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Dispel   /dɪspˈɛl/   Listen
Dispel

verb
(past & past part. dispelled; pres. part. dispelling)
1.
Force to go away; used both with concrete and metaphoric meanings.  Synonyms: chase away, drive away, drive off, drive out, run off, turn back.  "Drive away bad thoughts" , "Dispel doubts" , "The supermarket had to turn back many disappointed customers"
2.
To cause to separate and go in different directions.  Synonyms: break up, disperse, dissipate, scatter.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dispel" Quotes from Famous Books



... but I assure your that both friends and enemies of the Union look upon it in this light. It is a substantial hope, and by consequence a real strength to the enemy. If it is a false hope, and one which you would willingly dispel, I will make the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... that, and set out at a brisk trot. Night had now fallen, but the sky was clear, and a crescent moon came opportunely if feebly to dispel the gloom. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... clinging knitted coat that displayed every attractive line of her athletic figure, her cheeks reddened by triumph and the salt wind, her gray eyes lifted in challenging coquetry, was a sufficiently pleasant sight to dispel mere vexation. And Gerard had no right to feel more than annoyance at a disappointment of which she supposedly ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... occasion to use his hands in some useful vocation, the training they have received will never prove burdensome. On the other hand, the fact of being in possession of reserve powers will prove a source of pleasure. It will dispel many a dark cloud and remove positive forebodings of possible want. The world is strewn with the wrecks of men who inherited fortunes before they had developed the mental poise or business experience necessary to estimate money at its true ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... the company, to whom they were about to be ushered, consisted of some of the neighbouring squatters, who had volunteered their company for a few days to dispel their mutual monotony. But great was their surprise, when, upon entering a very comfortably (almost elegantly) furnished room, to see assembled several ladies, dispersed about the apartment; some in conversation with gentlemen; others at work, amusing or instructing the children; while ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... where wounded vanity has so many opportunities to avenge itself by resorting to all sorts of petty treason. Accordingly, he spoke to his superior officer—saying just enough to be able to remark, in case of success: "Ah! I warned you!"—just enough so as not to dispel any of Gevrol's doubts. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... a boiled chicken, while he gave them some coloured cotton handkerchiefs and some brass buttons. It was a beautiful country, and reminded the guest so much of some parts of England, that it needed a glance at the brown skin, flowing hair, and long poncho of Corbalan to dispel the illusion that he was near home. Things looked so favourable, that he had even selected a site for the mission-house, when some change of sentiment came over Corbalan, probably from the remonstrances of his fellow-chiefs: he declared that a warlike tribe near at hand would not suffer him to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... matter so, that I would much rather that I had once existed, than that I still exist; now do my hopes, my resources, and my succour, desert me and spurn themselves. This is that day, when, for my life, no safety can be hoped; nor yet is death my end; nor hope is there, in fact, to dispel this fear for me; nor cloak have I anywhere for my deceitful stratagems; nor for my devices or my subterfuges is there anywhere a screen presented to me. No deprecating is there for my perfidy; no means of flight for my offences. No refuge is ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... intention of the writer. The proper exercise of this art occasionally demands rare qualifications on the part of the critic; at the same time it adds dignity to his calling and value to his utterance. It serves to dispel the popular conception of a critic as a disappointed litterateur who begrudges his more brilliant fellow craftsmen their success and who dogs their triumphs with his ill-tempered snarling. Interpretative criticism needs few rules and no system; yet it serves a noble purpose as a guide and monitor ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... hereafter. I would regard them, as it is apparent that He regarded them, as being (in a sacred sense) self-sufficient; not, indeed, to the self-sufficient reader, but to the reader who prays in reverent simplicity that the Holy Spirit may dispel every moral mist, every hindrance of heart and will, from between him and the meaning of the written Word; and who intends in truthful sincerity to consent to, to obey, the discovered meaning; and who is taking pains ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... does not lament in their sad method of decay the loss of any element of manhood or of the higher ingredients of humanity. But Mr. Arnold pitches his requiem to a different strain. He reproduces and refines the romance which Dr. Palfrey would dispel. He exalts the Indian character; gathers comforts and joys and pleasing fashionings around their life; enlarges the sphere of their being, and asserts in them capacity to fill it. The wigwam of Massasoit is elegantly described by Mr. Arnold as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... young woman was just about to retire when there came a knock at the canteen door. She happened to be alone in the building at the time and when she opened the door and found several strange officers standing outside she was a little frightened. Nor did it dispel her fears to have them begin to ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... I intend, therefore, to mention very few of those graces which our Lord has wrought in me, if I should not be ordered otherwise; but there are certain visions of which I shall speak, an account of which may be of some service. In doing so, I shall either dispel his fears to whom our Lord sends them, and who, as I used to do, thinks them impossible, or I shall explain the way or the road by which our Lord has led me; and that is what I have been ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... splendid apparel and of glory wonderful; but Saint Francis' robe was more cunningly wrought than Saint John's. Now Peter stood