Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Phalanx   /fˈeɪlæŋks/   Listen
Phalanx

noun
(pl. phalanxes, L. phalanges)
1.
Any of the bones of the fingers or toes.
2.
Any closely ranked crowd of people.
3.
A body of troops in close array.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Phalanx" Quotes from Famous Books



... imitation; and the success that has so richly crowned their courage and enterprize, must be an invincible inducement to the fading phalanx of our remaining Bachelors, to make a vigorous attack on some fortress of female beauty, with a ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... unwholesome life of the city, into the broad fields and open air and the sovereignty of the soil. And if this immense intrusion of machinery has only this result, of equalizing the balance against production, we shall have one solution of the problem. And there will be another solution, if this phalanx of mechanism shall lift the mass of men above the occasions of coarse material drudgery into other activities, which doubtless will be thrown open, and shall allow more leisure for spiritual culture. But in this, and all other great questions affecting human welfare, I ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders, such as raised To heights of noblest temper heroes old Arming to battle; and instead of rage, Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved With dread of death to flight or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... and soul of his party was the indomitable Muza. With a rashness which seemed to the superstitious Spaniards like the safety of a man protected by magic, he spurred his ominous black barb into the very midst of the serried phalanx which Villena endeavoured to form around him, breaking the order by his single charge, and from time to time bringing to the dust some champion of the troop by the noiseless and scarce-seen edge of his ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... her on the death of one of her little girls:—'I loved her, for she was Thrale's and yours, and, by her dear father's appointment, in some sort mine: I love you all, and therefore cannot without regret see the phalanx broken, and reflect that you and my other dear girls are deprived of one that was born your friend. To such friends every one that has them has recourse at last, when it is discovered and discovered ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... Whether it deserves that epithet Englishmen will judge, when they learn that this doubt was first suggested by some of the best lawyers—the warmest friends and the most enlightened and able men whom Ireland ever knew—by Walter Hussey Burgh—by Henry Flood, and by the brilliant phalanx of constitutional lawyers who at that time graced the popular cause—men "to whom compared" the most proud and petulant of her present persecutors "are but the insects of a summer's day." These gentlemen had been the long-tried friends of the ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... make their way along over the top of the trellis. Jack only feared lest some strip of rotten wood might give way under their combined weight, and allow them to plunge downward. A solid phalanx of the sturdy football players had formed directly beneath, and they seemed determined that if anything of this sort took place they would serve as a buffer, so that those who fell through might ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... Pyrrhic dance as yet,[199] Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gave— Think ye he meant ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... "Drum out thy phalanx brave and strong, Maryland, my Maryland! Drum forth to balance right and wrong, Maryland, my Maryland! Drum to thy old heroic song, When forth to fight went Freedom's throng. And bore the spangled flag along, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... their crag; the said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and dances; but as to admitting the strangers to their own houses, they were inexorable. Ready to scoff and disparage, jealous and niggardly, marrying only among themselves, the families formed a serried phalanx to keep out intruders. Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such sagacity will give a sufficient idea of the old-world manners and customs of this society, suffering ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... parliament, religion will be found to influence votes more than property, and the greater part of the 100 Irish members who are returned to parliament will be Catholics. Add to these the Catholic members who are returned in England, and you will have a phalanx of heretical strength which every minister will be compelled to respect, and occasionally to conciliate by concessions incompatible with the interests of the Protestant Church. The fact is, however, that you are at this moment subjected to every danger of this kind which you can ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... the synthetic mind of the highest power to be increasing in proportion to the population, instead of, as I suspect, pretty rapidly decreasing, and supposing the capitalist to be fully alive to the need of administrative improvements, a phalanx of Washingtons would be impotent to raise the administrative level of the United States materially, as long as the courts remain censors of legislation; because the province of the censorial court is to dislocate ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... seen, and he was informed that Tabitha had left Welland shortly after his own departure, and had studied music with great success in London, where she had resided ever since till quite recently; that she played at concerts, oratorios—had, in short, joined the phalanx of Wonderful Women who had resolved to eclipse masculine genius altogether, and humiliate the brutal ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... considered himself under no obligation to continue an alliance proposed for a special object. Although Macdonald might be able to enlist the support of some maritime Liberals, Brown strove to reunite his party in Ontario and present a solid phalanx to ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun

... this orator, would have drawn up the rest of his forces in regular order. He has fallen, indeed, upon Asinius, Caelius, and Calvus; but where are his champions to enter the lists with them? I imagined that he had a phalanx in reserve, and that we should have seen them man by man giving battle to Cicero, Caesar, and the rest in succession. He has singled out some of the ancients, but has brought none of his moderns into the field. He thought it enough ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... to have used against them their phalanx and doubled it, until they were accustomed to this enemy and were enabled by their greater skill to repel them. If the Romans had been able to withstand their first shock, the Gauls would have easily been thrown into disorder, and put to flight. The Gauls who were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... sent him crowns and prayers; crowns for anticipated victories, prayers that he would come and win them. Homage so delicate was not to be disdained. Nero set forth, an army at his heels; a legion of claquers, a phalanx of musicians, cohorts of comedians, and with these for retinue, through sacred groves that Homer knew, through intervales which Hesiod sang, through a year of festivals he wandered, always victorious. It was he who conquered at Olympia; it was he who conquered at Corinth. No ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... souls are shut up a dozen leading passions: five egoistical, four animistic, and three distributive. The first class have reference to individuals, the second to groups, the last to groups of groups, or series, of which the whole forms a phalanx, a society of eighteen hundred persons dwelling in a palace. Every morning carriages convey the workers into the country, and bring them back in the evening. Standards are carried, festivities are held, cakes are eaten. Every woman, if she desires it, can ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... won the toss and is to have the ball. In my day we had to kick it; now it is manipulated with the hands, and not forward, but backward. The players form a phalanx, and one of their number snaps, as it is called, the ball between his legs to someone behind him, who in turn passes it to another, who is expected to make a forward dash with it. Before I can quite realize what is being done the Harvard men are speeding ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... ill-balanced brains. To oppose moderate reformers as well as extremists is both unjust and unwise. It confounds together the would-be healers and the enemies of the existing order. Furthermore, an indiscriminate attack tends to close the ranks in a solid phalanx, and it should be the aim of a tactician first to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... First's time were prudently anxious to diminish the phalanx of opposition. The Tory nobility, depending for their reflected lustre upon the sunshine of a court, had for some time been gradually reconciling themselves to the new dynasty. But the wealthy country gentlemen of England, a rank which retained, with much of ancient manners and primitive integrity, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... confused, and exchanged speaking glances with Julia. " However," she said calmly, "I have consulted Mr. Osmond and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon." And she felt invulnerable behind her phalanx ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... enemy with such force as to recoil; and Trippe, who had sprung into the enemy's rigging, found himself left with but nine of his people, to confront nearly twoscore Tripolitans. The Americans formed in a solid phalanx, and held their ground bravely. Again the two commanders singled each other out, and a fierce combat ensued. The Turk was armed with a cutlass, while Trippe fought with a short boarding-pike. They fought with caution, sparring and fencing, until each had received ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... fastened to a board, did duty behind the old churner, spurring him up with its score or more of sharp teeth when he settled back to stop the machine. "Run and start the old sheep," was a command we heard less often after that. He could not long hold out against the pressure of that phalanx of sharp points upon his broad ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... were dismissed; and the time for the arrival of the young bride, the Archduchess of Austria, who was about to be installed Dauphine of France, was at hand, and she came to meet scarcely a friend, and many foes—of whom even her beauty, her gentleness, and her simplicity, were doomed to swell the phalanx." ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... sufficiently to serve its purpose until it was replaced by another in the morning, the clerk escorted the representatives of the law downstairs. Of course, their departure from the hall and their prolonged absence had been noted by the phalanx of reporters, and they were surrounded instantly. Searching questions were fired at them, but Steingall, who knew how to use the press for his own ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... be an authentic beauty," she said wistfully, glancing at the solid phalanx of black backs and sleek heads at the other end of the room. "And she's ravishing, of course. The men are sleepless about her already. Do assure me that she is stupid! Nature would never treat the rest of us so unfairly ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... continued invincible, and when Philip stood after the battle viewing the slain, in that part of the field where the Three Hundred lay dead in their armour, heaped upon one another, having met the spears of his phalanx face to face, he wondered at the sight, and learning that it was the Band of Lovers, burst into tears, and said, "Perish those who suspect those men of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... crashing of bugles in it; something like a hymn before action?" Abruptly his voice mounted and he threw back his head. "By God, little brother, I want the sort of music that goes before the charge of an irresistible phalanx!" ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... at three, the hour appointed for the meeting. With him came Malster, and one of the junior secretaries of Bullion Ltd., a certain Guy Tyrrell. Lord Henry and St. Maur came a minute after time, and were followed by a phalanx of ladies of uncertain age, with their Poms, their Pekinese, their ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... anticipate, to obstruct by constructing, and to exterminate by supplanting. To cast any slight upon Theology, whether in its Protestant or its Catholic schools, would be to elicit an inexhaustible stream of polemics, and a phalanx of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... nearly divined. The original was Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron Burr. His affection for her was the redeeming fact of his career and character. Both were anomalous in our history. In an era remarkable for patriotic self-sacrifice, he became infamous for treasonable ambition; among a phalanx of statesmen illustrious for directness and integrity, he pursued the tortuous path of perfidious intrigue; in a community where the sanctities of domestic life were unusually revered, he bore the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... perfect development, a plant requires a congenial soil and atmosphere; it needs light and water; it needs protection from early destruction, or stunting, or starvation. It may seem heterodox, but I would maintain stubbornly, against all the phalanx of Baconians and Bedlamites, that, for the cultivation of Shakespeare's peculiar genius, circumstances were almost wholly propitious. His very poverty was his stimulus. Even that school education of his, which is made by misunderstanding to appear so scant and pitiful, was, I doubt not, better ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... the Hall and took the Speaker's chair. Beside him was Cyrus Griffin, the District Judge. Hay, the District Attorney, with his associates William Wirt and Alexander McRae, now appeared, and immediately afterward the imposing array of the prisoner's counsel, a phalanx which included no less than four sometime Attorneys-General and two subalterns of note. These took the seats reserved for them; the marshal and his deputies pressed the people back, and the jury entered and filled the jury box. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... the Reformation in Germany.—He was not the cause of the Reformation, only its most powerful and efficient agency, for the Reformation would have taken place in time had Luther never appeared. Somebody would have led the phalanx, and, indeed, Luther, led steadily on in his thought and researches, became a reformer and revolutionist almost before ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... hymnidico resonet paeane juventus, Parisia extincto gaudeat hoste phalanx. Hic dudum, et nuper morbo scabiosus edaci, Francorum reliquas inficiebat oves. Cognitus haud potuit mundari errore nefando, Quin purgaretur lucidiore foco. Nam quamvis concessa esset clementia, durus Obstitit, et ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... of her. Ikey's Own had formed a close-linked phalanx about her. No Englishman might penetrate that jealous barrier or help to form it. Within its sacred circle the mare was being ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... fate. Macedon is still to Greece what Russia, before Peter the Great, was to Europe—a half-unknown and barbarous land, full of latent energy and power, and waiting for the rise of a master mind to discern its embryo greatness and turn its peasants into the unconquerable phalanx. Alexander must arise to carry forth with his victorious arms the seeds of Greek civilization over the Eastern world. Aristotle must arise to gather up in one boundless mind the vast results of Greek philosophy, and found an empire vaster and more enduring than that of his great ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... boldly challenged him to battle. The armies met in 280 on the plain of HERACLEA, on the banks of the Liris, where the level nature of the country was in favor of the Greek method of fighting. The Macedonian phalanx was the most perfect instrument of warfare the world had yet seen, and the Roman legions had never yet been ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... formed into a phalanx, as was their custom, and received the attacks of the swords (i.e. of ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... convenient; and thus a road, in its own nature difficult, he rendered, as he imagined, impregnable by the works which he drew across every pass. The adjoining ground, being mostly covered with woods, was exceedingly incommodious to the phalanx of the Macedonians, which is of no manner of use, except when they extend their very long spears before their shields, forming as it were a palisade; to perform which, they require an open plain. The Thracians, too, were embarrassed ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... have I been doing? Doesn't he want you to grow up as one who hates fighting, and a lover of peace? And here have I been teaching you how to use the sword and spear and shield, making of you one who knows how to lead a phalanx to the fight—a man of war. What would he say ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... their haunts in the thick underwood. Nevertheless, and in spite of all these crafty inventions and open war with them, the wolves scarcely diminish in number; they still present the same formidable phalanx, and seem determined to defy ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... ploughed six well-defined lanes through the approaching phalanx; but our persevering foes had apparently become accustomed to the effects of artillery fire by this time, seeming to regard it as a disagreeable concomitant to the struggle which must be faced, but ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... to the gallant self-devotion of Arnold Struthan of Winkelried, at the battle of Sempach [9th July, 1386], who broke the Austrian phalanx by rushing on their lances, grasping as many of them as he could reach, and concentrating them upon his breast. The confederates rushed forward through the gap thus opened by the sacrifice of their comrade, broke and cut down their enemy's ranks, and soon became ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... was a whole phalanx of the common people—a phalanx bounded on the popular side by the outskirt of society and on the high-up side by the intellectual and philosophical patriots who were as pronounced as