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Militate   /mˈɪlɪtˌeɪt/   Listen
Militate

verb
(past & past part. militated; pres. part. militating)
1.
Have force or influence; bring about an effect or change.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Militate" Quotes from Famous Books



... sceptre had not departed from Judah. We must not allow ourselves to be perplexed by any events and arguments adduced to prove that the sceptre has departed from Judah; for the very same events and arguments would militate against the eternal dominion of his house which had been promised to David, and would therefore make us doubtful of that also. All these events and arguments lose their significancy, when we remark, that this departing is only ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... if it should not suit missionary needs, you cannot expect to gather in a missionary crop. And, moreover, all of us who are connected with the agents, who are under public instructions, must be conformed to their laws, whether they militate against ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... verse being in English will militate against its efficiency, but before we had time to turn it into French, we had passed to the right of the quaint old town of Nay, and were entering Coarraze (10 1/2 miles). As we bore off to the right across the river, the old castle—where Henry IV. spent a great part of his ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... such facts as are recorded in the previous paragraph, have alleged that the system will so favour the representation of localities that no one but a local candidate will ever have any chance of success. The conclusion is drawn that proportional representation will militate against the return of eminent politicians, and is, for this reason, undesirable. But the facts cited as to Belgium bear no such interpretation. It is true that under all electoral systems the local ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... the senseless theories that militate against exertion and industry in Ireland, and occasion many to shrink back from the laudible race of honest enterprise, into filth, penury, and crime. It is this idle and envious crew, who, with a natural aversion to domestic industry, become adepts in politics, and active ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... quotation from Dr. Lefevre, a gentleman certainly not among the number of those who stand denounced before the professional world as unworthy of belief. He says:—"As for many reports which have been circulated, and which, prima facie, seem to militate against the statement [communication to attendants, &c.]. I have endeavoured to pay the most impartial attention to them; but I have never found, upon thorough investigation, that their correctness ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... human being in the habit, and thence the power, of subordinating his personal impulses and aims to what were considered the ends of society; of adhering, against all temptation, to the course of conduct which those ends prescribed; of controlling in himself all feelings which were liable to militate against those ends, and encouraging all such as tended toward them; this was the purpose, to which every outward motive that the authority directing the system could command, and every inward power or principle which its knowledge of human nature enabled it to evoke, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... The same remark applies to Mediterranean countries, particularly to Syria and Asia Minor; although the author's opportunity for observing lasted only from April to December, during one season. If we are told it never rains on the coast of Peru, or in Upper Egypt, it does not seriously militate against the theory. The cause is local, and the Samiel and the sand storm of the desert, is but another phase of the question, explicable on the same general principles. From the preceding remarks it will ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... his namesake of Ithaca, however widely opinion may militate upon his other qualifications, certainly deserves the everlasting gratitude of a spoon-desolated country for the strategy displayed in tearing off the plumes of the American Polyphemus, and fixing that precious flower of knighthood among the "bottled" curiosities ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin

... everything—houses, property, and life; to spare neither age, sex, nor imbecility; and Santerre, undertaking the commission, had thought, in his republican zeal, that he would find no weakness in himself to militate against the execution of such orders. He was mistaken in himself, however. He had led the fierce mobs of Paris to acts of bloodshed and violence, but in doing so he had only assisted with an eager hand in the overthrow of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... favor presented itself to my mind, I rejected it utterly, shrugging my shoulders. As for the facts of which I am speaking, and which gave rise to my doubts—at first I simply tried to prove that those facts were false, taking, from the depositions of the witnesses, only that which would militate against their truth and rejecting all the rest, with a terrible simplicity of bad faith. And in the end, in order to dissipate my last scruples, I told myself, just as you told me, "That is the business of the defence; it isn't mine!" Listen, and you'll see ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... Holm bearing with her a note from Lady Arabella in which she asked her god-daughter to pay her a visit. In it, however, the wily old lady made no mention of her further idea of going to Harrogate, lest it should militate against an acceptance of the invitation. Magda demurred a little at first, but Gillian, suddenly endowed with diplomacy worthy of a Machiavelli, pointed out that if she really had any intention of ultimately withdrawing into a ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... [Footnote: Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I.] The zoster is now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (zoma), so characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a mitre, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that the metallic mitre is just as much an intruder into the armament of the Epos as the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr. Leaf suggests, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... facts that militate against the theory; the elephant, for instance, is accounted one of the most intelligent ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... to load, in order that sailors at forty dollars a month may obviate the employment of an equal number of stevedores at forty cents an hour; but Mr. Murphy, out of his profound experience, advised against this course, as tending to spread the news of the Retriever's misfortune and militate against securing a crew when the vessel should be loaded and lying in the stream ready for sea. Men employed now, he explained, would only desert. The thing to do was to let a Seattle crimp furnish ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... indeed she made it plain at this time that she cherished some grudge against me. It was, I suppose, only natural that she should suspect me of lukewarmness in a search which, if successful, would inevitably militate to my own discomfiture. Alphonse Giraud was doubtless awaiting, with a half-concealed impatience, the moment when he might honourably press his suit. Thus, Charles Miste held us all in the hollow of his hand, ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... understand this expression. Does it militate against the physical laws of time and space, or of matter and motion, that a man so ingenious and so expert as this Armenian must undoubtedly be, assisted by agents whose dexterity and acuteness are probably not inferior to his own; favored by ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... views on the subject, held back from the mother for a little the knowledge of the sex. Dame Norman was so weak that the Doctor feared lest anxiety as to how her husband would bear the disappointment, might militate against her. Therefore the Doctor sought the Squire in his study, and ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... as to any facts present or past in the wide universe. But if he is not so sure of them, and wishes, for some personal or interested motive, to believe them, he will be easily disturbed by anything which seems to militate against them. If the Scriptures are true, they can never be shown to be false—if they are not true, we ought not to ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... When, in making his little private arrangements within his own mind, he had decided that if Miss Todd rejected him he would forthwith walk off to Miss Baker, it never occurred to him that his own feelings would militate against such a proceeding. But such was now absolutely the fact. Having talked about "dear Sarah," he found that even he would have a difficulty in bringing himself to ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... sole concessions to the tie binding her. Marcia didn't see how it was possible that the two should avoid hating each other; the mere fact that they had been arbitrarily forced upon each other by the imperious will of old Chadwick, would inevitably militate against any hope of future affection between them. And now here was Berkeley Hayden, quite as imperious as Chadwick Champneys had ever been, and who was quite as successful in getting what ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... We suspend the sword of Damocles above his head and demand from him such answers as will fill the measure of our preconceived notions. He may know more of the subject, in reality, than the teacher, but this will not avail. In fact, this may militate against him. She demands to know what the book says, with small concern for his own knowledge of the subject. We proclaim loudly that we must encourage the open mind, and then by our witness-stand ordeal forestall the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... types of country there. In reading this section you must make allowances for my love of this sort of country, with its great forests and rivers and its animistic-minded inhabitants, and for my ability to be more comfortable there than in England. Your superior culture-instincts may militate against your enjoying West Africa, but if you go there you will find things ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... and had remained more at home. Possibly Mrs. Buxton regretted this; but she never said anything. She, far-looking, as one who was near death, foresaw that, probably, if Maggie and her son met often in her sick-room, feelings might arise which would militate against her husband's hopes and plans, and which, therefore, she ought not to allow to spring up. But she had been unable to refrain from expressing her gratitude to Maggie for many hours of tranquil happiness, and had unconsciously dropped many sentences which made Frank feel, that, in the ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... scientific conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer hues of an ideal world." And this he does without any distortion of the truth. For natural science, to one who understands its main tendency, does not militate against philosophy, art, and religion; nor threaten to overturn a metaphysic whose principle is truth, or beauty, or goodness. Rather, it is gradually eliminating the discord of fragmentary existence, and making the harmony of the world more and more audible to mankind. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... of centuries, then, is not, even in these free days, when there is such a talk about educating the masses, repaired by the English Government; and this sad fact seems to militate against the power of moral force. However, it is but right to remember that only those establishments are here spoken of which are supported by state aid, and that complete freedom of education, independent of such assistance, does actually exist in Ireland. Have not the bishops ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... words, actions, and even outward demeanour, by christianity, and by christianity alone. They consider themselves bound to give up such of the customs, or fashions of men, however general, or generally approved, as militate, in any manner, against the letter or the spirit of the gospel. Hence they mix but little with the world, that they may be less liable to imbibe its spirit. Hence George Fox made a distinction between the members of his own society and others, by the different appellations of Friends, and People ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... those facts from either a real or supposed difference between the translation, and their respective originals. For even if not only the original copies, but the language also in which they were originally written, should be entirely lost, it would not militate, as I can see, against the truth of ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... as with abstraction and concreteness, you should develop facility in gliding from literalness to figurativeness and back again. But you are always to remember that your gymnastics are not to militate against verbal concord. You must never set words scowling and growling at each other through injudicious combinations like this: "She was five feet, four and three-quarter inches high, had a small, round scar between her nose and her left cheek-bone, and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... least, there are as many magazines as newspapers, containing every kind of literature, the very contributors of which are so numerous, that they form a public of themselves. That seems at the first blush to militate against my suggestion, but though contributors are so common, and upon the whole so good—indeed, considering the conditions under which they labour, so wonderfully good—they are not (I have heard editors say) so good as they might be, supposing ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... rectangular kivas in the same areas in which round kivas occur does not necessarily militate against this theory, nor does it oblige us to offer an explanation of a necessarily radical change in architecture if we would derive it from a circular form. It would indeed be very unusual to find ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... weaken the claim that humanity in general has on an individual; but though the claim of society in general is weakened, it must be remembered that the claims of each caste on the members of it are strengthened. And though this fact may militate against an enlarged and Christian philanthropy, the aggregate force of claims will be found to amount to a much larger sum than if one part of a society had no more claim on a man than another. A man of one caste would not, for ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... Sweden should have undergone a change in consequence of the extraordinary success of Buonaparte, can hardly excite surprise; but another untoward circumstance took place, which seemed to militate against a continuation of an alliance with Great Britain, namely, the untimely death of the Danish prince, who had been unanimously elected to succeed Charles XIII, and who, having acted in Sweden as Crown Prince since the 21st of January 1810, had endeared himself ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... difficult to conceive how a multitude of witnesses can militate against a fact; but more so, how three hundred passengers could tamely submit to such cruelties, from a bashaw of ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... added to the Mosaic account of the peopling of the earth. That account will, I doubt not, stand the test of the most learned and rigorous investigation. Indeed, I have long been convinced, after the closest meditation of which I am capable, that sound philosophy and genuine revelation never militate against each other. The rational friends of religion are so far from dreading the spirit of inquiry, that they wish for nothing more than a candid, calm, and impartial examination of the subject according to all the lights which the improved reason and ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... to God; there are also other causes. The others think that every happening is due to God. This second class may again be divided according to the manner in which they account for those facts in experience which seem to militate against their view. Maintaining that every incident is due to God, they have to explain the apparent deviation from justice in the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the righteous. One party explains the phenomenon ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik



Words linked to "Militate" :   work, act upon, influence



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