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Defunct   /dɪfˈəŋkt/   Listen
Defunct

adjective
1.
No longer in force or use; inactive.  "A defunct organization"
2.
Having ceased to exist or live.  "A defunct Indian tribe"



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"Defunct" Quotes from Famous Books



... book which appeared in the now defunct New York Star, the late George Parsons Lathrop wrote that ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... turned again to his companion, a girl sitting on a box just outside the radius of the tiller. She was an odd-looking figure to be sitting in the cockpit of a fishing boat, amid recent traces of business with salmon, codfish, and the like. The heat was putting a point on the smell of defunct fish. The dried scales of them still clung to the small vessel's timbers. In keeping, the girl should have been buxom, red-handed, coarsely healthy. And she was anything but that. No frail, delicate creature, mind you,—but she did ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Italy, especially since the Abyssinian episode had so seriously discredited the latter. Then, of a sudden, with a poetic justice that is delicious, Italy turns around and humiliates the nation that was to take its place The whole comic situation resembles nothing more nearly than a supposedly defunct spouse rising from his death-bed to thrash the expectant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... evidently the business of the monks so to do, the priests, on the other hand, had only taken fork in hand for the sake of a little gentle exercise. One unhappy Jacques Bonhomme made hot and toilsome hay in thick brown clothes, plainly manufactured from a defunct Brother's gown; for, to judge from appearances, a cast-off gown is a thing unknown. It was good to see a Brother, in horn spectacles of mediaeval cut, tenderly chopping a log for firewood, and peering at it through his spectacles after each ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... melancholy gaze was fixed on a defunct cigar. "Never heard either of his hosses object ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... away from the spiritual and eternal salvation of the individual, which the New Testament makes the chief and ultimate thing, to the material and temporal things of this earth, which the New Testament makes a means to a higher end. To prove that the old evangelism is defunct, attention is called to the fact that seven thousand sectarian congregations did not have a single convert in an entire year. But can that be said of true New Testament evangelism? How prone we are to forget that only a comparatively few can attain unto worldly success ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... intercept the glances which the young couple exchanged to find himself transported to the candid region of romance. It was evident that Hermione adored and was adored; that the lovers believed in each other and in every one about them, and that even the legacy of the defunct aunt had not been too great a strain on ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... students of life. What would Balzac or Flaubert have known of life if they had been merely gentlemen? Nothing! What does a gentleman know? Nothing. What does he do in the world? Nothing. Of what use is he beyond his interest as a vestige of a defunct feudalism? This is the Twentieth Century, in the United States ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... died. Now, Monsieur, a Don Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always to have a confidential Leporello. If I could find Leporello alive I might learn the secrets not to be extracted from a Don Juan defunct. I ascertained, in truth, both at Vienna, to which I first repaired in order to verify the renseignements I had obtained at Paris, and at Baden, to which I then bent my way, that this brilliant noble had a favourite valet ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for a few days longer at the house, while they were hastening their preparations for the pomp and magnificence of his funeral. On the eighth day, so as to assemble the relatives, associates, and friends of the defunct the more easily, inform the public and call together all who wished to be present, the procession, which they called exequiae, was cried aloud and proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet on all the squares and chief places of the city by the crier of the dead, in the following ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... of title showing the successive transfers of ownership from colonial days down through the years of Virginia's splendor to the dread time when battle shook the world. The title had passed from the receiver of a defunct shooting-club to Armitage, who had been charmed by the description of the property as set forth in an advertisement, and lured, moreover, by the amazingly small price at which the preserve ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... creations, and so on. In this way the qualification of Sudras for the knowledge of Brahman is perfectly clear. And as the knowledge of Brahman may be reached in this way not only by Sudras but also by Brahmanas and members of the other higher castes, the poor Upanishad is practically defunct.—To this the following objection will possibly be raised. Man being implicated in and confused by the beginningless course of mundane existence, requires to receive from somewhere a suggestion as to this empirical world being a mere error and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... children and many of the adults that remained. The chief of this little band wore a hat proudly adorned with ribbons and plumes, and flew a flag before his dwelling with the initials of the North American Trading and Transportation Company on it—a defunct Alaskan corporation. We could not learn the origin thereof; the flag and the letters were plainly home-made. It was probably a mere imitation of a flag he had seen years ago at Tanana, copied without knowledge of the meaning of the letters, as the Esquimaux often copy into the decoration ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... heathen ideas of a resurrection were founded on the keen recollection of themselves the defunct have inspired. Our belief in the Christian revelations is founded on its ethical system, part of which, however, is of course for missionary effort only, but which is the more remarkably connected with previous revelations, ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... experiences, and carefully set down both historically according to the appearances, and artificially with a reference to the diseases and symptoms which resulted from them, in case where the anatomy is of a defunct patient; whereas now upon opening of bodies they are passed ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... the enslavement! On, on I rushed, my head all ablaze with 'od' that had no business there, and praying as I never had prayed before. I took the Gowanus road toward Greenwood. Perhaps it was some defunct rogue there interred, who was leading me on ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... men to love their present pains Upon example; so the spirit is eased; And when the mind is quick'ned, out of doubt, The organs, though defunct and dead before, Break up their drowsy grave and newly move, With casted slough and fresh legerity. Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both, Commend me to the princes in our camp; Do my good morrow to them, and anon Desire ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... he referred were those of a defunct Short Line railroad. A large number of these bonds had been discovered among A. Rodgers Warren's effects; part of his "tangled assets," the captain had termed them, differentiating from ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... which the same gentleman regrets, in the most pathetic terms, no longer exists in order that the seigneur may feed upon des gros morceaux de boeuf demi-cru, may hang up half his peasants pour encourager les autres, and ravish the daughters of the defunct pour ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a regular abode, to which it invariably returns after performing the offices of mortician to some defunct bird, beast, or reptile. This insect grave-digger, by the way, is remarkably expert at its business, and will bury a frog or a bird in a very short time. As soon as it has buried the dead animal and deposited its eggs, it returns to its ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... we inquired of two or three persons who was the distinguished defunct at whose obsequies we had been assisting, for we had some hope that it might be Rachel, who died last week, and is still above ground. But it proved to be only a Madame Mentel, or some such name, whom nobody ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... him as her conqueror, when she does not even consider him as an object she can sacrifice with eclat, I predict that his reign will be short. Her reasons for getting rid of him will be to her an embarrassment of choice. Thus the defunct of la Presidente was a counsellor of state, without doubt as dull and as stiff as his wig. What a figure to set up against a courtier, against a warrior ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... waiting in the Champs de Mars. The generalissimo swears in the name of armed France; the National Assembly swears; the king swears; be the welkin split with vivats! And the feast of pikes dances itself off and becomes defunct. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... dusty closet set them all sneezing, but they triumphantly brought forth an armful of defunct trousers and carried them up to their room. For the next fifteen minutes such giggles and exclamations and shrieks of laughter escaped from their room that Annie left her ironing to see what was up. An astonishing sight met ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward. These productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London and brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the ordinary style, without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald inscriptions. But others—and those far the most impressive both to my taste and feelings—were roughly ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... agitated circle, in his praiseworthy efforts to do business. Old Crocky, too, was there, mounted on a subdued wretch of the horse-species, tenanted, according to the Pythagorean doctrine, by the evil spirit of some defunct croupier, and ready to "return on the nick" as usual. In this "mess tossed up of Hockley-Hole and White's," in addition to our foregoing inventory, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... law and Shari'a law; as of 20 January 1991, the now defunct Revolutionary Command Council imposed Shari'a law in the northern states; Shari'a law applies to all residents of the northern states regardless of their religion; some separate religious courts; accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction, with reservations; ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... It was a human. He knew that; in spite of the thick veil that covered the slumberer's face. But it was also a bundle. It was a bundle which might well be expected to delight the Mistress almost as much as had the parasol;—far more than had the defunct chicken. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... people never give people their right names! Well, Mr Aspel, you must know I was nuss to baby. An amytoor nuss I was—got no pay for it, but a considerable allowance o' kicks from the Brute, who wasn't fond o' me, as I'd done 'im a mortal injury, somehow, by being his defunct brother's orphan child. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... summer is over, and you will be back to Paris. Apropos of Paris, it was not Sophia Gail, but Sophia Gay—the English word Gay—who was my correspondent.[1] Can you tell who she is, as you did of the defunct * *? ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... with the water it ignited a calcium flare and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine gun a few hundred yards away giving him its undivided attention. What saved him was possibly the fact that the defunct Intrepid still was emitting huge clouds of smoke which it had been worth nobody's while to turn. He managed to catch a rope, as the motor launch started, and was towed for a while till he was observed and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... sepulcher For worlds defunct, as earth for living forms! And thou, O Moon, who hast surveyed all this Thyself shalt be consumed with fervent heat, For e'en the firmament shall ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... same year to Bolt Court, still keeping to his beloved Fleet Street), and through an oaken doorway, with a yawning letter-box, there fell the MS. of a sketch entitled "A Dinner at Poplar Walk," afterward renamed "Mr. Minns and His Cousin," These were the offices of the old Monthly Magazine now defunct. Here the article duly appeared as one of the "Sketches by Boz." In the preface to an edition of "Pickwick," published in 1847, Dickens describes the incident sufficiently graphically for one to realize, to its fullest extent, with what pangs, and hopes, and fears his ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... but only before the Speaker. It is much referred to, that in the recent parliamentary commemoration of Sir Robert Peel, the Hebrew commoner kept silence; his long war of bitter sarcasm and reproach on the defunct statesman was too freshly remembered. Peel rarely exerted himself to more advantage than in his replies, to D'Israeli, all noticeable for subdued disdain, conscious patriotism, and argumentative completeness. