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Miscreant   /mˈɪskriənt/   Listen
Miscreant

noun
1.
A person without moral scruples.  Synonym: reprobate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Miscreant" Quotes from Famous Books



... spurning Cousin Henry away from him. "You wretched, thieving miscreant!" Then he got up on to his legs and began to adjust himself, setting his cravat right, and smoothing his hair with his hands. "The brute has knocked the breath out of me," he said. "But only to think that we should catch him after such a fashion as this!" There was a note of triumph in his voice ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... he passionately exclaimed. "I never could forget thee; thy name is written on my heart; I shall never cease to love thee. The saints forfend me, Doll. I were a miscreant indeed were I to play traitor ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... fingers' ends, but which had now relapsed into haze. There must have been some damnable taint in the blood of the common ancestor—a spice of the insane and the diabolical. They were an ill-conditioned race—that is to say, every now and then there emerged a miscreant, with a pretty evident vein of madness. There was Sir Jonathan Brandon, for instance, who ran his own nephew through the lungs in a duel fought in a paroxysm of Cencian jealousy; and afterwards shot his coachman dead upon the box through his coach-window, and finally ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts; and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if you were such a miscreant, and there was some boy you hated, you stole up and tied the hardest kind of a knot in one arm or both arms of his shirt. Then, if the Evil One put it into your heart, you soaked the knot in water, and pounded it ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... was out the poor boy was dead—murdered by some miscreant for the handful of gold in his possession, down in the ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... Who is at the door other than he?" 'Adi replied, "Hammam bin Ghalib al-Farazdak." And Omar said, "Tis he who glories in wickedness.... He shall not come in to me! Who is at the door other than he?" 'Adi replied, "Al-Akhtal al-Taghlibi." And Omar said, "He is the [godless] miscreant who ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... to have you still with us," continued the captain of the ship, as he took the hand of the young millionaire; "for it appears from the report of Captain Scott that you have been in imminent danger of being captured and carried off by that miscreant, and that you have been saved only by the bravery and determination of the commander of the Maud. He has done no more than I would have done in his place, and if the pirate had taken you I would have sunk his steamer at ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... these ghosts of departed crimes were no more than indefinite shapes; they never consolidated nor took a definite form. The most persistent miscreant of them all, which had tormented him so long, the sin of the flesh, at last was silenced, and left him in peace. La Trappe had rooted up the stock of those debaucheries. The memory of them, indeed, haunted him still, on ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... hell, that composed that miscreant piece of the three impostors, though divided from all religions, and neither Jew, Turk, nor Christian, was not a positive atheist. I confess every country hath its Machiavel, every age its Lucian, whereof common heads must not hear, nor more ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... will traverse, unwearied, his burning deserts; and the Icelander risk his life amidst perpetual snows. Its charms are experienced alike, by the savage who roams the wilds of an American forest, and the courtier who rolls in luxury and prescribes rules of refinement to the civilized world; by the miscreant who wrings from the cold hand of charity the pittance that sustains his life, and the monarch who sways his sceptre over half the globe; by him who is bent with woes and years, and him whose cheek is covered yet with boyhood's down. Hence we might conclude it capable of giving strength to the ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... Love, the sole permitted, sings Sovereignly of ME and I. Bowers he has of sacred shade, Spaces of superb parade, Voiceful . . . But bring you a note Wrangling, howsoe'er remote, Discords out of discord spin Round and round derisive din: Sudden will a pallor pant Chill at screeches miscreant; Owls or spectres, thick they flee; Nightmare upon horror broods; Hooded laughter, monkish glee, Gaps the vital air. Enter these enchanted woods You ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Junior, 'll come to judgment," cried Mrs. Kobbe, in a loud voice, "'specially Pharie Kobbe as soon 's ever he gits home," whereat giggling from that miscreant quarter ceased, and she relieved her lord of his ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Beaudry with a snarl of rage and terror. Except one of the Rutherfords there was no man on earth he less wanted to meet. The forty-four in his hand jerked up convulsively. The miscreant was in two minds whether to ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... we inspired, if we did not personally control, as to their line of conduct. My man I will call Roberts, whose adventures I now give, and in whose name I shall write. There are people who insist that I was Captain Roberts; all that such people have to do is to prove I was that 'miscreant,' whoever he may have been. The following is ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... for thinking of another thing, which was to die. They then went to Arbuthnot's printing-house, and inspected the history, as far as that terrible passage concerning Rizzio's burial, where Mary is represented as "laying the miscreant almost in the arms of Maud de Valois, the late queen." Alarmed, and not without reason, at such plain speaking, they stopped the press, and went back to Buchanan's house. Buchanan was in bed. "He was going," he said, "the way of welfare." ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... countenance, laced with his blood, upwards towards the moon and stars, as one who had looked his last look on earth; the large tears were flowing down his cheeks, and mingling with the crimson streaks, and a flood of silver light fell on the fine features of the poor boy, as he said firmly, "Never." The miscreant fired, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... only meant to be a blind to hide the truth!" cried Mr. Briggs. "After he set the fire he must have become frightened at what he had done, and tried to cover up his tracks. Oh! I know what boys are capable of; but I'll have the law on this miscreant who tried to get revenge on me this way, see if ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... mischievous amusement, as he said, in his gay voice, "You are on the alert, my old comrade. You have not forgotten your former habits when in command here. But Sir Eustace intrusts the care of changing the guard to none but me; so I will not trouble you to disturb yourself another night." And the baffled miscreant retreated. ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the Mexican mule, And who have not fair Cuba subdued, After three bloody years of your miscreant rule, It is time you ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw

... temporary home in the house of a M. de Rambercourt, at Vetry. Here he first told the full story of his adventures to a wondering but believing audience. He glibly narrated the events which took place in the Temple up to the removal of the miscreant Simon from his post; but this part of the tale possessed little attraction, for the cruelties of the shoemaker-tutor were well known; but the sequel was of ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... wrists in his, held them firm, and, from his superior height—he was head and shoulders taller than Ephie—looked down on the miscreant. He recognised her now as a pretty little American whom he had noticed from time to time about the building; but—but ... well, that she was as astoundingly pretty as this, he had had no notion. His eyes strayed over her face, picking out all its beauties, and he felt himself ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... him with stirring tales of forest life, till he found himself too late prudently to go further that night; and, on his guard against every person but the right, ordering a bed of his treacherous host, would fall into that slumber from which the miscreant took safe means to prevent his ever awaking. When, after many years of impunity in the commission of these fearful crimes, the officers of justice were at last set upon him, and his house was searched, in the cellar were found ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... as he was, he at once dropped on to the lower deck, rushing to where Moody was standing, but the other men got in between and hustled him away; so, seeing that he could do nothing towards arresting the miscreant for the present, he bent over the poor captain and lifted him on his knee to see whether life was quite extinct. Happily he still lived! moaning faintly as Mr Meldrum raised him in his arms; consequently, as it was too dark—for it was just under the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... perplexed matter," he said; "I am certainly not called upon to put to death a brave man, although my national enemy, because he hath killed a miscreant who was privately meditating my own murder. Neither is this a place or a light by which to fight as becomes the champions of two nations. Let that quarrel be still for the present.— How say you then, noble sir, if we adjourn the present dispute till we effect your deliverance ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... creature was doing him a terrible injury, was goading him almost to death, and yet he could not punish him. He was a clergyman, and could not be beaten and kicked, or even fired at with a pistol. As for prosecuting the miscreant, had not his own lawyer told him over and over again that such a prosecution was the very thing which the miscreant desired. And then the additional publicity of such a prosecution, and the twang of false romance which would follow and the horrid alliteration of the story of ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... to the government to recognize was a professional interviewer or only a malicious amateur, or whether he was a paid "spotter," sent by some jealous official to report on the foreign ministers as is sometimes done in the case of conductors of city horsecars, or whether the dying miscreant before mentioned told the truth, cannot be certainly known. But those who remember Mr. Hawthorne's account of his consular experiences at Liverpool