quite scared at the sight; but Saint John bade him take comfort, saying, 'Be not afraid, dearest brother, for we are come hither to dispel thy doubt. You are to knows then, that above all creatures the Mother of Christ and I grieved over the Passion of our Lord. But since that day Saint Francis has felt more anguish than any other. Therefore, as you see, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... shifted toward it, fastened on it, waiting for Leff's hand to come and bear it away. But the hand executed no such expected maneuver. It planted the needle deliberately, pushed it through, drew it out with its long tail of thread. Surprise began to dispel her lethargy. Her eye left the soap, traveled at a more sprightly speed back to Leff, lit on his ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... little fit for anything which required courage and resolution. Her mind ran much upon her father, and upon the mother whom she had never known, but whose miniature was among her most precious treasures. The thought of them helped to dispel the dreadful feeling of utter loneliness, which was the most unendurable ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... other. We must be defending or attacking something; only the lily-livered hide their natural cowardice by asking the impudent question, What is it all about? The heroic gird on the armor of the Lord, square their shoulders, and establish a muscular tension which serves to dispel doubt and begets the voluptuousness of bigotry and fanaticism.[28] In this mood questions become issues of right and wrong, not of expediency and inexpediency. It has been said that the worthy people of Cambridge ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... and passed without any untoward event. Yet that is not enough to dispel the faith in Mother Shipton's prediction. She is not at fault. Some blundering calculator made a mistake as to time, and the people of Somerset are yet to have ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... entrusted to our care, we now bring back. If your noble spirit be now present before this tomb, we pray you, as a sign, to take the dirk, and, striking the head of your enemy with it a second time, to dispel your hatred for ever. This is the respectful statement ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... brought her child no harm? Then the old mere would shrug her bent shoulders and rub her hands, and for a moment she would be lost in thought. Presently the cracked old laugh would peal forth again, and, as she threw back her head, she would shake it as if to dispel some dark vision. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... abundance of wonders in Nature, young ladies," said Mr Hooker, "but a more intimate acquaintance with the habits of animals will often dispel some of the common ideas which have been connected with them, albeit in many instances held for centuries. For instance, till within a very late period people believed that the upas-tree, which grows in Java, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... when compared with her conduct. I don't like to be evil spoken of, but I can bear that, or anything else, if you do not think evil of me,—you and papa." This reference to her father brought back the black cloud which her previous words had tended to dispel. "Tell me that you do not ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... conclusion that it lasted too long to be so accounted for. Gradually I grew aware—so gradually that at length I seemed to have known it from the first—that the soul of my uncle was harassed with an undying trouble, that some worm lay among the very roots of his life. What change could ever dispel such a sadness as I often saw in that chair! Now and then he would sit there for hours, an open book in his hand perhaps, at which he cast never a glance, all unaware of the eyes of the small maiden fixed upon him, with a whole world of sympathy behind them. I suspect, however, as I believe ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... been the first to bring home the fact that summer was gone. The chapel had been cold and bleak, and while they stood around the grave it began to rain. In the drawing-room at Cashelthorpe the fire had been lit, and tea awaited the brother and sister. Consoling as these comforts were they could not dispel the sadness which oppressed the kind ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... take no interest in any of these things. Her mind was all the time filled with bitter recollections of the past, which, even if she did not cling to and cherish them, she could not dispel. She dwelt continually upon thoughts of her husband and her child. She made ceaseless efforts to obtain possession of their bodies, in order that she might have them transported to Anjou, and, as she could not succeed in this, she paid annually a ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... in anger array'd, Once defy'd a proud monarch and built a new nation; 'Gainst their brothers of Britain unsheath'd the sharp blade That hath ne'er met defeat nor endur'd desecration; So must we in this hour Show our valour and pow'r, And dispel the black perils that over us low'r: Whilst the sons of Britannia, no longer our foes, Will rejoice in our ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... before he sees his father's spirit. In the French play, therefore, Hamlet is placed in one of the most dreadful situations in which the genius of poetry can imagine a human being: Haunted by a spirit, which assumes such mastery over his mind, that he cannot dispel the fearful impression it has made, or disregard the communication it so often repeats, while his attachment to his mother, in whom he reveres the parent he has lost, makes him question the truth of crimes which are thus laid to her charge, and causes him to look upon this terrific ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... seemly traditions, seemed to have a romantic quality, even in their sufferings and sorrows. No amount of experience, no accumulation of the certainty that life was interwoven with a sordid and dreary fibre, seemed ever to dispel this illusion, just as sorrows and miseries depicted in a book or in a drama appeared to have a romance about them which, seen from inside, they lacked. There were in Hugh's own memory a few places and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Vulgate, alone contained the true words of the sacred writers. Although many of the Reformers, as well as learned Jews, had long seen that these assertions could not be made good, there had been as yet no formal controversy upon the subject. Louis Cappel (q.v.) was the first effectually to dispel the illusions which had long prevailed by a work on the modern origin of the vowel points and accents. The elder Buxtorf had counselled him not to publish his work, pointing out the injury which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... wise to dispel any illusions Altorius might entertain about their staying in Atlans. "No, oh Splendor: remember, our agreement was that, should I conquer the Jarmuthian champions, Alden and I were to be ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... with any subjects, but finding none, and understanding from the respectful proprietor, Mr. Parks, that he could not be accommodated with a private room wherein to exercise the mysteries of his craft, he felt the time begin to hang heavy on his hands; so in order to dispel ennui he took out a pack of cards and began to amuse the by-standers in the bar-room with a number of ingenious tricks with them, which soon drew a crowd around him. "Now," said he, after giving them a good shuffle and slapping the pack down upon the table, "I'll bet any man ten dollars I ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... the facts which I have herein hastily set downhill dispel any apprehension as to the successful cultivation of the soil in the northern part of the territory. It has a health-giving climate which before long, I predict, will nourish as patriotic a race of men as gave immortality ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... the dining-room and dined alone without dressing, as he had done almost every evening for the last few months. The Irish maid waited upon him with a solicitude in which he read his pose of a deserted husband, and he tried with a forcible, though silent, bravado to dispel her very evident assumption. Connie had certainly not deserted him against his will, and when her absence had begun to show as so incontestable a relief it seemed the basest ingratitude to force upon her reckless ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... revelation itself, of that pure and natural life of man which we dream of, and liken to heaven; but we, nevertheless, in our penny-wise, pound-foolish way, insist upon regarding it as ignorance, and do our best, from the earliest possible moment, to disenchant and dispel it. We call the outrage education, understanding thereby the process of exterminating in the child the higher order of faculties and the intuitions, and substituting for them the external memory, timidity, self-esteem, and all that armament of petty weapons and defences ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... restraint should mark the first day of the week. But every dull look vanished as the father's step was heard, for his was one of those genial, warm-hearted, caressing natures, which are calculated to dispel the chill of even an old-fashioned Sunday. There was also a hearty brusqueness in the tone of his voice, something of the sea in the swing of his gait, and even in the movement of his full kindly gray eye, which could not fail to inspire confidence. His children flew to him at once, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... other's arms, they appeared much more ready to attempt cutting off each other's heads; and the alarm of both parties was very evident, for they both fancied that there was some treachery to be practised against them. The captain, however, who at once understood their feelings, quickly managed to dispel their fears, first by producing the white handkerchief, and then by bringing both parties close to each other, and making them shake hands. It must be owned that they did not do so with much good grace, and they reminded me strongly of two dogs who have just been gnawing away ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... asked for, in your letter of the 16th ult., in relation to the American Anti-Slavery Society;—and trust, that this correspondence, by presenting in a sober light, the objects and measures of the society, may contribute to dispel, not only from your own mind, but—if it be diffused throughout the South—from the minds of our fellow-citizens there generally, a great deal of undeserved prejudice and groundless alarm. I cannot hesitate to believe, that such as enter on the examination of its claims ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... good on the earth is the work of Ormuzd and works for good; the sun and fire that dispel the night, the stars, fermented drinks that seem to be liquid fire, the water that satisfies the thirst of man, the cultivated fields that feed him, the trees that shade him, domestic animals—especially the dog,[30] ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... singular sharpness and wit, mostly at my expense; yet she was so charming I forgave her. There is no denying that you become enraged, insulted, chagrined by these women, who, however, by a look, dispel your annoyance. I do not understand it. I found that while an author of a novel she was grossly ignorant of the literature of her own country, yet she possessed that consummate American froth by which ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... I found, in one of the huts, an elderly man, who was in a great fright, and preparing to make off with the most valuable of his effects that he could carry. However, I was fortunate enough, in a very little time, so entirely to dispel his fears, that he came out, and called to the two men, who were running away, to return. The old man and I now soon came to a perfect understanding. A few signs, particularly that most significant one of holding ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... doth make the day Or dark or doubly bright; Her beams along the way Dispel the gloom and gray. She lives and all is bright, She dies and life is night. For love doth make the day, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... matrimonial embrace, he was partially actuated by the promptings of the flesh. But in justice to him we will state that these were not the only considerations which had induced him to marry her; he wanted a companion and friend—one whose accomplishments and buoyancy of spirits would serve to dispel the loneliness and ennui of his solitary old age. Such a person he fancied he had found in the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... is in her power, to relieve the wretched; so that their generosity, even in this miserable disguise, is universally respected by their neighbours. Sometimes the recollection of their former rank comes over them like a qualm, which they dispel with brandy, and then humorously rally one another on their mutual