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Germanic   /dʒərmˈænɪk/   Listen
Germanic

noun
1.
A branch of the Indo-European family of languages; members that are spoken currently fall into two major groups: Scandinavian and West Germanic.  Synonym: Germanic language.



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"Germanic" Quotes from Famous Books



... northern Europe ceased to be predominant in the closing years of the last century. Then the tide shifted to southern Europe, to Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Poland, and the Balkans. A new strain was being added to our Anglo-Saxon, Germanic stock. The "new immigration" did not speak our language. It was unfamiliar with self-government. It was largely illiterate. And with this shift from the "old immigration" to the "new," immigration increased in volume. In 1892 the total immigration was 579,663; in 1894 it fell ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... languages offers an interesting example of differentiation. English and German, for example, are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All the European languages are traceable back to a hypothecated Primitive Indo-European.[1] The theory held by most students of this subject is ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... was fixed later, and from the time when it became fixed was not influenced by the Celtic type. But here in our country, in historic times, long after the Celtic embryo had crystallised into the Celt proper, long after the Germanic embryo had crystallised into the German proper, there was an important contact between the two peoples; the Saxons invaded the Britons and settled themselves in the Britons' country. Well, then, here was a contact which one ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... Whitehall, and carrier pigeons with love notes were sent flying over the temples, churches and towers of London to notify all loyal subjects that the throne of old Albion had been strengthened by an infusion of Germanic blood. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... the recent Balkan Wars had of course so weakened her that cautious diplomatic jockeying was a preliminary necessity, but when Russia had succumbed to Hindenburg's hammer-strokes in the summer of 1915 and the Germanic hosts menaced Serbia in the autumn, Bulgaria threw off the mask, struck Serbia from the rear, and joined the Teutonic powers. Thus did the "Berlin-Bagdad" dream grow into solid fact, and Mitteleuropa became a ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... not exhausted the source of experimental instruction on this subject. There are existing institutions, founded on a similar principle, which merit particular consideration. The first which presents itself is the Germanic body. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... lively adventure which might turn up. Little Teddy bore a charmed life, for nothing ever happened to him, and Jo never felt any anxiety when he was whisked up into a tree by one lad, galloped off on the back of another, or supplied with sour russets by his indulgent papa, who labored under the Germanic delusion that babies could digest anything, from pickled cabbage to buttons, nails, and their own small shoes. She knew that little Ted would turn up again in time, safe and rosy, dirty and serene, and she always received him back with a hearty ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... other poems of "Codex Junius 11", is not a direct translation into Anglo-Saxon of the Old Testament "Book of Genesis". Rather, it is an effort to retell the story in the poetry and style of the Germanic Epic, a style still popular with the Anglo-Saxons at the ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown

... essentially naturalistic. But it was a profound and moral naturalism, a loving embrace of Nature by man, a delicious poetry, full of the sentiment of the Infinite—the principle, in fine, of all that which the Germanic and Celtic genius, of that which a Shakespeare and a Goethe should express in later times. It was neither theology nor moral philosophy—it was a state of melancholy, it was tenderness, it was imagination; ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... George Muller's family name is Germanic in origin. Everywhere that his name appears in the printed text, the letter "u" is marked with two dots above it (called an 'umlaut') to show that it is pronounced differently from the way the unmarked vowel is normally pronounced. So his name is usually pronounced in English as Myew-ler, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... These were known as samurai, meaning literally, like the old English cniht (knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the soldurii whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the comitati, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his time; or, to take a still later parallel, the milites medii that one reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word Bu-ke or Bu-shi (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. They were a privileged class, and must originally have been ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... it is called, in round numbers the two hundred years from 400 to 600, at the close of which we find them settled in those regions which they have, generally speaking, occupied ever since. During these two centuries kaleidoscopic changes had been taking place in the position of the various Germanic tribes. Impelled partly by a native love of wandering, partly by the pressure of hostile peoples of other race, they moved with astonishing rapidity hither and thither over the