are fully aware to what intrusions and impertinences and impositions our national representatives ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... used to debel Kings and do to death champions and braves in battle and in the field of fight, so that the Conquerors feared him and the Chosros[FN516] humbled themselves to him. For all this, he was a miscreant in creed ascribing to Allah partnership and adoring idols, instead of the Lord of worship; and all his troops were of images fain in lieu of the All-knowing Sovereign. One day of the days as he sat on the throne of his Kingship, compassed about with the Grandees of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... the history of Lucero's tyranny, read Llorente, vol. i. pp. 345-353. When at last he had to be deposed, it was not to a dungeon or the scaffold, but to his bishopric of Almeria that this miscreant was relegated.] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... had been barely eight months in Alexandria when the Governor of Egypt received a message from his royal master. "Nothing that I could hear of would give me greater pleasure," he wrote, "than the news that you have driven that miscreant ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... his dancing soiree at Fa'a. He was put in the calaboose, and when he frankly said that he had come to Tahiti to preach the gospel of I. W. W.-ism and that he believed the fishermen had all the right on their side, he was sentenced as "a foreigner without visible means of support, a vagrant, miscreant, vagabond, and dangerous alien," to a month on the roads, and then to be deported to the United States, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... this mantle here in twain, Pressing one part upon my throbbing breast, And cast the other from me at thy feet, So do I rend my love, the common tie That bound us each to each. What follows now I cast on thee, thou miscreant, who hast spurned The holy claims of an unhappy wife!— Give me my children now, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... SINE PROLE," said Mumblazen, with more animation than he usually expressed, "than part, PER PALE, the noble coat of Robsart with that of such a miscreant!" ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... hands that alone have a right to protect her! I will give thee thy life on one condition, craven! Surrender up to me the maiden, and thou art free to depart! But enter not a foot again into the Christian camp. An army renowned as being the mirror of French chivalry cannot honorably harbor a miscreant like thee!' ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... Benedetto and his band of cut-throats! Had you committed even a much more serious fault than peeping into my correspondence, that would be more than sufficient to secure my full forgiveness. But do you know that Esperance shot and killed the miscreant who held his pistol to my temple and was about ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... seemed, were not prepared to wait even for that short space of time. A miscreant, larger than the common run of Judy, made a brief, but ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... second, which girdles less space, and so much more woe that it goads to wailing. There abides Minos horribly, and snarls; he examines the sins at the entrance; he judges, and he sends according as he entwines himself. I mean that when the miscreant spirit comes there before him, it confesses itself wholly, and that discerner of sins sees what place of Hell is for it; he girdles himself with his tail so many times as the degrees he wills it should be sent down. Always ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... the producer. "And now you find yourself confronting the miscreant, Bill. The train is passing through a city. It is on the elevated railway. Bill makes a dash for the door, springs out, and lands on the roof of a house. You follow him—your leap being considerably greater, because between his jump and yours ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various

... happened, for just as a good soldier, on seeing his own blood, is the more fired to take vengeance on his enemies and win renown, so her chaste heart gathered new strength as she ran fleeing from the hands of the miscreant, saying to him the while all she could think of to bring him to see his guilt. But so filled was he with rage that he paid no heed to her words. He dealt her several more thrusts, to avoid which she continued running as long as her ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... "Miscreant! devil! incarnate iniquity!" cried Douglas, as he grasped and grappled with the baffled plotter. "You have tried to murder me— and you have tried to murder her! I might have forgiven you the first crime—I will drag you to the halter for the second, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... hurried on with increasing speed, and likewise with augmented hope to be enabled to save not only your lordship's aunt and sister from the officers of the inquisition, but also the young Count of Riverola from the power of his miscreant enemies. Alas! my anticipations were not to be fulfilled! I lost my way amongst a maze of gardens connected with the villas bordering on the Arno; and much valuable time at such a crisis was wasted in the circuits which I had to make to extricate myself from the labyrinth and reach the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... in Ovid, whose verses, however, he for his part had never so much as touched with a finger. He gave thanks rather, that his vocation to the abstract sciences had kept him far apart from the whole crew of miscreant poets—Abode of demons. ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... Earl of Norbury, on 1 Jan., set all tongues wagging. His Lordship was walking in the shrubbery, near his own house at Kilbeggan, in the county of Meath, talking to his steward, and pointing out to him some trees he wished to have cut down, when some miscreant, behind a hedge, fired a blunder-buss loaded with swan shot at him, and he fell, mortally wounded. He lived for 43 hours afterwards—but his assassin ran away and escaped; nor, in spite of large rewards offered, was ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... The miscreant reeled, and lost his balance. Then Curtis closed with him, caught his right wrist, and threw him heavily, but, such was the man's frenzied resolve not to be arrested, that he fired twice again before the deadly weapon fell ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... "Why," replied the miscreant, "after the deed was done, what was to prevent us from robbing the house to-night, and taking away his daughter to the mountains. I have long had my eye on her, I can tell you, and it'll cost me a fall, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... this publication so much to heart that he offered a reward of a thousand dollars, and a first-class passage on his cruise to the top of Mount Ararat to any one who could give him the name of the miscreant who had written the lines, but he has never yet found out who did them, and until he reads these memoirs after I have passed away, he will never know from how ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... of affairs, was constantly impelled forward by the clubs, but more so by the incessant clamours of the mob. At the Hotel de Ville sat the Commune, a crew of blood-thirsty villains, headed by Hebert; and this miscreant, with his armed sections, accompanied by paid female furies, beset the Convention, and carried measures of severity by sheer intimidation. Let it further be remembered that, in 1793, France was kept in apprehension of invasion ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... was to show me that I gained nothing by seeking the protection of my mistress; that the power was still all in his own hands. I pitied Mrs. Flint. She was a second wife, many years the junior of her husband; and the hoary-headed miscreant was enough to try the patience of a wiser and better woman. She was completely foiled, and knew not how to proceed. She would gladly have had me flogged for my supposed false oath; but, as I have already stated, the doctor never allowed any ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... enemies of our liberty in the field, and, by the favour of God, have been kept unhurt, I trust your country will never harbour in her bosom the miscreant who would ruin her best supporter. I wish not to flatter; but when arts unworthy honest men are used to defame and traduce you, I think it not amiss, but a duty, to assure you of that estimation in which the public hold you. Not that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore, And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore, The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want, With just enough of talent, and no more, To lengthen fetters ...
— English Satires • Various

... hovered over the cold verge of death, with her sore distempered spirit, scarcely sure of anything, tidings came of another trouble, and turned the scale against her. Albert de Wichehalse, her trusty cousin and true lover, had fallen in a duel with that recreant and miscreant Lord Auberley. The strictest orders were given that this should be kept for the present from Frida's ears; but what is the use of the strictest orders when a widowed mother raves? Albert's mother vowed that "the shameless jilt" should hear it out, ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... he murmured, "if that frock yonder does not cover the body of that little miscreant whom I wished them to give me for a traveling companion, and who handles his arquebuse and sword ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... old Mother Chattox. The devil only knows which of the two is worst. But if the former hag did not bewitch your husband to death, as I shrewdly suspect, it is certain that the latter mumbling old miscreant killed my elder brother, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... clergymen of America, the Democratic party and the Catholics will discover, sooner or later, that the same spirit which caused the Protestant fathers to brave the perils of the BOOT and the STAKE: to stand, without flinching, before such miscreant judges as Jeffreys and Scroggs: to yield two thousand pulpits and look beggary and starvation in the face, rather than compromise with conscience; and, above all, to risk the untried dangers of the ocean and settle among savages—will ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... agony of the poor boy, fully believing himself a doomed miscreant, entering for the first time the awful presence of the head ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... I am not. Dynamite must have been used. Hazelton and I heard the noise of the blast, but of course we got out there too late to catch any miscreant at the job." ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... "Retire miscreant! or I will send your mangled carcass down to the foot without your help," shouted Rhimeson, swinging the huge stone up to the extent of his arms. His answer was a pistol shot, which, whistling past his cheek, struck the uplifted fragment of rock with such force as to send a stunning feeling ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... a change of linen, or any other convenience. In consequence of which enormities they fell under the high displeasure of chivalry, and all true, loyal, and gallant knights were instructed to attack and slay outright any miscreant they might happen to find above six feet high; which is doubtless one reason why the race of large men is nearly extinct, and the generations of latter ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... real identity of Vaucheray, one of the alleged murderers of Leonard the valet, has at last been ascertained. He is a miscreant of the worst type, a hardened criminal who has already twice been sentenced for murder, in ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... can hardly restrain myself from flying at his hair. A miscreant! Even of his own free will he comes ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... Humanity and the Conscience That dares imagine to destroy this wealth, To hang this matchless diamond in the eare Of Ethiope Death. Send him to file thy house, Strike with his dart thy Children and thy selfe, Gray bearded miscreant, whose best acts compard With Thurstons murder (cause this lady did [it]) Are ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... be that Walter Hornby was in reality the miscreant X? The thing seemed incredible, for, hitherto, no shadow of suspicion had appeared to fall on him. And yet there was no denying that his description tallied in a very remarkable manner with that of the hypothetical X. He was a ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... wailing soliloquies he interrupts himself to fling an admonitory parenthesis at "Lorenzo," or to hint that "folly's creed" is the reverse of his own. Before his thoughts can flow, he must fix his eye on an imaginary miscreant, who gives unlimited scope for lecturing, and recriminates just enough to keep the spring of admonition and argument going to the extent of nine books. It is curious to see how this pedagogic habit of mind runs ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... but never discovered who blew up the Cafe Vernon, although it was surmised that some miscreant had left a bag containing an infernal machine with either the ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... any public official listening to a miscreant who told the story of a stevedores' row, to which he himself had been a party, and seriously believing that the threats, however extravagant and bellicose, of a verbose old sailor could be a national danger, is, on the face of it, so ludicrous ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... well aware it was not from need of money that you went out with me, nor yet in order to serve Cyaxares; you came for my sake. You marched with me by night, you ran into danger at my side, simply to do me honour. [21] Unless I were a miscreant, I could not but be grateful for such kindness. But I must confess that at present I lack the ability to make a fit requital. This I am not ashamed to tell you, but I would feel ashamed to add, 'If you will stay with me, I will be sure to repay you,' for that would ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... been in this neighbourhood some six or eight months. People have certainly spoken to you about me; they have told you who I am; a miscreant, a man without religion, who regards neither law or Gospel: that is to say, only worth hanging. In spite of that, you came to see me. Very good. You know that I do not pick and choose my words, that I do not seek a lot of little twisting ways to express my meaning. You have had a proof of it. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... necessary element of larceny would be effectually established. Hence, in point of fact, Miller's testimony upon the question of whether the money had been stolen was entirely unnecessary, and the efforts of the defence were directed simply to making out Miller such a miscreant upon his own testimony that perforce the jury could not accept his evidence when it reached the point of implicating Ammon. All their attempts in this direction, however, only roused increased sympathy for the witness and hostility toward ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... Let the truth be known, and face it, whatever it is. Look, now. She wrote this letter which brought you here—this letter—every word of which is a lie; she it was who sent Gualtier to you to bring you here; she it was who recommended to you that miscreant who betrayed you, on whose tracks the police of France and Italy are already set. How do you suppose she will appear in the eyes of the French police? ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... him lies to the increase of life and of good, and in proportion as he works for this end or against it, is he the ashavan, the pure, the faithful one on earth and the blessed one in heaven, or the anashavan, the lawless miscreant who counteracts purity. The highest grade in the hierarchy of men belongs of right to the Mage or the athravan, to the priest whose voice inspires the demons with fear, or the soldier whose club despatches the impious, but a place of honour at their side is assigned to the peasant, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... my dear doctor," said Professor Maxon, "that you were bright enough to think of trailing the miscreant into the jungle. But for that Virginia would still be in his clutches and by this time he would have been beyond all hope of capture. How can we ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... miscreant cry and idiot laugh, withdrew to sigh his last breath in foreign climes. The public is as envious and ungrateful as it is ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the memory of Sir Isaac Brock, a monument which "the popularity of the general had caused to be regarded with more affectionate veneration than any other structure in the province." On Good Friday, the 17th of April, 1840,[141] a miscreant of the name of Lett introduced a quantity of gunpowder into this monument with the fiendish purpose of destroying it; and the explosion, effected by a train, caused so much damage as to render the column altogether irreparable. Lett, who was by birth an Irishman ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... originated in pious zeal. That zeal inflamed the champions of the church to such a point that they regarded all generosity to the vanquished as a sinful weakness. The infidel, the heretic, was to be run down like a mad dog. No outrage committed by the Catholic warrior on the miscreant enemy could deserve punishment. As soon as it was known that boundless license was thus given to barbarity and dissoluteness, thousands of wretches who cared nothing for the sacred cause, but who were eager to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The miscreant! I understood him now—oh, my God, for strength to tear his cowardly heart from his truculent body! But no; let there be no further unavailing anger. In God's good time all should recoil on his own head. For the present, I must bear, and make myself insensible; if possible; ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... a daughter, I believe, Mr. Trevethick?" and the Sergeant looked at the jury, with elevated eyebrows, as though he would have said, "If we can get even that admission out of this hoary miscreant, we may ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... It is devoutly to be wished, that this Lammie (who was killed in the skirmish) may have been the same miscreant, who, in the day of Queen Mary's distress, "hes ensigne being of quhyt taffitae, had painted one it ye creuell murther of King Henry, and layed down before her majestie, at quhat time she presented herself as prisoner ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... first meeting so full of goodwill and seeming friendliness that it was impossible to fix suspicion on him, and indeed there was no man among all the ship's company who showed more concern over this matter than did Thorir, or who made greater efforts to discover the miscreant who had dared to attempt the life ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... is it a crime to drive a prying miscreant from his door? Crime! Oh, no, sir; if there be a criminal involved in this ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... that a man living in a hovel should contest such a point with the owner of half-a-dozen palaces. I have come forward to help the man for the sake of seeing how the matter will go; and I have to confess that though those under the lord have treated me as though I were a miscreant, the lord himself and his friends have been ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... Orange to leave the Netherlands that Spain might recover her lost sovereignty. He was surrounded by foes, and many plots were formed against him. In March 1581, King Philip denounced him as the enemy of the human race, a traitor and a miscreant, and offered a heavy bribe to anyone who would take the life of "this pest" or ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... conduct, he girded the sword on his loins, and prepared himself for war. The wretch who had thus treated the woman whom he loved should be hunted down like a wild beast, as long as he had arms and legs with which to carry on the hunt. He would pursue the miscreant with any weapons that might come to his hands; and might Heaven help him at his need as he dealt forth punishment to that man, if he caught him within his grasp. Those who had hitherto known Morton ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope

... to her. She had not brought him there that she might frighten him with that danger, or that she might avenge herself by the power which it gave her. But now the idea flashed across her maddened mind. "Miscreant," she said. And she bore him back to the very edge of ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... look! Nay, gloat if thou wilt, tyrant—miscreant shall I say?—in human form! Yielding, if I may quote my friend here"—Mr. Sturge laid both handcuffed hands on the shoulder of Bill Adams—"yielding to none, I say, in my admiration of Britain's Navy, I hold myself free to ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... This miscreant lives unnoticed, in a little village near Paris, upon a slender income, which he has made in trade, not in the trade of blood; for it appears that Robespierre was not a very liberal patron of his servants. He kept his blood-hounds ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... chest, and he listened at it for so long that any miscreant who had been concealed in it would have had to give himself away by coughing or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various