any for the cause of their country, and with ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... chess combat continued with unabated spirit. Here Philemon's king stood pretty firmly guarded by both his knights, one castle, one bishop, and a body of common soldiers[218]—impenetrable as the Grecian phalanx, or Roman legion; while his queen had made a sly sortie to surprise the only surviving knight of Narcottus. Narcottus, on the other hand, was cautiously collecting his scattered foot soldiers, and, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... throughout the country from north to south and east to west, and subscribed everywhere. The spirit that thrilled the thousands filling and overflowing Greyfriars Church and churchyard, spread with rapidity over the whole land. It combined the "whole nation into one mighty phalanx of incalculable energy." The last sparks of the King's fury burst out in secret instructions to his followers to use all power against the "refractory and seditious," and in a threat to send his army and fleet to Scotland, but these ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... bush beyond should be traversed with caution. So I called in the flanking rangers, replacing them with Oneidas, and, sending the balance of the band forward on a trot, waited five minutes, then started on with a solid phalanx of riflemen behind to guard ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... suspended its juggling feats with vegetable baskets, and devoted itself exclusively to the task of silencing our guns. Porters, costers, and the riff-raff of the streets crowded in a semicircle around us. Just then it was borne in on us how small our number was. A solid phalanx of the toughest customers in London faced us. Behind this semicircle a line of carts had been drawn up. Unseen enemies from behind this laager now began to amuse themselves by bombarding us with the product of the market garden. Tomatoes, cauliflowers, and potatoes ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... Their names were hallow'd in the Muse's song, Wafted by fame from age to age along, High o'er oblivion's deep, devouring wave, Where millions find an unrefunding grave. With envious glance the changeful power beheld The glorious phalanx which his power repell'd, And faster now the fiery chariot flew, While Fame appear'd the rapid flight to rue, And labour'd some to save. But, close behind, I heard a voice, which, like the western wind, That whispers softly through the summer shade, These solemn accents to mine ear convey'd:— ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... of the distal phalanx of the second finger of the left hand above the root of the nail with lint and ether. Wind the rubber tubing tightly round the second phalanx; puncture with a sterile Hagedorn needle through the cleansed ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... toward the scene of battle. The combatants paused for a moment, gazing in mute astonishment, until the wind, dispelling the murky cloud, revealed the flaunting banner of Michael Paw, the patroon of Communipaw. That valiant chieftain came fearlessly on at the head of a phalanx of oyster-fed Pavonians and a corps de reserve of the Van Arsdales and Van Bummels, who had remained behind to digest the enormous dinner they had eaten. These now trudged manfully forward, smoking their pipes ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... as may stand with the public peace, that so the proceedings of the Assembly may not be so much retarded." Mr. Solicitor St. John appears as the reporter of the Order. Cromwell, in fact, had quietly formed a little phalanx of the right men to carry the thing through. The younger Vane was one of them. Even Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian and Smectymnuan, had to some extent aided in the contrivance, without consulting any of his brethren ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... fog was still too dense to be riven by slanting sunbeams. It closed again in solider phalanx. Our gray cell shut close about us. Esquihos and the distance became nowhere. In fact, ourselves would have been nowhere, except that a sluggish damp wind puffed sometimes, and steering into this we could guide our way within a few points of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... Jess published personal history. Yes, it described him to say that, in addition to all the rest of him, and of his personal history, and of his family, and of theirs, in addition to their social posture, as that of a serried phalanx, and to their notoriously enormous wealth and crushing respectability, she might have been ever so much less lovely for him if she had been only—well, a little prepared to answer questions. And it wasn't as if quiet, cultivated, earnest, public-spirited, brought up in Germany, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... imperfectly streamed the light upon Brandon's face, as he sat in his large chair, leaning his cheek on one hand, and gazing with the unconscious earnestness of abstraction on the clear fire. At that moment a whole phalanx of gloomy thought was sweeping in successive array across his mind. His early ambition, his ill-omened marriage, the causes of his after-rise in the wrong-judging world, the first dawn of his reputation, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... be difficult to enlarge this list, while on the other hand, the catalogue of those who really practised the licentiousness they celebrated, would be very numerous. One period alone, the reign of Charles the Second, would furnish more than enough to outnumber the above small phalanx of purity. Muretus, whose poems clearly gave him every right to knowledge on the subject, but whose known debauchery would certainly have forbidden any credit to accrue to himself from establishing the general purity of lascivious poets, at once rejects the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... move and settled back in satisfaction. Her pawns were in such position that his bishops were both unusable. He'd tried to play a phalanx game in the early stages of her attack, but she'd broken through, rolling up his left flank after sacrificing a ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... all was that my agent at the last moment threw up the sponge. The farmers formed a serried