face of Europe, generally in conflict with one another or buffeted ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... of fortune which involves the welfare, happiness and progress of many millions of people. The history of civilization in Europe has reached a new page, one which must be written by those who have in keeping the Divine destiny of the Germanic race. It is not a time to falter before the graveness of our responsibility and the magnitude of our undertakings. I spoke of these things at Eckartsau. I ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... originally not Germanic, but rather Slavish in type; and, indeed, to-day in the forest of the River Spree, on which Berlin is situated, and only about fifty miles from that city, there still dwell descendants of the original Wendish inhabitants of the country who speak the Wendish language. The wet-nurses, whose picturesque ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... his accent, too. There was a Germanic something in it as faint as the odor of high game. It was a time when the least hint of Teutonism carried the stench ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... adaptation of the municipal customs bequeathed to them by their predecessors, and which became developed to their full proportions through the greater amount of individual liberty that prevailed among the Germanic races. ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... Demidoffs would surely not recognize him any more than he would them. But are they as happy as he seems to have remained through his life of sacrifice? There is laughter in his blue eyes, which attest his pure Germanic origin, and which light up his face, one of those feudal faces such as one sees in the portraits hung upon the walls of the priories of Malta, where plainness has race. A thick, white moustache, in which ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... validity, the nations excluded from it began simultaneously beyond the Alps and beyond the Euphrates to pass from defence to aggression. On the battle- fields of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae, of Chaeronea and Orchomenus, were heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the Germanic tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to bring upon the Italo- Grecian world, and the last dull rolling of which has reached almost to our own times. But in internal development also this epoch bears the same character. The old organization ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... question to be approached concerns the pedigree of Anglo-Saxon law and the latter's natural affinities. What is its position in the legal history of Germanic nations? How far has it been influenced by non-Germanic elements, especially by Roman and Canon law? The oldest Anglo-Saxon codes, especially the Kentish and the West Saxon ones, disclose a close relationship to the barbaric laws of Lower Germany—those of Saxons, Frisians, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... system introduced by the victorious Othmans among the conquered nations was not as oppressive as is generally believed. The Turks, unlike the Germanic nations, the Huns and Normans, did not take forcible possession of private property and divide it among their conquering hordes. From those who acknowledged themselves subject to their rule, the Turks exacted tribute, but protected their liberties and political institutions. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to call the Northmen mere corsairs, or even to class them with piratical states such as Cilicia of old, or Barbary in more recent times. Their invasions were rather to be regarded as an after-act of the great migration of the Germanic tribes, one of the last waves of the flood which overwhelmed the Roman Empire, and deposited the germs of modern Christendom. They were, and but for the defensive energy of the Christianized Teuton would have been, to the Saxon what the Saxon had been to the Celt, whose sole ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... into several great families, i. The Aryan, or Indo-European, of which the oldest known branch is the Sanskrit, the language in which the ancient books of the Hindus, the Vedas, were written. With the Sanskrit belong the Iranian or Persian, the Greek, the Latin or Italic, the Celtic, the Germanic or Teutonic (under which are included the Scandinavian tongues), the Slavonian or Slavo-Lettic. 2. The Semitic, embracing the communities described in Genesis as the descendants of Shem. Under this head are embraced, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... Slavonic, the liturgical language common to all the Orthodox Slavs, but it has undergone more important modifications than any of the sister dialects in the simplification of its grammatical forms; and the analytical character of its development may be compared with that of the neo-Latin and Germanic languages. The introduction of the definite article, which appears in the form of a suffix, and the almost total disappearance of the ancient declensions, for which the use of [v.04 p.0785] prepositions has been substituted, distinguish ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... societies are composed of presidents, secretaries and officials, who want the conspicuousness of office, and a large list of other members who won't come to the meetings. For such an association, the invited speaker who is to lecture for nothing prepares his lecture on "Indo-Germanic Factors in the Current of History." If he is a professor, he takes all the winter at it. You may drop in at his house at any time and his wife will tell you that he is "upstairs working on