Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Untrained   /əntrˈeɪnd/   Listen
Untrained

adjective
1.
Not disciplined or conditioned or made adept by training.  "Untrained troops" , "Young minds untrained in the habit of concentration"






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





"Untrained" Quotes from Famous Books



... don't suppose that more than three of us had ever read or even heard of the selection which Mrs. Jameson read. It was, to my way of thinking, one of the most difficult of them all to be understood by an untrained mind, but we listened politely, and with a semblance, ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... seek by some means or other to check the large number of our boys and girls who, after leaving the Primary School, drift year by year, either through the ignorance or the cupidity or the poverty of their parents, into the ranks of untrained labour, and who in the course of two or three years go to swell the ranks of the unskilled, casual workers, and become in many cases, in the course of time, the unemployed and the unemployable. In the second place, we must endeavour to secure ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... smaller one of logs, part of which remained. It was much the same with the barns and stables, for while they were stoutly built of framed timber or logs one end of most of them was lower than the rest, and in some cases consisted of poles and sods. Even to her untrained eyes all she saw suggested order, neatness, and efficiency. The whole was flanked and sheltered by a big birch bluff, in which trunks and branches showed up through a thin green haze of tiny opening leaves, though here and there uncovered twigs still cut in lace-like tracery against ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... before them should they be encountered. Stephen, as he rode among the ranks, observed the awkward movements of some of the men, the jaunty air of others, and the ragged appearance of the cavalry, many of the horses being large untrained colts, and began to feel less confident of success till he recollected that probably the militia regiments on the king's side were much in the same condition, and, moreover, that they were well-affected towards the Duke. The army marched slowly and leisurely along till they reached ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... my poor larder can furnish forth,' said he. 'Meanwhile, this odour may be offensive to your untrained nostrils, so we shall away with it. He threw a few grains of some balsamic resin into the brazier, which at once filled the chamber with a most agreeable perfume. He then laid a white cloth upon the table, and taking from a cupboard a dish of cold trout and a large meat pasty, he placed them ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... aware of Angle's fluttering farewells on the sidewalk. Josie was lingering on the doorstep in an agony of untrained coquetry. He lowered his tone for her benefit, thereby adding new weight to his bombardment of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... Territorials had never filled in pre-war days, and there were practically no organized reserves. The war establishment was roughly 315,000 of all ranks; but at the beginning of August the strength was only about 270,000, and this, be it remembered, included a proportion of totally untrained individuals, as well as sick, absentees, and so forth. To have mobilized these troops properly, the number of officers and men on the books at the start and before the order came ought to have ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... constantly. But no act of the intellect can be so done, unless it rests upon a corresponding habit. If the habit has not been acquired, the act will be done fitfully, at random, and against the grain, like the music of an untrained singer, or the composition of a schoolboy. Painful study is not happiness, nor is any studied act. Happiness is the play of a mind that is, if not master of, yet at home with its subject. As the intellect is man's best and noblest power, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed now subdued. Caesar had conquered as he explored, and the skill of his well-disciplined army triumphed everywhere over the untrained courage of the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... ready also," and that "in the hall of learning, when he is capable of entering there, the disciple will always find his Master." They are well aware also that only under such guidance can a man develop his latent powers in safety and with certainty, since they know how fatally easy it is for the untrained clairvoyant to deceive himself as to the meaning and value of what he sees, or even absolutely to distort his vision completely in bringing it ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... little whisking skip, the half-simper, the deferential bend that had in it at the same time something of insolence, all were there; the very "Yes, miss," and "Very good, sir," rose automatically and correctly to his untrained lips. Cinderella rising resplendent from her ash-strewn hearth was not more completely transformed than Heiny in his role of Henri. And with the transformation Miss Gussie Fink had been left ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... a wonderful war song which was first sung in Paris by the men of Marseilles, and thus has come to be called "La Marseillaise." It is the cry of a crushed and oppressed people against foreign tyrants who would again enslave them. It fired the French army with a wonderful enthusiasm, and untrained as they were, they beat back the invaders at the hard-fought field of Valmy ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... petticoats, you know. It sometimes seems as though the better-trained girls had all that side of them kept out of sight and polished into nothingness. Why are they taught to ignore the biggest power that's in them? Why, even that untrained little Miss Quincy is vivid with some sex-fascination that the more fortunate girls do ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... desirable to have a chance of writing what may be read after our day, and praiseworthy to aim at providing for Catholics who speak English a Catholic Literature then—I do not say that we must at once throw open every sort of book to the young, the weak, or the untrained,—I do not say that we may dispense with our ecclesiastical indexes and emendations, but—we must not fancy ourselves creating what is already created in spite of us, and which never could at a moment be created by means of us, and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... point safely and went on. The edge of the woods was gained, still without provoking hostile shots. It would have looked to one untrained in the art of war as though there were no enemy there. But this handful of soldiers knew better than to jump at any such conclusion. The Moros, like the Tagalos and Pampangos, are fond of getting an enemy at close quarters, and then leaping on him with cold steel. The Tagalo ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... marvel at? And you, Mistress Margery, have of a surety known here in the Forest whither a false scent may lead.—Junker Kunz! Whither he may have gone to seek his brother, who can tell? Not I, and much less Uhlwurm. And young folks flutter hither and thither like an untrained falcon; and if Master Kunz, who is so much graver and wiser than others of his green youth, finds no one to open his eyes, then he may—I do not say for certain, but peradventure, for why should I frighten you all?—he may, I say, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... driven off, and the two girls walked through Lafayette Square into Pennsylvania Avenue to get another. The wide streets were filled, as of old, with skurrying orderlies, groups of lounging officers, and lumbering army wagons. But even the untrained eyes of Olympia soon took account of the better discipline, the more businesslike celerity of the men on duty as well as the flying couriers. The White House was gay with hunting, and salutes from the distant forts were signalizing the news that had just come of Union ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... felt the necessity for working for mere pelf, and being untrained for any form of industry whatsoever, his father's threat of disowning him loomed a serious menace ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... run far to have been saved the awful interrogation of opportunity. Perhaps all that she knew just then, in her childlike bewilderment, was that the slanders of the persecution were wrong, and her untrained mind jumped to the conclusion that the God of truth must therefore be with Smith. Beyond this there was unnamed wonder at the unexplained influence that Smith held over her, and more curious thoughts, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... attractive features of the life of a spy is that he has, on occasion, to be a veritable Sherlock Holmes. He has to notice the smallest of details, points which would probably escape the untrained eye, and then he has to put this and that together and deduce a ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell

... sit your horse. You can stoop over while you are galloping at full speed and pick up a stone from the sand. You can twirl your lance round your head and throw it into the air, and catch it as it descends while going at full speed. You can do things that no untrained Englishman could do. So is it with me. I have learned boxing from the best masters in England, I have practised daily for two years and a half, and I have gained a quickness that could not be imitated by one who has not had such ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... even admirable work, that of Italy was almost barbaric. A MS. in the Vatican (4922) is shown as a proof of this. It is not an obscure sort of book that might have been written by a merely devout but untrained monk for his own use, but a work of importance executed for no less a personage than the celebrated Countess Matilda. The scribe was Donizo, a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Canossa. It is of the early or pr-Carolingian type, rather inclined to Byzantine, ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... form, he had a strong sense of colour. To good music, also, he was always susceptible; as a young man he used to sing a little, but his voice, though true, was never strong. In music, as in painting, he was untrained. Yet, as has been noted already, his illustrations to MacGillivray's Voyage of the Rattlesnake and his holiday sketches suggest that he might have gone far had he ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... It still retains, as we may see in Africa, its power of bringing to simple people a message of hope and consolation that no other religion offers. But this enchantment is produced by its spurious association with the personal charm of Jesus, and exists only for untrained minds. In the hands of a logical Frenchman like Calvin, pushing it to its utmost conclusions, and devising "institutes" for hardheaded adult Scots and literal Swiss, it becomes the most infernal of fatalisms; and the lives of civilized ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... was a fine tall youth, but clumsy and untrained in the use of his limbs, and he rode a large, powerful brown horse, which brooked no companionship, lashing out with its shaggy hoofs at any of its kind that approached it, more especially at poor, plump, mottled Poppet. The men said he had insisted on retaining ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the wise, good, and loving Father he is, if at every cry of any of his children he ran to take away the trouble, or free them from the hardness, or make all things easy and pleasant for them. Such a course would keep us always children, untrained, undisciplined. Only in burden-bearing and in enduring can we learn to be self-reliant and strong. Jesus himself was trained on the battlefield, and in life's actual experiences of trial. He learned obedience by ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... what a "deep" slave was. It may have the same meaning as outlandish Negro. The "outlandish Negroes" were those newly arrived Negroes who had just come in from any country outside of the United States of America, and were untrained. They ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... reading. To him the thing was treason, and it was his business to help stamp it out. For the powers that be cannot afford to tolerate the planting of such seeds of dissatisfaction amongst the untrained minds ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... twenty wounded in the skirmish at Kilmory, Kenric returned to his castle, and there completed his preparations to resist the invaders. He had drawn off his ships. Three of them were anchored in Dunagoil Bay, with many fishermen and husbandmen — untrained in battle — ready at hand in case Allan Redmain required them. A thousand men-at-arms were within the castle, while a band of the best archers were stationed on the battlements. Along the shoreline ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... all later learning, that he forms his habits of study and his attitude toward education, and that his life is given the bent for all its later development. Nothing can be more irrational, therefore, than to put the most untrained and inexperienced teachers in charge of the younger children. The fallacious notion that "anyone can teach little children" has borne tragic fruit in the stagnation and mediocrity of many lives whose powers ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts

... Louisbourg brought great exultation to the English colonies. It was a unique event, the first prolonged and successful siege that had as yet taken place north of Mexico. An odd chance of war had decreed that untrained soldiers should win a success so prodigious. New England, it is true, had incurred a heavy expenditure, and her men, having done so much, naturally imagined that they had done everything, and talked as if the siege ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... course an explanation was wanted. My assurance that there must be some mistake in the observation could not be accepted, because this erratic course of the heavenly body had been seen by all of them so plainly that no doubt could exist on the subject. The men who saw it were not of the ordinary untrained kind, but graduates of West Point, who, if any one, ought to be free from optical deceptions. I was confidently invited to look out that night and see for myself. We all ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... doctrinaires. Of those academic politicians and fanatic doctrinaires, Treitschke has probably been the most dangerous and the most illustrious representative. He will ever remain a memorable example of the power for evil which may be wielded by a noble and passionate temperament untrained in and unrestrained by the realities of political life, who sees the State from the altitude of the professional tripod. The war will have helped to break the spell of the political professor, but the spell will continue ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... state of their equipments and horses for meeting a body of dragoons so superbly mounted and appointed. Their horses, though of the hardy mountain breed, wanted weight and bulk to oppose any sort of resistance to the momentum of the heavy dragoon horses—and were utterly untrained to any combined movement. It was obviously on this consideration that Edward Nicholas, whose voice was now heard continually giving words of command, had drawn his party to this point where the broken ground neutralized in a great measure the advantages of the dragoons. He was now ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... sorrow he said: "She was the oldest kid I had. Now I shall have to go back to work again until the next one is able to take care of me." The man was only thirty-three and had hoped to retire from work at least during the winters. No foreman cared to have him in a factory, untrained and unintelligent as he was. It was much easier for his bright, English-speaking little girl to get a chance to paste labels on a box than for him to secure an opportunity to carry pig iron. The effect on the child was what no one concerned thought about, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... conversation, she gave him her own. He shook it, less forcibly than she had feared, and abruptly left her. For a moment she was piqued at this superior and somewhat brusque way of ignoring her request, but reflecting that it might be the awkwardness of an untrained man, she dismissed it from her mind. The voices of her friends in the already resounding passages also recalled her to the fact that she had been wandering about the house with a stranger, and she ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... he, "after all my experience, to be obliged to consult unprofessional persons. Forty years ago I should have been TOO WISE to do so. But since then I have often seen science baffled and untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your sex in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that we men miss with a microscope. Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... he said—"And yet, why not! You were my first friend!—you found me working in the fields, a peasant lad, untrained and sullen, burning up my soul with passionate thoughts which, but for you, might never have blossomed into action,—you rescued me—you made me all I am! So why should I not confess to you at once that there is a woman I love!—yes, love with all my soul, though I ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... their explorations they passed over sections that Harris would have accepted, but McCrae objected, finding always some flaw not apparent to the untrained eye. Once, where a little river had worn its way across the plain, they came on a sod shack, where a settler was already located. "Nice spot," said McCrae, "but too sandy. His farm'll blow away when he breaks ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... like yellow floss; from her childishness and ignorance of what children at ten years of age are usually taught, she was supposed by strangers to be no more than eight years of age; she was an imperious little lady, impetuous, untrained, self-reliant, and, from much intercourse with strangers, not at all shy, looking out upon the world with confiding eyes, and knowing nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of. Nurse had been her only teacher; she could barely read a chapter in the New ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... cannot be left alone a minute, is fatal to all teaching of honor and self-restraint and self-help. It will take time and determination and tact, but I know that it is possible to train the children—not the untrained city slum children perhaps, but the average town children—to behave like ladies and