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... you think this is—a honeymoon? In the first place you'll probably be located in some defunct end-of-steel village where even the ghosts are abominable. In the next place you'll be too busy to know you're married. Horse-thieves? Bah! This is different stuff. You'll be up against something new. We've more than a suspicion ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... off all sound, an' no new holes in him. But as the Dallas party, who comes caperin' over with the first shot, is layin' at the windup outside the Lone Star door, plumb defunct, thar's an end to the ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... the fact that the defunct Intrepid was still emitting huge clouds of smoke, which it had been worth nobody's while to turn off. He managed to catch a rope as the motor launch started, and was towed for a while till he was observed ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... misguided people had a first-rate medicine chest, filled with useful drugs and deadly poisons, that had been provided for them cheaply, by the agent for their society at Cairo, who had purchased the stock in trade of a defunct doctor. This had been given to the missionaries, together with the caution that many of the bottles were not labelled, and that some contained poison. Thus provided with a medicine chest that they did not comprehend, and with a number of Bibles printed in the Tigre language ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... horrible development of cannibalism among the Australian blacks is the eating of defunct relatives. When a person dies there follows an elaborate ceremony, which terminates with the lowering of the corpse into the grave. In the grave is a man not related to the deceased, who proceeds to cut off the fat adhering to the muscles of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... good-naturedly and with understanding turned away. Mechanically he walked to the Club, but there was no club—then on to the office of The Progress—the paper that was the boast of the town. The Progress was defunct and the brilliant editor had left the hills. A boy with an ink-smeared face was setting type and a pallid gentleman with glasses was languidly working a hand-press. A pile of fresh-smelling papers lay on a table, and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... their senses and emotions, men approached them through the medium of scholastic erudition. Instead of seeing and feeling for themselves, they sought by dissection to confirm the written precepts of a defunct Roman writer. This diversion of a great art from its natural line of development supplies a striking instance of the fascination which authority exercises at certain periods of culture. Rather than trust their feeling for what was beautiful and useful, convenient ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... some defunct prude is placed side by side with the vinaigrette of some jolie danseuse who was any thing but prudish. How shocked would the original owner of the flacon feel at the friction! The fan of some grande dame de la cour touches the diamond-mounted etui ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... in the words which her child had written, not a vestige of heart was to be found. In that reconciling of God and Mammon which Mrs Grantly had carried on so successfully in the education of her daughter, the organ had not been required, and had become withered, if not defunct, through want ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... example, exposed the corpse in the open air, abandoning it to the birds or beasts of prey. It was considered a great misfortune if these respected the body, for it was an almost certain indication of the wrath of Ahura-mazda, and it was thought that the defunct had led an evil life. When the bones had been sufficiently stripped of flesh, they were collected together, and deposited either in an earthenware urn or in a stone ossuary with a cover, or in a monumental tomb either hollowed out in the heart of the mountain or in the living rock, or raised ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... neglect everything else. And he did nothing to link this phenomenon with the remarkable expansion of the Caddles' baby that had been going on now for some weeks, indeed ever since Caddles walked over one Sunday afternoon a month or more ago to see his mother-in-law and hear Mr. Skinner (since defunct) brag about his ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... chapter to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the tomb works of art, once the property of the dead, or objects of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases, animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future life. I also cited M. Desnoyers' comments on the absence among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of quadrupeds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... yet defunct. They saw it would be impossible for him to live much longer; for the lower part of his body,—all below the shattered portion of the spine,—appeared already without life. A few hours at most would terminate his sufferings; but for the expiration ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... cause than modesty restrained their speech. Thus, with downcast eyes, or casting side long glances at each other, as in expectation of the wished-for eulogy, and with the deepest gravity, they followed round and round, but still with sealed lips. The defunct must have been a strange being to deserve no commendation. Could it be? Did he possess no one good quality by which he could be remembered? Had he never done a kind act? Could he not hunt, or fish, or make baskets, or plant corn, or beans, or potatoes? Surely ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... was rediscovered and every one recognized it, and speeches were made, and the wreath piously deposited. The next year the admirers came again, with another wreath and more speeches. But some one had been before them. A wreath already lay on the grave; it bore this inscription: "To my dear husband defunct." Now Becque, though worried by liaisons, had lived and died a bachelor. The admirers had discoursed, the year before, at the grave of a humble clerk. After this Paris put up a statue to Becque. But it is only a bust. You can see it in the Avenue ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... "I am thinking of going there myself next year. Lovely orphan sat by Lady Mary at table d'hote. Read tracts presented by Lady Mary. Made acquaintance. Lovely orphan's travelling companion or governess discovered to be live sister of defunct travelling companion or governess of Lady Mary. Result, warm friendship. Ralph, like a dutiful nephew, appears on the scene. Fortnight of fine weather. Interesting expeditions. Romantic attachment, cemented by diamond and pearl ring from Hunt & Roskell's. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... the tomb of Jean Jacques, are two hands, darting out of the gates of death, supporting lighted torches, and below, (it is a little singular) are inscriptions illustrating the peaceful, and benevolent virtues of the enclosed defunct! ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... June 1987 (next to be held after new constitution drafted) President: last held 10 September 1987; next election planned after new constitution drafted; results - MENGISTU Haile-Mariam elected by the now defunct National Assembly, but resigned and left Ethiopia on 21 May 1991 Other political or pressure groups: Oromo Liberation Front (OLF); Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP); numerous small, ethnic-based groups ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... came suddenly to a close: the vehicle—like a luckless opposition coach, weak in its proprietorship—was run off the road, and broke down; and the triumphant organ, seizing eager hold of the name of its defunct rival as legitimate spoil, hung it up immediately under its own, as a red warrior of the West seizes hold of the scalp of a fallen enemy, and suspends it at his middle by his belt of wampum. The controversy, however, lasted quite long enough to lead curious minds to inquire how ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... superficial pantology; a speech intended to be delivered before a defunct Mechanics' Institute. By Swallow Swift, late M.P. for the Borough of Cockney-Cloud, Witsbury: reprinted Balloon Island, Bubble year, month ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... of the practice of the Caroline Islands, is as follows: "Lorsqu'il meurt quelque personne d'un rang distmgue, ou qui leur est chere par d'autres endroits, ses obseques se font avec pompe. Il y eu a qui renferment le corps da defunct dans un petit edifice de pierre, qu'ils gardent au-dedans de leur maisons. D'autres les enterrent loin de leurs habitations."—Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, tom. xv. p. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... the Empire, one and all toiling in the direction of Pretoria. We started at about mid-day, and reached our destination, tired and famished, at seven. After the first ten miles, behold a string of four men, tramping with never a halt, over rocks and grass, through spruits, past unutterably aromatic defunct representatives of the equine race, and through dust ankle deep, towards the city of their desire. Darkness came on swiftly, as it does out here, and past hundreds of camp fires they limped, footsore but as determined as ever, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... in the Lottery. Lamb's essay "The Illustrious Defunct" (see Vol. I.) shows him to have been interested in Lotteries; and in Letter No. 184 Mary Lamb states that he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... animal; he kicked right and left with his hind legs alternately, with the rapidity of a horse; trumpeting and screaming, he threw his trunk in the air, twisting it about, and shaking his immense head, until, having lashed himself into sufficient rage, he made a desperate charge at the supposed defunct enemy, with the intention of treating the body in a similar manner to that a few days previous. But the tiger was not quite dead and although he could not move to get away, he seized with teeth and ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... Ireland was in any way responsible for their existence. Lord Ranfurly also said that while the hearty friendship and co-operation of these gentlemen were warmly appreciated by Irish Loyalists, he was quite certain that their generous aid would never be required, for that Home Rule was now defunct, dead, and buried, and beyond the possibility of resurrection. It may be remarked, in passing, that this is the feeling of the best-informed Irish Home Rulers, and that many in my hearing have offered to back their opinion by laying odds. The rejection ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... on shore, haul up a boat; Till, after a great deal of lugging, He lugg'd him to the edge of the Knight's moat; And stuck him up so straight upon his rear, Touching, almost, the water, with his heels, That the defunct might pass, not seen too near, For some fat ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... the deputies from Bonaparte drew up different articles conformable to the situation of the country, and in order to prevent, not a revolution in the Government, for the Government was defunct, and had died a natural death, but a crisis, and to save the city from convulsion, anarchy, and pillage. Bonaparte spared a division of his army to save Venice from pillage and massacre. All the battalions were in the streets of Venice, the disturbers were put ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... name strongly suggestive of its owner's connexion with Cambria. If A SUBSCRIBER has exhausted the resources of the Clifford pedigrees, it were, I suppose, useless to refer him to the ancestry of the defunct Earls of Cumberland; and especially to that part of it represented by Sir Roger de Clifford, of Clifford, co. Hereford, a famous soldier in the days of Henry III. and Edward I. He accompanied the latter monarch ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... future life; they do not worship either visible or unseen things, and are the most moral of the Filipinos. The lowlanders also desert their dying, and after death close all paths to the house, leave the skeleton of the defunct to be picked clean by ants, and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... devours her lovers; but, if some weakling succumb, the survivors hardly ever fail to profit by his carcass as they would in the case of any ordinary prey. With no scarcity of provisions as an excuse, they feast upon their defunct companion. For the rest, all the sabre-bearing clan display, in varying degrees, a propensity for filling their bellies with their ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... money was gone and his stock was reduced to a mere handful of goods. At last one Saturday afternoon we went out to make a sale and I cleaned out the last dollars' worth and then sold the trunks and declared the business defunct. ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... lighting, and the telegraph, telephone, and messenger service. Surely no man knoweth the beginning or the end of the network which is woven over our heads, and which, besides all the useful wires already enumerated, is full of "dead" wires, many of them strung by defunct or irresponsible companies, who would never have been allowed to obstruct the streets if they had not been "competing" for the business. Can there be any doubt that it is the height of folly to continue this work, and that the only rational ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... now, the old hunks!" they say. "So poor, forsooth, so poor! And yet he's paid a gold piece. Many a defunct person of quality have I buried in my time, but I never ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... As for the brigands, the leader with three others had escaped, and the faces of those captured were not known to the guard. But the fact that they had been seven was significant in his opinion; and he believed that they would prove to be men of Ecija, forming a band officially supposed to be defunct. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... banner representing the unwilling party does not move to approach the other banner. In case the couple should die too young to understand the matter, a dead man is appointed as a tutor to the male defunct, and some effigies are made to serve as the instructress and maids to the female defunct. The dead tutor thus nominated is informed of his appointment by a paper offered to him, on which are inscribed his name and age. After the consummation of the marriage ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... that? except that all's game to the poet! Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who for three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a defunct male. I suppose that's what Ricky ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the veranda again, dinner eaten, and dusk come down, Signet brought out an old guitar from among the Dutchman's effects (it had belonged probably to that defunct nephew of the dress clothes), and as he talked he picked at the thing with idle fingers. Not altogether idle, though, I began to think. Something began to emerge by and by from the random fingerings—a rhythm, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... kindness to him! No, you Fool, I got his Pardon my self, that no body else should have it, so that if he gets any body to speak to his Majesty for it, his Majesty cries he has granted it; but for want of my appearance, he's defunct, trust up, hang'd, Francis. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... American Pacific slope had changed conditions, and that, should the treaty be observed and such a canal remain unfortified, the superiority of the British fleet would give the nation complete control. Great Britain, however, could scarcely be expected to regard a treaty as defunct from old age at thirty years, especially as she also possessed a developing Pacific coast. Moreover, if the treaty was to British advantage, at least the United States had accepted it. Great Britain, therefore, refused to admit that the treaty was not in full force. Blaine then ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... believed that both Griffenbottom and Sir Thomas were dead,—and that the mayor had now no choice but to declare Moggs and Westmacott elected. Then there arose a suspicion that the polls would be kept open on the morrow on behalf of two defunct candidates, so that a further election on behalf of the conservative party might be ensured. Men swore that they would break into the bedrooms of the Standard Inn, in order that they might satisfy themselves whether the two gentlemen were alive or ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... of the strict observance of the Order of Cluny, certify that this book has been entrusted to us by order of the defunct Dom Michel Nardin, a professed religious priest of our said observance, deceased in our college of Saint-Martial of Avignon, March 28th, 1723, aged about eighty years, of which he has spent about thirty among us, having lived very religiously: he was a German by birth, and had served as an officer ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... to purge the roll of the fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the defunct National Committee, and the majority which thus endorsed fraud was made a majority only because it included the fraudulent delegates themselves, who all sat as judges on one another's cases. If these fraudulent votes had not thus been cast and counted the Convention would have been purged of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... meet in the same person.' Do you, my dear (to whom theory and practice are the same thing in almost every laudable quality), apply the observation to yourself, in this particular case, where resolution is required; and where the performance of the will of the defunct is the question—no more to be dispensed with by you, in whose favour it was made, than by any body else who have only themselves in view by breaking ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... wild-cat Bills. The answer to that is that the head of the Government can veto the wild-cat Bills. The Governor-General can withhold his assent, and the withholding of the assent of the Governor-General is no defunct power. Only the other day, since I have been at the India Office, the Governor-General disallowed a Bill passed by a Local Government which I need not name, with the most advantageous effect. I am quite convinced that if that Local Government had had an unofficial majority ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... allowed to come back. There was no longer any hope. The room was arranged as a death chamber. Julien and the priest were talking in a low tone near the window. It was growing dark. The priest came over to Jeanne and took her hands, trying to console her. He spoke of the defunct, praised her in pious phrases and offered to pass the night ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... take care of itself, and all forms of Christianity and all other religions shall have equal rights to protection by the police. Confiscate for the use of the State all the existing revenues of the defunct Church and its belongings, giving such compensation for life- interests therein as may seem reasonable; but create no new Church, nor stump of a Church, round which new interests may gather. Do not even implicate the State so far in the future