Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Fad   /fæd/   Listen
Fad

noun
1.
An interest followed with exaggerated zeal.  Synonyms: craze, cult, furor, furore, rage.  "It was all the rage that season"



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Fad" Quotes from Famous Books



... sensitive spot, Edmonds cursed briefly. "If it hasn't, it's because the public has a dam'-fool fad for pretending it doesn't believe what it reads. Of course it believes it! Otherwise, how would it know who's president, or that the market sagged yesterday? This 'I-never-believe-what-I-read-in-the-papers' guff makes me sick to the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... favor—another instance in which imitation is permissible, for the "real thing" is undoubtedly costly. The quaint conceits in creams and sugars, chocolate pots, bonbon dishes, and plates, with their storks and chrysanthemums, their almond-eyed damsels and mandarins, are always interesting. The fad of odd cups and saucers is fast developing into a fixed fashion, and a good one, which is a particular boon to the giver of gifts on Christmas and other anniversaries when "presents endear absents." Pretty styles in all sizes ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... it his motto. For he, like all truly great statesmen, was so immensely concerned in winning today's battle, that he wasted no time in speculating what tomorrow, or next year, or next century would say about it. Mysticism, the recurrent fad which indicates that its victims neither see clear nor think straight, could not spread its veils over him. The man who visualizes is safe from that intellectual weakness and moral danger. But although Roosevelt felt the sway of the true emotions, he allowed only his intimates ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... "Honey's right. That business of taking care of their feet symbolizes the whole sex to me. They do the things they do just because the others do them—like sheep jumping over a wall. Their fad at present is pedicure. Peachy's at it just like the rest of them. Every night when I come home, I find her sitting down with both feet done up in one of those beautiful scarfs she's collected, resting on a cushion. It's rather amusing, though." Ralph ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... good book, or she should go to some gathering where she will meet those who will refresh her intellectually. Keep the mind open to all the impressions of nature. Love the open air. Fresh air is not a fad, it is a necessity if one would keep young. Occasionally read a book of travel or a biography of some well-known person. Keep mentally alert. An intellectual back number adds years to her seeming age. Nothing makes for youth as a young mind, ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... in his stride. "All this evolutionary fad becomes ridiculous, of course, when a mind that is properly trained in clear thinking by the diligent perusal of the classics strips it of its pseudo-scientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder, in the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... these links, and fitting them together like bits of jigsaw puzzles. He's absolutely thrilled, and wants to stop the car whenever we come to one of the curiously deformed old trees which still, on country roads, mark the direction of ancient Indian trails. This fad of Jack's leads to awkwardness during our present excursion, as we're part of a weird cavalcade which I'll describe to you later. But just now I can't let you ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... child above all things. All of us remember some woman whom we knew in youth who kept canaries, or raised flowers or had some queer little fad. We learn to know why women do this. In her case she expressed her mother's passion in studies, in art, in travel, in friendship, in kindness to every one; above all in devotion to her husband. She mothered him in the most tender and beautiful way. In a little while I ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... could not succeed in Italy, and that was that it could not catch the ear of the common people. If for the churchman it was a heresy, and for the free-thinker a superstition, for the "general public" of ordinarily educated persons it was an aristocratic fad. Those who did embrace its doctrines and read its books, and they were not a few of the second-rate humanists, cherished it as their fathers had cherished the neo-Platonism of Pico della Mirandola, as an esoteric philosophy. So little inclined were they to bring their faith to the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... FAD'LADEEN, the great nazir' or chamberlain of Aurungze'be's harem. He criticises the tales told to Lalla Rookh by a young poet on her way to Delhi, and great was his mortification to find that the poet was ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... another thing. Italian fecundity is apparent everywhere, and the farther up the steep slope of the Hill you go the more children you see. They are everywhere, and of all sizes and ages, in such reckless profusion that you no longer wonder if the world is to be depopulated through the coming of the fad of Eugenics. The Italian mother has but two thoughts—her God and her children, and it is to care for her children that she has brought from her native land the knowledge of cookery, and of those things that help to put life and strength in ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... the necessary fillip. "Because I knew him, smelled his stogy, and drank with him in Cedar Street. It was some time in the early '70s, when a passion for Corot's opalescences (with the Critic's permission) was the latest and most knowing fad. As a realist I half mistrusted the fascination, but I felt it with the rest, and whenever any of the besotted dealers of that rude age got in an 'Early Morning' or a 'Dance of Nymphs,' I was there among the first. ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... have followed any counsel even if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,—they came to hear him "say things,"- -witty observations on the particular fad of the hour—sharp polemics on the political situation—or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps so satisfactory ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... was elected president. The industrial fad swept over the country and men soon forgot the Academy. But Prof. John Wesley Cromwell, the secretary, Dr. Francis J. Grimke, the treasurer, Prof. Kelly Miller, Prof. C. C. Cook and Prof. John L. Love, of Washington, D. C., did not despair. In December, 1902, the Academy ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris

... as near as possible to the realities of things. He prided himself on having no fads. Few men are without some foible or hobby; Crowl felt almost lonely at times in his superiority. He was a Vegetarian, a Secularist, a Blue Ribbonite, a Republican, and an Anti-tobacconist. Meat was a fad. Drink was a fad. Religion was a fad. Monarchy was a fad. Tobacco was a fad. "A plain man like me," Crowl used to say, "can live without fads." "A plain man" was Crowl's catchword. When of a Sunday morning he stood on ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... unusual fads, generally in the matter of diet. At this particular time he had decided to live solely on grape nuts. As he was one of the best men on the team, Jack did not burden himself with trouble over this fad, although at several times Moakley told him that he might improve if he would eat some real food. However, when this man started a grape nut campaign among the younger members of the squad he aroused Jack's ire and upon his arrival at the field house he wiped the black board clean ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... scarlet one I possess, and just at present I've a wild fad for scarlet. I get crazes for various colors. Last term I'd look at nothing but pale blue, till Bertha Ford got that new blue chiffon dress, and that, of course, set me against it forevermore. I'd a rage ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... only give up their Irish fad—and bring in a bill to make it penal for any parson to hold any office in a public school or university or to presume to teach outside the pulpit—they should have my ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... Ewold's on Mr Crawley and after all there should be no marriage between his son and Grace? "Of course they'll be married," said Mrs Grantly. "It's all very well for you to say that, my dear; but the whole family are so queer that there is no knowing what the girl may do. She may take up some other fad now, and refuse him point blank." "She has never taken up any fad," said Mrs Grantly, who now mounted almost to wrath in defence of her future daughter-in-law, "and you are wrong to say that she has. She has behaved beautifully;—as nobody knows better than you do." Then the archdeacon ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... "perhaps you can enlighten me on a point concerning which a great many people have questioned me recently. Has golf taken hold of Hades yet? You referred to it some time ago, and I've been wondering ever since if it had become a fad ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... his bravery; in addition, he must, upon the smallest pretext, draw his sword, must fight constantly, and especially with adversaries better armed and larger in force; the love of woman was for such men only. Adventure was the fad: it is said of one seigneur that he took pleasure in going every night to a certain corner and, from pure malice, striking with his sword the first person who chanced that way; this unique pastime he continued ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... for everything that goes wrong. Is that really so? and then the victims! it is quite enough to be undone by one's own fault without having one's own foolishness thrown in one's teeth. Have pity! There are so many fine spirits among them just the same! Christianity has been a fad and I confess that in every age it is a lure when one sees only the tender side of it; it wins the heart. One has to consider the evil it does in order to get rid of it. But I am not surprised that a generous heart like Louis Blanc dreamed of seeing it purified and restored to his ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... may perhaps be said on the recent fashion—not to say fad—of suppressing in the printed play the traditional list of "Dramatis Personae." Bjoernson, in some of his later plays, was, so far as I am aware, the first of the moderns to adopt this plan. I do not know whether his example has influenced certain ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... the study of these millions would greatly modify the results of observing a few hundreds at home. But, as in the case of opium-eating, populus vult decipi, the philanthrope does not want to know the truth, indeed he shrinks from it and loathes it. All he cares for is his own especial "fad." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... To be quite athletic. That's our fad, you know. I can hold the strap, sir! And keep off your lap, sir! ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... to-day, since Socialism has become a fad. It no longer demands any special energy, or any break with capitalist society to assume the name of Socialist. It is no wonder, then, that more and more these new Socialists remain entangled in their previous manner of ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... table-turning and spirit-rapping in fashionable salons of the capital, was eager to witness his performances. The women in the high society of Paris were greatly excited about them. Spiritualism was the fad of the season, and the empress caught the infection. The emperor, who was present at many of the exhibitions at the Tuileries, was also, it is said, much impressed by some of them, especially by ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... miserable one, for the Malletts made it a charming festival with inspired ideas for gifts and a delightful party on Christmas Day, when Caroline was allowed to appear. She refused to say that she was better; she had never been ill; it was a mere fad of the doctor and her sisters; she supposed they were tired of her and wanted a little peace. However, she continued to absorb large quantities of strengthening food, beef tea, meat jelly and heady tonic, for she loved food, and she was determined ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... to stay. It has nothing to do with superstition at all. It's part of Advanced Thought — quite scientific, you know, while Spiritualism was just a fad. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... worse because, in you, the stiffening of the tastes had taken the form of aversions rather than preferences. You did not so much wish your readers to like your favorite authors as to hate all the others. At the time when there was a fad for making lists of The Hundred Best Authors, I always wondered that you didn't ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of mystery—who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... dogs to get any lower. Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be, Noble Knights of the Golden Flea, Knights of the Order of St. Steboy, Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy. God speed the day when this knighting fad Shall go to the dogs and the dogs ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... her in a pavilion that flanked a corner of the veranda, and with her some other young people, all of whom were busily engaged with the new fad of basket making. They were just on the point of having light refreshments and heartily welcomed her to their circle, where the time slipped unheeded by until a clock, somewhere, striking the half hour after twelve, warned her that lunch at home would soon be served, and Sadie, even now, must ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... it only concerns us in its connection with the psychology of the people it interprets in satire. There is the psychology of individuals and the psychology of a whole society—the latter was du Maurier's theme. It is generally an obsession, a "fad," a "craze," or "fashion" that his pencil exploits. He does not with Keene laugh with an individual at another individual. His art is well-bred in its style partly through the fact of its limitations. Moreover, in "Society" individuality ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... particularly interested in their stables, their jockeys and their horses. There was no bar of religious tradition or of social custom which hindered a Vestal from freely mingling with men visibly in the open daylight in public. Visiting the stables of the racing companies had long been a fad with Rome's social leaders, men and women alike. Brinnaria availed herself of her freedom in this regard and followed her inclination. She haunted the training-stables of all six corporations, but ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... made the Boston Trade School, with a committee of women to help her. It has now been taken over by the public authorities and merged into the public-school system. What looked like a private fad has become a public function. The training of women for self-support has been recognized as a duty ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... was waiting doggedly at the entrance and took his place beside her, forcing the man to walk beside the girl whom Mary introduced as Lola Parsons. The man's name was Roberts, but the girls called him Freddie, and he seemed composed mostly of a self-satisfied smile and the latest fad in male attire. Andy set himself to the task of "cutting Mary out of the main herd" so that he might talk with her. Thus it happened that, failing a secluded spot in the immediate neighborhood of the Casino, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... statesman-inventor and the political psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that only superficial people disliked the superficial. Nothing, for example, could on the surface be more trivial than an interest in baseball ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... she lets me visit them. And when I happened to mention, for something to say, that the Archdeacon had an eccentric cousin in America who was afraid of hotels and even of visiting at their house because of a fad about burglars, she offered to give him the better of her two spare rooms whenever he came to England. I never thought he'd accept, but he did, only he would insist ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... order as the library, but with an emphasis on comfort. Thus, the sofa should be replaced by a wide divan, which may also serve on occasion as a sleeping-place. The Turkish style of furnishing is the customary one; the Japanese style being a fad that came in with the aesthetic craze, was carried to an uncomfortable excess, and has gone out of fashion. The most appropriate style for an American house is American Indian. The brilliant and strikingly designed Navajo blankets may be used for both rugs and couch covers, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... of generalities. Then an idea occurring to her, she conducted the conversation by devious paths to ties and asked Alwyn if he had heard of the fad of collecting ties. He had not, and she showed him a ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... no cream, as he observed; and then he peeped into the teapot, and proceeded to fill it up from the great urn which was bubbling and boiling in front of him. He always made tea in his own house; it was a fad of his, and the more people he had to make it for the better pleased he was. A servant was stationed at his elbow, whose duty it was to place the cups as his master filled them on a silver salver held by another servant, who took them to offer to the visitors who were seated about the room. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... little bits of black sticking-plaster with which ladies used to adorn their faces. According to Addison ('Spectator', No. 81), ladies even went so far in this fad as to patch on one side of the face or the other, according ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... was one thing more than another upon which Martha Foote prided herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy, they were her especial fad. "Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold snake-work are all well and good," she was wont to say, "and so are American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys. But it's the blankets on the beds that stamp a hotel ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... interest hydrophobia to stamp out; 'Tis a curse to us canines; that no person well can doubt Who has sense. They who think we doggies share old maid's sentimental fad, Just as though it really were a dog's privilege to go mad, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... of it; but it's a fad of hers. She likes to wear it on state occasions. I have often wondered if it is really the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed. Driver, the Savoy, and ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... cracking a single pit or stone. This is a great improvement, as one crushed stone will give an acrid taste to a quart of oil. There is a fashion in fruits as much as in bonnets or sleeves. Olive culture is just now the fad. Pears, prunes, almonds, walnuts, have each had their day, or their special boom. Pomona is headquarters for the olive industry. Nursery men there sold over 500,000 trees last year. The tree does not require the richest soil. Hon. Elwood Cooper's olive oil ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... very latest fad in London to drive in a victoria with a white bulldog on the seat with you!" she said, complacently. "And Jack will be simply perfect for ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... begins, then, on a bright Sabbath afternoon in mid-autumn when Miss Janet Cragiemuir left her home in K Street and set out leisurely upon her walk to Bethany Church, where she revelled in her latest fad. She had recently taken a class in the Chinese Sunday-school. The good work began at three o'clock, and as it was nearly that hour, groups of Chinamen stood out on the sidewalk chattering as only Celestials can. They greeted Miss Cragiemuir ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... of fad," Clayton went on, "it's a national move, in a way. You don't owe any gratitude. We need our babies, you see. More than we do hats! If this war goes on, we shall need a good many ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... lodge, or any organization, whether worn by man or woman, is more honored in the breach than the observance. Better drape the departed member's seat in black, or hang crepe on the charter than follow this foolish fad. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... eunuchs' made a very reasonable objection. He had been appointed to see after the health of the lads, and had ample means at his disposal; and if they lost their health in this chase after what he could only think a superstitious fad, the despot whom he served would think nothing of making him answer with his head. His fear gives a striking side-light as to the conditions of service in such a court, where no man's head was firm between his shoulders. Why should the prince of the eunuchs have supposed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... timidly. "I've been reading about the possible change of climate and its relation to the sun's rays going wild into space. I don't want to start anything, but it might be judicious to buy more furs next Summer. Also it might justify the premonitory fad." ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... night! He'll say those brave Orangemen Home Rule will quash, He'll hint that raised Tariffs trade rivals must smash, And his eloquence sounds neither rabid nor rash, At night, at night! But oh! what a difference In the morning! He vows he merely meant a friendly warning, But fuss and fad 'twill boom. And his colleagues growl with gloom O'er the "Times" upon their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various

... mother having gone to town—were eating timothy roots. Bertha Lawrence, a Charlottetown girl, who had visited Kitty Marr in June, and had gone to school one day with her, had eaten timothy roots, affecting to consider them great delicacies. The fad was at once taken up by the Carlisle schoolgirls. Timothy roots quite ousted "sours" and young raspberry sprouts, both of which had the real merit of being quite toothsome, while timothy roots were ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was a subject about which at the time I was feeling somewhat sore. "Needs must when the Devil drives;" but as matters were, Dan and I could well have afforded domestic assistance. It rankled in my mind that to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the future Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps rolled into one, should be compelled to the performance of menial duties. On this morning of all others, my brilliant literary career just commenced, the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... the camp-supper, I don't take a crank with me, who has gone mad on moose-calling," he said. "See here! If we do come across moose-signs, I'll get under cover, and give you quarter of an hour to call and listen for an answer—not a second longer. Now stop thinking about this fad, and keep your eyes ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... the old system can be revived and put into operation is a question. Certainly it cannot be adopted as a fad and imposed on an unwilling society as a clever archaeological restoration. It will have to grow naturally out of life itself and along lines at present hardly predicable. There are many evidences ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... books, therefore I need no library; I indulge in no chemical pursuits, therefore I need no laboratory; my music-room is the forest in summer and the chimney in winter, while my studio, according to the latest aesthetic fad—I think that is ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... side of fifty. His grizzly beard, grown comparatively long, his closely-trimmed mustachios, and his head-cloth, worn like a turban, made me take him at first sight for a Moslem. He has a cunning eye, which does not belie his reputation. His fad is to take money and to do no work for it; he now wants us to pay for the clearing of an uncleared path. The villagers fear him on account of certain fetish-practices which, in plain English, mean poison; and he keeps up their awe by everywhere displaying the outward signs of magic and sorcery. A ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... this new fad of the old man's and our having a notion that we had better keep quiet for a spell and let things settle down a bit, we had a long steady talk, and the end