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Scourge   /skərdʒ/   Listen
Scourge

verb
(past & past part. scourged; pres. part. scourging)
1.
Punish severely; excoriate.
2.
Whip.  Synonym: flagellate.
3.
Cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly.  Synonyms: desolate, devastate, lay waste to, ravage, waste.



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"Scourge" Quotes from Famous Books



... were created for a scourge and a snare to fallen man; for while we are compelled to spend much of our time in destroying thorns and thistles from our premises, they are continually tempting the weaker part of our race to spend their strength and time upon that, which at best, can yield no profit." But ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower

... but homeless, living in hotels and boarding-houses, is awfully handicapped. Children are only little animals, and travel is their bane and scourge. They belong on the ground, among the leaves and flowers and tall grass—in the trees or digging in sand piles. Hotel hallways, table-d'hote dinners and the clash of travel, are all terrible ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... unwilling to get up when I heard the doctor's voice, till I remembered that we were to make war on the alligators. The feeling of utter detestation with which those creatures are regarded is not surprising, when it is recollected what a scourge they are to the people inhabiting the banks of the rivers and lakes of that part of the country. I was soon on foot; and having loaded my gun with ball, I accompanied the doctor to a little creek which ran at no great distance ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... alone, of all in the establishment, while the sick lay scattered through the town on uncounted thousands of beds, and the month of October passed by, bringing death to eleven hundred more, escaped untouched of the scourge. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... Capitol? S. Chiara's shrine was hung round with her relics; and among these the heart extracted from her body was suspended. Upon it, apparently wrought into the very substance of the mummied flesh, were impressed a figure of the crucified Christ, the scourge, and the five stigmata. The guardian's faith in this miraculous witness to her sainthood, the gentle piety of the men and women who knelt before it, checked all expressions of incredulity. We abandoned ourselves to the genius of the place; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... probable that about 5 per cent. of these animals sold in Dublin are more or less affected by this malady. There are two forms of pleuro-pneumonia—the sporadic, or indigenous, and the foreign, or contagious. It is the latter form which has become the scourge of the ox tribe in this country, though unknown here until the year 1841, when it appeared as an epizooetic, and carried ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... Zingis Khan, who, on possessing himself of the three capitals of the one country, coolly butchered four millions three hundred and forty-seven thousand persons, their inhabitants; and of that Attila, "the scourge of God," who used to say, more especially in reference to the other country, that "whenever his horse-hoofs had once trod, the grass never afterwards grew," and before whose ravages the human race seemed melting away. The terms in which the great ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... means of vengeance, therefore, possessed by the vindictive man whose follies and vices had been the means of creating this perpetual scourge to his pride, was withholding from him the purchase of the remaining lands indispensable to the completion of his estate, more especially as regarded the water-courses, which, at Lexley Park, were commanded by the sluices of the higher grounds of the Hall; and mighty was the oath sworn by Sir ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the problem of useful children's dress. Who stood up at that time, as he did, for the fallen girl, and for the prostitute compelled by necessity? Who saw so clearly the social danger of marriages of persons infected with the new scourge of Europe, so violently abhorred by Erasmus? He would wish that such a marriage should at once be declared null and void by the Pope. Erasmus does not hold with the easy social theory, still quite current in the literature of his time, which casts upon ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... misfortune to be ruled by such an absolute and infatuated monarch as was Charles XII. He did nothing for the civilization of his subjects, or to ameliorate the evils he caused. He was, like Alaric or Attila, a scourge of the Almighty, sent on earth for some mysterious purpose, to desolate and to destroy. But he died unlamented and unhonored. No great warrior in modern times has received so little sympathy from ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... young monk, - the latter (by which I mean a monk of any kind) being a rare sight to-day in France. This young man, indeed, was mitigatedly monastic. He had a big brown frock and cowl, but he had also a shirt and a pair of shoes; he had, instead of a hempen scourge round his waist, a stout leather thong, and he carried with him a very profane little valise. He also read, from beginning to end, the "Figaro" which the old priest, who had done the same, presented to him; and he looked altogether as if, had he not been a monk, he would have made a distinguished ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, fell into the hands of Henry Martyn. Twenty years earlier it had opened the eyes of William Wilberforce and led him to repentance. Doddridge's powerful sentences fell upon the proud soul of Henry Martyn like the lashes of a scourge. He resented them; he writhed under their condemnation; but they revealed to him the desperate need of his heart, and he could not shake from him the alarm which ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... the