of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... into reflections unfavorable to the defunct husband, who was small, and discreetly complimentary to himself, as he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... defunct beetles are harmless, old clothes retain no characteristics of their former owners, no matter how blood-thirsty, and empty bottles probably never contained fatal potions. If the place is dark, press your finger on ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... married an Italian woman; thence threw out lines of descent to Milan, thence to Paris; and because his Attic usages were all local, epichorial, and tied to a particular mythology which has given way, or to a superstition which is defunct, or to a patriotic remembrance which has vanished with the land and the sympathy that supported it; hence, and upon other similar arguments, the Athenian has long since melted into the mass with which he was intermixed; he was a unit attached to a vast overpowering ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... assembled in the tent for luncheon the Chinese began work upon the wolf. They had obediently gone to a considerable distance to perform the last rites, but had not chosen wisely in regard to the wind. As the antelope steak was brought in, a gentle breeze wafted with it a concentrated essence of defunct camel. Yvette put down her knife and fork and looked up. She caught my eye and burst out laughing. Mrs. Mac had her hand clasped firmly over her mouth and on her face was an expression ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... belongs definitively to a college of prelates[5340] who vote according to established formalities; these elect the new pope by a majority of two-thirds, and, for more than four centuries, not one of these elections has been contested; between each defunct pope and his elected successor, the transfer of universal obedience has been prompt and unhesitating and, during as after the interregnum, no schism in the Church has occurred.—On the other hand, in the legal title of Caesar Augustus there was a defect. According to Roman ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... possessing a fair degree of good looks, the color-line would shrivel up like a scroll in the heat of competition for their hands in marriage. The penalty for the violation of the law against intermarriage is the same sought to be imposed by the defunct Glenn Bill for violation of its provisions; i.e., a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not to exceed six months, or twelve months in ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... indestructible principle, the incorporeal spirit, is disengaged from the body; it is called in Assyrian ekimmou or egimmou.... The ekimmou inhabits the tomb and reposes upon the bed (zalalu) of the corpse. If well treated by the children of the defunct, he becomes their protector; if not, their evil genius and scourge. The greatest misfortune that can befall a man is to be deprived of burial. In such a case his spirit, deprived of a resting-place and of the funerary libations, leads ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... materials, with a saddle of five-year-old mutton from the Eastern Shore, as the main piece de resistance, might have satisfied the defunct Earl Dudley, of fastidious memory. The wines ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... man, much smaller than his wife, with a certain air of defunct style about him. He had quite a fierce bristle of moustache, and a nervous briskness of carriage, yet there was something that was unmistakably conciliatory and subservient in his bearing toward Mrs. Jameson. He stood aside for her to enter the pew, with the attitude of vassalage; ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... had been; she thought him cruel in conducting himself towards her as he did at Budmouth, cruel afterwards in making so light of her. She knew he had stifled his love for her—was utterly lost to her. But for all that she could not help indulging in a woman's pleasure of recreating defunct agonies, and lacerating herself with them ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... tomb. Why should extremely few persons, the least capable, perhaps, of sympathy, be invited to sympathize, while thousands are excluded from it by the iron grate of a dead language? Those who read a Latin inscription are the most likely to know already the character of the defunct, and no new feelings are to be excited in them; but the language of the country tells the ignorant who he was that lies under the turf before them; and, if he was a stranger, it naturalizes him among them; it gives him friends and relations; it brings to him and detains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... told, arose from the practice of those who had shared his dainties when alive being in the habit of perambulating St. Paul's, where he was buried, at the dining time of day; what dinner they then had, they had with Duke Humphrey the defunct. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... that were made for the obsequies of the defunct king; and his body was watched by a few servants and these hodmen whom Andouille ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... to the faithful care of a good clerk, who guarded well the registers of a defunct City church of London. My father was endeavouring to prove his title to an estate in the north country, and had to obtain the certificates of the births, deaths, and marriages of the family during about a century. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... originality or absurdity, from beauty or deformity:—the plea of humanity is lost by going through the process of law, the firm and manly tone of principle is exchanged for the wavering and pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion are reduced to a defunct common-place, and all true imagination is buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and imposing authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the other is a lifeless skeleton: if the one in its feverish and hectic extravagance resembles ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... transferred to that unearthly city of the dead, till for one reason or another some jealous ghost gains a monarchic supremacy over his brethren, and thus polytheism gives place to monotheism. It need not be that this supreme deity is always conceived as a defunct ancestor, once embodied, but no longer in the body. Rather it would seem that the primitive savage, having once arrived at the conception of a ghost, passes by generalization to that of incorporeal beings unborn and undying, of spirits ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... one of our