degeneracy. She often stops me in the walk, and, pointing to the captain, says, 'My husband, though he is become a blackguard jail-bird, must be allowed to be ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... happy combination of circumstances: he must know how to produce other combinations, vary them as much as possible and test them by substitution and interchange. Lastly, to provide science with a solid basis of facts, he must experiment. In this way, the evidence of formal records will one day dispel the fantastic legends with which our books are crowded: the Sacred Beetle (A Dung-beetle who rolls the manure of cattle into balls for his own consumption and that of his young. Cf. "Insect Life", by J.H. Fabre, translated by the author of "Mademoiselle ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... a reformer, should have been so treated by a council, itself also reforming, and with a man like Gerson—Doctor Christianissimus was the title he bore—virtually at its head. But a little consideration will dispel this surprise, and lead us to the conclusion that a council less earnestly bent on reforms of its own would probably have dealt more mildly with him. His position and theirs, however we may ascribe alike to him and to them a desire to reform the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... maladies of human nature," said Mr. Stackpole,—"that it remains for the progress of enlightened reason to dispel." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... happening. It was a dark, cloudy night, yet a strange red light was glinting faintly through the windows and making very dim panels on the rugs of the floor. There was a bare gleam of fire from the charcoal in the portable metal stove that stood in a remote corner of the room to dispel the chill of night. Artemisia was stirring in her sleep, and saying something—probably in a one-sided dream-dialogue. Cornelia opened her eyes, shut them again; peeped forth a second time, and sat up in ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... experience at the receipt of your letters? I have already described my sombre kind of life, but I am sure you will rejoice to hear that my present quiet has been productive of the essential good of restoring my health. I now consider myself quite re-established; therefore, my good Irving, dispel all your alarms on my account. I once thought of visiting Ballstown, but, as a trial of the springs there was my chief motive, I gave up the journey the moment I found there was no medical occasion to undertake it. I do not admire the manners ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... his stockholders selfishly when he delayed the prosecution of patent suits and gave all his time and energies to manufacturing. This belief was the stronger because the manufacturing enterprises belonged personally to Mr. Edison and not to his company. But the facts render it easy to dispel this false belief. The Edison inventions were not only a lamp; they comprised also an entire system of central stations. Such a thing was new to the world, and the apparatus, as well as the manufacture thereof, was equally new. Boilers, engines, dynamos, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... Chang's mind continually returned to thoughts of Ling, whose lifeless body would so opportunely serve to dispel the embarrassing perplexities of existence which were settling thickly about him. Urged forward by a variety of circumstances which placed him in an entirely different spirit from the honourable bearing which he had formerly maintained, he now ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... He tried to dispel her sadness; he laughed, and she smiled feebly; he patted her head playfully. But she came back to the same words: "I ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... second place, there is here another general line of considerations tending to dispel all anxious care—the thought that it is contrary to all the lessons of Religion, or Revelation, which show it to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of them, especially the Londoners, men of substance and position. The second is a list of cottagers resident in the village of Steeple Claydon in Bucks. Even a cursory perusal of these lists should Suffice to dispel all recollection of the nightmare "philology" which has been so much employed to obscure what is perfectly simple and obvious; while a very slight knowledge of Latin and French is all that is required to connect these names of men who were ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... street again, the evil fumes would evaporate, and daylight re-enter Susy's soul; yet she felt that the old poison was slowly insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer's evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... considered their race had no history; the new religion, when it arose, had made a clean sweep of all that had gone before, and had caused a new world to begin. The labours of Arabic scholars have, however, done something to dispel the mists which hung over early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a much more satisfactory sketch than formerly of the earlier religion of the Arabs, and to discern to some extent the processes which had unconsciously been preparing for the advent ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... stroll I returned to the ladies' parlor of the Umatilla House, rubbed my eyes in vain to dispel the illusion of a piano and a carpet at this jumping-off place of civilization, and sat down at a handsome centre-table to write up my journal. I had reviewed my way from Portland as far as Fort Vancouver, when another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... Dispel the blue haze, Golden fountain of morn! With meridian blaze The wide ocean adorn: The sunlight has touched the glad waves of the sea, And day now illumines the ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return—and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over—and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... seemed to dispel a horrible vision, and she met his upward look of sorrow with something like the return of consciousness after fainting. Then she dwelt on it with that growing pathetic movement of the brow which accompanies the revival of some tender recollection. The look ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... in the day when Mr. Abercrombie turned his steps homeward. How little was he satisfied with himself! And now, when he remembered, with painful distinctness, the clouded brow of his wife, how little promise was there of home-sunlight, to dispel the ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... evidence of our sensations, and also give light to what is invisible, music to the musical that silence dulls. Thus mind itself compels us to acknowledge that we are in a world of intellectual order, beauty, and harmony. The essences, or absolutes of these ideas, necessarily dispel their opposites which belong with evil, disorder and discord. Thus deafness and blindness do not exist in the immaterial mind, which is philosophically the real world, but are banished with the perishable material senses. Reality, of which visible things are ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... heavily now, and drifted in the fosse and whitened the world; outside, therefore, all was silent; there must be bustle and footsteps, but here they were unheard: it seemed in a while that he was buried in catacombs, an illusion so vexatious that he felt he must dispel it at ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... war again. 