of it was that we made up our minds to go and put in a month ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... entirely water, milk, and chocolate, and he condemns the use of tea, coffee, liquors, and tobacco. He has almost a perfect set of natural teeth and his sight is excellent. Like most men who live to a great age, Dr. Baynes has a "fad," to which he attributes a chief part in prolonging his life. This is the avoidance of beds, and except when away from home he has not slept on a bed or even on a mattress for over fifty years. He has an iron reclining chair, over which he spreads ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... volume, and the reader must be the judge to what extent I have been successful in the accomplishment thereof. I have touched but lightly on the material development of the country of recent years. I know from experience that though statistics are the fad of a few they are caviare to the great mass of the public. Nor have I dealt at all with politics or political parties in new Japan. It is, I think, unfortunate that the Japanese people, in adopting or adapting ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... was Rhoda's first remark, with nothing in particular to precede it. "Molly Delawarr's a darling! I don't much care for Gatty, and Betty I just hate. She's a prig and a fid-fad both. But Molly—oh, Phoebe, she's as smart as can be. Such parts she has! You know, she's really—not quite you understand—but really she's almost as clever as ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... idle moments and given to the child of a wealthy summer visitor, made a hit. The child liked it and other children wanted mills just like it. Then "grown-ups" among the summer folk took up the craze. "Winslow mills" became the fad. Jed built his little shop, or the ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... going to do," returned Seaton, with a gleam in his gray eyes. "I'm going to burst this unjustifiable fad for platinum jewelry so wide open that it'll never recover, and make platinum again available for its proper uses, in laboratories and in ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... cut in. "The tickler is the newest fad for increasing worker efficiency. Once, I read somewheres, it was salt tablets. They had salt-tablet dispensers everywhere, even in air-conditioned offices where there wasn't a moist armpit twice a year ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... o thaobh gu taobh ann 'Us ceangail luibte gan cumail ceart Tha tuthain chaltuinn o cheann gu ceann deth 'Us maide slabhraidh 's gur mor a neart, Tha lathais laidir o bheul an fhail air, Gu ruig am falas sgur mor am fad, Tha ropan siamain 'us pailteas lion air 'S mar eil e dionach cha 'n eil ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... is all right! Clem—my nephew—has a fad in his head. He asked me yesterday for the living—in case you resigned. I tell him it's folly; a youngster oughtn't to play with his chances. But he insists that it will do him good to fling up Oxford and play parish-priest for a year or two. He has taken a fancy to your ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... you must use your common-sense. That fad about locking the gates is a pure and simple whim on the mother's part. Of course we'll humor it, but not to the extent of waking up old Tester. Come, Kitty, you shall give the old man any amount ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational things to do—invent a new fad in dress, or send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... seen in various Shop-Windows the spindly Utensils and snowy Pellets which, he had reason to believe, were affiliated in some way with the sickening Fad. He would look at them with extreme Contempt and rather resent their contaminating contiguity to the Mask, the Shin-Guard, and the ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... I always beat the sellers down. Fortunately, I can afford to indulge in my caprices, and you can consider this my latest fad if you like. I am subject to no claims, and my means are hardly large enough to make me an object of interest to ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... country living, now so far flung as to be a characteristic of American life, is not just a fad. It has been a slow steady growth and has behind it a tradition of a century and more. When our larger commercial centers first began to change from villages to compact urban communities, there were those who found even these miniature cities far too congested. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... carry to the table. This petition excited great attention. During all these years no petitions were presented against granting the suffrage to women. These numbers were undoubtedly a surprise to many members of parliament who were inclined to look upon woman suffrage as an "impracticable fad," "the fantastic crochet of a few shrieking sisters." But the collection and arrangement of the signatures took up incalculable time, and after a few years this method of agitation was discarded to a great extent in the large political centres. Friends became wearied out with the toilsome ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... is not a fad involving the expenditure of sums of money for useless "frills" but is a practical means of getting better results with money that must be expended in such changes as disposition of lands, the location of roads, the furnishing of ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... it," replied "his ludship." "Not so abroad, by no means, my man. In fact, on the home lines in Lunnon, it is quite the thing, you know, for the quality to make a fad of locomotive parties, and the accommodations for their comfort are quite superior ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... the office floor, is a sunny, glass-enclosed nook, open on three sides and sheltered from cool north winds. It is called the solarium or sun-parlor. To this retreat come the ladies, with sewing baskets and books. It is quite the fad to take a ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... than one attempt was made upon his life. But the equanimity of Francois Blanc was equal to all adventures. Threats, prayers, temptations, left him untouched. This man