phalanx against Free Trade; it was useless to incur the expense of a poll. Then came the bill. It was a heavy one; for in addition to my London agent - a professional electioneering functionary - were the local agents at towns like Malmesbury, Wootton Bassett, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... extract from my letter of May the 27th, 1786, will, I fear, have very mischievous effects. It will tend to draw on the Count de Vergennes the formidable phalanx of the Farms; to prevent his committing himself to me in any conversation which he does not mean for the public papers; to inspire the same diffidence into all other ministers, with whom I might have to transact business; to defeat the little hope, if any hope existed, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the Cantilupes, the Cliffords, the Braoses, and the Lacys; and the barons of the West Midlands, headed by Henry of Neufbourg, Earl of Warwick, and William of Ferrars, Earl of Derby. This powerful phalanx gave to the royalists a stronger hold in the west than their opponents had in any one part of the much wider territory within their sphere of influence. There was no baronial counterpart to the successful raiding of the north and east, which John had carried through in the last months ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... they stand together as members of the Church of England, whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the shop. The supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its enemies are of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people are a mob in which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and Positivists by Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest unbelievers and all ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... was successful. Given an open battle on their own ground, these desperate rebels would have fought till none could stand, and by sheer ferocious numbers would have pulled down any trained troops that the city could have sent against them, whether they had advanced in phalanx or what formation you will. For it must be remembered they were far removed from cowards, being Atlantean all, just as were those within the city, and were, moreover, spurred to extraordinary savageness and desperation by the oppression under ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... every point. To assume that portions of psychic experience are capable of vital coalescence, is to beg the whole question. We know that stone can be piled on stone, that men can be trained to form a platoon, a cohort, a phalanx; but that detached fragments of mind are capable of any sort of cohesion and organization we do not know at all. And, even if this point could be granted, where is the organizing power? We should have to postulate another ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... professors, have no more voting power than the young men who have just taken their degrees, nay, have in reality less influence than these young Masters, who always meet together and form a kind of compact phalanx when votes are to be taken. There was even a Non-placet club, ready to throw out any measure that seemed to emanate from the reforming party, or threatened to change any established customs, whether beneficial or otherwise ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... descried a herd of oxen (bison) extending a mile and a half in length, and too numerous to be counted. They travelled, not one after another, as, in the snow, other animals usually do, but, in a broad phalanx, slowly, and sometimes stopping to feed.... Their numbers were so great that we dreaded lest they should fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise, but for the dogs, almost as numerous as ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... her acquaintance, if young and especially of the harder sex aforesaid, for obvious reasons, delighted just at present to humour. George, however, in no wise shared his aunt's expansiveness in this direction, if only that it meant that Lilith was promptly surrounded by an adoring phalanx, even as on the deck of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... masked men all around the platform—a solid phalanx of them on the slope above. They were heavily armed. Other masked men stood on the platform. They seemed rigid figures—stiff, jerky when they moved. How different from the two forms ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... candidate, but the Roman Catholic Bishop, Dr. Lennan, met and repulsed the intruder in militant fashion. "Mr. Bell," he reports to Archbishop Troy, "declined the poll, and surrendered yesterday. The Catholics stuck together like the Macedonian phalanx, and with ease were able to turn the scale in favour of the Chancellor ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... purity of the ballot—no, not guaranteeing, but simply asserting those rights, and leaving the upholding of them to—Kelly's allies and henchmen! Also, the League had the power of between a thousand and fifteen hundred intelligent and devoted men and about the same number of women—a solid phalanx of great might, of might far beyond its numbers. Finally, it had Victor Dorn. He had no mean opinion of his value to the movement; but he far and most modestly underestimated it. The human way of rallying to an abstract principle ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... may shelter tyrants. The slopes of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek text than the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of this I am sure: God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... it should be forever remembered to her honor that Italy made her decision in face of Teutonic successes. If the military situation did not look so black for the Allies at the end of May as it does this December, it looked black enough with the crumbling Russian resistance before Mackensen's phalanx. Neuve Chapelle had been a costly and empty victory. There had been no successful drive in Champagne and Artois to encourage those who bet only on winning cards. There were heavy clouds in the east, merely a sad silence along the western wall. It was long past ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... "aver, bata!" after the last visitor has gone, the house-boys