835 To whom Achilles, matchless in the race. So be it, ancient Priam! I will curb Twelve days the rage of war, at thy desire.[16] He spake, and at his wrist the right hand grasp'd Of the old sovereign, to dispel his fear. 840 Then in the vestibule the herald slept And Priam, prudent both, but Peleus' son In the interior tent, and at his side Briseis, with transcendent beauty adorn'd. Now all, all night, by gentle sleep subdued, 845 Both Gods and chariot-ruling warriors lay, But not the benefactor ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... On the 2nd of March he had arrived in London from Marlborough, still lame, and no more than half recovered. There his new physician, Dr. Addington, eager, no doubt, to restore him to his public duties with the least delay, had rashly administered some strong remedies, which did indeed dispel the gout from his limbs, but only to scatter it about his body, and especially upon his nerves. This fact was discovered, and has been recorded by two separate and equally shrewd observers at the time (Lord Chesterfield to his son, December 19, 1767; Lord Orford, 'Memoirs,' ii. ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... his attention to another link in the chain between the Severn and the sea. In the end this arrangement, although it seems to have led to some little feeling between the former partners, which Mr. Whalley and others did their best to dispel, probably expedited the completion of the through connection. At any rate, it did not hinder progress among the hills. In this, the "long looked-for arrival of the world-wide famed iron-horse," as an expansive journalistic scribe put it, at ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... unaccountability that was not only enigmatic to himself but to every one else with whom he came in contact. He kept Mary in a ferment of excitement trying to devise remedies for his successive ills. One day she would be sure he needed a tonic to dispel his listlessness and with infinite pains would brew the necessary ingredients together; but before the draught could be cooled and administered, Martin had rebounded to an unheard-of vitality. Ah, she would reason, it must be his appetite that was at the bottom of the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... know them and me, he would be glad to stay, and see also the pictures of the magic lantern; but, as it was now getting dark, he had evidently got enough of my witchery, and began to use some charms to dispel any kindly feelings he might have found stealing round his heart. He asked leave to go, and when his party moved off a little way, he sent for my spokesman, and told him that, "if we did not add a red jacket and a man to our gift of a few copper ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... silence followed. Ughtred was conscious of it, yet there seemed to be nothing which he could do to dispel it. He knew that the loyalty of these men was being sorely taxed. In their hearts they believed him responsible for the war. This severance with Reist encouraged them in their belief. Baron Doxis rose slowly ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... strong, ardent embrace, a great peace—a joy that is almost pain—comes to her. Had she still any lingering doubts of her love for him, this moment, in which he stands by her as a guardian, a protector, a true lover, would forever dispel them. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... me out of the Emperor's presence; and now I live in neglected solitude. While at home, I learned a little music, and could play a few airs on the lute. Thus sorrowing in the stillness of midnight, let me practise one of my songs to dispel my griefs. [Begins to ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... travelling English were fewer this year than usual, to the great detriment of the innkeepers. Every now and then he would say a word to Marie herself, as she passed near him, speaking in a cheery tone and striving his best to dispel a black silence which on the present occasion would have been specially lugubrious. Upon the whole he did his work well, and Michel Voss was aware of it; but Marie Bromar entertained no gentle thought respecting him. He was not wanted there, and he ought not to have come. She had given him ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... housemaid, Jane, whether the room was used, and she said how Mr. Griffith had given it up, and none of the servants could spend a night there when they are sleeping round. Of course I said all in my power to dispel the idea, and told her that there was no accounting for all the noises in old houses; but you never can reason with that ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fame ye've left your Jean, Forgat your plighted vow, Willie; Can honours proud dispel the cloud, That darkens on your brow, Willie? Oh, was I then a thing sae mean, For nought but beauty prized, Willie; Caress'd a'e day, then flung away, A fading ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and her sister to a certain secluded spot where, as he happens to know, his hated rival, Mr. Tomkyns, is in the habit of secretly practising on the bicycle. He (Captain de S.) calculates that a mere glimpse of Mr. T., as he wobbles wildly by on that instrument, will be sufficient to dispel any illusions that the fair Laura may cherish in her bosom respecting that ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... it, but Ratia's example warned her against drenching her only garments, though indoors the dryness was only comparative. Everything she touched, herself included, seemed pervaded by a damp, limp rawness, that she vainly tried to dispel by ordering a fire. The turf smouldered, the smoke came into the room, and made their eyes water, and Rashe insisted that the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flame, and Love himself allays My burning fever, as when gathering clouds Rise o'er the earth in summer's dazzling noon, And grateful showers dispel the morning heat. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... tended to dispel my sense of strangeness; and in time I yielded to my yawns and took my turn at slumber. My uncle seemed now very wakeful, and welcomed his period of watching even though the nightmare had aroused him far ahead of his ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... right well that Ludovico did not love her, and that there had never been any probability that he should do so; and, had she any lingering doubt on the subject, the good Assunta took very good care to dispel it. And there was a bitterness in this knowledge which did much towards producing in Violante the state of mind that has been described. She was not in love with Ludovico, but she had liked him—he was the only man she had ever liked at all. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... kindly anxiety to soften and dispel the feeling of bitterness that had been engendered in the malignant bosoms of the Copperhead-Democracy by their defeat, was apparent when he said with emphasis ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... approaching derision. Yet from a lawyer's point of view (and it must be borne in mind that the President was a lawyer and is now Chief Justice of the Court) the statement cannot be controverted. The decisions in the Standard Oil and Tobacco cases did in fact dispel whatever uncertainty remained as to what ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... to dispel your gloom, either, Katherine," said Migwan, looking closely at Katherine, who, after the first moment of banter, had lapsed into silence and sat staring gloomily into the curtain of vines that covered the end of the porch. "What's the matter?" she asked curiously, brushing back the damp ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... boarder for a few months, stayed for some four years, which were for me years of much happiness, clouded only, from time to time, by the memory of my parents; but the good Mlles. Mongalvi and their boarders would then redouble their kindness, to dispel those thoughts which now and then saddened me. I was spoiled beyond belief by the mistresses and the boarders; I had only to wish for something to obtain it. There was nothing too good or too fine for me. My health recovered completely. I was clean and fresh, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... restless night, being disquieted by gloomy apprehensions of approaching death, which we tried in vain to dispel. He was so low in the morning as to be scarcely able to speak. I remained in bed by his side to cheer him as much as possible. The Doctor and Hepburn went to cut wood. They had hardly begun their labour when they were amazed at hearing the report of a musket. They could scarcely ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... bargaining aggression of the British prosperous and the swaggering vulgarity of the German junker that make and sustain that monstrous European devotion to arms. And we are convinced there is nothing in these evils and conflicts that light may not dispel. We believe that these things can be dispelled, that the great universals, Science which has limitations neither of race nor class, Art which speaks to its own in every rank and nation, Philosophy and Literature which broaden sympathy and banish prejudice, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... so; but I do my best to dispel it by pointing out what she thought herself faced with. And I tell him what is true, that Sabina in her moments of greatest fear and exasperation, always behaved like a lady. But in your ear only, Ernest, I confess to a new sensation—a sickly sensation of doubt. It comes over my religious ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... one fearing to dispel a welcome illusion he drew nearer—nearer—nearer. Suddenly a dry bush on the ground snapped under his foot. She turned ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... walked about till it was time for the evening meal. It was served in an open tea-house. Hospitable and kind to the last degree, both host and hostesses pressed upon me every dainty eatable, and tried by all they knew to dispel the gathering clouds. I was touched by their efforts and did my best to smooth the way to peace, but my endeavors were vain. It was a conflict of conditions in which were both wrong and right, but which not to the end of time would ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... I could never acquire; the other I had attained unaided and in the face of the tremendous barriers that shut me out. The repeated insistence upon the fact that Sally was a Bland aroused in me, whenever I met it, an irritation which I tried in vain to dispel. To be a Bland meant, after all, simply to be removed as far as possible from any temperamental relation to the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... having been added to it in the course of years as the mode of life changed and increasing civilisation demanded more convenience and comfort. The walls were quite four feet thick, and the one small lattice-window in its deep recess scarcely let in sufficient light, even on a summer's day, to dispel the gloom, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... one thing that constantly threw its dark shadow across these two budding lives,—it was the dark figure in a distant prison. This it was that saddened the souls of the two children with a gloom which no sunshine could dispel. When on Fridays Ephraim returned, fatigued and weary from his work, to the home over which Viola presided with such pathetic housewifely care, no smile of welcome was on her face, no greeting on his. Ephraim, 't is true, told his sister where he had been, and what he ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert

... that Polychrome, and perhaps Queen Ann and her Army, might have been able to dispel the enchantment of Ruggedo's Chief Magician had they known that danger lay in their pathway; for the Rainbow's Daughter was a fairy and as Oogaboo is a part of the Land of Oz its inhabitants cannot easily be deceived by such common magic as the Nome King could command. ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... assumed that the prejudice which blinds the people of one race to the virtues of another and leads them to exaggerate that other's faults is in the nature of a misunderstanding which further knowledge will dispel. This is so far from true that it would be more exact to say that our racial misunderstandings are merely the expression of our racial antipathies. Behind these antipathies are deep-seated, vital, and instinctive impulses. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... transmigration.—We reply that this might be so if just as the mere hearing of the true nature of the rope dispels the fear caused by the imagined snake, so the mere hearing of the true nature of Brahman would dispel the erroneous notion of one's being subject to transmigration. But this is not the case; for we observe that even men to whom the true nature of Brahman has been stated continue to be affected by pleasure, pain, and the other qualities attaching to the transmigratory condition. Moreover, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... Blinky had done the horse a great injustice. How good to be back in the saddle! Pan wanted to ride down at once to show Lucy his first mount west of the Rockies. Indeed he was possessed of a strong yearning desire to hurry to see Lucy, a feeling that he had to dispel. If all went well he could go to his mother's for dinner. Meanwhile he must meet ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... 'Present-day Papers,' by Bishop Ewing (edited), are a wonderful help, many of them, to puzzled people; I mean to get them. But I am sure you will find that the truth will (even so little as we may be able to find out) grow on you, make you free, light your path, and dispel, at no distant time, your painful difficulties and doubts. I should say on no account give up your reading. I think with you that you could not do without it. It will be a wonderful source of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel — forbidding —now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... had supported her at the Congress of Algeciras. Finally, she believed herself to be the object of an attempt at encirclement by France, England, and Russia, and was anxious to show that the gesture of putting her hand to the sword was enough to dispel the illusions of her adversaries."[1] These are the kind of reasons that all Powers consider adequate where what they conceive to be their interests are involved. From any higher, more international point of view, they are no reasons ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... sweetmeats. Her large, shapely hands among the gold-and-white china fascinated him, while her calm, noiseless, unhurried movements induced a feeling of passive repose that it required an effort to dispel, when she said ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... baron came to the grene wode, Wi' mickle dule and care, And there he first spied Gill Morice Kameing his zellow hair: That sweetly wavd around his face, That face beyond compare: He sang sae sweet it might dispel A' ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... collecting until he had a huge pile, made up of dead limbs, branches, and a number of green sticks thrown in. In a few minutes the flames were under way. He had kindled them against the face of a rock, and they burned with a cheery heartiness that did much to dispel the gloom which had begun settling over him. He seated himself as near the fire as he could without being made uncomfortable by the reflected heat, and then he assumed as easy a position as was possible ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... with other thoughts. For several successive figures it so happened that Natalie was the partner of the reserved Mr. Delwood, who never was known to appear a second time upon the floor, and it also happened, how, or at what moment was a mystery, that the two had sought to dispel fatigue, by the conservatory's soothing influences, whither the eye of Winnie wandered ever and anon, as with Mr. Montague she vied with her competitors in the giddy waltz. Miss Winnie's brain was capable of containing two thoughts at the same time, and no one would have suspected, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... thick, braced diagonally, and that the locks and hinges were unusually crude and massive. He followed Miss Guir into the hall, with a slight foreboding of evil which the memory of the stage driver's remark did not help to dispel. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... fingers then ran over the instrument's keyboard, and I noticed that he touched only its black keys, which gave his melodies a basically Scottish color. Soon he had forgotten my presence and was lost in a reverie that I no longer tried to dispel. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... and mother; she yearned for reconciliation, and her present sorrow rose from her belief that they would never, never, never forgive her. I endeavoured, with all the eloquence I was capable of, to dispel these gloomy ideas, but she was firm in her conviction that precisely because they had loved her so much they would never pardon this first great offence. My poor darling might have been reading Christabel, I thought, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... of relief, however, that the authorities had acted so promptly in impounding Lyne's books. An examination into these might lead to the discovery of the murderer, and at any rate would dispel the cloud of suspicion ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... what might be passing in Miss Nugent's mind. She now appeared in remarkably good spirits; for her aunt had given her a hint that she thought her out of humour because she had not been permitted to be Miss Broadhurst's bride's-maid, and she was determined to exert herself to dispel this notion. This it was now easy for her to do, because she had, by this time, in her own imagination, found a plausible excuse for that coldness in Lord Colambre's reception of her, by which she had at first ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... not at first avail to calm their fears, in which we however participated, but which a greater degree of strength of mind enabled us to dissemble. At last, a firm countenance and consoling words succeeded in calming them by degrees, but could not wholly dispel the terror with which they were struck; for according to the judicious reflection, made after reading our deplorable story, by Mr. Jay, whose authority we quote with pleasure, "To support extreme misfortunes, and what is worthy of remark, to bear great fatigues, moral energy is much ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... the mounds, as fairies also have been, or were themselves thought to have died and been buried there. The haunting of the mounds by the old gods is seen in a prayer of S. Columba's, who begs God to dispel "this host (i.e. the old gods) around the cairns that reigneth."