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Dispersion   /dɪspˈərʒən/   Listen
Dispersion

noun
1.
Spreading widely or driving off.  Synonym: scattering.
2.
The spatial or geographic property of being scattered about over a range, area, or volume.  Synonym: distribution.  "The distribution of nerve fibers" , "In complementary distribution"
3.
The act of dispersing or diffusing something.  Synonyms: diffusion, dispersal, dissemination.  "The diffusion of knowledge"



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"Dispersion" Quotes from Famous Books



... one time suspected that the long pedigrees running between those several divisions of the mythological period were the invention of mediaeval historians, anxious to spin out the national record, that it might reach to Shinar and the dispersion. Not only, however, was such fabrication completely foreign to the genius of the literature, but in the fragments of those early divine cycles, we see that each of these personages was at one time the centre of a literature, and holds a definite place as regards ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady

... 20th, there being a strong breeze from the N.N.E., with fog and rain, all favourable to the dispersion of the ice, that part of it which was immediately around the Hecla, and from which she had been artificially detached so long before, at length separated into pieces and floated away, carrying with it the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... to credit; and insensibly it created and prepared a popular intelligence to which one can appeal, no longer hopelessly, in an attempt to dispel the mysteries with which for nearly three centuries it has been the labour of party writers to involve a national history, and without the dispersion of which no political position can be understood ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... pages of the last sheet sent I am extremely glad to see that you are going to treat of the dispersion of animals. Your preliminary remarks seem to me quite excellent. There is nothing about M. Wagner, as I expected to find. I suppose that you have seen Moseley's last book, which contains ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... polarisation is advanced to completion the further deposition of gold is changed in its manner from an indiscriminate to an orderly and selective deposition concentrated upon the negative or gold plate. The deposition of gold being thus controlled, its loss by dispersion or from the crumbling away of the sustaining pyrites is nearly or quite prevented, a conservative effect which we could scarcely expect to obtain if organic matter were the reducing agent. Meanwhile there is a gradual wasting away of the pyrites ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... occupied by a busy little man, who wears eye-glasses and a bob-tailed coat, and who is breeding Jersey cattle and experimenting with ensilage. It is well for this little man's peace of mind that the dispersion was an accomplished fact before he made his appearance. The Jersey cattle would have been winked at, and the silo regarded as an object of curiosity; but the eye-glasses and the bob-tailed coat would not have been ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... forth to the dunghill and leave them there." The writers of these Martin Mar-Prelate books have been tolerably ascertained,[419] considering the secrecy with which they were printed—sometimes at night, sometimes hid in cellars, and never long in one place: besides the artifices used in their dispersion, by motley personages, held together by an invisible chain of confederacy. Conspiracy, like other misery, "acquaints a man with strange bedfellows;" and the present confederacy combined persons of the most various descriptions, and perhaps of very opposite ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... their presence. In fact, the glacial phenomena of the United States and elsewhere are due to two distinct periods: the first of these was the glacial epoch proper, when the ice was a solid sheet; while to the second belongs the breaking up of this epoch, with the gradual disintegration and dispersion of the ice. We talk of the theory of glaciers and the theory of icebergs in reference to these phenomena, as if they were exclusively due to one or the other, and whoever accepted the former must reject the latter, and vice versa. When geologists have combined these now discordant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... satisfy to show, more than theoretically, how authorship stirs up the mind to daily-teeming projects, and then casts out its half-made progeny; how scraps of paper come to be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts, thenceforward doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves; how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order, each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal, educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen precipitating test, gregariously ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... doing this we are still making use of our own supreme principle. And this is the true "understanding" which, by placing all the other powers in their correct order, creates one grand unity of power directed to clearly defined and worthy aims, in place of the dispersion of our powers, by which they only neutralise each other and ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... can afford to lose a chieftain in the person of James, but it cannot yet spare the commander-in-chief. The enemies of the Church had hoped that the destruction of the chief shepherd would involve the dispersion of the whole flock; therefore they redoubled their fury against the Prince of the Apostles, just as her modern enemies concentrate their shafts against the Pope, his successor. Does not this incident eloquently proclaim Peter's superior authority? In fact Peter figures so conspicuously ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... confusion and commixtion? or why should I take care for anything else, but that as soon as may be I may be earth again? And why should I trouble myself any more whilst I seek to please the Gods? Whatsoever I do, dispersion is my end, and will come upon me whether I will or no. But if the latter be, then am not I religious in vain; then will I be quiet and patient, and put my trust in Him, who is the Governor ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... half the time," said the R.F.A. man professionally. "And their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours has. Ours is a treat—like sugar-loaf." The German gunnery has become deadly enough ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... the grass—"natural" or "artificial"—into hay, there is more or less loss of nutritive matter sustained by fermentation, the dispersion of the smaller leaves by the wind, and other agencies. But this unavoidable loss is trivial when compared with the prodigious waste sustained, in Ireland at least, by allowing the hay to remain too long in cocks in the ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... importance to that part of the country and the kingdom at large. It was the first check which the United Army of Wexford and Kildare experienced and proved the fore-runner of those multiplied defeats which terminated in its total dispersion. ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... for their regular pay, and it was necessary to find means to satisfy them. The taxes voted for nine years in 1559 had come to an end. New taxes could only be imposed with the assent of the States-General. Alva, however, after his victory at Jemmingen and the dispersion of the army of Orange, felt himself strong enough to summon the States-General and demand their assent to the scheme of taxation which he proposed. The governor-general asked for (1) a tax of five per cent., the "twentieth ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... as might have been expected, our complete dispersion, and the arrest of some our members, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... measure prosperous at the Kuruman, clouds were gathering to the eastward, which were destined eventually to throw a dark shadow over the whole Bechwana Mission. The encroachments of the Boers upon the natives led to much bloodshed, and to the dispersion of several native tribes, with the consequent abandonment of mission-work among them. One of the early sufferers was Moselekatse, who, having been attacked in 1837, had retired to a place far away to the north-east, and for some years nothing was heard of him, except by vague rumour; ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... Wales and the Highlands of Scotland,[618] omens of life and death have at one time or other been drawn from the position and state of the pebbles on the morning of All Saints' Day. The custom, thus found among three separate branches of the Celtic stock, probably dates from a period before their dispersion, or at least from a time when alien races had not yet driven home the wedges of separation ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... emergency letter came from his group leader, warning him not to appear there. I am going completely underground. I think they may suspect my activities. The dispersion plan must go into effect. You know how to reach Johnson and Wright and they each in turn can get ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... passage out, which was remarkable for stormy weather, and for the consequent dispersion of the convoy, the activity and zeal of young Saumarez not only attracted the attention, but gained the esteem of the noble earl; who, by offering to make him his aide-de-camp and take him by the hand, had nearly ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... other acts of fate, had scattered them. Here and there a grizzled waiter let fall the old names with a shrug of perplexity, then hastened to answer the call of a rising generation as cheerful as if it were not doomed, also, to dispersion and regrets. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the spring, there can be little doubt that the British, in their advance, would have found themselves opposed—if not by a Russian army—at least by an army led and officered by Russians, with Russian engineers and artillerymen. The promptness of their advance, and the capture of the passes and the dispersion of the Afghan armies, within a week of the opening of the campaign, altogether altered ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... nomadic life encourages the beginning of industry, but rarely advances it beyond the household stage, owing to the thin, family-wise dispersion of population which precludes division of labor. Such industry as exists consists chiefly in working up the raw materials yielded by the herds. Among the Bedouins, blacksmiths and saddlers are the only professional artisans; these are regarded ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... The dispersion of the idlers on the pavement was accelerated, and the footman's imaginary description of the proceedings then in progress at Mr. Thorpe's was cut short, by the falling of a heavy shower. The frost, after breaking up, had been succeeded that year by prematurely mild spring weather—April ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... the opening Buck Ogilvy had sparred for. Fixing Moira with his bright blue eyes, he grinned boldly and said: "Suppose, Miss McTavish, we start a league for the dispersion of gloom. You be the president, and I'll be the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... the same time so powerful and so singular as that of individual character. It arises as often from the weakness of the character as from its strength. The dispersion of this clever and showy ministry is a fine illustration of this truth. One morning the Arch- Mediocrity himself died. At the first blush, it would seem that little difficulties could be experienced in finding his substitute. His long occupation of the post proved, at any ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... us that the Italian wind, gliding over the crest of the Matterhorn, is as firmly ruled as the earth in its orbital revolution round the sun; and that the fall of its vapour into clouds is exactly as much a matter of necessity as the return of the seasons. The dispersion, therefore, of the slightest mist by the special volition of the Eternal, would be as much a miracle as the rolling of the Rhone over the Grimsel precipices, down the valley of Hash to Meyringen ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... experience. "O jubilate for a providential deliverance!" that would have been his cry. "Henceforward be all my difficulties on the heads of my opponents!" But at least, it is argued, the fact would have been against him; the dispersion would have disarmed him, whatever colouring he might have caused it to bear. Not at all. We doubt if one meeting the less would have been held. Ready at all times for such emergencies, the leader would not suffer himself to be found without every conceivable legal quillet, sharpened ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... this century must not be omitted, the dispersion of the great Alexandrine library, collected by the Ptolemies. In the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar, the Philadelphian