middle of the eighteenth century. He has gone further; he has invoked the spirit of Beaumarchais to animate his people and his incidents. The one thing which he could not do, or did not do, was to supply the satirical scourge which justified the Figaro comedies of his great French prototype and which, while it made their acceptance tardy, because of royal and courtly opposition, made their popular triumph the more emphatic. "Le Nozze di Figaro" gave us more than one figure and more than one scene in ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... arm'd rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom, To drench the Capitol, but that they would Have one man but a man? And that is it Hath made me rig my navy; at whose burden The anger'd ocean foams; with which I meant To scourge the ingratitude that despiteful Rome Cast ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... days of health officers and vaccination, people can have no idea of the terrors of a smallpox scourge at the beginning of this century. The habitant is as indifferent to smallpox as to measles, and accepts both as dispensations of Providence by exposing his children to the contagion as early as possible; but I was not so minded, and hurried down the gorge as fast ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... my duty to call the attention of Congress to the Bank of the United States. Created for the convenience of the Government, that institution has become the scourge of the people. Its interference to postpone the payment of a portion of the national debt that it might retain the public money appropriated for that purpose to strengthen it in a political contest, the extraordinary extension and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of the resurrection. The murderers of the Savior were there. What do the priests do next? They had bribed the soldiers to tell a lie which was so base that it only needed to be told in order to be known as a lie. Next, they arrest the apostles; they beat them, they scourge them, and bid them shut their mouths, and insist that they shall say no more about this matter. They did not seem to regard them as liars and impostors, else they would doubtless have charged them ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various

... Hotel was a large, airy apartment, rustling with artistically perforated and slashed pink paper that hung everywhere, at this season of the year, to lend festal effect as well as to palliate the scourge of flies. There were six or seven large tables, all vacant except that at which Columbus Landis, the landlord, sat with his guests, while his wife and children ate in the kitchen by their own preference. Transient trade was light in Plattville; nobody ever came there, except occasional commercial ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... ye come to me I will you comfort, as well as I can, And a precious jewel I will give thee, Called penance, voider of adversity; Therewith shall your body chastised be, With abstinence, and perseverance in God's service. Here shall you receive that scourge of me Which is penance strong, that ye must endure, To remember thy Saviour was scourged for thee With sharp scourges, and suffered it patiently. So must thou, or thou scape that painful pilgrimage: Knowledge, keep him in this voyage, And by that time Good Deeds will be with thee; ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... softly, In grief for a nation's brave, Who died 'neath the scourge of treason And rest in ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... combatants were so exasperated that the slain rose during the night and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above, borne on a shield, is Attila, with a scourge in his hand; opposite him Theodoric, King of the Visigoths. The foreground is a battle-field, strewn with corpses, which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up and rallying, while among them wander ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... tout fini!" There was something of fatality in the affair. The instinct was terrible; a demoniacal possession. It was for women a veritable curse, a disease. M. Jouffroy had pronounced views on the subject. He regarded the maternal instinct as the scourge of genius. It was, for women, the devil's truncheon, his rod of empire. This "reproductive rage" held them—in spite of all their fine intuitions and astonishing ability—after all on the animal plane; cut them off from the little band of those who could break ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... Danes arrive and find nought but children and aged men even their savage breasts may be moved to pity; but if not, God's will be done. The younger brethren will seek refuge in the fens, and will carry with them the sacred relics of the monastery. The most holy body of St. Guthlac with his scourge and psalmistry, together with the most valuable jewels and muniments, the charters of the foundation of the abbey, given by King Ethelbald, and the confirmation thereof by other kings, with some of the most precious gifts ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... are afflicted with the terrible scourge of leprosy, which is so prevalent that at least a tenth part of the population are infested with the disease. The cause of this dreadful malady must be sought in the insalubrity of the climate, the miasma from the marshes, which are overflowed with ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... Spedding (of course) used to deny that R. deserved his ill Reputation: but I never heard any one else deny it. All his little malignities, unless the epigram on Ward be his, are dead along with his little sentimentalities; while Byron's Scourge hangs over his Memory. The only one who, so far as I have seen, has given any idea of his little cavilling style, is Mrs. Trench in her Letters; her excellent Letters, so far as I can see and judge, next best to Walpole and Cowper in our ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... be