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Ineffective   /ɪnɪfˈɛktɪv/   Listen
Ineffective

adjective
1.
Not producing an intended effect.  Synonyms: ineffectual, uneffective.  "Ineffective legislation"
2.
Lacking in power or forcefulness.  Synonyms: ineffectual, unable.  "Like an unable phoenix in hot ashes"
3.
Lacking the ability or skill to perform effectively; inadequate.  Synonym: inefficient.  "Inefficient workers"



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"Ineffective" Quotes from Famous Books



... proudly forward with her head in the air at first. He might look round. Perhaps he was peeping at her from behind some cholla. She would not gratify him by showing any interest in his whereabouts. But presently she began to lag, to scan draws and mesas anxiously for him, even to call aloud in an ineffective little voice which the empty hills echoed faintly. But from him there came ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... must be resisted at sword-point. The first quarter of an hour thus spent in attempted meditation will be, indeed, a time of warfare; which should at least convince you how unruly, how ill-educated is your attention, how miserably ineffective your will, how far away you are from the captaincy of your own soul. It should convince, too, the most common-sense of philosophers of the distinction between real time, the true stream of duration which is life, and the sequence of seconds so carefully measured ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... those of scarlet and white, they are very attractive, and can be made extremely useful in the winter garden. They should not be neglected, because they widen the range of color to such an extent that the charge of monotony of tone in the winter landscape is ineffective. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... Wolsey began to pay the price of their policy at home as well as abroad. War was no less costly for being ineffective, and it necessitated demands on the purses of Englishmen, to which they had long been unused. In the autumn of 1522 Wolsey was compelled to have recourse to a loan from both spiritualty and temporalty.[469] It seems to have met with a response which, compared ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... designed by Mr. Scowden and introduced into these works. It was found that the sedimentary matter of the Ohio river cut the valves in the condensing apparatus, and so destroying the vacuum, rendered the working of the engine ineffective. This Mr. Scowden overcame by introducing vulcanized india rubber valves, seated on a grating. Since that time he has designed several low pressure engines for the Mississippi river, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... without zeal is of necessity ineffective. What is the temperature of your zeal? Does it let you go for months without speaking to a soul about his salvation? Does it permit you to rest easy while others are toiling, praying, and sacrificing? About how much time on an average do you spend each day praying for ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... But below all this surface play of pretty disreputable outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and genuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing about her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her capricious and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... La Ricci and La Cesari made their appearance, the former as Giulietta, the latter as Romeo. The Ricci is a thin young woman, with a long, pale face, black eyes and hair, long neck and arms, and large hands; extremely pretty, it is said, off the stage, but very ineffective on it; but both on and off with a very distinguished air. Her voice is extensive, but wanting cultivation, and decidedly pea-hennish; besides that, she is apt to go out of tune. Her style of dress was excessively unbecoming ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... portrait-painter puts on the shoulders and off the necks of his savage or insane customers, never can make the 'prentice look military, or the idiot poetical; and the architectural appurtenances of Norman embrasure or Veronaic balcony must be equally ineffective, until they can turn shopkeepers into barons, and schoolgirls into Juliets. Let the national mind be elevated in its character, and it will naturally become pure in its conceptions; let it be simple in its desires, and it will be beautiful in its ideas; let it be modest in feeling, and ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... throughout the battle between the battalion, the covering batteries, and the Brigade Commander. The value of this was now extreme. By telephone our Colonel communicated his intentions to the firing line, and thus prevented those sporadic attacks by independent platoons, at once so gallant, so ineffective, and so deadly in losses. By telephone he explained the situation to the Brigadier, who ordered up half a battalion of another Highland regiment, old friends of ours, but never more wanted than now, and by telephone he arranged that the batteries should bombard as heavily as possible the trenches ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... he told himself, turning his eyes homewards. Everything seemed so hopeless and ineffective. He tried not to reflect on his fellow-priests, but for the fiftieth time he could not help seeing that they were not the men for the present situation. It was not that he preferred himself; he knew perfectly well that he, too, was fully as incompetent: ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... Empire, and his father, Charles V, was very anxious that he should please the stubborn English; for if he could only become both King of England and Emperor of Germany he would rule the world by sea as well as land. Philip did his ineffective best: drank English beer in public as if he liked it and made his stately Spanish courtiers drink it too and smile. He spent Spanish gold, brought over from America, and he got the convenient kind of Englishmen to take it as spy-money for many years to come. But ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... immemorial the Japanese islands have been affected with earthquakes. Occasionally they have been severe and destructive, but usually slight and ineffective. It is said that not less than five hundred shocks(6) occur in Japan each year. The last severe earthquake was in the autumn of 1891, when the central part of the Main island, especially in the neighborhood of Gifu, was destructively disturbed. ...