... but he who observed the traditions of the elders. So that, as Professor Bruce says,[39] it was possible for a man to comply with all the requirements of the Rabbis and yet remain in heart and life an utter miscreant. "Outwardly," said Christ, "ye appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." Is it any wonder that He should call down fire from heaven to consume a system which had yielded such bitter, poisonous ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... of the bullets wounded, it is feared mortally, the secretary, Senor Esperandez, who was seated beside his chief, whilst the Minister was shot in the arm. Several people rushed forward to seize the miscreant, who defended himself desperately, discharging the remaining chambers of the revolver amidst his assailants, two of whom have sustained serious injuries. He was, however, overcome and taken, handcuffed and bound, to the nearest police station. On being interrogated ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... greatly in their gravity and in their very nature as to have little in common. There is a great gulf between the lad convicted of unlawful carnal knowledge with a girl who is under the legal age of consent, but who in some instances may even be the actual instigator of the offence, and the miscreant who tampers with little girls of tender years, or sets himself deliberately to corrupt boys. It was this class which the Prisons Board had in mind when it passed the resolution quoted, and no doubt it is the class which the Committee's order of ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... with so unmistakable an air of cunning and triumph that Eric was both astonished and dismayed. Could the miscreant have any further plot against him? At first he fancied that Billy might attempt to extort money by a threat of telling Dr Rowlands; but this supposition he banished as unlikely, since it might expose Billy himself to very ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... must keep boosting. Fortunately society here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before us. But I think we ought to stop buying—except among ourselves, and keep the transfers from falling ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... storm the cavern of the Demons And their gigantic chief—great need there is For sword and battle-axe—and with the aid Of Heaven, these miscreant sorcerers may fall Victims to thy avenging might. The road Is straight before thee—reach the Seven Mountains, And there thou wilt discern the various groups, Which guard the awful passage. Further on, Within a deep and horrible recess, Frowns the White Demon—conquer him—destroy That ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... down the club. Landless swerved, and the blow fell harmlessly; before the arm could be again raised, he caught it, held it with a grasp of steel, and shortened his sword. The miscreant saw his death, and screamed for mercy. "Remember Robert Godwyn!" said Landless, and drove the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... altered value which they now possess, may be in continual danger of misreading his author, of misunderstanding his intentions, while he has no doubt whatever that he perfectly apprehends and takes it in. Thus when Shakespeare in 1 Henry VI makes the gallant York address Joan of Arc as a 'miscreant', how coarse a piece of invective this sounds; how unlike what the chivalrous soldier would have uttered; or what one might have supposed Shakespeare, even with his unworthy estimate of the holy warrior Maid, would ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... marble pedestal Eros stood Fronting the pool: the statue leaped, and smote And slew that miscreant. All the stream ran blood; And to the top a girl's cry seemed to float. Rejoice, O lovers, since the scorner fell; And, maids, be kind; ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... "infidel," I cannot do it. "Infidel" is a term of reproach, which Christians and Mahommedans, in their modesty, agree to apply to those who differ from them. If he had only thought of it, Dr. Wace might have used the term "miscreant," which, with the same etymological signification, has the advantage of being still more "unpleasant" to the persons to whom it is applied. But why should a man be expected to call himself a "miscreant" or an "infidel"? That St. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... in peculiarly by the Ancient Mariner and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and bewailed. Captain Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta was fiendish in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how he should be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched his great hands ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... return from the Legislature, and afterwards, this same McCarty was in my presence the most abject and humble wretch I knew in Marysville. He almost piteously begged recognition by me, and was ready to go down on his knees for it. He was a blustering miscreant, full of courage where no force was required, and ready to run at the first appearance of a fight. He was one of a class, all of whom are alike, in whom bluster, toadyism, and