fellow-passengers. Then for some hours this boat was busily plying to and fro, bringing out to us all that was portable of a once flourishing, or at least promising, fishery and cannery, now defunct. Meanwhile the mosquitoes boarded our ship on a far more profitable speculation. It was pitiful to see our friend gathering together the debris of a wrecked fortune—for he had been wealthy and was now on the down grade of life—hoping almost against hope to be able to ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... and struck out the prayers for the royal family from the books. But there was doubt in their minds and a reluctance to alter in any particular the liturgy that had been taught them, and it is quite likely that intercessions for a defunct sovereign of another land still arise from the Chandalar village. One cannot but feel a deep admiration for the pioneer missionaries of this region—Bishop Bompas, Archdeacon MacDonald, and the others—whose ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... Dead King the factor of importance. Impossibility of proving human origin for Vegetation Deities. Not Death but Resurrection the essential centre of Ritual. Muharram too late in date and lacks Resurrection feature. Relation between defunct heroes and special localities. Sanctity possibly antecedent to connection. Mana not necessarily a case of relics. Self-acting weapons frequent in Medieval Romance. Sir J. G. Frazer's theory holds good. Remarks on method and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... believe Jonah, when he came to tell me all this,' he said, 'and you here, Gryb, too? Where is the defunct?' ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... question of it now," she reminded him, with a touch of asperity. "I've told you—the whole thing's defunct. Later—we'll be glad, perhaps, that I discovered in time that part of me could not be coerced—by the other part, which still wants you as much as ever. We should have been landed in disaster—soon or late. Better soon—before the roots have struck too deep. But you're so furiously angry ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... warning to all progressive young men not to grow wiser than their teachers. Tradition points out the heads of the master and workmen among the corbels. So you see, whereas in old Greek times people used to point out their celebrities among the stars, and gave a defunct hero a place in the constellations, in the middle ages he only got a place among ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... a venture shot an arrow, Which pierced a pig precisely in the ear, And passed unto the other side quite through; So that the boar, defunct, lay tripped up near. Another, to revenge his fellow farrow, Against the Giant rushed in fierce career, And reached the passage with so swift a foot, Morgante was not now in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... securities worth upward of seventy thousand dollars. There were ten of the beautiful bonds of the Great Lakes and Canadian Southern Railroad Company with their miniature locomotives and fields of wheat, and ten equally lovely bits of engraving belonging to the long-since defunct Bluff Creek and Iowa Central, ten more superb lithographs issued by the Mohawk and Housatonic in 1867 and paid off in 1882, and a variety of gorgeous chromos of Indians and buffaloes, and of factories and steamships spouting clouds of soft-coal ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... Laval's desire to settle up some old scores now that he had the power as a member of the Sovereign Council and was the dominating influence in its deliberations. Under the bishop's inspiration the Council ordered the seizure of some papers belonging to Peronne Dumesnil, a former agent of the now defunct Company of One Hundred Associates. Dumesnil retorted by filing a dossier of charges against some of the councilors; and the colonists at once ranged themselves into two opposing factions—those ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... poetical as he was, could not understand his own poetry; and philomathical as he was, could not read his own destiny: since the Pope, the King of France, and great part of his Court, are either literally or metaphorically defunct: since, I say, these things (not foretold by any one but yourself) have come to pass after so surprising a manner; it is with no small concern I see the original of the Staffian race so little known in the world as it is at ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... under pretence that his wardrobe must be wholly refitted. To this I made no objection, though it certainly showed like vanity to purchase garments in the extremity of the mode, when not only great part of the defunct's habiliments were very fit for a twelvemonth's use, but as I myself had been, but yesterday as it were, equipped in a becoming new stand of black clothes, Mr. Pattison would have been welcome to the use of such of my quondam raiment ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... creating profound emotion because it snapped the last link with the past. Yuan Shih-kai's position was considerably strengthened by this auspicious event which secretly greatly delighted him; and by his order for three days the defunct Empress lay in State in the Grand Hall of the Winter Palace and received the obeisance of countless multitudes who appeared strangely moved by this hitherto unknown procedure. There was now only a nine-year old boy between the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... of the illustrious dead by the quick, often reminds me of the gravedigger in Hamlet, and the skull of poor defunct Yorick."—W. H. B. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... having the one virtue of courage. Caesar says that when a man of importance died, his wives were tortured and put to death by fire if suspected of being instrumental in his taking off; but a short time before his conquests it was the custom to burn with the defunct his slaves and his favorite clients. It was also said that the women were not constrained in their choice of husbands, and that the latter were obliged to furnish an equivalent for the dowry brought by the wife. Human sacrifices were offered on certain great occasions, and it was ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... pulled one of the brushes off the defunct scrubber and sudsed it up. It wasn't until he started to use it that he got a good look at his arms. He hadn't paid ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the spirit, "that you would cause a mass to be said, in the Chapel of the Virgin at Rotembourg; I made a vow to that intent during my life, and I have not acquitted myself of it. Moreover, you must have two masses said at