his lecture." If he comes down at all it is in carpet slippers and dressing gown. His mental vision of ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... incessantly twisting circumstances foiled the pleasure and pride due to me. From the Club I bent my steps to Temple's district, and met in the street young Eckart vom Hof, my champion and second on a memorable occasion, fresh upon London, and looking very Germanic in this drab forest of our city people. He could hardly speak of Deutschland for enthusiasm at the sight of the moving masses. His object in coming to England, he assured me honestly, was to study certain editions of Tibullus in the British Museum. When ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and the native speech, were both commonly used in all the countries of western Europe all through the Middle Ages, we must glance at the origin of the modern languages. These all fall into two quite distinct groups, the Germanic and the Romance. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... Irish, but March noticed in these East Side travels of his what must strike every observer returning to the city after a prolonged absence: the numerical subordination of the dominant race. If they do not outvote them, the people of Germanic, of Slavonic, of Pelasgic, of Mongolian stock outnumber the prepotent Celts; and March seldom found his speculation centred upon one of these. The small eyes, the high cheeks, the broad noses, the puff lips, the bare, cue-filleted skulls, of Russians, Poles, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... did not begin to have any form until towards the tenth century; it was born from the ruins of Latin and Celtic, mixed with a few Germanic words. This language was first of all the romanum rusticum, rustic Roman, and the Germanic language was the court language up to the time of Charles the Bald; Germanic remained the sole language of Germany after the great epoch of the partition of 843. Rustic Roman, the Romance language, prevailed ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... The Germanic Confederation pledged itself to 34,285 florins. It was impossible to ask for more; besides, they would not have ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... European countries, and the refusal to recognise its special place as the cult of a tribal people.[160] Another example of this fundamental error takes us in the very opposite direction to that of Dr. Frazer. Thus Dr. Gummere, in a recent study dealing with Germanic origins,[161] sees nothing in the fire cult of the Indo-European people but a branch, and apparently an undeveloped branch, of general nature worship, not specially Germanic or Indo-European, not specialised by the tribes and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... presentation we feel that we are seeing a succession of scenes rather than unified, organic drama. But, after all, the main thing is the substance—"the weighty content, and this will most certainly secure for them for a long time to come a place in the repertoire of the theater of the Germanic world. So long as we admit that in the delineation of character, in the presentation of noble figures, and in the mastery of dialogue, Shakespeare is unexcelled, so long we must admit that Shakespeare has a place on the ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... these Witches being simply transfigurations, or later disguises, of the Teutonic Norns is fully established—as may be seen from Grimm or Simrock. In delineating these hags, Shakspeare has practically drawn upon old Germanic sources, perhaps upon current folk-lore ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... drink in of the beauty of its scenery, to have his ears regaled with the tragic record of its neighborhood. The name of Petard-the name of as bold a bandit as ever led a company of mountain-robbers—has become classic as any historic name of the Germanic confederacy, or the Italian states, by reason of the influence he exerted, the boldness of his deeds, the oftentimes chivalric character of his conduct; but, above all, for his singular personal bravery, and his remarkable prowess in battle. Only second, as it regarded the extent of his fame, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... the mind from the joyless landscape until we drew near Valladolid. It is true that for a while we shared our compartment with a father and his two sons who lunched on slices of the sausage which seems the favorite refection of the Latin as well as the Germanic races in their travels. But this drama was not of intense interest, and we grappled in vain with the question of our companions' social standard. The father, while he munched his bread and sausage, read a newspaper which did not ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... were a tribe of the Indo-Germanic branch which dwelt on the south-east of the Caspian, and belonged to the same race as the Getae, the Massagetae, and other nations, confounded by the ancients under the vague denomination of Scythians. Klaproth, Tableaux Hist. d l'Asie, p. 40. Strabo (p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... powerful nation of the Germanic race, which, originally from the Baltic, first settled near the Black Sea, and then overran and took an important part in the subversion of the Roman empire. They were distinguished as Ostro Goths (Eastern ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope

... nations of Europe have had the very same Christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines. The whole of the polity and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary, from the feudal institutions which must be considered as an emanation from that custumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into system and discipline by the Roman law. From hence arose ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... the world, having once founded their empire, immediately set themselves to acquire that knowledge of the sciences which alone was lacking to their greatness. Of all the invaders who competed for the last remains of the Roman Empire they alone pursued such studies; while the Germanic hordes, glorying in their brutality and ignorance, took a thousand years to re-unite the broken chain of tradition, the Arabs accomplished this in less than a century. They provoked the competition of the conquered Christians—a healthy competition which secured the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... to their proportionate share of the land occupied by the whole. This system created a mutual independence and self-consciousness of personal right and importance, strongly at variance with the subjugation of the Germanic and Anglo-Norman vassal. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... that in previous wars against France, the eight hundred princes of the Germanic region had been unable to act in unison; there were some who provided no more than a company, others only a platoon, and some just one soldier; so that a combination of all these different contingents made up an army wholly lacking cohesion, which broke up at the first ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... and sacred books (Puranas) show that they are much older than the Brahmans; and, in this case, moreover, the Aryan tribes had an actual existence in other countries of our globe than the much renowned district of the Oxus, the cradle of the Germanic race, the ancestors of Aryans and Hindus, in the fancy of the scientist we have ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... and the Rhine, in the country vaguely designated under the name of Austrasia, German invasions have left more indelible traces. The ideas, customs and even the language have taken on a Tudesque imprint. There they sing in a form purely Germanic the 'Antiquissima Carmina' ["Most Ancient Songs"] which Charlemagne was one day to order his writers to compile and put in permanent form. Between these two extreme divisions there was a neutral territory where a new language was in process of forming—that of the 'Oc' and 'Oil.' ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... affiliation, though it had a totally diverse element in the Celtic, to begin with, yet absorbed that element, without in the least destroying the connection. It runs clearly from the Anglo Saxon to the Frisic, or northern Dutch, and the Germanic, in all its recondite phases, with the ancient Gothic, and its cognates, taking in very wide accessions from the Latin, the Gallic, and other languages of southern Europe; and it may be traced back, historically, till it quite penetrates through these ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... know how to trace this Germanic spirit to its lair beneath its many modern dressings, or even beneath heaps of ruins; one must love it so that one is not ashamed of it in its stunted form, and one must above all be on one's guard against confounding ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... from the struggle as a homogeneous people, having absorbed none of the blood of those with whom it strove for the lordship of this vine-clad valley? He would indeed be a courageous ethnologist who would suggest a purely Germanic origin for the Rhine race. As the historical period dawns upon Middle Europe we find the Rhine basin in the possession of a people of Celtic blood. As in Britain and France, this folk has left its indelible mark upon the countryside ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... reactionary suggestions of Prince Metternich were carried into effect. A good opportunity for Metternich to assert his ascendency was presented by the first session of the new German Diet. Late in the year the delegates from all the States of the New Germanic Confederation met at Frankfort, Austria holding the permanent presidency. Count Buol von Schauenstein opened the Diet with a solemn address, which fell flat. First of all, it was settled that Hesse would have to cede a large ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... the character of Europe has, since the commencement of the Middle Ages, been chiefly influenced by the Germanic race of northern conquerors, who infused new life and vigour into a degenerated people. The stern nature of the North drives man back within himself; and what is lost in the free sportive development of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... investigations concerning language. Ewald has shown in an interesting manner the means afforded by the Hebrew proper names for gaining a conception of Hebrew life (see his article on Names in Kitto's Bibl. Encycl.); and a similar analysis has recently been applied to the Indo-Germanic languages in ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... of America do not afford either the first or the only instance of confederate states, several of which have existed in modern Europe, without adverting to those of antiquity. Switzerland, the Germanic empire, and the republic of the United Provinces, either have been or still are confederations. In studying the constitutions of these different countries, the politician is surprised to observe that the powers with which they invested the federal government are nearly identical with the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... into a better frame of mind. We know that nervous