pusillanimity go in concert, and are about equally ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... your great and noble city. But because it is grievous to the Christian and clement heart of the Emperor to avenge the persecutions and death which so many holy martyrs have endured at the hands of the bloodthirsty and cruel heathen on their posterity, or on the miscreant and—misbelieving enemies of our holy faith—and because the Lord hath said 'vengeance is mine'—Theodosius Caesar only decrees that the temples of the heathen idols in this great and noble city of Alexandria ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief. A prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be a "thrifle lame-futted"; though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at a grasshopper's lep, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... kind. Monthault still continued in a languishing condition; but his accomplice underwent an examination as to the purpose of his attempt, and the name of his employer. On promise of pardon the miscreant offered to make a full discovery. His conditions were accepted; and he then named Eustace Evellin as the person who was to receive the advantage of the nefarious action. He asserted, that being overcome with despair at the thought of having forfeited his uncle's ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... yes; for he is as despicable a miscreant as ever lived; but, still, not likely to have married such a woman. And it may be possible that there was no California marriage at all. Therefore I feel very anxious ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... be friends. Even if, for a paltry trifle of seven pounds fifteen and six, I am condemned by your master (whom you will excuse my terming a miscreant) to eke out the dregs of my worthless existence in this infernal yard—no, my loved Arabella, you will pardon me, but as a practical man I insist on facing the worst—even so I have found a congenial spirit, a co-mate and brother in exile, a Friend in my retreat Whom I can whisper: ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dead," Musard gravely informed them. "She died while you have been searching for the miscreant who fired the shot we heard at the dinner table. Gentlemen, he must be found. It seems hardly possible that he has succeeded in getting clear away in so short ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... discharged by a sporting country gentleman, broke into his stables by night, and cut off the ears and tail of a favourite hunter. As soon as it was discovered, a blood-hound was brought into the stable, who at once detected the scent of the miscreant, and traced it more than twenty miles. He then stopped at a door, whence no power could move him. Being at length admitted, he ran to the top of the house, and, bursting open the door of a garret, found the object that he sought in bed, and would have torn him to pieces, had ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... exemplarily punished. They returned haughtily, That all the country reverenced the great Cham-Chi-Thaungu, who dwelt in the son, and no mortal would have dared to offer violence to his image, but some Christian miscreant; so they called them, it seems; and they therefore denounced war against him, and all the Russians, who, they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... and left, and the explosion followed, proportionate in energy and destructive power to the quantity of pent-up self-love that served as a charge. Once the mine is fired, in the confusion and disorder that follow, vengeance stalks forth in quest of the miscreant that did the wrong. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... marvellous amateur, Mr. Gimblet, for the purpose. I must believe that he was marvellous, because she says so; but in this case he did nothing and had little opportunity of justifying his references. He merely believed what he had the luck to be told and caused the miscreant to be arrested when of his own motion he practically offered himself for arrest. There are, after all, two phases of crime—the first, its commission, and the second, its detection. Mrs. Bryce would have done better to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... bounded over the top. Some of us are thinkers, others men of action. Archie was a man of action, and he was out of his chair and sailing in the direction of the back of the intruder's neck before a wiser man would have completed his plan of campaign. The miscreant collapsed under him with a squashy sound, like the wind going out of a pair of bellows, and Archie, taking a firm seat on his spine, rubbed the other's face in the carpet and awaited ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... that was irresistible, so I let him off. Who could have thought he would have turned out so?" And the baronet proceeded to eulogize his own good-nature, by which it is just necessary to remark that one miscreant had been saved for a few years from transportation, in order to rob and murder ad libitum, and, having fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer on the gallows at last. What a fine thing it is to have a good heart! Both our gentlemen now sank into a revery, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Miscreant" :   scapegrace, deviate, black sheep, pervert, wretch, offender, deviant, wrongdoer, degenerate



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