run in with the noon meal. The padre had a good cook, who understood the art of fixing the provisions in the Spanish style. I was surprised at the resources of the parish; for a meal of ten or fifteen courses was the usual thing. A phalanx of barefooted waiters stood in line to take the plates when we had finished the respective courses, broth, mutton stew, and chicken, and bananas for dessert. The padre, I am sorry to say, ate with his knife, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... grant them." On the return of the deputation, the Gauls were moved to laughter. "He shall soon see," said they, "whether it was in his interest or our own that we offered him peace." And, indeed, in the first engagement, neither the famous Macedonian phalanx, nor the elephant he rode, could save King Ptolemy; the phalanx was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the king himself taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of battle on the top ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... written it, and going over the score all alone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To be contradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, but to be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping up behind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make any radiant, long-accumulated genius pause in full career, question himself, question his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted Northern ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Englishman and a soldier. In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation. The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers—the reader may smile—has not been useless to the historian ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... get somebody, dear,' I answered, calmly. 'Don't trouble your sweet little head about that. An eminent statistician has calculated that five hundred and thirty duly qualified young women are now standing four-square in a solid phalanx in the streets of London, all agog to teach the higher mathematics to anyone who wants them at a moment's notice. Let Miss Latimer take her pick of the five hundred and thirty. I'll wire to her at once: "Elsie Petheridge unable through ill health to resume her duties. Ordered to Florence. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... physical beauty and strength. But it is plainly impossible that we should all attain to equality on the level of the best of us. The history of civilization shows us that the human race has by no means marched on in a solid and even phalanx. It has had its advance-guard, its rear-guard, and its stragglers. It presents us the same picture today; for it embraces every grade, from the most civilized nations down to the lowest surviving types of barbarians. Furthermore, if we analyze the society of ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... himself. What! flee from an outpost of time-worn celery? beat an inglorious retreat before a phalanx of machine-made pies? He would look them (figuratively) in the eye. Having, as it were, fairly stared out of countenance the bland pies and beamed with stern contempt upon the "droopy," Preraphaelite celery, he went, better satisfied, on his way. It is these little victories that count; at that moment ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... spake, th' Angelic Squadron bright Turn'd fiery red, sharpning in mooned Horns Their Phalanx, and began to hem him round With ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... address by Prof. George A. Parker, of Hartford, Conn., on the occasion of the visit of the famous Putnam Phalanx to Putnam Park and Camp, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... the substance of the people is devoured. Conflagrations may, and do, occasionally diminish the number of cotton-mills, and lighten the warehoused accumulation of cottons, or other inert matter; but no lucky plague, pestilence, or cholera, comes to thin the crowded phalanx, and rid this empire of some portion of the interminable brood of mongers of all shapes and sizes. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... the recent measures of the country go to prove there is no real disposition, in the masses, to do otherwise. The attachment to the Union is very strong and general throughout the whole of this vast country, and it is only necessary to sound the tocsin to bring to its maintenance a phalanx equal to uphold its standard against the assaults of any enemies. The impossibility of the North-western States consenting that the mouth of the Mississippi should be held by a foreign power, is in itself a guaranty of the long existence of the present political ties. Then, the increasing and overshadowing ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... of public feeling during the last few years. He pointed out that at the dissolution of 1831 the conservative members of the House of Commons amounted perhaps to 50. In 1835 they saw this small dispirited band grow into a resolute and formidable phalanx of 300. The cry was: 'Resolute attachment to the institutions of the country.' One passage in the speech is of interest in the history of his attitude on toleration. Sir William Moles worth had been invited to come forward ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... happy, removed from the more profane looks and soft speeches of the younger part of the creation. Then there are the hoi polloi of outcasts, younger sons of younger brothers, tutors, governesses, portionless cousins, and curates, all formed in phalanx round the side-tables, whose primitive habits and simple tastes are evinced by their all eating off the same plate and drinking from nearly the same wine-glass,—too happy if some better-off acquaintance at the long table invites them to "wine," though the ceremony on ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... these red-hot "forwards" came the phalanx of old-fashioned people who voted Liberal because their fathers had voted Liberal before them. Then there were the electors who used to be Conservative but, being honestly dissatisfied with the Government ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... the cache was a solid phalanx of Cascellans. They stood behind a network of ropes that probably marked the boundary between sacred and ...