— Japan • David Murray

... gayly predicted defeat for any enemy who should attack "the boys in the forts." The forts were not slow in returning the fire; but as the mortar-vessels were hidden, and did not offer very large marks, their fire was rather ineffective. Parties of Confederates, old swamp-hunters, and skilled riflemen, stole down through the dense thickets, to pick off the crews of the mortar-schooners. They managed to kill a few gunners in this way, but were soon driven away by the point-blank fire of the supporting ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... increasing, because it is radiating not only an increasing percentage of visible radiant energy but an increasing amount of the most effective luminous energy. But even when it appears white, a large amount of the energy which it radiates is invisible infra-red and ultra-violet, which are ineffective in producing light, so at best the substance at this high temperature ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... have been ineffective in Mr. Hathorn's time never failed to have an effect now; for even Mather, the idlest and worst boy there, was able to appreciate the difference between the present regime and the last. In a marvelously short time Mr. Porson seemed ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... of the vast area contained in the bed of this immense lake, is certainly dry on the surface, and consists of a mixture of sand and mud, of so soft and yielding a character, as to render perfectly ineffective all attempts either to cross it, or reach the edge of the water, which appears to exist at a distance of some miles from the outer margin. On one occasion only was I able to taste of its waters; in a small arm of the lake near the most ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... by many different names, which must be identified quickly as emergencies arise. Then acquire a knowledge of harmony, specially useful in accompanying church music with dignity, and enabling the player to fill in chords which the vocal score (or voice parts) have left thin and ineffective. Volumes might be written on accompaniments; but on this subject we would advise amateurs to consult heart, head, and common sense, and we would recommend them to read Dr. Bridge's "Organ Accompaniment," ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various

... nature gods, while subject to ordinary human passions, are not hostile to the gods of heaven and earth. The Hebrews adopted the Babylonian cosmogonic myth,[1783] but it became a mere literary attachment to the conception of the supreme god Yahweh, and was otherwise ineffective. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... the Federal principle, but the representative principle. It carries important measures away from the Federal Legislature to submit them to the votes of the entire people, separating decision from deliberation. The operation is so cumbrous as to be generally ineffective. But it constitutes a power such as exists, we believe, under the laws of no other country. A Swiss jurist has frankly expressed the spirit of the reigning system by saying, that the State is the appointed ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... working in a battle, and a whale of an inconvenience. We were heated only four times as much as the Miran. He had to pump that heat into a heat-reservoir—a water tank probably—to protect himself. Highly inefficient and ineffective against a large ship. Also, he had to hold his beam on us nearly ten minutes before it would have become unbearable. He was again, trying to kill the men, and not the ship. The men are the weakest ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... spermatazoa and thus prevent their uniting with the ovum. Research and experiment have proved conclusively that no spermatazoa—indeed, no microbes or germs of any kind—can pass through a film of oil. But if the protective covering of grease is incomplete at any point, it may there prove ineffective, and there is no chemical protection whatever if the particular germicide relied upon, such as quinine, has been omitted. Quinine is sometimes omitted on the ground of expense, and sometimes because it proves irritating to many women. Only really suitable suppositories, ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... the side of Germany. In regard to Belgium the Germans have indeed put forward the plea that the French had already violated its neutrality before war was declared. This plea has been like a snowball. It began with the ineffective accusation that the French were at Givet, a town in French territory, and that this constituted an attack on Germany, though how the presence of the French in a town of their own could be called a violation of their neighbour's neutrality it is difficult ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... and thirsty; and how the big winds, that cleaned the woods and fields elsewhere, crawled here with difficulty through the dense foliage that protected The Towers from the North and West and East. They were ineffective, sluggish currents. There was no real wind. Nothing happened. I began to realize—far more clearly than in my sister's fanciful explanation about "layers"—that here were many contrary influences at work, mutually ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... most of the Western States, had a law on the subject of railroad regulation; but it was