Altheim, the one of the Defunct and the other of the Virgin; and as I did not always pay my servants exactly, I wish that a quarter of corn should be distributed to the poor." Simon promised to satisfy him on all these points. The spectre held out his hand, as if to ensure his promise; but Simon, fearing ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... return my nine rats to the bag, and draw the string; for I suspected that I had not killed all the rats in the ship, and I feared that the comrades of the defunct nine might take a fancy to eat their old shipmates. This I had been told was not an uncommon habit of the hideous brutes, and I determined to guard against it, so far ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... his demoniac possession is a mere fable. But there are two sufficient arguments for not reading him, so long as innumerable books of greater interest remain unread. First, he writes upon subjects that, to us, are mean and extinct—race-horses that have been defunct for twenty-five centuries, chariots that were crazy in his own day, and contests with which it is impossible for us to sympathise. Then his digressions about old genealogies are no whit better than his main theme, nor more amusing than a Welshman's ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... diverse manias create fictitious dignities, presidents, vice-presidents, and secretaries of societies, the number of which is greater than that of the social questions they seek to solve. Society on its grand scale has been demolished to make a million of little ones in the image of the defunct. These parasitic organizations reveal decomposition; are they not the swarming of maggots in the dead body? All these societies are the daughters of one mother, Vanity. It is not thus that Catholic charity or true beneficence proceeds; they study evils in wounds ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... late Lord Lytton's tale for All The Year Round, "The Disappearance of John Ackland," for the purpose of mystifying the reader as to whether Ackland was alive or dead. But he was conspicuously defunct! (All the Year ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... he goes, Of Gods defunct, and all their pedigrees, But shuns their scandalous amours, and shows How Plato wise, and clear-ey'd Socrates, Confess'd not to those heathen hes and shes; But thro' the clouds of the Olympic cope Beheld St. Peter, with his holy ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... and ventilated, and its area kept sacred from the pollution of the dead. The practice of burying in churches was the effect of ignorant superstition, influenced by knavish priests, who pretended that the devil could have no power over the defunct if he was interred in holy ground; and this indeed, is the only reason that can be given for consecrating all cemeteries, even at ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... so knowing after two or three trials. Besides, there is a fatality about some women—they're bound to be widows. Furthermore, widows have a way of appearing to be loaded down with ducats, when, in reality, they are pawning the late defunct's unmentionables for the means ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various

... little that he hadn't already known. The Kremlin had all but laughingly declined a suggestion on the part of Switzerland that the extraterrestrials be referred to that all but defunct United Nations. The delegates from the Galactic Confederation had chose to land in Moscow. In Moscow they should remain until they desired to go elsewhere. The Soviet implication was that the alien emissaries had no desire, intention nor reason to visit other sections of Earth. They had contacted ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... Common, he is tripping over the crania of some Indian sachems. Goldsmith's seat, "for whispering lovers made," very likely rested on some venerable, departed Roman; and many a Maypole has gone plump through the thorax of some defunct Gaul. If the old story be true, that, when we shudder, somebody is walking over our grave, what a shaking race of beings our remote ancestors must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... annihilating one in the House of Lords. The reign of order and tranquillity has been restored in Wales, and let us also add, in Ireland, after an unexampled display of mingled determination and forbearance on the part of the Government. Chartism is defunct, notwithstanding the efforts made by its dishonoured and discomfited leaders to revive it. When, in short, has Great Britain enjoyed a state of more complete internal calm and repose than that which at present exists, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... good practice in the larger kind. The faults and the merits of that kind, as such, appear in it after a fashion which can hardly fail to be instructive and suggestive. The faults so frequently charged against that "dear defunct" in our own tongue, the three-volume novel—the faults of long-windedness, of otiose padding, of unnecessary episodes, etc., are almost mechanically or mathematically impossible in the nouvelle. The long book provides pastime in its literal sense, and if it is not obvious in the other ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... (as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanize as you may, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... without a sacrifice, according to popular belief, which sacrifice was offered in the person of the late defunct at Waddow. Indeed, according to some, it were an act of unbelief and impiety to suppose any other, and only to be equalled by that of the attack made by this resolute dame upon Peggy's representative—an outrage she so dearly atoned for by ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... have been the tenth or the twentieth if what the chroniclers tell us about the adoption of the defunct caciquess' names ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... even the title which in its palmy days it bore of PERKINISM. Taking it as settled, then, as no one appears to answer for it, that Perkinism is entirely dead and gone, that both in public and private, officially and individually, its former adherents even allow it to be absolutely defunct, I select it for anatomical examination. If this pretended discovery was made public; if it was long kept before the public; if it was addressed to the people of different countries; if it was formally investigated by scientific men, and systematically adopted by benevolent persons, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)



Words linked to "Defunct" :   dead, inoperative, defunctness



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