providential, quite as much as the things which puff it up? As Luther well expressed it, "We say to our Lord, that if he will have his church, he must keep it, for we cannot. And if we could, we should be the proudest asses under heaven." As Attila was the scourge of God to the Roman world, when God needed to clear that empire out of the way, as he built his new Christendom, so may not doubt be the scourge of God to the easy-going, sleepy, too credulous piety of to-day, which gulps down all the husks of faith so ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... have found my sin's sharp scourge in thee, For loving thee, as one should love but Heaven; Therefore, oh, thou beloved! I blame not thee, But by my anguish hope to ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... reached a land charged with the seeds of yellow fever, varied in the direction of woolliness of hair and darkness of skin. Then, if it be true that these physical characters are accompanied by comparative or absolute exemptions from that scourge, the inevitable tendency would be to the preservation and multiplication of the darker and woollier families, and the elimination of the whiter and smoother-haired. In fact, by the operation of causes precisely similar to those which, in the famous ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... grasshoppers are a real scourge in alfalfa fields. Because of the shade provided by the ground and the influence which this exerts in softening it, they are encouraged to deposit their eggs and remain so as to prove a source of trouble the following year. It has been found that through ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... for her face he could not tell what to say of it, as it was concealed under the sheet. "From this little intrigue," adds Brantome, "sprang that brave and valiant bastard of Orleans, Count Dunois, the pillar of France, and the scourge of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... everything regarding the treatment and the limitation of cholera, then for the first time making its appearance in Western Europe with frightful virulence. Believing himself likely to continue the practice of medicine for some years at least, he thought his observations upon this scourge would be of great importance to him. His letters of this date to his father are full of the subject, and of his own efforts to ascertain the best means of prevention and defense. The following answer to an appeal from his mother ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... Mohammedan fanaticism in Bokhara brought the Ameer of that town into collision with the Russians, who thereupon succeeded in taking Samarcand. The capital of the empire of Tamerlane, "the scourge of Asia," now sank to the level of an outpost of Russian power, and ultimately to that of a mart for cotton. The Khan of Bokhara fell into a position of complete subservience, and ceded to the conquerors the whole of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... action, could bring heaven down to man. To weary and restless spirits He taught the great truth, that happiness consists in making others happy. No cloister for idle genuflections and bead counting, no hair-cloth for the loins nor scourge for the limbs, but works of love and usefulness under the cheerful sunshine, making the waste places of humanity glad and causing the heart's desert to blossom. Why, then, should we go searching after ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... C. A. Manhes" (Naples, 1846)—one of a considerable number of pro-Bourbon books that cropped up about this time. One is apt to have quite a wrong impression of Manhes, that inexorable but incorruptible scourge of evildoers. One pictures him a grey-haired veteran, scarred and gloomy; and learns, on the contrary, that he was only thirty-two years old at this time, gracious in manner and of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... rugged face Betrays no spirit of repose; The sullen warrior sole we trace, The marble man of many woes. Such was his mien when first arose The thought of that strange tale divine, When hell he peopled with his foes, The scourge of many a ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... been on board the frigate upward of a year, and remained unscourged; the ship was homeward-bound, and in a few weeks, at most, I would be a free man. And now, after making a hermit of myself in some things, in order to avoid the possibility of the scourge, here it was hanging over me for a thing utterly unforeseen, for a crime of which I was as utterly innocent. But all that was as naught. I saw that my case was hopeless; my solemn disclaimer was thrown ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the child! Another fiery scourge, wielded by the Hand Unseen, bit deep into his shrinking conscience, into his writhing soul. His own act had brought this about. Be a cur, and accuse Destiny, blame Fate, lay the onus upon God, as so many defaulters do—he could not. He lay looking his deed in the foul face until the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... its slayers. Your son and M. Sandwith, they, and they alone, have reaped the glory which every sportsman in Burgundy has been so long striving to attain; they alone in the forest, miles away from the hunt, pursued and slew this scourge of ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... thrash, batter, conquer, pommel, strike, vanquish, belabor, cudgel, pound, surpass, whip, bruise, defeat, scourge, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... so many things now. He remembered the shipment of arms with which, he had assured Bill, he believed Murray intended to wipe out the Bell River scourge. And he remembered Bill's doubtful acceptance of it. Now he knew from bitter experience the meaning of that shipment. It was the murder of himself. The massacre of his "outfit." An added crime to leave Murray free to wallow in his gold lust. Free to possess himself ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... some circumstances, we may hope that, now Lord Beresford has come out to take command of the Portuguese army, and is going to have a certain number of British officers to train and command them, they will be of some utility, instead of being simply a scourge to the country and a constant drain ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... about the expense," she smiled. "I have money—'oodles of it,' as we used to say in school—millions, if I need them! And I'm going to fight this Brute MacNair until I drive him out of the North! And you? Will you help me to rid the country of this scourge and free the people from his tyranny? Together we could work wonders. For your heart is with ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... almost cut it, and perspiring freely, one can imagine our condition. Bathing as frequently as opportunity offered, yet our condition was almost unendurable. For with the accumulation of dirt upon our body, there was added the ever-present scourge of the army, body lice. These vermin, called by the boys "graybacks," were nearly the size of a grain of wheat, and derived their name from their bluish-gray color. They seemed to infest the ground wherever there had been a bivouac of the rebels, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... Saltus has treated at greater length and with greater effect elsewhere. He makes a whimsical plea for a modern revival of the Court of Love and in "Morality in Fiction" he derides that Puritanism in American letters whose dark scourge H. L. Mencken still pursues with a cat-o'-nine-tails and a hand grenade. He gives us a fanciful set of rules for a novelist which, happily, he has ignored in his own fictions. The most interesting, personal, and charming chapter, although palpably derived from "The Philosophy of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... the demands of Eternal Justice must be fulfilled: in earthly instruments, concerned with fulfilling them, there may be all degrees of demerit and also of merit,—from that of a world-ruffian Attila the Scourge of God, conscious of his own ferocities and cupidities alone, to that of a heroic Cromwell, sacredly aware that he is, at his soul's peril, doing God's Judgments on the enemies of God, in Tredah and other severe scenes. If the Laws and Judgments are verily those of God, there can be no ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Another scourge of the traveller in the Cordillera, is the disease called the Surumpe. It is a violent inflammation of the eyes, caused by the sudden reflection of the bright rays of the sun on the snow. By the rarefied air and the cutting wind, the eyes, being kept in a constant state ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... a malicious laugh, and stamping his feet, he would issue orders that some one was to be castigated,—probably his brothers.—"Thrash!"— he yelled hoarsely, choking and coughing with laughter,—"scourge, spare not, thrash, thrash, thrash the monsters my malefactors! That's right! That's right!" Just before he died he greatly amazed and frightened Alexyei Sergyeitch. He entered the latter's room all pale and quiet, and inclining his body in obeisance to the girdle, he first returned thanks ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... victory; the beaten general complained of the breach of etiquette; so Wu-Pei-Fu went back to the position he held before the battle, and fought all over again on a fine day. (It should be said that battles in China are seldom bloody.) In such a country, militarism is not the scourge it is with us; and the difference is due ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... none should receive more attention than typhoid fever, because it is a great scourge and yet it can be prevented by simple means. If we understand that typhoid is a dirt disease, that it comes only from dirt, we shall feel it a disgrace to have an epidemic of typhoid, though one of the saddest features about it is that we must suffer for the sins of others. The ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... with the dead eyes and the dead heart seemed to be destined to be the scourge of the Idealists, quite against her will, for scarcely had one unfolded his wings and flown away from her, than another fell out of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... Pestilence was frequent throughout the Middle Ages, but this attack was not only vastly more destructive and general than any which had preceded it, but the disease when once introduced became a frequent scourge in subsequent times, especially during the remainder of the fourteenth century. In 1361, 1368, and 1396 attacks are noticed as occurring more or less widely through the country, but none were so extensive as ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... that two years ago these four hundred children were slaves, and still more to remember that in our own country, boasting its republicanism and Christian institutions, there are thousands of just such children under the yoke and scourge, in utter heathenism, the victims of tyrannic law or of more tyrannic public opinion—caused the heart to swell with emotions unutterable. There were as many intelligent countenances, and as much activity and sprightliness, as we ever saw among an equal number of children ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... of supreme renown Judge ill to scourge the Refuse of the Town. How'ere their Casuists hope to turn the scale, These men must smart, or scandal will prevail. By these, the weaker Sex still suffer most: And such are prais'd who rose at Honour's cost: The Learn'd they wound, the Virtuous, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... during the retreat from Orleans that a Christian is reported to have approached the Hunnish king, and said to him, "Thou art the Scourge of God for the chastisement of Christians." Attila instantly assumed this new title of terror, which thenceforth became the