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Handicap   /hˈændikˌæp/   Listen
Handicap

verb
(past & past part. handicapped; pres. part. handicapping)
1.
Injure permanently.  Synonyms: disable, incapacitate, invalid.
2.
Attempt to forecast the winner (especially in a horse race) and assign odds for or against a contestant.
3.
Put at a disadvantage.  Synonyms: hamper, hinder.



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"Handicap" Quotes from Famous Books



... to settle up details—mark-boats, handicap, and the like. . . . It's a wonder to me," said Cai reflectively, "how this regatta has run on, year after year. With Bussa for secretary, if you ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Greenfield's horse gave out. Frawley uttered a cry of joy, but the handicap of half a day was a serious one; he was exhausted, famished, and in the bag there remained only sufficient water to ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... race?" asked the man eagerly, too eagerly, Ned thought. "I'll give you a brush, if you do, and a handicap into ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... Pluffles Cupid's Arrows His Chance in Life Watches of The Night The Other Man Consequences The Conversion of Aurellan McGoggin A Germ-destroyer Kidnapped The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly In The House of Suddhoo His Wedded Wife The Broken-link Handicap Beyond The Pale In Error A Bank Fraud Tods' Amendment In The Pride of His Youth Pig The Rout of The White Hussars The Bronckhorst Divorce-case Venus Annodomini The Bisara of Pooree A Friend's Friend The Gate of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck, which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it was that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before South American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... there is no telling what himplements Frenchmen ave. They don't fight like us, they don't. It was a runnin' scrimmage, or handicap fight.' Yes, Sir, if it was hanywhere helse, where it wouldn't show, it wouldn't be so bad, but there it is on the face, and there is no denyin' ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the average Englishman, on the other hand, is impaired by his complacent acceptance of positions of social inferiority and by his worship of degrading social distinctions; and even successful Englishmen suffer from a similar handicap. The latter rarely push their business successes home, because they themselves immediately begin to covet a place in the social hierarchy, and to that end are content with a certain established income. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... severe handicap to youth; not very many grown men can stand it; but beyond a needless display of velvet coats and frilled shirts, the young man stood the test, and got through Harvard. In point of scholarship he did ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... stiffness out of his legs, and laying his ears back, raced valiantly for five squares neck and neck with the engine-horses. But the odds were against him; Mrs. Wiggs and Chris sawing on one line, and Billy and Jake pulling on the other, proved too heavy a handicap. Within sight of the fire he came to a ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... "The Handicap, eh? You must think pretty well of him. Some good horses in that race. Well, there won't be a price on him worth taking; ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... in his progress. The impediment of speech, which in his very nervous moments would almost make one think his mouth was roofless, would have prevented many men from even attempting to enter public life; it has always been a handicap to Mr. Churchill, but he has never allowed it to stop his way, and I think it is significant both of his courage and the nervousness of his temperament that while at the beginning of a speech this thickness of utterance is ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... not fools, by the way. Their car was much more disreputable than you would believe a car could be and turn a wheel, and the Barrymores recognized the handicap of its appearance. They camped well out of sight of town, therefore, and ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... the West is just emerging from the slavery and degradation of ages, and she ought to know that that degradation was not the handicap of barbaric and undeveloped races, so far as the Aryan race is concerned, but a demoralization and degradation instituted by priests, in the name of religion, through which they have sought to rule the world, and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... the doe; but this is a debatable question. Throughout the year the buck thinks only of himself. During fully one-half the year the doe is burdened by the cares of motherhood, and the paramount duty of saving her fawns from their numerous enemies. This, I am quite sure, is the handicap which makes it so much easier to kill a doe in the autumn hunting season than to bag a fully antlered and sophisticated buck who has ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... allied gifts of mind and graces of person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... now John's vigor is on the wane, and he has little left with which to gain a livelihood except his unusually contagious laugh, and a truly remarkable flow of words. "Old John" could give Walter Winchel a handicap of twenty words a minute and then beat him at his own game. His mouth is enormous and his voice deep and resonant. He can make a noise like a wood saw which he maintains for 2 or 3 minutes without apparent effort, the sound buzzing on and on from some mysterious depths of his being with ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... the Arctic blast, but he knew that in the North bodily weakness must be conquered. In the stern battle with savage Nature prudence is a handicap; one must risk all and do what one undertakes since there is no place in the wilderness for the man who counts the cost. Moreover, Jim had fought harder fights, when his strength was lowered by ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... upon in advance. The credit possibilities of the industry have grown with the admission of acceptances to rediscount in the Federal Reserve Banks, and this admissibility has likewise played a part in the present growth of the warehouse system, the lack of which was a handicap to the ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous

... able financially to handle the matter. It knows clearly how the child with physical defects is hampered in trying to perform its school work; it knows, too, how seriously the entire work of the school is interfered with when there are many such in the room; and it also knows the handicap under which such unfortunate children face life when school days are over. And the school knows, too, the preventive and remediable natures of these defects. Possessing all this knowledge, why has it not acted? To make a long story ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... big flathead reposed in two feet of water, half buried in the sand. George had one of his darts fast in a twinkling, and the fish flashed away, the tip indicating its movement. In a few minutes the hapless flathead was carrying no less than six darts, and as such a handicap was absurd it abandoned the race ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... there over the patented structure, and with the aid of keen and able counsel, hardly a patent exists that could not be invaded by such infringers. Such is the condition of our laws and practice that the patentee in seeking to enforce his rights labors under a terrible handicap. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... London interested and stimulated Mr. Kipling, and he settled down to writing. "The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot," and his first novel, "The Light that Failed," appeared in 1890 and 1891; then a collection of verse, "Life's Handicap, being stories of Mine Own People," was published simultaneously in London and New York City; then followed more verse, and so on through ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... other American book of note has been written under so great a handicap. When Mrs. Stowe began this work, one of her large family of children was not a year old, and the others were a constant care. Nevertheless, she persevered with her epoch-making story. One of her friends has given us a picture of the difficulties in her way, the baby on her knee, the new hired ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... was the older man's mental comment. "Doesn't seem at all the sort of person to be fooled about that healing business. Good eye. Good manner. Perhaps this was Ballard's handicap all the time. I guess you're ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... girl, 'I beg that you will allow me to go with you! I have a good horse, and I shall not handicap you in battle. I only ask your protection in camp as your kinswoman and a maid ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... are outstanding targets for simple sabotage. They are extremely susceptible to damage, especially by fire; they offer opportunities to such untrained people as janitors, charwomen, and casual visitors; and, when damaged, they present a relatively large handicap to the enemy. ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... the logic of fact got the better of simulation, they would speak of the handicap of fighting an enemy who could deliver blows with the long reach of his guns to which they could not respond. But this did not happen often. It was a part of the game for the German to marshal more guns than they if he could. They accepted the situation and fought on. They, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... Rose, she soon gave up asking if another letter had come, and to Mrs. Otway's sore heart it was as if the girl, increasingly absorbed in her own not always easy problem of keeping Jervis happy under the painful handicap of his present invalid condition, had no time to spare for that of anyone else. Poor Rose often felt that she would give, as runs the old saying, anything in the world to have her man to herself, as a cottage wife ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Stevenson wrote of the one-legged rascal Silver, one associates with that handicap a tendency to try to outwit others; while the dependence of blind men ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... "Or rather, it will be when I have it perfected. Aeroplane motors now are about as compact and speedy as they can be made. It is only the terrific noise that is a handicap. It is a handicap to the pilots and observers in the craft, as they cannot communicate except through a special speaking tube, and this is not always satisfactory or sure. Then, too, the noise of an airship ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... side of her mother's temperament had, for some reason, suggested that image to me, and I was quite absurdly dumfounded for the moment when I saw this little, roundabout, dark-haired Frenchwoman, as typically exotic as her husband was home-grown, voluble, brisk despite the handicap of her figure, and with nothing English about her ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... seeking after the health he never lost. How I felt can be better imagined than described. I was up against it for fair. As I told you, I was unable to settle the hotel bill at the last town, and in addition we had now the handicap of an extra hotel and railroad fare for Breadland's clerk, who according to agreement was to travel with the show until the whole account with Breadland was ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... independence, he was certain that she had humour, and he remembered how alive she had seemed to him, receptive, like a woman with ten senses. But after all, would not her graceful sanity of view, that sense of tradition and unerring taste which he so reverenced, yet handicap her now and prevent her from daring whatever she ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch again. "By the way, didn't you say he was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... no such thing as a handicap in this race, I understand?" remarked a gentleman who apparently was a stranger in the vicinity, for no one seemed ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... had gained four or five miles during the lull, was now in plain view again, nearly straight ahead. Her deep lading was telling against her now. The handicap of sail area being overcome, the black pirate's shallow draft and long lines gave her the advantage. Every buccaneer in the crew was howling with excitement as the race went on. The long main boom of the Royal James skipped through the spray and her mainsail was wet to the ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... joined in the enjoyment of the children. I recall my surprise and chagrin at having challenged Mr. Davis to a footrace at Belmont one year, giving him distance as an age handicap, and finding that I had overestimated the advantage ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling father and mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of that would be worse than the material handicap of being ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... that meteors could be hurled from one planet to another and then have some kind of machine, with people in it, on the inside of the meteor. But the hero of "The Gray Plague" surely proved himself a hero, in spite of his handicap. I relish the idea of that Venusian instrument, by which one can learn all from another within a few minutes. Something for our students who cannot seem to ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... which they had struggled through generations, for fear that those rights would not be readily accorded them again after the War. It must be admitted that this fear is justified. The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription. This attitude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on the War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit of democracy ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... of his life in filling his immense stomach against the needs of his mighty thews. It is thus with all the lower orders—their lives are so occupied either with searching for food or with the processes of digestion that they have little time for other considerations. Doubtless it is this handicap which has kept them from advancing as rapidly as man, who has more time to give to thought ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that I experimented with dry gardening I went overboard and attempted to grow food as though I had no running water at all. The greatest difficulty caused by this self-imposed handicap was sowing small-seeded species after ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... rather a handicap for your future wife?' asked Marion gently. 'But why not ask your ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... done had he been able to give Rocket free rein. But he had to hold back for the slower-gaited pony. Also, the girl had more of a start than he had at first realized, and she did her best to hold the handicap. Hitched to the light buckboard, her young broncos could have run a good part of the way to Stockchute. She was far out on the flat before she at last tired of the wild bumping over ruts and sagebrush roots, and pulled her horses down to ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... the boys playing were members of the Oldtown school team, but enough others had been picked up to make a scrub game of seven on a side. Two players had to cover the whole outfield, and each side was minus a shortstop. Even with this handicap, the game had been a good one, and, after one more inning had been played, Fred's side had come out two runs ahead. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the boys, flushed and dusty, had begun ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... "is a great handicap to a woman, but add proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty. Short and pretty; long and beautiful. D'you get that? A short woman may be beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... he won. It looked doubtful at first; Charles was nervous and frail, and hence backward. His mind was too excitable and his health too poor to send him to school. That's a handicap in England; school associations and training count much. However, the boy easily mastered his studies at home, and he often met eminent men who came around to the house, and he made some experiments in literature—in ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... the Doctor understood Dan. The boy was well born; he was natural. He was what a man-child ought to be. He did not carry the handicap that most of us stagger under so early in the race. And because of these things, to the keen old physician and student of life, the boy was a revelation of that best part of himself—that best part of the race. With the years this feeling of the Doctor's toward the boy has grown even ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... know what it is well to do, but because they do not choose to attempt it. And why do they not choose? So far as this question affects middle life, it is largely because so few of us have the grit to face its difficulties, and attack them, when we have to do it with the serious handicap of self-made disadvantages. It is while you are young that you must lay up these stores of living material for the after years; and this is the significance of it all—you can only do it, or you can do it most effectually, when you are young. As touching certain ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... it," said George. "Won it in fair fight. He was second in the race under twelve, and first in the race under ten. They gave him a decent handicap, and he simply romped home. That chap can run, Mabel. He tried the sack race, too, but the first time he slipped altogether inside the thing and had to be taken out, yelling. But he stuck to it like a Trojan, and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... more women, from excessive labour, and surrounding them with costly sanitary precautions, may easily, if they are injudiciously framed, so handicap a sex or a people in the competition of industry as to drive them out of great fields of industry, restrict their means of livelihood, lower their standard of wages and comfort, and thus seriously diminish ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... but we don't want one too high for this post. Too, the Beta curve shows a good deal of variation, a Dionysian characteristic. There is, perhaps, a stronger sense of responsibility than is recorded in the Dionysian index, but this may not be a handicap." ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... for the evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win in a canter. You cannot tell him anything he does ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one language, and express themselves in another and alien one. It was a heavy handicap. I have by me "English as She is Taught"—a collection of American examinations made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le Row. An extract or two from its ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... following Davis's election as provisional President, he dominated the situation, though the Charleston Mercury, the Rhett organ, found opportunities to be sharply critical of the President. He assembled armies; he initiated heroic efforts to make up for the handicap of the South in the manufacture of munitions and succeeded in starting a number of munition plants; though powerless to prevent the establishment of the blockade, he was able during that first year to keep in touch with Europe, to start out Confederate privateers upon the high seas, and to import ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... answer. Why must there be Grace Irvings in the world? Why must the healthy babies of the obstetric ward go out to the slums and come back, in months or years, crippled for the great fight by the handicap of their environment, rickety, tuberculous, twisted? Why need the huge mills feed the hospitals daily ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... be admitted, was no gentleman. Starting with a generous handicap, as the younger son of a wealthy and aristocratic Scottish laird, he had, during a Colonial race of forty years, daily committed himself by actions which shut him out from the fine old title. He was in the gall of altruism, and in the bond of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... what curse or mildew collects on poor Irish earls, but it simply goes nowhere to be one in London; and then there was the handicap of Father's two quaint marriages. Diana's mother was a music-hall "artiste" (isn't that the word?) without any money except what she earned, and also—I heard a woman say once, when she thought Little Pitcher's ears were engaged elsewhere—without ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... themselves subject to the deadly fire of men concealed behind the trees and rocks and clumps of shrubs that everywhere conveniently lined the open road. With this method of warfare, not learned in books, the British were unfamiliar. Discipline was but a handicap; and the fifteen hundred soldiers that General Gage sent out to Lexington to rescue Colonel Smith served only to make the disaster greater in the end. When the retreating army finally reached the shelter of Cambridge, it had lost, in killed and wounded, 247 men; while the Americans, ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... adoring mother. Great opportunities awaited him and a large space in the affairs of men if not of nations. Such confidence did he feel in himself at this fevered moment that he never doubted that eventually he would gain all this, even with the handicap of a ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... public the news to which it was entitled. Placed in such a position there was a very natural impatience here and there to have the Exchange reopened, while now and then a tendency became manifested to publish certain news of the day which, while interesting to the public, tended to handicap the efforts of those bent only on reassurance and calm counsel. At times it became somewhat difficult to prevent the publication of some of these matters, particularly of the prices made in the so called "gutter" market which sprang up in New Street. And yet on the whole nothing ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble

... for carving out one's own little niche, nothing beats having poverty-stricken, but sensible and respectable parents. Many a fellow has been heard to deplore the lack of opportunities in his early youth when, in reality, nothing stood in his way, unless it may have been the rather unhandy handicap of being poor. Money may sometimes enable one to get recognition in the hall of fame, and sometimes it is instrumental in getting one's ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... But work like that takes a man's whole being. It takes more than mere eyes and hands—more than just mind. You must have the spirit right for it—all things must work together. It's not the sort of work to do under a handicap. God knows I'd start in if I could see my way—but neither the world nor myself would have anything to gain. Some one would have to be eyes for me—and so much more than eyes. It's all in how things look, dear—their appearance tells the story. An assistant could ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... Winn, RESPECTABLE SIR: It was me that fixed yr sisters house. You have raised hell, aint you. Send ten thousand now. Going up all the time. Dont put any more handicap weights on that bird. You sure cant follow her, ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... young fellow on entering life has to struggle to get his foot on the first rung of the ladder, and all his future prospects depend on his doing better than others, how inexpressibly silly it is for him to handicap himself needlessly by taking a narcotic which confuses his brain and impairs his memory, and which affords him no pleasure whatever. I treat you as a rational being, and appeal to your common sense, and speak as ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... sir! Those poor devils are starting out with too much of a handicap. After three generations on that island they don't know how to get ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... local muscular effort to hold it and control it. Result: a stiff, set, condition of the face muscles, the jaw, the tongue and the larynx. This