himself, in a moment of hasty indignation, asserted many years afterwards that what Raffaello knew of art was derived from ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... that time Reuben, junior, was a minor, scarcely eighteen. Yet his turn for finance had been such that he had already amassed reserves, and—without a drop of Jewish blood in his veins—possessed confidence enough to compete in their own field with the acutest Hebrews of the district. Reuben, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... which might well be enlarged from mere protection to positive hospitality. How great a part the desolating loneliness of a city plays in seductions the individual histories in the report show. Municipal dance halls are a splendid proposal. Freed from a cold and over-chaperoned respectability they compete with the devil. There, at least, is one method of sexual expression which may have positively beneficent results. A municipal lodging house for women is something of a substitute for the wretched rented room. A little suggestion to the police that ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... the plaza a platform has been erected, the scenery being of bamboo, nipa, and wood; there the Tondo comedians will perform wonders and compete with the gods in improbable miracles, there will sing and dance Marianito, Chananay, Balbino, Ratia, Carvajal, Yeyeng, Liceria, etc. The Filipino enjoys the theater and is a deeply interested spectator of dramatic representations, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... whoever considers the unity, correspondence, and amity that was so well kept and entertained betwixt superiors and their followers and vassals in former ages, besides as it is now-a-days, he need not think it so; and I may truly say that there was no clan in the Highlands of Scotland that would compete with the Mackenzies, their vassals and followers, as to that; and it is sure their superiors in former times would not grant their daughters in marriage without their consent. Nor durst the meanest of them, on the other hand, give theirs to any stranger without the superior's ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... The cost of sending a pair of shoes from a shop in New York to the residence of the wearer is, if I mistake not, much greater than the mere cost of transporting them across the Atlantic. Even if a dirigible balloon should cross the Atlantic, it does not follow that it could compete with the steamship ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... the other. "There is no such glass as my father's for lightness and strength. If he had a dozen workmen like you, my brother and I should be ruined in trying to compete with him. I watched you very closely the other day, and I watched the others, too. By the bye, my friend, was that really an accident, or does the man owe you some grudge? I never saw such ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... least, for from the moment one does anything one ceases to compete with him. It leaves him the field more clear. But that's just the discomfort for him—he feels, as you said just now, kind of lonely: he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far from being jealous ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... was indeed a charmed garden, and also had its fairy, who, if she did not compete with the moonbeams in rocking herself on the tops of the trees and the edges of the wall, was nevertheless as delicate as an elf, and who tripped from flower to brook and from brook to hill as lightly and gracefully as the gazelle. The whole ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... ameliorations were introduced and the prosperity of the country promoted by the Austrian administration, notwithstanding the national jealousy of the inhabitants. Venice, with her choked-up harbor, could, it is true, no longer compete with Trieste. The German element has gained ground in Galicia by means of the public authorities and the immigration of agriculturists and artificers. The Hungarians endeavored to render their language the common medium throughout Hungary, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... its technique was not up to the level of the technique of the commercial drama! Perhaps he has changed his opinion since then. Heaven knows that the so-called "intellectual" drama is amateurish enough, but nearly all literary art is amateurish, and assuredly no intellectual drama could hope to compete in clumsiness with some of the most successful commercial plays of modern times. I tremble to think what the mandarins and William Archer would say to the technique of Hamlet, could it by some miracle be brought forward as a new piece by ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... voice, as she thanked the clerk for his trouble, had been forgotten. He had heard that she was rich—how rich he did not know—but fancied she might possibly be worth a few paltry thousands, not more, and so, of course, she was not prepared to compete with him, who counted his gold by hundreds of thousands. Five hundred was all she would give for Rocket. How, then was he surprised and chagrined when, with a coolness equal to his own, she kept steadily on, scarcely allowing the auctioneer to repeat his bid before she increased it, and ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... canopy, surrounded by courtiers, sit Blanche de Bourbon and her illustrious lord Dom Pedro, with Dona Maria de Padilla, the lady of his choice, at his left. Three times the trumpets have sounded, announcing the approach of the troubadours gathered from all parts of Castile to compete with one another in song. Behold! a venerable old man, with silvery white beard flowing down upon his breast, seeks to extricate himself from the crowd. With admiring gaze the people respectfully make way, and enthusiastically greet him: "Rabbi ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... characters, in depicting one phase of life. With this thought, I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern trouvere, was then giving a gigantic vogue to a kind of composition unjustly called secondary. Is it not really harder to compete with the registry of births, marriages, and deaths by means of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther, Rene, Corinne, Adolphe, Gil Blas, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... the siege of that city by his patron Nobilior in 565.(50) But the number of these national dramas remained small, and that species of composition soon disappeared from the stage; the scanty legend and the colourless history of Rome were unable permanently to compete with the rich cycle of Hellenic legends. Respecting the poetic value of the pieces we have no longer the means of judging; but, if we may take account of the general poetical intention, there were in Roman literature few such ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... great efforts to signal to us, but as she was a Union boat the captain refused to go near enough to read the flags, and we still remain ignorant of the state of the war. If the great lines of steamships to the Cape were to compete against each other, as do those of the Atlantic, by increasing their speeds, by lowering their rates, by improving the food and accommodation, no one would complain, but it is difficult to see how the public can be the gainers by the silly antagonism I have described. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... powerful nip broke off a piece of the shell. Once more taking it in his claws, he inserted the very long and sharp point of his bill and picked out the kernel, which he seized hold of, morsel by morsel, with his curiously formed, extensible tongue. As no other bird in existence can compete with him in eating these nuts, he has always an abundance of food. Mr Hooker called this species the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... some time during his flying periods, and it gave him a chance briefly to renew old acquaintanceship and personally to wish them good luck on their long journey. Of course our friends would have given a whole lot to have been able to compete in the novel contest themselves, but that was out of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... experience in the mills. Theory and practice must be learned at the same time. Even the supervisory and executive positions in which a technical education is of considerable value require a long and arduous apprenticeship on the job before the worker can compete with men who have started with the scantiest educational equipment, but have picked up a knowledge of the processes by experience and observation. Below these positions the work rapidly grades off to various kinds of machine operating in which ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz



Words linked to "Compete" :   try for, play, race, run off, emulate, competitor, competition, touch, match, competitory, competitive, equal, run, rival, go for



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com