ineffective, and the commission under it had no practical power. I appointed the committee of the House of Representatives of the Illinois Legislature in 1873, of which John Oberly, of Cairo, Illinois, was a member, and it was that committee ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... mode of expression used in this paragraph is rather misleading. One may have a complete mastery of his thoughts and will, while both thought and will are very feeble and ineffective. It requires great POWER in the will and thought to acquire such control over bodily functions, and any expression leading persons of feeble character to suppose they can attain such results would be delusive. Many persons of feeble character have been ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... island were constructed by the home authorities in a very dilatory manner. Ponce's house in Caparra had been fortified in a way so ineffective that Las Casas said of it that the Indians might knock it down butting their heads against it. This so-called fort soon fell in ruins after the transfer of the capital to its present site. There is no information of what became of the six "espingardas" ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... of Madrid, and which occupation enabled him to cover the right of the allied army. These successes, however, were far from completing the recovery of Spain, and the situation of Lord Wellington in the Spanish capital was yet very critical. So ineffective was the aid which the natives afforded, and so great the military power which yet remained to be subdued, that a triumphant result was still uncertain. In a little time, indeed, Lord Wellington saw himself ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... difficulty in transmitting pleasantly enough his mild share of the fun. Miss MARIE HEMINGWAY needed all her prettiness to make up for the futility of her part. And I was really sorry that so sound an actor as Mr. DAWSON MILWARD should have had such ineffective stuff put into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various

... to be imperfect expressions of the social will, they may stand condemned by public opinion. In such a case their authority is undermined and violations of them are condoned. Where public opinion is strongly against a law; the law becomes ineffective. The conservatism of law is such that a law may be allowed to stand unchanged, and yet may fail to be carried into effect. Juries may refuse to convict, or the unpalatable infliction of punishment may be avoided by granting to the judge a wide ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... sprawling to the floor over my walnut folding chair, which snapped at the arm. It was my doing. The man said no more, picked up his loads, and was the first to arrive at Yung-ch'ang, so that a little force was not ineffective. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... obstructed the levy for a little time. The patricians being once more perplexed, Appius Claudius declared that the tribunician power had been put down the year before, for the moment by the fact, for the future by the precedent established, since it was found that it could be rendered ineffective by its own strength; for that there never would be wanting a tribune who would both be willing to obtain a victory for himself over his colleague, and the good-will of the better party to on advancement of the public weal: that more tribunes ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... is when Pouget grows enthusiastic over sabotage that we find in him the same spirit that actuated Brousse and Kropotkin when they despaired of education and sought to arouse the people by committing dramatic acts of violence. In other words, the saboteur abandons mass action in favor of ineffective and futile assaults upon men ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... and total workers capable of filling the jobs, are at any moment in normal times equal quantities, if they can be brought together. But almost everywhere is lacking a real labor-market. The substitutes for it are largely ineffective: trade-union action, employers' associations, "want ads," cards in shop windows, weary walks from door to door, lines of waiting men outside of factories, private employment agencies. At their best the private employment ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... for fourteen centuries, had preserved the throne of the Bourbons from the machinations of republicans and other conspirators against monarchy, it is very probable that her representations would have been as ineffective as her piety or her prayers. So long ago as 1796 she implored the mercy of Napoleon for the Roman Catholics in Italy; and entreated him to spare the Pope and the papal territory, at the very time that his soldiers were laying waste and ravaging the legacy of Bologna ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... of his parentage made him an excuse for lingering longer than others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he inwardly said, had a more definite place and duties. But the project which flattered his inclination might not have gone beyond the stage of ineffective brooding, if certain circumstances had not quickened it ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... on the same group of general ideas, both progress in much the same ordered calm from observation to observation, both have an inspiration which is efficient and stimulating but below the greatest, both are enthusiastic and effective as investigators of fact, but timid and ineffective in drawing conclusions. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... meaning. He never would suffer what he considered either the connection or the balance and adjustment of varied and complementary truths to be sacrificed to force or point of expression; and he had to choose sometimes, as all people have, between a blurred, clumsy, and ineffective picture and a consciously incomplete and untrue one. His choice never wavered; and as the artist's aim was high, and his skill not always equally at his command, he preferred the imperfection which left him the consciousness of honesty. The other cause which threw a degree of haze round his writings ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... The penalty was so ineffective that in 1705 it was changed simply to imprisonment for six months "without ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... unity modern Hellenism has concentrated its efforts, and after nearly a century of ineffective endeavour it has been brought by the statesmanship of Venezelos within sight of its goal. Our review of outstanding problems reveals indeed the inconclusiveness of the settlement imposed at Bucarest; but this only witnesses to the wisdom of the Greek nation in reaffirming its confidence in Venezelos ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... to notice that the first impression made on him by diplomatic work was that of wanton and ineffective deceit. Those who accuse him, as is so often done, of lowering the standard of political morality which prevails in Europe, know little of politics as they were at the time when ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... cows were slowly mouching from the corrals as he neared the sheds. A diminutive herder was urging them along with shrill, piping shrieks—vicious but ineffective. Far more to the purpose were the efforts to a well-trained, bob-tailed sheep dog who was awaking echoes on the brisk morning air with the full-toned ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... has an Empire room, admires the lines of her sofa as furniture, but feels it ineffective unless one reclines a la Mme. Recamier. To obviate this difficulty, she has had made a square (one and a half yards), of lovely soft mauve silk damask, lined with satin charmeuse of the same shade, and ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done now is cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot understand how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and cruel a ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... to the hesitancy of his opponents and his own mobility. The details of the fight show that some of the commanders waited upon one another like Lord Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan at Walcheren. Again the British cavalry was ineffective for pursuit. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... its influence around, until the conversation once again flagged, and there was not one of the party who did not wish himself elsewhere. The costliest viands and wines spread out before them were ineffective to produce that festive gayety upon which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Holy Scriptures to a natural intuition, and to render peculiar modes of thought and representation in them more universally comprehensible, that by this historico-critical aspect many an objection might be removed, many offensive things effaced, and many a shallow scoffing be made ineffective, there appeared in some men just the opposite disposition, since these chose the darkest, most mysterious, writings as the subject of their meditations, and wished, if not to elucidate them, yet to confirm them through internal evidence, by means of conjectures, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... of Mr. Breckinridge was tame and ineffective. He did not repel the fierce characterizations with which Colonel Baker had overwhelmed him. He did not stop to resent them, though he was a man of unquestioned courage. One incident of his speech was grotesquely amusing. He was under the impression that the suggestion in regard to the Tarpeian ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... Clark fortunes had reached their lowest ebb: family extinction was all that now remained for them. The Church Street house rested solely, save for the small pension, on the exertions of two ineffective women. It could just get on as it was, and if the family life had never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old, and neither her brother nor ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... indiscriminate panegyric or mawkish praise. Her comedy is by no means satisfactory to me. The disadvantage of a petite figure is not, in this department compensated by any high excellencies. Her comedy is generally speaking, rather meagre and unadorned, and in a degree pointless and ineffective.