[214] An early MS also tells how the Milesians allotted the underground part of Erin to the Tuatha Dea who now retired within the hills; in other words, they ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... been a part of his life. What a sad and dark and endless void lay between that past and the present! He had no right even to dream of a beautiful woman like Ray Longstreth. That conviction, however, did not dispel her; indeed, it seemed perversely to make her grow more fascinating. Duane grew conscious of a strange, unaccountable hunger, a something that was like a pang ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... "And yet, they were fraught with a certain sadness, but idle as is the stuff of dreams. They were yours to dispel, for ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... M. Delcasse, and England, through Lord Crewe, sought to dispel these fears by formally disclaiming any intention to press upon Greece a mutilation to which she objected, and explaining that the eventual cession of Cavalla was only envisaged on condition that she should consent of her own accord. M. Zographos, however, who had done his best to ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... the doom of, do in, do for, dish*, undo; break up, cut up; break down, cut down, pull down, mow down, blow down, beat down; suppress, quash, put down, do a job on; cut short, take off, blot out; dispel, dissipate, dissolve; consume. smash, crash, quell, squash, squelch, crumple up, shatter, shiver; batter to pieces, tear to pieces, crush to pieces, cut to pieces, shake to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces; laniate[obs3]; nip; tear to rags, tear to tatters; crush to atoms, knock to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... suggested that a political motive was not absent. The fact that in the ensuing presidential election, Ohio, the home of the Brotherhoods, swung from the Republican to the Democratic column, did not dispel this suspicion from the public mind. Throughout this maneuver it was apparent that the unions were very confident, but whether because of a prearranged pact, or because of a full treasury, or because of a feeling that the public was with ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... admirable dinners of the past. An aged butler and a footman in the sere and yellow only added to the general Rip van Winklism, and the presence of two very old dogs, one the grandfather's Airedale and the other Mrs. Ludlow's Irish terrier, with a white nose and rusty gray coat, did nothing to dispel the depression. The six full-length portraits in oils that hung on the walls represented men and women whose years, if added together, would have made a staggering grand total. Even ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... lovely search illumines. From the grove Where Wisdom talk'd with her Athenian sons, Could my ambitious hand entwine a wreath Of Plato's olive with the Mantuan bay, Then should my powerful verse at once dispel Those monkish horrors: then in light divine Disclose the Elysian prospect, where the steps Of those whom Nature charms, through blooming walks, Through fragrant mountains and poetic streams, 410 Amid the train of sages, heroes, bards, Led by their ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... storms of life were blowing snell, And on his brow sat brooding care, Thy seraph smile would quick dispel The darkest gloom of black despair. Sure Heaven hath granted thee to us, And chose thee from the dwellers there; And sent thee from celestial bliss, To shew what all ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... representatives! from seeing the King on his return choked with anguish at the mortifications to which I was doomed to behold the majesty of a French Sovereign humbled! These events bespeak clouds, which, like the horrid waterspout at sea, nothing can dispel but cannon! The dignity of the Crown, the sovereignty itself, is threatened; and this I shall write this very night to the Emperor. I see no hope of internal tranquillity without the powerful aid of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... again, and has no place in a fantastic romance. So I hasten to add that the mood was one of brief duration, and that no cold-water arguments were able to quench the fire which those eyes had set aflame within me, no daylight philosophy had any power to dispel the dream of a face which was now my most precious possession, as I once more took up my stick and listlessly pursued my ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... reason for such. Because of that, some are right in attributing to him a feminine quickness of observation, or rather a minute observation for the feminine. That is why he determined, in "The City," to dispel the illusion that he could not write a man's play, or draw masculine characters. Yet was not Sam Coast, in "Her Own Way," almost the equal ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... minds in our times is that in former days the Church was leagued with princes for the oppression of the people. This is a base calumny, which a slight acquaintance with ecclesiastical history would soon dispel. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... level skyline. Mountains, ranges, distances unknown to Jean, always called to him—to come, to seek, to explore, to find, but no wild horizon ever before beckoned to him as this one. And the subtle vague emotion that had gone to sleep with him last night awoke now hauntingly. It took effort to dispel the desire to think, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... to cough and to feel heavier than she had done at ordinary times, so she never by any chance put her foot out of doors, but remained at home and looked after her health. When at times, dullness crept over her, she longed for her cousins to come and chat with her and dispel her despondent feelings. But whenever Pao-ch'ai or any of her cousins paid her a visit, she barely uttered half a dozen, words, before she felt quite averse to any society. Yet one and all made every allowance for her illness. And as she had ever been in poor health and not strong enough ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin



Words linked to "Dispel" :   separate, rout out, clear the air, shoo off, rouse, displace, shoo away, banish, fire, disband, shoo, frighten, move, scatter, divide, force out



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