— Warrior Race • Robert Sheckley

... numbers of the population would, I saw, become a means of plenty, by supplying additional numbers and power to the phalanx of nature's workmen, each, with redoubled skill fitly applied, joyfully labouring in his sphere to create abundance ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... concha, for conspicuous aid in the color decoration of the whole; the northern builder burst through the walls of his apse, poured over the eastern altar one unbroken blaze, and lifting his shafts like pines, and his walls like precipices, ministered to their miraculous stability by an infinite phalanx of sloped buttress and glittering pinnacle. The spire was the natural consummation. Internally, the sublimity of space in the cupola had been superseded by another kind of infinity in the prolongation of the nave; externally, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... lips set tight and her chin dimpled. She had gone back thirty generations in as many seconds. Thus might one of the daughters of Boadicea have looked whilst guiding her mother's chariot against the Roman phalanx. Resting on one knee, with a revolver in each hand, she seemed no puling mate for the gallant man ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... of comradeship that binds the glorious survivors of the Napoleonic phalanx, that they always feel as if they were in camp together, and bound to stand together ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... sleds and crowded forward in a phalanx, cupping with their ranks the sledge where their master was couched. Voices were hushed ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... he could converse in, so numerous; that he more than furnished an example of that saying of Charles the Fifth— he who speaks five languages is as good as five men. But Jack, he was better than a hundred common mortals; Jack was a whole phalanx, an entire army; Jack was a thousand strong; Jack would have done honour to the Queen of England's drawing-room; Jack must have been a by-blow of some British Admiral of the Blue. A finer specimen of the island race of Englishmen ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... a warm Chinook creeping in from the Rockies and a sky of robin-egg blue. The gophers have come out of their winter quarters and are chattering and racing about. We saw a phalanx of wild geese going northward, and Dinky-Dunk says he's seen any number of ducks. They go in drifting V's, and I love to watch them melt in the sky-line. The prairie floor is turning to the loveliest of greens, and it is a ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... in their pearly shells, And all the wonder of her lucent limbs Sphered in a vermeil mist. Upon the throne She took her seat, the knight beside her still, Singing on couches of fresh asphodel, And the dance ceased, and the flushed revelers came In glittering phalanx to adore their queen. Beautiful girls, with shining delicate heads, Crested with living jewels, fanned the air With flickering wings from naked shoulders soft. Then with preluding low, a thousand harps, And citherns, and strange nameless instruments, Sent through the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... phalanx of men which had collected around the moveless bodies as swiftly as mercury sinks through water. Yet none of them touched either Donnegan or George. And then the solid group dissolved at one side. It was the moan of a woman which had scattered it, and a yellow-haired girl slipped ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... ready sympathy. "I understand. Say no more. You are unmarried. She wouldn't have you. Alas, Comrade Parker! However, thus it is! We look around us, and what do we see? A solid phalanx of the girls we have loved and lost. Tell me about her, Comrade Parker. Was it your face or your manners at which she drew ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... overshadowed the highway, opening now and then into vistas of green fields where stood a cottage or two, with a herd of mottled cows grazing down by the brook. On the higher ridges the trees formed a close phalanx, and with their dark tops cut the horizon into a long, irregular line of forest, as if offering battle to the woodman's axe that was threatening to invade ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... 'Tyne.'" The "Tyne" is a superannuated lifeboat which is kept under lock and key. The key was refused, and the men who demanded it were implored not to tempt Providence. Thereupon they coolly formed themselves into a phalanx, rushed against the door, burst it in, hauled the old "Tyne" down, and ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... instant terror through the German ranks. They broke and fled in disorder, followed by the death-phalanx of the Carocium, who cut them down in multitudes, and drove them back in complete disorder and defeat. For two days the emperor was mourned as slain, his unhappy wife even assuming the robes of widowhood, when suddenly he reappeared, and all was joy again. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... their airy flight. Sometimes they lose the wind when the capricious gusts battle, or come and go in the upper regions. When this confusion comes by day, you can see the leader of the file fluttering aimlessly in the air, then turn about and take his place at the tail of the triangular phalanx, while a skilful manoeuver of his companions forms them soon in good order behind him. Often, after vain efforts, the exhausted leader relinquishes the guidance of the caravan; another comes forward, tries in his turn, and yields his place to a third, who finds the breeze, and continues the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... seen; 110 Courage was on his open brow, yet care Seemed like a wandering shade to linger there; And though his eye shone, as the eagle's, bright, It beamed with humid, melancholy light When now Valdivia saw the embattled line, Helmets, and swords, and shields, and matchlocks, shine; Now the long phalanx still and steady stand, Fixed every eye, and motionless each hand; Then slowly clustering, into columns wheel, Each with the red-cross banners of Castile; 120 While trumps, and drums, and cymbals, to his ear Made music such as soldiers love to hear; While horsemen checked their steeds, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... think it would have been more prudent, and would have helped to keep alive those feelings of association with, and loyalty to, the Crown which I am fully certain the majority of the Canadians deeply feel; a phalanx of senators, removed from all the sinister influences of the periodical simoons common to all countries would thus have been retained, and the Governor-General would have had the power of calling the highest talent and patriotism to his councils, in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... in this country we bring with us out of our childhood, not all the logic in the world would make us listen to language such as this. It is not so—we know it, and that is enough. We are well aware of the phalanx of difficulties which lie about our theistic conceptions. They are quite enough, if religion depended on speculative consistency, and not in obedience of life, to perplex and terrify us. What are we? what is anything? If it be not divine—what is it then? If created—out of what ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... black cloud the beetles shot forward. A serried phalanx covered the two men and the girl, hovering a few feet overhead, the long legs dangling to within arm's reach. And a terrible cry of fear ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... total of about 110,000 men. After several days' manoeuvring a general battle took place near Plataea. The light-armed undisciplined Persians, whose bodies were unprotected by armour, maintained a very unequal combat against the serried ranks, the long spears, and the mailed bodies of the Spartan phalanx. Mardonius, at the head of his body-guard of 1000 picked men, and conspicuous by his white charger, was among the foremost in the fight, till struck down by the hand of a Spartan. The fall of their general was the signal for flight to the Persians, already wearied and ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... left for America, where she procured an engagement in New York City, and, so far as London was concerned, she might have found rest and retiredness in the waters of Lethe. Of her reception in the old New York Theater; the verdict of the phalanx of critics assembled in the Shakespeare box which, according to tradition, held more than two hundred souls; the gossip over confections or tea in the coffee room of the theater—it is unnecessary to dwell upon. But had not the player become a voluntary exile; had ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... was, Alike they acted, Those chieftains twain In wedge-like phalanx. Chased were the East Wends Into a corner narrow, Not easy for the LaesirsSec. Was the law ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... take his place. Up and up they came till there was a whole phalanx of enemy faces, eyes flashing, white teeth gleaming in horrid snarls ... shot after shot rang out, but by marvellous luck none touched the defenders, who on their side emptied their revolvers as fast as Iris' fingers ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... mission, then, dear Cesar," said the Vicomte des Barres, a delicate, sarcastic-looking man of middle age. "March on Paris with your phalanx of Amazons." ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price



Words linked to "Phalanx" :   digit, os, armed forces, bone, war machine, crowd, military, armed services, force, military machine, phalangeal, military group, military unit, dactyl, military force



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com