—But her tragedy merits every praise. In richness and variety of tone; in propriety and justness of action and gesture; in picturesque and impressive attitude, in a nervous mellowed modulation; in appropriate ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... Your political opinions, or notions, are not represented by any party in England; and therefore they are practically ineffective, and could not clash with mine. And such ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... both that important point and the bridge on the Block House road were utterly ignored, and Lee's approach to Spottsylvania left entirely unobstructed, while three divisions of cavalry remained practically ineffective by reason of disjointed and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... pious incantation of the Angelus bell had the power of excluding all evil influence abroad at that perilous hour within its audible radius, and comfortably keeping all unbelieving wickedness at a distance, it was presumably ineffective as regarded the innovating stage-coach from Monterey that twice a week at that hour brought its question-asking, revolver-persuading and fortune-seeking load of passengers through the sleepy Spanish town. On the night of the 3d of August, 1856, it had not only brought but set down at the Posada one ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... for this work; no, not one teacher for every hundred schools. Another example of futile legislation is the California law requiring the reporting of cases of venereal diseases. One could easily list a score of laws in the domain of sexual morals which are ineffective, either because in their very nature they could not be enforced, or because the public do not wish to have them enforced. Perhaps there are no factors of the social emergency so frequently left out of account as the relation of public education to public opinion and the relation ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... followers shouted, "A doom—a doom!" and prepared to second his purpose, when lo! it was suddenly frustrated. Roland Graeme had witnessed with indignation the insults offered to his old spiritual preceptor, but yet had wit enough to reflect he could render him no assistance, but might well, by ineffective interference, make matters worse. But when he saw his aged relative in danger of personal violence, he gave way to the natural impetuosity of his temper, and, stepping forward, struck his poniard into the body of the Abbot of Unreason, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Aristocratic government proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always ineffective or inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has in view ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... stoniest of the farms is owned by an old man named Howieson. A strange, brown-clad, crooked, crabbed old man, I have seen him often creeping across his fields with his horses. An ineffective worker all his life long, he has scarcely made a living from his stony acres. His farm is tipped up behind upon the hill and runs below to the brook, and the buildings are old and worn, and a rocky road goes by to the town. Once, in more prosperous days, before the factories took over the winter ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... to fall back from the plate a little, and again bat and ball met squarely, an inshoot being sent humming over the head of Cooper, who made a ludicrously ineffective jump for it, the ball passing at least ten feet above his outstretched hand. But Piper, leaping forward and speeding up surprisingly, made a forward lunge at the last moment, and performed a shoestring catch that brought the entire Oakdale crowd to its feet ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... from dominating the earth, defying all law, and establishing the kingdom of the devil. At the back of all effective law there is, in fact, physical force. Behind the police stands the army. The magistrate would be wholly ineffective without the soldier. The criminal population would laugh civilian restraints to scorn, if it did not know that out of sight, but never far away, are the bayonets and the guns of the ultimate defenders of the peace. The salvation of the criminal is not ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... was made to increase and better equipment, but it was slow and, in Lloyd George's view, it was ineffective. He fought on. At length he succeeded in impressing the seriousness of the situation on the Government, and it was just about this time that he became possessed of a powerful ally. The Daily Mail, in past years the ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... later French came forth from his room, haggard and trembling, to find every bottle empty, Mackenzie making ineffective attempts to prepare a meal, and Kalman ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... scholarship that is essential to the perfect writer, who, 'being a true lover of words for their own sake, a minute and constant observer of their physiognomy,' will avoid what is mere rhetoric, or ostentatious ornament, or negligent misuse of terms, or ineffective surplusage, and will be known by his tact of omission, by his skilful economy of means, by his selection and self-restraint, and perhaps above all by that conscious artistic structure which is the expression of mind in style. I think I have been wrong in saying that ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... fast out of the wreck of it into numbers and importance. In twenty years more they were in fact recognized as the basis of our electoral system in every English county. The Labour Statutes proved as ineffective as of old in enchaining labour or reducing its price. A hundred years after the Black Death the wages of an English labourer was sufficient to purchase twice the amount of the necessaries of life which could have been obtained for the wages ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... organization. The time has come when the educational work has borne its fruit, and there are States in which there is sentiment enough to carry a woman suffrage amendment, but it is individual and not organized sentiment, and is, therefore, ineffective. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... the foremost man in war-matters with this new King; and well worthy to be so. He is inventing, or brooding in the way to invent, a variety of things,—"iron ramrods," for one; a very great improvement on the fragile ineffective wooden implement, say all the Books, but give no date to it; that is the first thing; and there will be others, likewise undated, but posterior, requiring mention by and by. Inventing many things;—and always well practising ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... influences vivid and overpowering. Every one knows, too, those often clever linguistic forms which are to aid the suggestion. They are to inhibit the opposing impulses. The mere use of the imperative, to be sure, has gradually become an ineffective, used-up pattern. It is a question for special economic psychotechnics to investigate how the suggestive strength of a form can be reinforced or weakened by various secondary influences. What influence, for example, belongs to the electric sign advertisements in which the sudden change ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... Simon was upon me, dashing his fists into my face, and bearing me down. My puny struggles were as ineffective as though I had been fighting ten men. He had me on the floor and was kneeling on my chest, and in a trice the other ruffians had come dashing along ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... as they were at Philadelphia. The Blanchard lathe for turning irregular forms is here in a variety of forms. This is an interesting object of study, as illustrating the usual course of invention, in which a master-hand grasps a subject which has been suggested in an incomplete and comparatively ineffective manner from time to time by others. De la Hire and Condamine during the last century described lathes adapted to turn irregular shapes, and the scoring-machine for ships' blocks invented by Brunel and made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... completely conceals them, is to be faithless to the commission of Jesus Christ to be a witness unto Him before the world; to neglect such witness-bearing, or by carelessness or inattention to detail, to render it in a manner so ineffective as to disparage the truth in the eyes of beholders, is to be none the less unfaithful ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston

... tendency in preparing stories to begin with detail work, often a gesture or side issue which one has remembered from hearing a story told, but if this is done before the contemplative period, only scrappy, jerky and ineffective results are obtained, on which one cannot count for dramatic effects. This kind of preparation reminds one of a young peasant woman who was taken to see a performance of "Wilhelm Tell," and when questioned as to the plot could only sum it up saying, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... a deep sleep, due to his weakness from loss of blood, the three boys sat before the fire while Carl told of his encounter with the faceless man, and of the six shots which he had fired at him and the ineffective bullets ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... himself behind Christine. There is no place like the opera for public devotion. Christine was resplendent in black and gold with a huge black and gold fan that made the fans of the temple dancers—the opera was "Aida"—look commonplace and ineffective. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... Principe Sao Tome and Principe's army is a tiny force with almost no resources at its disposal and would be wholly ineffective operating unilaterally; infantry equipment is considered simple to operate and maintain but may require refurbishment or replacement after 25 years in tropical climates; poor pay, working conditions, and alleged nepotism in the promotion of officers have been problems ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Alcott still awaits an adequate biographer. Connecticut Yankee, peddler in the South, school-teacher in Boston and elsewhere, he descended upon Concord, flitted to the queer community of Fruitlands, was starved back to Concord, inspired and bored the patient Emerson, talked endlessly, wrote ineffective books, and had at last his apotheosis in the Concord School of Philosophy, but was chiefly known for the twenty years before his death in 1888 as the father of the Louisa Alcott who wrote "Little Women." "A tedious archangel," was Emerson's verdict, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... They obtained something more than could be rationally calculated, but what was far indeed from answerable to their real necessities, and much less to their fond expectations. Rational people could have hoped for little from this their tax in the disguise of a benevolence,—tax weak, ineffective, and unequal,—a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity, and public spirit,—a tax of regulation upon