library in the museum, containing some 400,000 volumes, had been burned; but there still remained ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... produced the same consternation as that which was produced among the conspirators at Adonijah's banquet, when they heard of the measures taken by the dying David. There was a panic-stricken dispersion, and every one pretended to be grieved, or ignorant of what was going on. Caius, in stupified silence, expected death instead of empire. Macro alone did not lose his presence of mind. With the utmost intrepidity, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... pirates, as it had transpired that many of them were growing anxious to enjoy the fruit of their nefarious labours, and serious thoughts were entertained of a speedy general division of the spoil and dispersion of the gang. I may as well mention, en passant, that it appeared to be the fashion for everybody visiting the lagoons to speak of Giuseppe, whenever they had occasion to mention him, as "Captain Merlani," whilst within the limits of Santa Clara Bay. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... necessity; the Acadians were not loyal subjects, and they would have eagerly welcomed the expulsion of the British from North America. Indeed their conduct might have been construed as treasonable, and the English had ground for regarding them as enemies of the British crown. Their dispersion weakened the French cause at a time when that cause seemed in the ascendant, and when Braddock's unavenged defeat had reanimated the French with the hope of driving the English from America. Yet even if the deportation of ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... Batavian general of some publicity, is not by birth a citizen of the United States, but was born at Brussels in 1758, and was by profession a stonemason when, in 1789, he joined, as a volunteer, the Belgian insurgents. After their dispersion in 1790 he took refuge and served in France, and was made an officer in the corps of Belgians, formed after the declaration of war against Austria in 1792. Here he frequently distinguished himself, and was, therefore, advanced to the rank of a general; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... 'true Republicans,' who were thus adding hundreds of millions yearly to the public debt, struck hundreds of thousands out of the lawful income of the clergy of France. They ordered the dispersion by Executive decrees, and 'if necessary by military force,' of all religious orders and communities not 'authorised' by the Government. They drove nuns and Sisters of Charity, with violence and insult, out of their abodes. They expelled the religious ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... the legends extant in the various countries of the globe are identical, or have the same foundation, it is probable that a clue has already been obtained whereby an outline of the religious history of the human family from a period even as remote as the "first dispersion," or from a time when one race comprehended the entire population of the globe, maybe traced. Humboldt in his Researches observes: "In every part of the globe, on the ridge of the Cordilleras as well as in the Isle of Samothrace, in the Aegean Sea, fragments ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... lieutenant, anchored in the same place before day-light the next morning. The Canada, however, having exerted her utmost speed, had, prior to all these, on the 4th of the same month got to Portsmouth, where she spread the news of the dispersion of this miserable fleet, which being conveyed to France, her privateers immediately put to sea in hopes of making prizes of them. Some of the Jamaica-men, with part of the crew of the Ramillies, fell into their hands; ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... a considerable area, from the Province of Ontario, on the east, to the Red River of the North, on the west, and from Manitoba southward through the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This tribe is, strictly speaking, a timber people, and in its westward migration or dispersion has never passed beyond the limit of the timber growth which so remarkably divides the State of Minnesota into two parts possessing distinct physical features. The western portion of this State is a gently undulating prairie which sweeps away to the ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... was most nearly merged in the bond of a common spiritual ideal. And Browning puts the loftiest passion for Athens in the mouth of an alien, and the loftiest Hebraism in the mouth of a Jew of the dispersion. Responsive to the personal cry of the solitary hero, Browning rarely caught or cared to reproduce the vaguer multitudinous murmur of the great mass. In his defining, isolating imagination the voice of the solitary soul rings out with thrilling clearness, but the "still sad music of humanity" escapes. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... Pennsylvania, also, were determined not to permit the sixty days allowed in the proclamation of Lord and Sir William Howe, to elapse, without availing themselves of the pardon it proffered. Instead of offensive operations, the total dispersion of the small remnant of the American army was to be expected, since it would be rendered too feeble by the discharge of those engaged only until the last day of December, to attempt, any longer, the defence of the Delaware, which would by that time, in all probability, be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... antiquity—probably soon after the dispersion at Babel—it was said that the Mountain-men had said to the Raturans, that it had been reported to them that a rumour had gone abroad that they, the men of Ratura, were casting covetous eyes on the summit of their mountain. The ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... absolute despair, as regarded the original purposes of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes whatever beyond that of instant safety. The solitary object contemplated was, to reach some district lonely enough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested dispersion. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... off with his hardy white police, leaving Lamington and his black, legalised murderers to go their own way in pursuit of Sandy and Daylight, and "disperse" the myalls—if they could find them—such dispersion meaning the shooting of women and children as ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... on discovering that the French were about to carry off the Spanish Infantes. The blood of some comparatively innocent Frenchmen was shed, and the base governor and magistrates of Madrid allowed Murat to make his own terms, which were nothing less, in fact, than the dispersion of the troops, who were ordered to clear out of their barracks, and hand them over to the French. The two artillery officers, Daoiz and Valarde, with one infantry officer named Ruiz, and a few of the populace, refused, and, all unaided, attempted to hold the barracks of Monteleon against ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... 