appellation by which he was most widely ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... which let us read with him. "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak; for it is not ye ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... they were, with fresh insolence, demanding "land," and during the centuries which followed, the Gallic name acquired no fresh lustre in Greece. Half-naked, gross, ferocious, and ignorant, sometimes allies, but always a scourge, they finally crossed the Hellespont (B.C. 278), and turned their attention to Asia Minor. And there, at last, we find them settled in a province called Gallicia, where they lived without amalgamating with the people about them, and four hundred years after Christ were speaking ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... sphinx-like face looks at us: our lips answer, but far from the region of elemental being we inhabit, they syllable in shadowy sound, out of old usage, the response, speaking of a love and a hope which we know have vanished from us for evermore. So hour by hour the scourge of the infinite drives us out of every nook and corner of life we find pleasant. And this always takes place when all is fashioned to our liking: then into our dream strides the wielder of the lightning: ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... unerring prophet spoke: "Not for neglected hecatombs or pray'rs, But for his priest, whom Agamemnon scorn'd, Nor took his ransom, nor his child restor'd; On his account the Far-destroyer sends This scourge of pestilence, and yet will send; Nor shall we cease his heavy hand to feel, Till to her sire we give the bright-ey'd girl, Unbought, unransom'd, and to Chrysa's shore A solemn hecatomb despatch; this done, The God, ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... shall discover a reliable prophylactic against scarlatina, is probably not yet born. The patients die in the same proportion as they did two hundred and fifty years ago, and the physicians who have any success at all in the treatment of the terrible scourge, are those who treat for symptoms and leave ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde

... fear the fever," he explained. "What strangers regard as such certain death is to us scarce more than the agues of a North Carolina flat. 'Yellow Jack' is a terrible scourge, indeed, to the lower classes, and to those not acclimatized. The heavy deposits of vegetable drift from the inundations leave the whole country for miles coated four or five inches deep in creamy ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... the 16th of July we arrived at Malta, where we were detained by contrary gales until the 21st, when we left it, and arrived in sight of Tripoli the 25th, and were joined by the Syren, Argus, Vixen and Scourge. Our squadron now consisted of the Constitution, three brigs, three schooners, two bombs, and six gun-boats, our whole number of men one thousand and sixty. I proceeded to make the necessary arrangements for an ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... priest and prophet stands. The martyr's pain Is not alone from scourge and cell and chain; Sharper the pang when, shouting in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... died the Duchesse de Gesvres, separated from a husband who had been the scourge of his family, and had dissipated millions of her fortune. She was a sort of witch, tall and lean, who walked like an ostrich. She sometimes came to Court, with the odd look and famished expression to which her husband ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... answer," exclaimed the Captain, with a Tartar oath. "Come, take off his striped dressing-gown, his fool's garment, and scourge him well." ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... threatened persons escaped, perhaps owing to the connivance of Fouche; some were sent to the Isle of Oleron; but the others were forthwith despatched to the miseries of captivity in the tropics. Among these were personages so diverse as Rossignol, once the scourge of France with his force of Parisian cut-throats, and Destrem, whose crime was his vehement upbraiding of Bonaparte at St. Cloud. After this measure had taken effect, it was discovered by judicial inquiry that the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... comparative deforestation would make agriculture easily possible where today it is out of the question. At the same time the relatively dry climate and the clearing away of the vegetation would to a large degree eliminate the malarial fevers and other diseases which are now such a terrible scourge in wet tropical countries. Then, too, the storms which at the present time give such variability to the climate of the United States would follow more southerly courses. In its stimulating qualities ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... can quite replace. As a matter of fact, the natural man's attitude to these things does not differ much from the attitude of the great artists. It is only that a certain lust for creation, and a certain demonic curiosity, scourge these latter on to something ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... pass an hour in his company, for everyone feared the rough and brutal frankness of his speech. The gregarious and friendly notary used to wince when he heard his adopted son spoken of as "the hard Ueberhell," or "the sinner's scourge," and he tried his best to make him more human, and to draw him within ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... perilous or more decisive hour, or a period when it drew nearer its ruin; and the fact that we exist to-day would appear to be due to the unexpected expedient which saved the race at the moment when the scourge that fed on man's very reason, on all that was best and most irresistible in his instinct of justice and injustice, was actually on the point of destroying the heroic equilibrium between the desire to live and ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... higher