virtue. At length the mask is thrown ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If I trembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us, shall I not stand aghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey any idea of which the words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective? All in the immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless water; but, about a league on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice, towering away into the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of an arid region, wind erosion is comparatively ineffective as compared with deflation (Latin, de, from; flare, to blow),—a term by which is meant the constant removal of waste by the wind, leaving the rocks bare to the continuous attack of the weather. In moist climates ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... clouds are to be found several thousands of feet lower. If a pilot be above them they help him to dodge writs for trespass, which Archibald the bailiff seeks to hand him. When numerous enough to make attempts at observation ineffective, they perform an even greater service for him—that of arranging for a day's holiday. And at times the R.F.C. pilot, like the man with a murky past, is constrained to have clouds for a covering against ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... the commissary who conveys them this examination into their life and habits, for, if he is a conscientious man, he knows well that he lays a burden upon his conscience if he conducts ministers who will not unburden the conscience of the king; and, if he is not conscientious, these ordinances are ineffective, for, as they are so rigorous, he will evade them with very little trouble and at no expense to himself, for the whole matter must rest upon the honesty with which he is willing ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... Holwell and the gallant few who had stuck to their posts had been assured of good treatment. During the day the vessel dropped still lower down the river to Budge Budge, running the gauntlet of a brisk but ineffective fire from Tanna Fort, now in the hands of the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... might be effected by an easier path than the cross—a little compromise with him who held the power and was able to bestow the kingdoms, and all should be His own. The lying wiles of the seducer were instantly rejected by our LORD; not so ineffective are such wiles to many of His people; a little policy rather than the course for which conscience pleads; a little want of integrity in business dealings; a little compromise with the ways of the world, followed by a prosperity which ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... of the war it had become increasingly clear that the submarine as a weapon to decide the war was ineffective. Not only were the Allied destroyers and chasers, armed with their depth-bombs, waging a successful fight against the undersea boats, but other methods were beginning to have their effect. Chief among these were our mine-laying exploits, by which, in October ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... in the physical universe. In reality, a written description arranges its parts in our mind only when the impression of the first features of which it is formed are remembered sufficiently, so that we can easily join the first to those which complete and end it. In short, a piece of description is ineffective if we cannot hold in mind all its details at one time. It is necessary that all the details coexist in our memory just as the parts of a painting coexist under our eye. This becomes next to impossible if the description ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... white man is hostile to religion. He attacks it as a bull a red cloak, goring it, stamping on it, tearing it to shreds. With the Caucasian as he is this fury is instinctive. Recognising religion as the foe of the materialistic ideal he has made his own he does his best to render it ineffective. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... and the moorghy-khana I had a bad night. I thought I had to make in five minutes a new scheme of the Universe. All the odd-shaped pieces were lying about like a picture-puzzle, and I feverishly tried to make them fit, in the clumsy ineffective way one does things in dreams. Just as I had it almost finished, Mrs. Royle came with a fowl in each hand and said sternly, "These must come into your scheme." I took the two great clucking things and vainly tried to thrust their feet—or is it claws hens have?—into a tiny ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... across the street without being out of breath, while others will climb the Matterhorn without overstrain. The fact that certain people have lived to the century-mark in spite of unhygienic living is sometimes cited to prove that hygiene is ineffective. One might as well cite the fact that certain trees are not blown down in a gale or are not quickly destroyed by insect-pests to prove that gales have no tendency to blow down ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... gripped as a club. The ball is thrown in front of the body and not high. The swing is a sharp wrist twist from right to left, the ball carried for some distance on the face of the racquet. The curve is from left to right while the bound is high and breaks sharply to the left. This