makes automatic vowel form, placing, and even freedom of expression, impossible. The conscious, artificial breath is a handicap in every way. It compels the singer to directly and locally control the parts. In this way it is not possible to easily and freely use all the forces which Nature has given to man for the production of ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... states in the matter of silent propaganda. A handsome comfortable city of impressive buildings will always predispose foreigners in favour of the country itself. On the other hand, an inadequate capital will be a hindrance to a state. In this respect, Belgrade, as it is to-day, is a handicap to Jugo-Slavia. But Budapest will ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... he could. But, medically speaking, I was two days senior to him, so that when the Sister heard the uproar and bustled up it was he who was forbidden to speak. She then proceeded to clinch the matter by inserting a thermometer in his mouth. I defy any man to argue under such a handicap. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... sword was probably the Rajput's chief reason for talking in riddles still to Cunningham. The silence went straight to his Oriental heart—so to speak, set the key for him to play to. But he knew, too, that Cunningham's youth would be a handicap should it come to argument; what he was looking for was not a counsellor or some one to make plans, for the plans had all been laid and cross-laid by the enemy, and Mahommed Gunga knew it. He needed a man of decision—to be flung blindfold ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... hand, ahead, the low, livid green banks of the Hooghly were closing in, imperceptibly constricting the narrow channel through which the tawny tide swirled down to the sea at the full force of its ebb. Struggling under this handicap, the Poonah trembled from stem to stern with the heavy labouring of the screw, straining forward like a thoroughbred, its strength almost spent, with the end of the race in sight. Across the white gleaming decks, as the bows swung from port to starboard ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... reached the shoulder of the hill on the farther side, with a long stretch of down slope before, they had placed a large handicap between them and the danger of pursuit, but still they were not at ease. On their trail, sooner or later, would come three powers working towards one end, the surety of Black Bart following a scent, the swiftness of Satan which never tired, and above all the rider who directed them both and ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... surprising how often it will at the last moment pull off one of its erratic swoops—right into the mark! As a compensating device for rotten shooting it is unexcelled. It is a pity to laugh at it as much as we do; for I am convinced it is a conscientious arrow doing its best under natural handicap; like a prima donna with a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... has really been attained as much by training as by breeding, though the breeding is given the credit. Our men are highly specialized, and once outside the walls of Berlin they will find things so different that this very specialization will prove a handicap. The mongrel peoples are more adaptable. Our workmen and soldiers are large in physique, but dwarfed of intellect. The enemy will beat us in open war, and, even if we should be victorious in war, we could not rule them. Either we solve this food business or we all turn soldiers and go ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... never liked her name. I have an idea that names show character. Could anybody under heaven be noble with such a name as Flossy? I believe names handicap people. I believe children are sometimes tortured by hideous and unmeaning names. But give them strong, ugly names in preference to Ina and Bessie and Flossy and such pretty-pretty names, with no meaning and no character to them. Take my own name, Ruth. If I wanted to be noble or ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... of early training is a handicap but not a formidable one, especially to a business man. As the Spaniards say, there is little curiosity about the pedigree of a good man. And no man needs to be ashamed of his origin. The president ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... us fast enough after '96; many of the Sons of old-time Democrats joined the Republicans. Fitch has spoken to me of you often as the kind of man we ought to push forward, and I'm willing to put you out on the firing-line, where you can work for your ideals. My help will handicap you at first,"—his voice grew dry and hard here,-"but once you have got a start you can shake me off as quick as you like. It's a perfectly selfish proposition I'm making, Harwood; it simply gets down to this, that I need ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... the duties of maternity and the care of children, which in a civilized human society ought to secure for them some remission from the burden, of the industrial fight, are a positive handicap in the struggle for a livelihood. When a married woman or a widow is compelled to support herself and her family, the home ties which preclude her from the acceptance of regular factory work, tell fatally ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... the full the hopelessness of his task. The man had left the shop at least two minutes before Dufrenne came out—perhaps more, and another minute had been consumed by the latter in telling his story. Three minutes' start, in a crowded street at night, was a handicap which the detective could scarcely ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... not constructed to work hard like some of the other types, as we shall see in subsequent chapters. His overweight is not only a handicap in that it slows down his movements, but it tends to slow down all his vital processes as well and to overload his heart. This gives him a chronic feeling ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only nurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to our nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not only a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their efficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state hospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee needs to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses the rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... is capable of betterment, and this is possible of every man.) Many causes operate to account for his production, some of them reaching far back into his ancestry. When this is the case some physical handicap is always present, such as e.g. cerebral irritation ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... wheeze The stiff old charger crooks his knees; At first with cautious step sedate, As if he dragged a coach of state He's not a colt; he knows full well That time is weight and sure to tell; No horse so sturdy but he fears The handicap of twenty years. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... words. When he began again, his voice was lower, and at first he spoke with less conviction, though again it grew on him. "Now I knew all this—oh, knew it better than I can ever make you understand! You've been running a handicap. You had no time to lose. I wanted you to have what you need and to get on fast—get through with me, if need be; I counted on that. You've no time to sit round and analyze your conduct or your feelings. Other women ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... in millions and who under our glorious Constitution may not propose an expenditure of sixpence without the consent of Tom, Dick and Harry in the Commons—and they all talk the most excellent good sense. But whether such unimpeachable truisms as that "this huge Debt is going to be a terrible handicap to this country" (Lord LANSDOWNE), or that "what applies to private credit and private economy may be in the main taken to apply to public economy and also to public credit" (Lord CREWE), are going to have much effect upon the demands of the Labour Party, to whom ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... to exceed his authority. It seems the English marine is very particular about such things. He's a Canadian, and he graduated first in his class at Edinburgh. I gather he was frozen out in private practice. You see, his appearance is against him. It's an awful handicap to look like a kid and be as shy ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... two of the greatest obstacles to an innocent layman's intimacy with the diviner portion of creation; and, in these days of reform and disestablishment, of hereditary and other conservative grievances, something ought to be done to abolish the persons in question, or at least handicap them so that other deserving young men might have a fair chance in the race for beauty's smile and Hymen's chain. They have an enormous advantage, at present, over outside men-folk. Girls like to have a sort of good-natured ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... row, run, or play soccer. In my time golfers were thought dull whether they played golf or only talked about it. I did run in our college sports because Collier said I wouldn't, and Collier ran because I said he couldn't, the result was that we competed in a half-mile handicap in which he received the munificent start of eighty-five yards, while I had to worry through the whole distance with the exception of twenty yards. Collier bet me five shillings that he would defeat me in ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... they are not classed as unable to tell right from wrong unless they are rich enough to hire a psychiatrist. Yet a variable but always-present percentage of the human race ignores rules of conduct at all times. They are the handicap, the burden, the main hindrance to the maintenance or the progress of civilization. They are not consciously evil. They simply do not bother to act otherwise than as rational animals. The rest of humanity has to defend itself with police, with laws, and sometimes with ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... right place. She and I have been the best of friends and love each other, and she has often defended me and spoken well of my work. But I think the W. C. T. U. would be much more effective under her management, if she had understood that Stanley, the republican governor, wished to handicap her in her prohibition work when he appointed her husband as physician in the reformatory at Hutchinson, Kansas. Be it said to the credit of this christian physician he never used alcohol in his practice. And perhaps other bearings have prevented her from seeing that the republican pressure has ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Filmer waved his pipe aloft. "I'm glad you can take life this way, with the handicap of your trade, I don't quite see, by thunder, how your future parish is going to account for you, but so far as I'm concerned you ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... large, influential newspapers were in attendance. The next day one of them declared, in the widely circulated Alten Buergerzeitung, that the poems the poet Kohn, who enlists our sympathy because of his physical handicap, brought to the attention of a sparsely attended hall were not yet ready for publication; however, one might expect something from his muse when Kohn has matured. Another declared, in the Journal for Enlightened Citizens: the overall impression is pleasing, but the poems are not all ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... especially America. One may be Chinese, Spaniard, even Indian—anything white or dirty white in this land, and demand decent treatment; but to be Negro or darkening toward it unmistakably means perpetual handicap and crucifixion." ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... little later that they got communication through to Earth, and the men went to the power room. The television screen was struggling to form a clear image despite the handicap of forty million miles of space. In a moment it had cleared, though, and they saw the face of Dr. Arcot. He showed plainly that he was worried about the startling news that had reached him already, sketchy though it was. After brief ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... up and gripped my hand. "You are right. I will put in a few hours' sleep and then to work once more. This time I am up against a man who is nearly as smart as I am myself, and I can't afford to carry any handicap." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... be a handicap to nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand. But not to her. She puts up with it, and if she can't sleep one time—she should worry—she just sleeps some other time ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... shirtwaists, and the friendly interest in the Invention, lost out. The reason for that was Raymond's youth, and Raymond's vanity, and Raymond's unsophistication, together with Lucy Calhoun's own honesty and efficiency. These last qualities would handicap any girl in love, no matter how clear her ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... one thing particularly well is, in its way, as serious a handicap in the selection of a vocation as great versatility. One who can do nothing well finds it just as hard to decide upon a vocation as one who can do everything well. Perhaps the large majority of those who come to us for consultation do so because they feel ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... the modern negro. The intense desire for education, and the keen recognition of the fact that knowledge is power, point to a time when utter ignorance even among the negroes will be a thing of the past. Prejudice is hard to fight against, and the colored man has often a considerable amount of handicap to overcome. But just as Mr. Sala found the typical negro, "standing in the mill pond longer than he oughter," a sad memento of the past, so the traveler can find many an intelligent and entertaining individual whose accent betrays his color even in the darkest night, but whose cute ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... careworn man has thought out how to begin it. It is not work that kills but worry. Illness is frequently brought on by worry. Worry wrinkles the face, makes us look old before our time, often makes us sour and disagreeable, always makes us more or less wanting in true politeness, and is socially a great handicap to a man, a much greater to a woman. Further, worry not only prevents cure but kills, and nothing will help us more in recovering from illness than ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... sealed and the air, already stored in the ship's tanks, was released. The slight acceleration of the Comet's towing served to create artificial weight for easier work, but not enough to handicap the shifting of the heavier pieces of apparatus. An electric cable was run back from the little yacht and the Invincible took her ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... near, however, to solving the problems as individuals of Adelle and her cousin, who save more in character than they lose in pocket. And it might possibly have come nearer still were it not for the handicap under which Mr. Herrick, for all his intelligence and conscience, has labored as an artist. That handicap is a certain stiffness on the plastic side of his imagination. His conceptions come to him, if criticism can be any judge, ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... by the state of the boys, extends in its application to practically the whole of the village. "Book-learning" had been very unimportant to the peasant with his traditional lore, but it would be hard to exaggerate the handicap against which the modern labourer strives, for want of it. Look once more at his position. In the new circumstance the man lives in an environment never dreamt of by the peasant. Economic influences affecting him most closely come, as it were, vibrating upon him from across the sea. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... it!" exclaimed Marcia. "Coal from the Orient, the lowest grade, when we should be exporting the best. Think of the handicap, the injustice put upon those pioneer Alaskans who fought tremendous obstacles to open the interior; who ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... fighting them. The Navy and Mercantile Marine gained eleven million tons during the war, exactly half each. But as the Mercantile Marine lost nine millions sunk, it ended three-and-a-half to the bad, a terrible handicap in the race with the shipping of countries which, like the United States have made stupendous fortunes by the war, besides gaining enormously in shipping and oversea trade. Norway, Japan, and the States gained most. The States ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... numbers all over the province except in a few of the western and south-western districts. As farmers they are much hampered by caste rules which forbid the employment of their women in the fields, and the prohibition of widow remarriage is a severe handicap. They are generally classed as poor cultivators, and this is usually, but by no means universally, a true description. The Dogra Rajputs of the low hills are good soldiers. They are numerous in Kangra and in the Jammu province ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... box of heavy timber, most of it constituting the bin itself, but the old fellow showed it proudly—nor was his pride misplaced, for with this great cube of massive timber, his neighbors had met and overcome a perplexing handicap of nature. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... literary work, by or in the course of a transmission specifically designed for and primarily directed to blind or other handicapped persons who are unable to read normal printed material as a result of their handicap, or deaf or other handicapped persons who are unable to hear the aural signals accompanying a transmission of visual signals, if the performance is made without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America: - contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. • Library of Congress Copyright Office