power than Abraham Lincoln, a power that rules and governs the universe of men, decreed the war as a necessary and unavoidable event, to prepare the way for a new south and a new north, and a more perfect Union. The war did come as a scourge and a resurrection. Grant was the commander of the Union armies, and at the close of the war more than what we had hoped for at the beginning was accomplished. When the war commenced no man among those in public life contemplated or expected the speedy abolition of slavery ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow, Wind whose might in fight was England's on her mightiest warrior day, South-west wind, whose breath for her was life, and fire to scourge her foe, Steel to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way, Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky, Rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms the shore, We receive, acclaim, salute thee, we who live and dream and ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... still have overwhelmed us, had our country continued to the present times, through some cruel policy, to be the mart for slaves to the more civilized nations of the world;—God forbid, that we should any longer subject Africa to the same dreadful scourge, and exclude the sight of knowledge from her coasts, which had reached every other quarter ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... Such a scourge did this tribe become that the Governor of Chihuahua had a law passed through the Legislature, which put a certain price upon the head of every Apache. But this law had soon to be repealed, as the Mexicans, eager ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... sentence were immediately instituted. A scourge was prepared by wiring nine heavy leather thongs to a whip-handle, the platform was cleared, and a call was issued for a man to administer the punishment. Some delay ensued at this point, but finally a burly fellow volunteered, climbed to the stage, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... the 7th of August the wind came up to blow, and the rising waves soon demonstrated the uselessness of schooners for purposes of war. At early dawn a fierce gust of wind caused the schooners "Hamilton" and "Scourge" to careen far to leeward. Their heavy guns broke loose; then, crashing down to the submerged beams of the schooners, pulled them still farther over; and, the water rushing in at their hatches, they foundered, carrying with them to the bottom all their officers, and all ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... to flog high, he did—to flog low, he did—to flog in the middle, he did,—high, low, down the middle, and up again, but all in vain; the patient continued his complaints with the most provoking pertinacity, until the drummer, exhausted and angry, flung down his scourge, exclaiming, "The devil burn you, there's no pleasing you, flog where one will!" Thus it is, you have flogged the Catholic high, low, here, there, and every where, and then you wonder he is not pleased. It is true that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... and so I went on from enchantment to enchantment, and fell out of the frying-pan into the fire. If I stood erect, and no longer groveled, if I was not any more a beast, I became like the devils which possessed them. So did I scourge and lash the object of my hatred with feelings of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Sea, and the civilized people of southeastern Europe were unable to cope with the savage hordes. In the vanguard were the Goths, who made an effort to settle, in Scythia, but they were forced to move on when Attila, who is known as the Scourge of God, swooped down upon them with his Huns. He was followed by a host of Finns, Bulgarians, Magyars, and Slavs who, however, left his wake, scattered and settled down. Soon after the Slavs became known to Greek authors and were described ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... precisely similar epidemic broke out at the settlement at Magomero, in which fifty-four of the slaves liberated by Dr. Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie died. This disease is by far the most fatal scourge the natives suffer from, not even excepting small-pox. It is common throughout Tropical Africa. We believe that some important facts have recently been brought to light regarding it, and we can only trust sincerely ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... not warranted by custom, nor by the terms of our alliance; and the springs, O Pausanias, are bounteous enough to provide for all. I proceed. You have formally sentenced citizens and soldiers to the scourge. Nay, this very day you have extended the sentence to one in actual command amongst the Chians. Is it ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... thee thou liest, false knave!" cried the abbot, striking him on the hand with his scourge. "Quit thy hold, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... that. The artist-master plies his pupil. The brave general or discoverer inspires and stimulates his men by multiform motives. The charioteer holds the reins, guides his steeds, restrains or lifts the scourge. Similarly man holds the reins of influence over man, and is himself in turn guided. So friend shapes and molds friend. This is what gives its meaning to conversation, oratory, journalism, reforms. Each man stands at ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... injure &c. (damage) 659; pain &c. 830. wrong, aggrieve, oppress, persecute; trample upon, tread upon, bear hard upon, put upon; overburden; weigh down, weigh heavy on; victimize; run down; molest &c. 830. maltreat, abuse; ill-use, ill-treat; buffet, bruise, scratch, maul; smite &c. (scourge) 972; do violence, do harm, do a mischief; stab, pierce, outrage. do mischief, make mischief; bring into trouble. destroy &c. 162. Adj. hurtful, harmful, scathful[obs3], baneful, baleful; injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... south-east, Goergei