of ice, self-possessed, cold, indifferent to the ruin of the thousands of victims of his will, had a fad or fancy. It was for raising red and white roses, and while the mad throngs were fluttering in frenzy around the tables in his halls at Homburg, Wiesbaden and Monte Carlo, he, hoe or trowel in hand, would ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... both sides of the Atlantic,—including the introspective analysts of the past fifteen years,—has within a decade been rising again, and has lately burst forth in a new group of historical romancers who seem to have "harked back" from the subjective fad of our day to Scott's healthy, adventurous objectivity. Not only so, but new editions of the Waverley Novels are coming one by one from the shrewd publishers who keep track of the popular taste, one of the most attractive being issued in Edinburgh ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... "Put the thing away! It's a sheer fad to mend it at all. I don't care what I wear, ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... would be spent in harmony with the vibrations of Orion, and set us all at work to get in touch. I love Orion light myself, for none other suits my aura quite so well, and I was glad to find they had not taken up the Vega fad.—The light here? My dear, it is not even filtered.—Some of us, no doubt for want of practice, were rather slow about perfecting, but finally we all caught on, and when O'Brien, no longer fat and florid, and the elder Miss Dooley, no longer scrawny, moved ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... prefers to leave the beaten highway and go into the by-ways for his characters; his interest is with the humble of the earth, the outcast and alien, the under dog in the social struggle. It has become well-nigh a fashion, a fad, to deal with these picturesque and once unexploited elements ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... praise to God.' For many years the house in Avenue Road was, we are told, a meeting-place for all that was best and brightest in the world of modern thought and art. William Howitt was always ready to lend an attentive and unbiassed ear to the newest theory, or even the newest fad, while Mary possessed in the fullest degree the gift of companionableness, and her inexhaustible sympathy drew from others an instant confidence. Her arduous literary labours never impaired her vigorous powers of mind or body, and she often wrote till late into the night without appearing ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... he said in his jerky way. "Good employer—model to follow—great man. Watch him, mark him, imitate him—that's the way to get on. Can't go wrong," and he trotted down the street in search of fresh contributions towards his latest fad. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... restriction; but in the fact that nothing can ever restrict the restriction. The prohibitions are bound to progress point by point; more and more human rights and pleasures must of necessity be taken away; for it is of the nature of this futurism that the latest fad is the faith of the future, and the most fantastic fad inevitably makes the pace. Thus the worst thing in the seventeenth-century aberration was not so much Puritanism as sectarianism. It searched for truth not by synthesis but by subdivision. It not only broke religion ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... he must quit study, but when he took up his breathing fad, he renounced the doctors, and later denounced them. If he were going to die, he would die without the benefit of either the clergy or ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... is my District death-rate low?" Said Binks of Hezabad. "Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are "My own peculiar fad. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... met with a favor that no one had ventured to forecast. It did not touch the public's fad-nerve; it was too close to the soil for that. It was so simple, with an art so sly, with a humor that, like an essence, so quietly stole the senses, that the reviewers did not arise in resentment against it. They had expected nothing and were surprised to find much. Worn out with heavy ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... the hair change with the times. At present it is the direct part in the middle which is most fashionable. Very young men wear their hair unusually long, but this fad is uncleanly. The hair should be cut at least once a month, and a glimpse of the skin of the neck should always intervene between the ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... of the art of suggestion, but she had been brought up by finicky parents who held that certain words were not to be used in refined society. The impressions received in plastic years were not to be obliterated by any fad of the hour. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... with the fad of the moment, 'the simple life'?" he asked. "Let me assure you that it is beautiful only when you can look down upon it from the safe altitude of a comfortable income. I know, because I've been living it for ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... fact, is a fad of the summer folks this year; but what it will be another no one knows; it may be their hissing and by-word. In the mean time, as I have already suggested, they have other amusements. These are not always of a nature so general as the trolley, or so particular as the tea. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to now? Philately? Arboriculture? What's his last fad? You've seen him lately, you said. I met him for a minute in New York, a few years ago, and he told me he was going to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... and Comparative Anatomy of Fads, Fancies and Theories; showing, moreover, that men and women exist only as the organs and tools of the ideas that dominate them; it is the fad that is alone living. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... court. Lacrosse was quite unknown, and as for the "winter sports" of snow-shoeing, ski-ing, ice-boating, curling, and tobogganing, they were practised only here and there by a few (except for the "coasting" of children) as rather a curious fad. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... regulate admission to it; that marriage is a real bond, making jealousy and marital revenge at the least highly pardonable; that vegetarianism and all pitting of animal against human rights is a silly fad; that on the other hand to save money to give yourself a fine funeral is not a silly fad, but a symbol of ancestral self-respect; that when giving treats to friends or children, one should give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them; that there ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... but nothing happened. Pretty soon my mind began to wander off on other things, decidedly unghostly and material things, such as my wife's shopping and how on earth I was going to cure her of her alarming tendency to take every new fad that came along and work it to death. But I realized that would never get me any place, so I went back to staring ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... got a new fad—crazy to mount the hunt on white horses. I've old Sol here, and Jack has a pair of handy white ones for the two whips, but where to get a white mount for Jack stumps us. Jogged over to see if you ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... lecture before the Mutual Improvement Society of the town he represents. He will then marry, in order that he may attend Mothers' meetings by deputy, and cause his wife to make lavish purchases at a local bazaar, which he will have opened. Shortly afterwards he will select an unpopular fad, which certain members of his own party approve, and will take a vigorous stand against it on principle, thus earning the commendation of all parties as a man of ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... final position of the two life-long friends who led the columns at Trafalgar, the crowning achievement of the British Navy as well as of their own illustrious careers. The coincidence at the earlier date may have been partly factitious, due to a fad of the commander-in-chief; but it assumes a different and very impressive aspect viewed in the light of their later close association, especially when it is recalled that Collingwood also succeeded, upon Nelson's death, to the Mediterranean ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... Clinging to Truth in a truthless land in the name of the ancient Name; Generous, courteous, gentle, patient under the yoke, Decent (hemmed in a harem land ye were ever a one-wife folk); Royal and brave and ancient—haply an hour has struck When the new fad-fangled peoples shall weary of raking muck, And turning from coward counsels and loathing the parish lies, In shame and sackcloth offer up the only sacrifice. Then thou who hast been neglected, who hast called o'er a world in vain To the deaf deceitful traders' ears in tune to the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... have heard. They rant and froth, contradict themselves and one another, wander from the point and never get anywhere....That would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor California is a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the riff-raff and derelicts....My other hope is that even they—that is to say the least unbalanced of them—will come in time to realize that socialism is ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... restaurant business. If they did, they would probably be engaged in it instead of in their different trades. All experiments along this line of which we have heard have failed. The so-called "democratic idea," purely a fad, never has been ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... without a prolonged struggle, even in religious doctrine and ordinary life. Every revolt is tested as by fire, and we do not otherwise know the temper of the rebels or the value of their purpose. Is it a trick? Is it a fad? Is it a plot for contemptible ends? Is it a riot—a moment's effervescence—or a revolution glowing from volcanic depths? We only know by the tests of ridicule, suffering, and death. In his "Ode to France," written in ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... lucky I got him just as I did. I hadn't much more'n broke him in before I runs up against this new one. Understand, I ain't no fad chaser. I don't pine for the sporting-extra life, with a new red-ink stunt for every leaf on the calendar-pad. I got me studio here, an' me real-money reg'lars that keeps the shop runnin', and a few of the boys to drop around now and then; so I'm willing to let it go at that. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... playing, and within there were spendthrifts who paid fourpence for their chairs, when the music could be perfectly well heard without charge outside. It was, in fact, heard there by a large audience of bicyclers of both sexes, who stood by their wheels in numbers unknown in New York since the fad of bicycling began to pass several years ago. The lamps shed a pleasant light upon the crowd, after the long afterglow of the sunset had passed and the first stars began to pierce the clear heavens. But there was always enough kindly obscurity to hide emotions that did not mind ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... to the invariable slacking of cordage under strain, the ship was fit for any eye to light on, like a conscious beauty going forth conquering and to conquer. I doubt the crew grumbled and d——d a little under their breath, for the process was tedious; yet it was not only a fad, but necessary, and the deck-officer who habitually neglected it might possibly rise to an emergency, but was scarcely otherwise worth his salt. In my humble judgment, he had better have ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... slightly wanting in ease and continuity, yet possesses the elements of force. "The Traitor", by Agnes E. Fairfield, is a short story of artistic development but questionable sentiment. The present fad of peace-preaching should not be allowed to influence a writer of sense into glorifying a socialistic, unpatriotic fanatic who refuses to uphold the institutions that his fathers before him created with their toil, blood, and sacrifice. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... her and with them. I couldn't stand it. I felt myself being submerged by something. I wanted to be orderly and to work, you see. I couldn't let violin making alone. Lord, how I tried—tried bluffing myself about it—calling it a fad." ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... Conway energetically. 'Of course Mallinson's aim is apparent enough, poor fellow.' A touch of scorn in the voice, which rang false, negatived the pity of the phrase. 'But I don't suppose for an instant that she has realised it. She would be the last to do so. No, she has a fad in her head about authors ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... it don't sound so unreasonable, although I don't believe there is much of a demand for that kind of thing. But the other—-the—the knickerbocker things—that's not even practical. It will make an ugly garment, and the women who would fall for a fad like that wouldn't be of the sort to wear an ugly piece of lingerie. It isn't to ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... authorities felt that women's leagues were informed bodies of women whose suggestions they would make no error in adopting, more legislation could be effected. Too often city councils are approached by those who favor some whim or fad, and so ALL women's demands are classed together. Much harm has been done to the cause by indiscreet, pushing women with only a glimmer of knowledge. The question is not WOMAN, but ability and women. It is better, as a rule, to work out ideas ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... impugn the motives of those men whose philanthropic disposition had earned for them the approval of the well-disposed. One was actuated by vanity and vainglory; another by political ambitions; a third took to philanthropy as to the current fad. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... of news is that of the letter purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter," writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several renderings in ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... pleasure or of his career to linger. This meeting had left his curiosity baffled. He understood how Marta's vitality demanded action, which exerted itself in a feminine way for a feminine cause. The cure for such a fad was most clear to his masculine-perception. What if all the power she had shown in her appeal for peace could be made to serve another ambition? He knew that he was a great man. More than once he had wondered what would happen ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... quite off the hinge. What's the meaning of this new fad?" And he tossed me, with visible irreverence, a drawing in which I happened to have depicted both my elegant models. I asked if he didn't think it good, and he replied that it struck him as execrable, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... best, the members read papers to one another, and a few medical men and schools secure a needed advertisement. They have no organization, no concentration of their energy, and their chief effect seems to be to present an interest in education as if it were a harmless, pointless fad. But if a few men of means and capacity were to organize a committee with adequate funds, secure the services of specially endowed men for the exhaustive study of developing speech, publish a digested report, and, with the assistance of a good writer or so, produce very cheaply, advertise vigorously, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... that feels good, but contains germs of all diseases, and tobacco that smells good when it is in conflagration under your nose, and does not kill instantly if it is pasted up in a Wisconsin wrapper, that is the pure goods. If tobacco ever ceases to be a fad with the rich consumer of fifty-cent cigars, and beet sugar is found to contain no first aid to Bright's disease, Cuba will amount to about as much as Dry Tortugas, which has purer air, and the Isle of Pines, which has more tropical scenery and less yellow fever. But now the Island of Cuba ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... kept their word. Thereafter, nearly every Saturday of the summer found them taking tea with Miss Sally at Golden Gate. Sometimes they came alone; sometimes they brought other girls. It soon became a decided "fad" in their set to go to see Miss Sally. Everybody who met her loved her at sight. It was considered a special treat to be taken by the Seymours to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... a bare little box," she replied with a laugh. "It's like a cell. A friend of ours who has the anti-germ fad insisted on it. But ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... a tease you are! But you know that in your heart your pride of family is as great as mine. Only it is the 'fad' of the day to affect to despise birth and lineage. We of Wales ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... and the lad went into the courtyard with his sister to have a look at her new fad, as Nick Garth called it, that is to say, the well-plastered pool with its surrounding of rock-work, in which various plants were beginning to flourish and reflect themselves in the crystal water with which the little pond ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... of running over next day with Lord Robert West, to look at a wonderful new motor car for sale there—one that a Rajah had ordered to be made for him, but died before it was finished. Lady Mountstuart always has one new fad every six months at least, and her latest is to drive a motor car herself. Lord Robert is a great expert—can make a motor, I believe, or take it to pieces and put it together again; and he'd been insisting for days that she would be able to drive ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... introduced the hobble skoit. My Bella was one of the foist to wear one. There ain't a fad that he don't go over to Europe and get. He made a fortune off the hobble ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... custom were a fad which affected only the wealthy classes it would be reprehensible enough, but it curses rich and poor alike, and almost every day we saw heavily laden coolie women steadying themselves by means of a staff, hobbling stiff-kneed along the roads ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews



Words linked to "Fad" :   fashion



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com