... Army, consisting of upwards of fifty thousand troops, was extremely mobile in spite of the handicap of having no form of transportation except their own legs. They had no cavalry; the only beast of burden known to them—the flame-beasts—were too small to carry more than a hundred pounds, in spite of their endurance. ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... right to raise its own levies in its own way. To induce men to enlist Congress was twice handicapped. First, it had no power of taxation and could only ask the States to provide what it needed. The second handicap was even greater. When Congress offered bounties to those who enlisted in the Continental army, some of the States offered higher bounties for their own levies of militia, and one authority was bidding against ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... left behind them with the artifice of civilisation that subtle handicap of a woman's presence; and the little flotilla of canoes that set sail from the terrace at Msala one morning in November, not so many years ago, was essentially masculine in its bearing. The four white men—quiet, self-contained, and intrepid—seemed to work together with a perfect ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... ranks of the hunters to those of the hunted. He now feared police interference as abjectly as did Calendar and his set of rogues; and Kirkwood felt wholly warranted in assuming that the adventurer, with his keen intelligence, would not handicap himself by ignoring this point. Indeed, if he were to be judged by what Kirkwood had inferred of his character, Calendar would let nothing whatever hinder him, neither fear of bodily hurt nor danger of apprehension at the hands of the police, from making ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... are by such a host of witnesses, let us also lay aside every handicap and the sin which clings so closely to us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith, who for the joy which lay before him, patiently endured the cross, thinking nothing of the ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... during the first weeks of the war some million and a quarter, which grew during the first period (that is, before the coming of winter had created a very serious handicap, to which allusion will presently be made) to perhaps two million and a half at the very most. I put that ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... of Kerensky's troops, wrote about the complete demoralization of the Petrograd garrison; about an irresistible advance of the Cossacks, equipped with much artillery; and predicted the imminent fall of the Smolny Institute. Our chief handicap was, as already stated, the lack of suitable mechanical accessories and of men able to direct military operations. Even those officers who had conscientiously accompanied their soldiers to the lines, declined the ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... first-hand observation. Such a jolt are the new poets. Spoon River is a medicine, a splendid tonic. But the form of Spoon River is not conditioned by eternal needs, only by temporary ones. Its complete absence of loveliness, of lines that linger, will be its greatest handicap to immortality—for poetic immortality to-day as much as ever is not in the pages of a book on a library shelf, but on the lips of men and women. A poem from which nobody ever ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... or six-fingered or with a snub or aquiline nose. And not only that, but even before his birth the qualities that are not strictly and inevitably inherited are also beginning to be made. The artificial, the avoidable handicap also, may have commenced in the worrying, the overworking or the starving of his mother. In the first few months of his life very slight differences in treatment may have life-long consequences. No doubt there is an extraordinary recuperative ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... though it should contrive To keep its pinions on the flap, And by a tour de force survive This devastating handicap, Yet are there perils in the skies Whereon we blandly shut our eyes, But which are bound to be incurred, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various

... almost ever since his arrival in the country. The pity of it was that he possessed such qualities as should have lifted him far above the crowd. He had courage, he had resource. Upon occasion he was even brilliant. But ever the fatal handicap existed that had pulled him down. He lacked moral strength, the power to resist temptation. As long as he lived, this infirmity of character would dog his steps, would ruin his every enterprise. And Burke, whose stubborn ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... only handicap with which Brown entered on his first election contest. There was no cordial sympathy between him and the government, yet he was hampered by his connection with the government. The dissatisfied Radicals rallied to the support of William Lyon Mackenzie, whose ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... crippled white ibis, with a broken leg impeding its flight, was flying clumsily across the river. Close above it, with deadly intent, sailed a brown hawk. The hawk struck, but in spite of its handicap the ibis swerved in time to escape the deadly talons. Then pursued and pursuer disappeared in the jungle ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... keep that fact secret, if I were you," she said earnestly. "Poor lassie! it's always a handicap to a girl to be received for what she has, rather than what she is. And there are two or three idle, worthless young men hanging about, who might be only too glad to pick up a rich wife. I should simply announce that I was ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey



Words linked to "Handicap" :   disfavour, dysphasia, vision defect, injure, amputation, descensus, bandy leg, genu varum, albatross, difficulty, pigeon toes, bandyleg, bandy legs, disability of walking, astasia, drag, millstone, tibia valga, knock-knee, hearing disorder, vantage, prolapsus, obstruction, tibia vara, visual disorder, visual impairment, prolapse, bow leg, genu valgum, penalty, scratch, softness, bow legs, hypoesthesia, anorgasmia, diriment impediment, dysomia, obstacle, hock, hypesthesia, disfavor, disintegration, bind, unfitness, bias, advantage, bowleg, wound, disadvantage, straitjacket, visual defect, hearing impairment



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