took post on the Upper Danube, to meet the powerful force which the Emperor of Austria had placed under the orders of General Haynau, a soldier whose mingled energy and ferocity in Italy had marked him out as a fitting scourge for the Hungarians, and had won for him supreme civil as well as military powers. Goergei naturally believed that the first object of the Austrian commander would be to effect a junction with the Russians, who, under Paskiewitsch, the conqueror of Kars in 1829, were now crossing the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... pressure of the world's sin, which made Him cry: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" How greatly He must have loved us! It was love, and only love, that kept Him standing at the bar of Pilate, bending beneath the scourge of the soldiers, hanging in apparent helplessness on the cross. Not the iron hand of relentless fate; not the overpowering numbers or closely-woven plots of His foes; not the nails that pierced His quivering flesh. No, it was none of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... almost on one another's heels, so hot was the pace. Not only did the travelers wish to get to the Sierras before the snows blocked the passes, not only were they eager to enter the gold mines, but they were pursued by the specter of cholera in the concentration camps along the Mississippi Valley. This scourge devastated these gatherings. It followed the men across the plains like some deadly wild beast, and was shaken off only when the high clear climate of desert ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... receive a scourge of maledictions or a blow the culprit waited. But nothing came—neither vindictives nor chastisement. He ventured to raise his head and confront ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray —that this mighty scourge of War may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... conversation turned on medicines, or the cause and effects of diseases. Cholera, for instance, very much affected the land at certain seasons, creating much mortality, and vanishing again as mysteriously as it came. What brought this scourge? and what would cure it? Supposing a man had a headache, what should he take for it? or a leg ache, or a stomach-ache, or itch; in fact, going the rounds of every disease he knew, until, exhausting the ordinary ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... manufacture all over many of the counties. Grattan and some of his friends made many efforts in the Irish House of Commons to induce the Government to devise some means for the pacification of Ireland other than Coercion Acts, the scourge, the bullet, and the gallows. Finding their efforts wholly in vain, Grattan, Arthur O'Connor, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his brother, and many other men of high character and position withdrew from the Dublin Parliament altogether, and left ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... centuries, and reappeared in the seventeenth, had been identified with a disease which yields to enlightened treatment, and its ancient virulence was attributed to ignorance of hygiene, and the filthy habits of a former age. Another fatal and disfiguring scourge had to a great extent been checked by the discovery of vaccination. From Sangrado to Sydenham, from Paracelsus to Jenner, the healing art had indeed taken a long stride. The Faculty might be excused had it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... outraged in me and with me. We must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation which is one of the most passionate forms of love. We must make great efforts in behalf of brotherhood to repair the ravages of hate. We must put an end to the scourge, wipe out infamy with scorn, and inaugurate by faith the resurrection of ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... from his lone abode, Embassador of Heaven, the Prophet trod; 435 Wrench'd the red Scourge from proud Oppression's hands, And broke, curst ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... folding his arms, and drawing up his elegant figure to its full height, he fixed his eagle eye upon the count, with a glance full of bitter hatred and mortal defiance. And afterwards, when submitting to the ignominious punishment, with his flesh lacerated by the scourge, no groan escaped his lips that might reach the listening ear of Alvina. He bore it ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... His work. Himself I hardly knew at all; And yet—I know him now! I have heard him now And, since he pledged me in so rare a cup, I'll lift and drink to him, though lightnings fall From envious gods to scourge me. I will lift This cup in darkness to the soul that reigns In light on Helicon. Who knows how near? For I have thought, sometimes, when I have tried To work his will, the hand that moved my pen Was mine, and yet—not mine. The bodily ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... faith in the coming of universal peace and brotherhood, the same defense of the poor and the oppressed, the same scathing rebuke of the oppressor, that we find in Judaism. There is the same relentless scourge of the despoilers, of those who devour widows houses. And again I say that Socialism is not only not opposed to the great social ideals of Christianity, but it is the only means whereby they may be realized. And the same thing is true of the teachings of Confucius; ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... own inflexible spirit and the loyalty of his Tonty in the heart of the wilderness. Still undismayed, he turns his hand to the giant task again, only to find when he reaches the Illinois a dread foreboding of the crowning disaster. The Iroquois, the scourge of the east, had swept down the valley of the Illinois like hyenas of the prairies, leaving total desolation in their path. After a vain, anxious search for Tonty among the ruins and the dead, he makes his way back, finding