34 degrees and 27 degrees, a vast area of depressed interior, subjected in seasons of prolonged rains to partial inundation, by a dispersion of the several waters that flow upon it from the eastern mountains whence they originate; and bearing in mind at the same time, that the declension of the country within the above parallels, as most decidedly shown by the dip of its several rivers, is uniformly ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... beautiful and romantic spot of which the imagination of a poet might dream. The bay was about half a league in circumference, and a perfect circle in form. To the east, south, and west, were mountains covered nearly to their peaks with thick forests of fir; and when the dispersion of the clouds revealed their gray summits, many cascades, like thin pillars of light, darted down the rocks; and the eye, following their track, could trace their increasing bulk as they rolled along from crag to glen, bounding, gliding, foaming, till they fell, roaring, with ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... When the men on the spar-decks of the enemy are exposed, by the heeling of the ship, grape or canister may be used against them, at distances varying from 200 to 300 yards. Against light vessels, a single stand of grape from heavy guns may be used at about 400 yards. The dispersion of the balls is about one-tenth the distance, and is ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... where the ark had rested, and settled in Shinar. Here they attempted to build a city and a tower whose top might reach unto heaven, but were miraculously prevented by their language being confounded. In this way the diversity of human speech and the dispersion of mankind were accounted for; and in Gen. xi. 9 (J) an etymology was found for the name of Babylon in the Hebrew verb b[a]lal, "to confuse or confound," Babel being regarded as a contraction of Balbel. In Gen. x. 10 it is said to have formed part ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... weeks before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. Those who voted against a government exclusively Socialist did not think that, under the troublesome conditions of the time, they could expose the country to the risk of a dispersion of strength; they feared the possible isolation of the government in face of certain elements whose help could not be relied on. But they did not take into account a fact which had resulted from the Kornilovist insurrection: the natural distrust of the working masses in presence of all ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... defence they were arming, and (many undoubtedly prepared beforehand) were marching in all haste to the protection of the convention. But they heard also the less pleasing tidings, that Henriot, having effected the dispersion of those citizens who had obstructed, as elsewhere mentioned, the execution of the eighty condemned persons, and consummated that final act of murder, was approaching the Tuilleries, where they had held their sitting, with a numerous staff, and such of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... the accident of your death, against anarchy, dispersion, and the consequent danger to your party, and total failure of the enterprise, you are hereby authorized, by any instrument signed and written in your own hand, to name the person among them who shall succeed ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... fellow-countrymen. Thus while the rebellion seemed quelled to all appearance, it was not entirely extinguished. A secret fire still slumbered under the ashes, ready to burst forth when a master hand could be found to raise the flame. But the want of unity amongst the Moors, and the general dispersion which had ensued after the destruction of their last town, seemed to offer an insurmountable bar to the organization of a second revolt. Besides, the death of El Feri had struck the hearts of his followers with dismay, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... and been very much disordered, but I hope is grown well. Mr. Langton went yesterday to Lincolnshire, and has invited Nicolaida[1127] to follow him. Beauclerk talks of going to Bath. I am to set out on Monday; so there is nothing but dispersion. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... by the wars, which, with little intermission, have afflicted Europe, and extended their ravages into other quarters of the globe, for a period exceeding twenty years, the dispersion of a considerable portion of the inhabitants of different countries, in sorrow and in want, has not been the least injurious to human happiness, nor the least severe in the trial of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... imperfect and careless, as is proved by other and far richer discoveries which were made in 1544. Unfortunately, if the accounts we have of these are complete, no drawings were made before the dispersion of the objects. The only sketches which have reached us represent a few perfume bottles found inside the grave. Of these flacons there are two sets of drawings, one in a codex of marchese Raffaelli di Cingoli, f. 43, with the legend, "Five goblets of agate discovered in the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... detail I close my letter. The melancholy end of the Conqueror, the strange occurrences at his interment, the violation of his grave, the dispersion of his remains, and the demolition and final removal of his monument, are circumstances calculated to excite melancholy emotions in the mind of every one, whatever his condition in life. In all these events, the religious man traces the hand of retributive justice; the philosopher regards the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... horrid desolation. The mountain itself, the highest in this chain of the Grampians, was in every part marked by deep and black ravines, made by the rushing waters in the time of floods; but where its blue head mingled with the clouds, a stream of brightness issued that seemed to promise the dispersion of its vapors; and consequently a more secure path for Wallace, to lead his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... general, the musqueteers demanded the post opposite Mohammed, and directed all their efforts against the part where the Moslem Attila stood. His fellow religionists still relate that when Gragne fell in action, his wife Talwambara [19], the heroic daughter of Mahfuz, to prevent the destruction and dispersion of the host of Islam, buried the corpse privately, and caused a slave to personate the prince until a retreat to safe lands enabled her to discover the stratagem to the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... a passage to the territory of the enemy, the officer commanding the Northwestern army transferred the war thither, and rapidly pursuing the hostile troops, fleeing with their savage associates, forced a general action, which quickly terminated in the capture of the British and dispersion of the savage force. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... all between has been lingering suspense. This is at an end now, and the present certainty, however sad, is better than the former doubt. What will be the consequence of his death is another question; for my own part, I look forward to a dissolution and dispersion of the family, perhaps not immediately, but in the course of a year or two. It is true, causes may arise to keep them together awhile longer, but they are restless, active spirits, and will not be restrained always. Mary ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... mere ground of numerical amount, and as for that reason alone an uncontrollable mass, might not such a meeting have been liable to dispersion? Answer—this allegation of monstrous numbers was uniformly a falsehood; and a falsehood gross and childish. Was it for the dignity of Government to assume, as grounds of action, fables so absurd as these? Not to have assumed them, will never be made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... rather outside than real: it was a kind of effrontery, provoked into noisy display by the extravagant bigotries of those about him. He did not believe in monopolies of opinion, but in good average dispersion of all sorts of thinking. On one occasion he had horrified his poor wife by bringing home a full set of Voltaire's Works; but having reasoned her—or fancying he had—into a belief in the entire harmlessness of the offending books, he gratified her immensely by placing them out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... theology, jurisprudence, and medicine; and in the fifteenth century, till we come to Ermolao Barbaro and Aldo Manuzio, humanistic culture is, for a city of such importance, most scantily represented. The library which Cardinal Bessarion bequeathed to the State (1468) narrowly escaped dispersion and destruction. Learning could be had at the University of Padua, where, however, physicians and jurists the latter for their opinion on points of law received by far the highest pay. The share of Venice in the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... I am not unaware of the existence of many and widely divergent sects and schools among the Jews at all periods of their history, since the dispersion. But I imagine that orthodox Judaism is now pretty much what it was in Philo's time; while Peter and Paul, if they could return to life, would certainly have to learn the catechism of either the Roman, Greek, or Anglican Churches, if they desired ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... "The President will see you in the cabinet. And let me warn you to be frank in your answers. I have stood your guarantee; but the club requires a searching inquiry before admission; for the indiscretion of a single member would lead to the dispersion of the whole ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... were impatiently looking out for tidings of the anticipated victory scattered horsemen came spurring across the Vega. They were fugitives from the Moorish army, and brought the first incoherent account of its defeat. Every one who attempted to tell the tale of this unaccountable panic and dispersion was as if bewildered by the broken recollection of some frightful dream. He knew not how or why it came to pass. He talked of a battle in the night, among rocks and precipices, by the glare of bale-fires; of multitudes of armed foes in ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... sitting together, each occupied with his own melancholy thoughts, after the dispersion of the clouds and the anticipated relief, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... not be thought that the social graces and persuasive abilities of Sheriff Hoover were confined to the conduct of legalized necktie-parties and the dispersion of outlaws. In its extended account of the "Lane-Hope Nuptials," the Florence Kicker devoted much of the space to the part taken by the "best man" in the ceremony, "our genial and expansive boniface of the new county apartment hotel." And soon after it recorded that the same ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... darkness. Pythagoras lived before the time of history, and almost nothing is known about him, though his teaching and his name were never lost. There is a belief that he had traveled in the East, and in Egypt, and as he lived about the time of the dispersion of the Israelites, it is possible that some of his purest and best teaching might have been crumbs gathered from their fuller instruction through the Law and the Prophets. One thing is plain, that even in dealing with heathenism the Divine rule holds good, 'By their fruits ye shall know them'. ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the different branches of the Aryan stock.... They are ancient Aryan ——, ... older than the Odyssey, older than the dispersion of the Aryan race. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... says, "They are very averse to wandering from their native waters," and he shows that there are now reported many species of American and East Indian fishes entirely unknown on the other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be explained by any theory of natural dispersion. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... to move quietly forward had been disappointed, by the Australians hastening on to occupy a thick piece of bush, through which the English party must pass, at last, Captain Grey, advancing towards them with his gun cocked and pointed, drove them a little before him, after which, to complete their dispersion, he intended to fire over their heads. But, to his mortification and their delight, the gun missed fire, upon which the natives, taking fresh courage, turned round to make faces at him and to imitate the snapping of the gun. The second barrel ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... led his followers to the attack; after the battle he sat in judgment on his prisoners; and before execution he administered to them the aids of religion. But as soon as the death of Tyler and the dispersion of the men of Kent and Essex were known, thousands became eager to display their loyalty; and knights and esquires from every quarter poured into London to offer their services to the King. At the head of forty thousand horse he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... consigned as a prey to the flames, the joy of the victors, and the glory of their leader. With reluctance, as if unwilling to check their congratulatory prayers, he recounts to them the subsequent misfortunes of the Greeks, their dispersion, and the shipwreck suffered by many of them, an immediate symptom of the wrath of the gods. It is obvious how little the unity of time was observed by the poet,—how much, on the contrary, he avails himself of the prerogative of his mental dominion over the powers of nature, to give ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... after Gates' defeat on the 16th of August, 1780, and the surprise and dispersion of Sumter's forces at Fishing creek by Tarleton's cavalry on the 18th following, Colonel McDowell disbanded, for a time, his little army, and he himself retreated over ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... United States with every other aristocracy on earth wishing it success. But the people did not refuse the challenge. In April, 1861, they rushed to the capital, saved their Government from immediate capture or dispersion, and then began to prepare, after their way, for—they hardly knew what—to suppress a riot ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... orders him to be seized and hurled from the summit of the tower; but before his commands can be executed, a thunderbolt strikes it and crumbles it into a heap of shapeless stones. While Abraham exults over the destruction, the dispersion of the three races, the Shemites, Hamites, and Japthides, occurs. Nimrod laments over the result of his folly, and at last acknowledges the authority of the Divine Power, and thus ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... to the East to buy them wherever they could be discovered, and copyists and translators were busy at work in all the leading centres of Italy. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 tended to help the Greek revival in the West by the dispersion of both scholars and manuscripts ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... always be obliged to flee before the stronger. Such differences would necessarily promote distant settlements, and when navigation was introduced and improved, unforeseen accidents, sea-storms, and unfortunate shipwrecks, would contribute to the general dispersion. These, we may naturally suppose, would be the effects of division and war in the earlier ages. Nor would time and higher degrees of civilization prevent such consequences, or prove a sufficient remedy against domestic discord and trouble. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... more credible and more certain that he speaks of that dispersion into which the Britons were driven by the Romans, in order that they might become possessed of the land near the Tuscan Sea which is called Armorica. After that dispersion, therefore, his parents went straight to Strath Clyde. There St. ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming

... was the stain in the past of that woman of the Orient, purchased long ago in the slave-mart at Adrianople for the Emperor of Morocco, then, upon the Emperor's death and the dispersion of his harem, sold to the young Bey Ahmed. Hemerlingue had married her on her exit from that second seraglio, but was unable to induce society to receive her in Tunis, where no woman, be she Moor, Turk, or European, will ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... which death could be attributed. Such a crime, however, may be detected by examination of the bones which, from the head downwards, will be found entirely of a bright red colour, caused by the dispersion of the blood; and moreover, the more the bones are scraped away, the brighter in ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... of serving tea each day at five o'clock is one which admits of great enjoyment. The man of the house tries to be at home for the quiet social hour before the family dinner. The young people of the family are gathering after the day's dispersion. The friends, who are out calling or on their way home, drop in for a pleasant chat; and the charming hostess has time for many glimpses of friends, and chance also to say the right word to some friend in need of cheer, who knew that she could ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... is obvious that the names of the whole series of Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, and from Noah onwards, are in almost every instance pure Hebrew names." Delitzsch, however, thinks it comparatively more probable that the Syriac or Nabataan tongue, preserved after the dispersion at Babylon, was the one originally spoken. Yet he dismisses the possibility of demonstrating it. He supposes that the names of Adam and the other patriarchs have been altered, but not so as to lose any of their original meaning; in other words, ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel; and also to snub his stove, and his military inspirations, his unseemly endeavor to make himself conspicuous when he entered Philadelphia, and his flying his kite and fooling away his time in all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... behind the project of secularization. The enforced withdrawal of the paternal hand before the Indian had learned to stand and walk alone, coupled in some sections with the dread scourge of pestilential epidemic, wrought dispersion, decimation and destruction. If, however, the teeming acres are now otherwise tilled, and if the herds of cattle have passed away and the communal life is gone forever, the record of what was accomplished in those pastoral days has linked the name of California with a new and imperishable architecture, ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... have one thing peculiar to them: their days of rest seem to be the signal for a general dispersion and flight. Like birds that are just restored to liberty, the people come out of their stone cages, and joyfully fly toward the country. It is who shall find a green hillock for a seat, or the shade of a wood for a shelter; they gather May flowers, they run about ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... stopped in to tell me, he has Just met with his nephew, Lord Yarmouth,(886) who has received a letter from a foreign minister at Manheim, who asserts all the Duke of Brunswick's victories, and the destruction or dispersion of the French army in that quarter. The Earl maintains, that the King of Prussia's politics are totally changed to the right, and that eighteen thousand more of his troops have joined the allies. I should like to know, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... be to promote the civilization and progress of the negro race? The tendency must be otherwise. By the dispersion of the slaves, their labor would be rendered more productive and their comforts increased. The number of owners would be multiplied, and by more immediate contact and personal relation greater care and kindness would be engendered. ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... fresh army which was shortly raised behaved better, and Tivoli was reduced. Burning with shame at the disgraceful failure of their first attempt, the Romans clamoured for the total destruction of a hated rival and the dispersion of its inhabitants. But the pope, satisfied with the triumph of his authority, would lend no countenance to so guilty a severity, and concluded with his chastised children a fatherly peace. For thus checking the bad passions of his subjects, he incurred their displeasure; whereupon, ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... tactics; and the fundamental laws of human nature: these are things that must most certainly be studied. 42. When invading hostile territory, the general principle is, that penetrating deeply brings cohesion; penetrating but a short way means dispersion. ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... which a skilful use of interruption always gives to an orator, the Athenian turned to Eurybiades. Artfully suppressing his secret motive in the fear of the dispersion of the allies, which he rightly judged would offend without convincing, he had recourse to more popular arguments. "Fight at the isthmus," he said, "and you fight in the open sea, where, on account of our heavier vessels and inferior number, you contend with every disadvantage. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... however, may be advantageous when the center of the enemy has been broken and his forces separated either by a battle or by a strategic movement,—in which case divergent operations would add to the dispersion of the enemy. Such divergent lines would be interior, since the pursuers could concentrate with more ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... should afterwards happen any fault, he might be exempt from being the cause of any of their evil, he dispersed some of them upon the earth, some into the moon, and some into the other instruments of time. And after this dispersion, he gave in charge to the young gods the making of human bodies, and the making up and adding whatever was wanting and deficient in human souls; and after they had perfected whatever is adherent and consequent to this, they should rule and govern, in the best manner they possibly could, this ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... of the catacombs, the engraved tablets that had closed the graves were almost as much an object of the greed of pious or superstitious marauders as the more immediate relics of the saints. Hence came their dispersion through Italy, and hence, too, it has happened that many very important and interesting inscriptions belonging to Rome are now found scattered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... with considerable fulness the wide dispersion of the quinary scale. Every part of the world contributes its share except Europe, where the only exceptions to the universal use of the decimal system are the half-dozen languages, which still linger on its confines, whose number base is the vigesimal. Not only is there no living European tongue ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... that gentleman's serious consideration. The fifth man was not so easily disposed of. He insisted upon seeing the editor, and presently disappeared inside with the clerk. Miss Baxter smiled at the rapid dispersion of the group, for it reminded her of the rhyme about the one little, two little, three little nigger-boys. But all the time there kept running through her mind the phrase, "Board of Public Construction," and ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... in The North American Review, his quondam classmate addressed him in a somewhat formal letter of thanks as "Dear Sir." Later the relations of the two became closer, though never perhaps intimate. It was Hawthorne who handed over to Longfellow that story of the dispersion of the Acadian exiles of Grandpre, which became "Evangeline": a story which his friend Conolly had suggested to Hawthorne, as mentioned in "The American Note Books." The point which arrested Hawthorne's attention ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... from its taking the ships under control, as well as under protection; but this control cannot be exercised except by means of sailing orders. Otherwise, the master could not learn the rendezvous in case of dispersion by a storm, or obey ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... Cecily St. John, a professed nun at Romsey till her twenty-eight year, when, in the dispersion of convents, her sister's home had received her. There had she continued, never exposed to tests of opinion, but pursuing her quiet course according to her Benedictine rule, faithfully keeping her ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... starving men, whose food supplies had grown so low that they were forced to gnaw the young shoots of the trees for sustenance. It is not our purpose here to tell what followed the surrounding of the fragment of an army by an overwhelming force of foes, the surrender and parole, and the dispersion of the veteran troops to the four winds, but to confine ourselves to the homeward journey of General Lee and a few ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... general and his lady, in Cyprus, meeting with the news of the dispersion of the enemy's fleet, made a sort of holiday in the island. Everybody gave themselves up to feasting and making merry. Wine flowed in abundance, and cups went round to the health of the black Othello, and his lady ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... that time the surface of the earth has undergone many and important changes. All known camp and village sites, graves, mounds, and ruins belong to that portion of geologic time known as the present epoch, and are entirely subsequent to the period of the original dispersion ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell

... the princess], and entered the seraglio along with the confidential servant, and saw the same scene I had seen the day before. The princess received me kindly, and sent every one [present] away, each to his own occupation. When there became a dispersion of them, she retired to a private apartment, and called me to her. When I entered, she desired me to sit down; I made her my obeisance, and sat down. She said, 'As you have come here, and have brought these goods with you, how much profit do you expect on them?' ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... national pride, which put a mortifying explanation on national disasters, which painted them and their fathers in dark colours, which proclaimed truths they never loved, and breathed a spirit they never caught. It is stranger still, that in the long years of dispersion the very vices and limitations of the people subserved the same end, and that stiff pedantry and laborious trifling—the poorest form of intellectual activity—should have guarded the letter of the word, as the coral insects painfully build up their walls round some fair ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... whose name means Despair; and when Adam was created, God commanded the angels and the Jinns to do him reverence, and they all obeyed but Iblees, who was then turned into a Shaitan, or devil, and became the father of all the Shaitan tribe, the mortal enemies of mankind. Since their dispersion the Jinns are not immortal; they are to live longer than man, but they must die before the general resurrection. Some of them are killed by other Jinns, some can be slain by man, and some are destroyed by shooting stars sent from heaven. When they receive a mortal wound, the fire which burns ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... a large and numerous body, and after their dispersion from Babylon they were scattered "Abroad upon the face of the earth." They were the same people who imparted their rites and religious services into Egypt, as far as the Indus and the Ganges, and still further into Japan and China. From this event is to be discovered the fable of the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... of the women's tent, where, seated together on a bit of wood, they underwent the inspection of the whole tribe, old and young, male and female. This was a much more trying ordeal, but in about an hour an order was issued which resulted in the dispersion of every one save a few boys, who were either privileged individuals or rebellious subjects, for they not only came back to gaze at the children, but ventured at length to carry them off to play near ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... blood, and long captivities in forests, tracked by the enemy; then disasters, discouragements, the vanishing of the last hope, punishment, the gallows, and finally a mute, feverish resignation, swallowed up in that vast solitude with which silence surrounds misfortune. After the dispersion of the band whose destinies he had followed, he had ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... of the Dispersion" was marked by complicated strifes in politics, religion, and philosophy. It was one of the most reactionary epochs in French history. No writer has better depicted the time, with the severities, atrocities, and effects of the revocation of the great edict, than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... than the narrow and rigid system of the protectionists can suppose, does not permit the concentration of labor, and the monopoly of advantages, from which they draw their arguments as from an absolute and irremediable fact. It has, by means as simple as they are infallible, provided for dispersion, diffusion, mutual dependence, and simultaneous progress; all of which, your restrictive laws paralyze as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of nations. By this means they render much more decided the differences ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... been discovered; a copy of that of 1567 was in the Harleian library. At the sale of the White-Knights collection in 1819, Mr. George Daniel of Canonbury gave nineteen guineas for the exemplar of Berthelet's undated 4to, which had previously been in the Roxburghe library, and which at the dispersion of the latter in 1812, had fetched the moderate sum of 5l. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... as long as it does not come in contact with matter. When in apposition with any body, it suffers variable degrees of decomposition, resulting in color, as by reflection, dispersion, refraction, and unequal absorption. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... untried as himself, the measures he adopted to increase his force, and to create in the enemy's mind exaggerated estimates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of Marshall, the capture of his camp, the dispersion of his force, and the emancipation of an important territory from the control of the rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of disasters to the Union arms, Garfield's victory had an unusual and extraneous importance, and in the popular judgment elevated the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... see,' said Tancred thoughtfully, after a short pause, 'that the penal dispersion of the Hebrew nation is at all essential to the great object of the Christian scheme. If a Jew did not exist, that would ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... considerations we ought to add, that an armistice for one year would be very burdensome, because the powers at war will be obliged to remain in arms, to their manifest loss, as it will be impracticable to disarm, as well from the dispersion of the troops, as from the enormous expense, if, (which is highly probable) it should become necessary to renew hostilities. If, then, the mediators wish sincerely to establish the peace they propose, they should prefer a truce of many years to a simple armistice for one year. This expedient is ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... the consequences might have been had this state of affairs long continued, it is not difficult to imagine; but, fortunately for them, an early and gradual dispersion took place, so that by the end of January few individuals were left in the village. The rest, in divided bodies, established themselves in snow huts upon the sea-ice at some distance from the land. Before this change had been completed, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry



Words linked to "Dispersion" :   diaspora, complementary distribution, concentration, spacing, spraying, complementation, crop-dusting, dissipation, innervation, disperse, scatter, spatial arrangement, spreading, spread



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