delivery is slow, ineffective and very uncertain. There is little opportunity to follow ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... by running counter to the tendencies of the Renaissance at a moment when society was too corrupt to be regenerated, and the passion for antiquity was too powerful to be restrained, proved of necessity ineffective. It may further be said that the limitations he imposed would have been fatal to the free development of art if ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... who worshipped flowers, was perhaps the most ineffective gardener in England. With a trowel and the best intentions he would do more damage in twenty minutes than Miss Bracy could repair in a week. She had made a paradise in spite of him, and he contented himself with assuring her that the next tenant would dig ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... by the classes was manifested in the States General of France, Spain, and Portugal, the Diet in Germany, and the Parliament in England. All these, except the Parliament, were ineffective and as it were accidental in their action; all they did was to preserve in a manner the notion of liberty. The circumstances of England were exceptional. The Parliament did not govern; but it became a mode of government adopted in principle, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... more sudden. They were paralyzed and unnerved. A score fell at the first fire, and though Cuyler succeeded in forming the rest in an irregular semicircle about the boats, their return shots were so wildly scattering and ineffective that the enemy were emboldened to abandon their usual tactics, break from cover in a body, and rush fiercely upon the wavering line of panic-stricken soldiers. Most of these now saw Indians for the first time. None waited ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with their ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... as ineffective in a war as an officer without his men. Well, I spent the day in agony and it was not until along at dusk that the first of the blighters straggled in—quite drunk, all of them, and swearing to a man that they had ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... legends of the Romish Church, though generally more insipid and less varied than those of Paganism, deserve audience from us on this ground, if on no other, that they have once been sincerely believed by good men, and have had no ineffective agency in the foundation of the existent European mind. The reader must not therefore accuse me of trifling, when I record for him the first piece of information I have been able to collect respecting the cathedral ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... agonized cries of the people and sinks with their utterances of despair. The device of introducing voices before the disclosure of visible action in an opera is not new, and in this case is both uncalled for and ineffective. Gounod made a somewhat similar effort in his "Romeo et Juliette," where a costumed group of singers presents a prologue, vaguely visible through a gauze curtain. Meyerbeer tried the expedient in "Le Pardon de Ploermel," and the siciliano in Mascagni's ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... text with the above as a guide will show that this collection of episodes, chaotic as it seems, makes no ineffective play. With a genius—and a genius Johannes Brun was—as Falstaff, one can imagine that the piece went brilliantly. The press received it favorably, though the reviewers were much too critical to allow Bjornson's mangling of the ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... detached portions of the State, ignorant men, many of them without political rights, degraded in social position, and instinctive of revolt, all this is true. It is proved by the daily record of our police courts, and by the ineffective labors of those good men among us, who seek to detach want from temptation, passion from violence, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... to abort asthma, and though its action is uncertain, it is one of the many remedies that should be tried, which though ineffective in one case may in another afford positive relief in this distressing disease. Not more than 1.50 grams should be smoked in one day and their use should be discontinued if any symptom of intoxication supervenes. The Pharmacopoeia ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... it for insinuation it was ineffective. The other smiled kindly. In the fine effect of the delicate features, and most of all in the eyes was sincerity. In that face was the mark of genius—he felt it—and of a potent superior intelligence. Most of all did ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... Penitent" was entirely ineffective, and did neither me nor the theater any service; the play itself is a feeble adaptation of Massinger's powerful drama of "The Fatal Dowry," and, as generally happens with such attempts to fit our old plays to our modern stage, the fundamentally objectionable nature of the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble



Words linked to "Ineffective" :   effectiveness, impotent, idle, useless, ineffectiveness, incompetent, toothless, inefficient, unable, unproductive, inefficacious, uneffective, effectualness, effective, effectivity, powerless, effectuality, ineffectual



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