at last at the junction of the two rivers ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... accompaniment of good manners; and as gallantry had its finished fops, so the duel had its refined rufflers. In the comparatively short period of a few years, nine hundred gentlemen perished in these combats. To stop this scourge, Richelieu issued a royal edict, which punished death by death, and sent the offenders from the Place Royale to the Place de Greve. On this head Richelieu showed himself inflexible, and the examples of Montmorency-Bouteville, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... scourge of Rome, marched into Italy, and in A.D. 408 besieged the capital. Pestilence and famine soon raged within the walls of Rome, until the Senate purchased a respite from their calamities by an enormous ransom. Honorius refused to confirm the treaty, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... terrible war the groundwork for appealing to the working classes and the people of all other European countries to join in protesting against war altogether, [prolonged cheers,] as the shame of Christendom, and direst curse and scourge of the human race. Let the will of the people sweep away war, which cannot he waged without them. ['Hear!'] Away with enormous standing armies, ['Hear!'] the nurseries and instruments of war,—nurseries, too, of vice, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner

... to disarm the rage of these mortal scourges,—their home is in the mind, which they corrupt,—they gnaw the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge?" ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... wretchedness; for these he considered as the indispensable stimuli to progress. Even war, he used to say, is sometimes necessary to the welfare of nations, as sickness and sorrow plainly are to that of individuals; although, to his moral sense, the human authors of this scourge were no more admirable than the devisers of any private calamity. Improvements in knowledge he regarded as the only elements of real progress; and these he looked upon as true germinal principles, bound up organically ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... Jerusalem, and in the very temple, and testified the resurrection of Christ, even before those who had murdered him. What now do the chief priests do? They seize upon the apostles, they threaten them, they beat them,. they scourge them, and all to stop their mouths, insisting that they should say no more of the matter. But why did they not, when they had the disciples in their power, charge them directly with their notorious cheat in stealing the body, and expose them to the people as imposters? This had been much more to ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock

... purling brook. Each sex and genus must be considered by itself, for each possesses its peculiar virtues and inherent vices. In all nature God intended the male to seek, the female to be sought. These he drives with passion's fiery scourge, those he gently leads by maternal longings, and thus is the Law of Life fulfilled,—the living tide runs ever on from age to age, while divine Modesty preserves her name and habitation in the earth. A man's crown of glory is his courage, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... snatching his hideous banquet like a beast of prey, too! Yes, through the tatters of his mean and ragged garb I could see the marks of the seventies, cruel and foolish, with which men in that time tried to tame the might of madness. The scourge—its marks were there; and the scars of the hard iron fetters, and many a cicatrice and welt, that told a dismal tale of hard usage. But now he was loose, free to play the brute—the baited, tortured brute that they had made him—now without ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... the harbour, I was ordered on board the Scourge. This vessel was English-built, and had been captured before the war, and condemned, for violating the revenue laws, under the name of the Lord Nelson, by the Oneida 16, Lt. Com. Woolsey—the only cruiser we then had on the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Mr. Cawkins told them that the plague had broken out in the settlement on Honey Creek, where the quarterly meeting was to be held, and that the people had been rapidly "dyin' off." Samson knew from this that the smallpox—a dreaded and terrible scourge of pioneer days had ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... enrich the land, which is growing poor. Now and then, substantial brick cottages shone out amidst the gray and yellow of the thatched log huts in the hamlets. We heard of one landed proprietor who encouraged his peasant neighbors to avoid the scourge of frequent conflagrations by building with brick, and he offered a prize to every individual who should comply with the conditions. The prize consisted of a horse from the proprietor's stables, and of the proprietor's presence, in full uniform and all his orders, at the house-warming. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of this day are those who have come of an ancestry of which it would not be courteous to speak in ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... saying, "To ransom these that city would yield itself into your hands." Camillus, however, not only rejected this offer, but causing the schoolmaster to be stripped and his hands tied behind him, gave each of the boys a scourge, and bade them lead the fellow back to the town scourging him as they went. When the citizens of Falerii heard of this, so much were they pleased with the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they resolved to surrender their town to him ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli



Words linked to "Scourge" :   affliction, lash, mortal, devastate, trounce, lather, soul, individual, strap, ruin, someone, slash, destroy, somebody, terror, punish, flog, penalise, whip, person, penalize, welt



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