affections were very prevalent in those times among the ignorant masses of the people, and verbal charms were doubtless of value in furnishing therapeutic mental impulses. The Germanic sooth-saying physicians maintained that every bodily ailment could be cured by the use of magical spells and enchanted herbs. The medieval charlatan oculists inherited ancient medical formulas, by means of which they professed to treat with success ophthalmic disorders. Their ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... now have a Germanic pulse?" the Empress risked, and called Comte Solms. "Think of something pleasant," said the inventor. "A ballet is a nice thing to think of," said the Princess Metternich, in her ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... Easter as a Christian festival, but it is really in name and origin a pagan one. The word "Easter" is the modern form of "Eastra," the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring (in primitive Germanic, "Austro"). The Germans, like ourselves, keep its true pagan name, "Ostern." The Latin nations use for Easter the word Pascha (French, Paque), the Greek form of the Jewish name for the feast of the Passover, with which it is historically associated ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... Catholic, Frederick Schlegel. He accepted the discoveries in the old language and literature of India as final: he saw the significance of these discoveries as regards philology, and grouped the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany under the name afterward so universally accepted—Indo-Germanic. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... historical occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents. Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race more richly endowed by Nature for dominion and progress than the Belgo-Germanic people. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... theology, and he also compared these records with certain facts in what we may call the pre-Olympian religious ideas of the Greeks. "The conclusion which he draws," writes Dr. Farnell[329]—and I cannot state it better—"is that the Indo-Germanic peoples, on the way to the higher polytheism, passed through an earlier stage when the objects of cult were beings whom he designated by the newly-coined words 'Augenblickgoetter' and 'Sondergoetter'" (gods of momentary or limited function). He went further ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... part of Europe then called Gaul was invaded in succession by three Germanic races. The Visigoths first conquered and took possession of the southern part of the country. They were followed by the Burgundians, who settled in the eastern portion. Then came the terrible Franks, who were not content with ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... political discontent during the latter part of the forties of the past century. This fact is reflected in the German language as spoken in Joinville to-day. It is perhaps more free from dialect than in any other German colony in Brazil. The general cultural status of the inhabitants of Germanic ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle

... its materials from Roman, Germanic and Christian sources, conceived the Universe as Civitas Dei, the State of God, embracing both heaven and earth, with God as at once the source, the guide and the ultimate goal. Now this Universe contains numerous parts, one of which is composed of mankind; ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... forcible seizure in ancient times by bands of invaders, with the negligible exception of Holstein and a slight extent of territory adjoining that province to the south and south-west. Since the time when such peoples as were overtaken in this region by the Germanic barbarian invasions, and were reduced to subjection and presently merged with their alien masters, the same general fashion of law and order that presently grew out of that barbarian conquest has continued to govern the life of those peoples, with relatively slight and intermittent ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... take you to be the greatest 'juris peritus' and politician of the whole Germanic body, I suppose you will have read the King of Prussia's letter to the Elector of Mayence, upon the election of a King of the Romans; and on the other side, a memorial entitled, IMPARTIAL REPRESENTATION OF WHAT ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... put on the names, Kuhn almost invariably seeing fire, storm, cloud, or lightning where Mr. Max Muller sees the chaste Dawn. Thus Mannhardt, after having been a disciple, is obliged to say that comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not borne the fruit expected, and that "the CERTAIN gains of the system reduce themselves to the scantiest list of parallels, such as Dyaus Zeus Tius, Parjanya Perkunas, Bhaga Bog, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... reaching away to north and to south. College girls, working-girls, home-women, fine ladies, efficient business women, vague, non-producing, half-awakened women,—all sorts, all conditions, black, white, Latin, Slav, Germanic, English, American, American, American,—they came marching on. They were proud and they were diffident; they were sad and they were merry; they were faltering and they were enthusiastic. Some were there freely, splendidly, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... stream, from his childhood he had instinctively felt their inevitable union; all through his life the unconscious effort of his genius had been to maintain the balance and equilibrium of the two mighty wings. The greater was his wealth of Germanic dreams, the more he needed the Latin clarity of mind and order. It was for this reason that France was so dear to him. In France he had the joy of better knowledge and mastery of himself. Only in France was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... yelling, wild to take a city so important that the world would be impressed. Why, it would be—they thought—as if the whole Ile-de-France were in their grasp! The next step would be to Paris, goal of all Germanic invasions since Attila. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and how America modified and developed that life and reacted on Europe. Our early history is the study of European germs developing in an American environment. Too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins, too little to the American factors. The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... proofs that this language was once universal all over France; and that this, and not immediately the Latin, has been the parent of the Provencal, and afterwards of the modern French, the Italian, and the Spanish. The oath taken by Lewis the Germanic, in the year 842, in confirmation of an alliance between him and Charles the Bald his brother, is a decisive proof of the general use of the Romance by the whole French nation at that time, and of their little knowledge of the Teutonic, which being the native tongue ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... Aix-la-Chapelle you turn your back to the river—a particular which suited my mood well enough. The railway bore us away from the Rhine-shore at an abrupt angle, and in my notion the noble Germanic goddess or image seemed at this point to recede with grand theatric strides, like a divinity of the stage backing away from her admirers over the billowy whirlpool of her own skirts. As I dreamed we penetrated the tunnel of Koenigsdorf, which is fifteen hundred yards long, and which seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... as the French saw the triumph of Prussia with much bitterness of feeling, and gladly would have joined the Austrians; but the mistake he made in regard to Germany was very great, and shows that he and his advisers knew nothing of Germanic feeling. If they could thus err on a point that was plain to every intelligent foreigner, how can we expect them to exhibit more intelligence and more sense with respect to the new state of things proceeding from the event ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... order, their chief characteristics, the kinds of authority they possessed, their modes of operation, and their defects. The confederacies analyzed in this paper are the Lycian, Amphictyonic, Achaen, Helvetic, Belgic, and Germanic. He also read the standard works on general politics and the science of government, abridging parts of them, according to his usual practice, that he might impress the essential points more deeply on his mind." He resolved ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... Prince of Orange ... was proclaimed Sovereign Prince of the Low Countries, December 1, 1813; and in the following year, August 13, 1814, on the condition that he should make a part of the Germanic Confederation, he received the title of King of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the plain and took the road to Biberich. This is a small town on the banks of the Rhine, and is the residence of the Duke. Nassau figures in the tables of the Germanic confederation as the fourteenth state, having three hundred and thirty-eight thousand inhabitants, and furnishing three thousand troops as its contingent. The population is probably a little greater. The reigning family ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... country in the neighborhood of the Rura (Ruhr), a tributary of the Rhine. Probably this slaughter was the destruction of them as a separate people; and by the time that Trajan succeeded to the imperial power they seem to have been blotted out from amongst the Germanic tribes. Hence their name will not be found in ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... decorated with boxes of bright-coloured flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... it difficult to imagine that the Greek immigrant—who stood in somewhat the same relation to the Babylonians and the Egyptians as the later Germanic barbarians to the Romans of the Empire—should not have been immensely influenced by the new life with which they became acquainted. But there is abundant direct evidence of the magnitude of this influence in certain spheres. I suppose it is not doubted that the Greek went to school with the Oriental ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... general air of ignoring Bert, but muttering to himself in English nevertheless. "Stupendous!" Bert heard him say. "Here!" he said, "get off this locker." And he proceeded to rout out two books and a case of maps. He spread them on the folding-table, and stood regarding them. For a time his Germanic discipline struggled with his English informality and his natural kindliness and talkativeness, and at ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... destroyed the Christian churches and monasteries, whose origin, as we have seen, is unknown. They drove away or massacred the priests and monks. Christianity was practically extirpated in those districts subject to the Germanic yoke. But when Augustine landed British monks were still to be found in various obscure parts of the country, principally in Ireland and Wales. Judging from what is known of these monks, it is safe to say that their ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... Christian society. Mediaeval Europe thought of itself as nothing but the old world-state under religion; from Spain to Russia men were living under a Holy Roman Empire of an Italian, or Teutonic, or Byzantine, or independent type. England and Russia were not parts of the Germanic revival of Charlemagne, but they had just the same two elements dominant in their life: the classical tradition and ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... alive to the fact that the Regular Army could not cope in point of numbers with the Germanic hordes. On the day following the declaration of war the Territorial Forces of Great Britain were mobilized, and with a marvellous and inspiring unanimity their members volunteered for Overseas Service. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... brothers, Polybius and his son, to the place of execution, like Titianus. And Philostratus perceived what was going on in her mind, and with the exhortation, "Remember how many persons' weal or woe lies in your hands!" he rose and began a conversation with the Thracian commander of the Germanic guard. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... jurisprudence remark that it was only the fiercer and ruder of the conquerors of the empire, and notably the nations of Sclavonic origin, which exhibited a Patria Potestas at all resembling that which was described in the Pandects and the Code. All the Germanic immigrants seem to have recognised a corporate union of the family under the mund, or authority of a patriarchal chief; but his powers are obviously only the relics of a decayed Patria Potestas, and fell ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... were neglected in France until very recent times; for specimens of the French ballad, and for an account of it, the reader should consult Professor Crane's 'Chansons Populaires de France,' New York, 1891. It is with ballads of the Germanic race, however, that we are now concerned. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, the Faroe Islands; Scotland and England; the Netherlands and Germany: all of these countries offer us admirable specimens of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... the Teutonic clan, meaning Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Social and commercial aims and aspirations in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, independent as they are and probably always will be, still show a decided trend to Central Germanic cohesion. The whole of Europe is roughly divided into three dominant races—the Teutonic, the Latin and the Slavish. The Teutonic has Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Norse subdivisions. The Latin, Gallic, has the French, Italian and Spanish nations; and the Slavonic comprises the Slavs and ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... that now flashed, luridly, for Karen, was that of an immense Germanic face with bright, blinking eyes behind glasses; huge lips; a flattened nose, modelled thickly at the corners, and an enormous laugh that rolled back the lips and revealed suddenly the Semitic element and a boundless energy and kindliness. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... precisely the same cause that had made it tolerable to his father. To the troubles caused by the Reformation he attributed the election of his uncle Maximilian "King of the Romans," and his own consequent loss of the Germanic empire. But, as a compensation for this loss, he had substantially acquired England by his marriage with Queen Mary, and had the satisfaction of having his soldiers mingled with those of England in his war against France, and of seeing his own Archbishop ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... that the republican form of government produces greater peace and prosperity than the monarchical would neglect the obvious exceptions in the Central American republics; and to make it at all tenable the generalization would have to have some such proviso as, "among peoples of Germanic race." Even then the exceptions would be more numerous than the cases which would fall within the rule.[39] One must cultivate respect for facts in making theories: a theory should always be held so tentatively that any new or unnoticed facts ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... air or melody: hence the primitive meaning of trobador is the "composer" or "inventor," in the first instance, of new melodies. As such, he differs from the vates, the inspired bard of the Romans and the [Greek: poeta], poeta, the creative poet of the Greeks, the "maker" of Germanic literature. Skilful variation upon a given theme, rather than inspired or creative power, is ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... beforehand in his mind: they are already deeply graven on it through his education and through his instinct. By virtue of this instinct, which is despotic, by virtue of this education, which is classic and Latin, he conceives human associations not in the modern fashion, Germanic and Christian, as a concert of initiations starting from below, but in the antique fashion, pagan and Roman, as a hierarchy of authorities imposed from above. He puts his own spirit into his civil institutions, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... as it is, is almost the first requisite for all who belong to a party of whatever sort: the party man becomes inevitably a liar. For example, the German historians are convinced that Rome was synonymous with despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of liberty into the world: what is the difference between this conviction and a lie? Is it to be wondered at that all partisans, including the German historians, instinctively roll the fine phrases of morality upon their tongues—that ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... which the powers of the Triple Entente, and especially Russia, have made themselves the champions have not provoked this bloody struggle. It was imposed on them by the reactionary spirit of the Germanic world, which desired to consolidate its hegemony, based on the sufferings of the weak, impossible to describe, and on the contempt of right, which was proclaimed as a ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... king's own account of Europe in his time, and the only authentic record of the Germanic nations, written by a contemporary, so early ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt

... which formed the center of the Hottentot area.[220] A view of the ancient Germans during the first five or six centuries after Christ reveals differentiation by various contacts in process along all the ragged borders of the Germanic area. The offshoots who pushed westward across the Rhine into Belgian Gaul were rapidly Celticized, abandoning their semi-nomadic life for sedentary agriculture, assimilating the superior civilization which they found there, and steadily merging with the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... thing through the medium of good sense and earthly foresight. The Emperor of Germany is victorious; he is gradually weakening the Sultan, so that it is within the range of possibilities that he overturn the Ottoman power, and consolidate the Germanic confederations into one great empire. This done, he will turn his attention to France—of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... German Empire consisted of a union of twenty-five Germanic states of various grades and the Reichland of Alsace-Lorraine under the leadership of Prussia, by far the most important state of the Empire. The foundation of Prussia's greatness was laid by Frederick the Great in 1763 ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... sweeping; encyclopedical[obs3], widespread &c. (dispersed) 73. universal; catholic, catholical[obs3]; common, worldwide; ecumenical, oecumenical[obs3]; transcendental; prevalent, prevailing, rife, epidemic, besetting; all over, covered with. Pan-American, Anglican[obs3], Pan-Hellenic, Pan-Germanic, Slavic; panharmonic[obs3]. every, all; unspecified, impersonal. customary &c. (habitual) 613. Adv. whatever, whatsoever; to a man, one and all. generally &c. adj.; always, for better for worse; in general, generally speaking; speaking generally; for the most part; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... enlightening nor suggestive than the stoicism of the North American Indian. This mirthful and mock-innocent naivete, so alien to the delicate and subtle spirit of the French, found instant response in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic peoples. The English and the Germans, no less than the Americans, rejoiced in this gay fellow with his combination of appealing ignorance and but half-concealed shrewdness. They laughed at this unsophisticated ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... becomes fantastic after one has lived at the front. One waits on more information before he forms conclusions about campaigns. He is certain only that the Marne was a decisive battle for civilization; that if England had not gone into the war the Germanic Powers would ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... settled and peopled the empire rather than conquered it. It was the weakness of war-worn Rome that gave the Germanic ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... has received Lord Palmerston's letter of yesterday, but cannot say that his arguments in support of his former opinion, that the Germanic Confederation should be omitted from amongst the Powers who are to be invited to sign a protocol, the object of which is to decide upon the fate of Holstein, have proved successful in convincing her of the propriety of this course. As Holstein belongs to the Germanic ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... some such theory as this for a general starting platform. We do not owe our flora—I must keep to the flora just now—to so many different regions, or types, as Mr. Watson conceives, but to three, namely: an European or Germanic flora, from the south-east; an Atlantic flora, from the south-west; a Northern flora from the north. These three invaded us after the glacial epoch; and our general flora ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... laws, in the first stage, are very severe. In the Germanic middle age the insolvent was disgraced. He became the slave of his creditor (zu Hand und Halfter), who might imprison him, fetter him (stoecken und bloecken), and probably kill him. A Norwegian law allowed the creditor, when his debtor would not work and his friends would ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... Empire, the richest prize that the world has ever displayed, spread out its treasures before the envious eyes of militant nations, practically undefended, save for its slender ring of circling ships. There it lay, a constant and irresistible lure, especially to that parvenu and predatory Germanic Power which had appeared upon the European scene, as the offspring of treachery and violence, in 1871. Thus those politicians—they were to be found in all parties—who refused to face the new conditions, ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw



Words linked to "Germanic" :   Old Norse, Indo-European, Norse, Proto-Norse, Teuton, nordic, German, Scandinavian language, Indo-European language, Scandinavian, Indo-Hittite



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