gentlemen left almost entirely to themselves through ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... quantities of wonderful natural voices, particularly among the young people of Switzerland and Italy, and the American voice is especially noted for its purity and the beauty of its tone in the high registers. But these naturally untrained voices soon break or fail if they are used much unless the singer supplements the natural, God-given vocal gifts with a conscious understanding of how the vocal ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... donkies,—guides of course. We set off at eight in the morning, and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, one could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted torrents—above and through the chestnut forests precipitous beyond what you would think possible for ascent ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... that page and on the one facing it. Malone recognized an outboard motor, a store-front, a suit of clothing hanging neatly on a hanger, a motor scooter, a shotgun and an IBM Electrotyper. Whoever had done the work was a reasonably accurate artist, if untrained; the various items were easily recognizable and Malone could see a ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... they, either on dry ground, or advancing a little way into the water, free in all their limbs, in places thoroughly known to them, could confidently throw their weapons and spur on their horses, which were accustomed to this kind of service. Dismayed by these circumstances and altogether untrained in this mode of battle, our men did not all exert the same vigour and eagerness which they had been wont to exert in ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... from one to another. They were all marked by something of the jerk and decision of their maker; they were all perfectly untrained onslaughts of the brush upon some half-realised idea suggested by hill or tree; and they were all in some ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... with a careless "Presently!" and called a young miner to him for a song. The lad sang and Green accompanied, and again Juliet marvelled at the amazing facility of his performance. He seemed to be able to adapt the instrument to every mood or tone. The boy's voice was rough and untrained, but it held a certain appeal and by sheer intuition—comradeship as it seemed—Green brought it home to the hearers. The man's unfailing responsiveness was a revelation to her. She believed it was ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... from no desire for enlightenment that Avdey Ivanovitch questioned Kister; God knows why he did! Possibly he wished to ascertain for himself what sort of head he, Lutchkov, had, whether it was really dull, or simply untrained. 'So I really am stupid,' he said to himself more than once with a bitter smile; and he would draw himself up instantly and look rudely and insolently about him, and smile malignantly to himself if he caught ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... with the other. Such a person has no need of this book anyway and will long since have cast it aside. Most of us are just average citizens with some ideas which we want to put into concrete form but find difficult because we are either inarticulate or untrained. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... was disinfecting the wound of a sheep that an untrained dog had injured when a note from the Security State Bank was handed her by one of Neifkins' herders. It was signed by its President, Mr. Vernon Wentz, late of the White Hand Laundry, and there was something which filled her with forebodings ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... Karl had courage enough for anything. But he was too wise to imagine that any good could come from a few thousand untrained workingmen, armed with all sorts of implements, dangerous most to themselves, challenging the trained hosts of capitalist troops. That was the old idea of 'Revolution,' you know, and it took more courage to advocate the long road of patience than it would take to join in a silly riot. ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo

... does not matter to him one single jot. As to the Parisians, we shall see. I sincerely hope, they will do all that you expect of them, but in point of fact I would rather have a battalion of trained soldiers than a brigade of untrained peasants or citizens, however full of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... day when the Jewish boy, a distinguished veteran of the Revolution, should entertain President Washington as his guest. Today young Franks stood undistinguished among the other eager patriots and the future president was only the leader of an army of untrained "rebels", knowing full well that a traitor's death awaited him if his campaign against ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... unprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousand little battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought out of sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... "But untrained," she answered laughingly. "It was just common sense that enabled me to cure your malady, Ajo. I couldn't bandage a cut or a bullet wound ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... who drink much beer also become fatter than usual, and to an untrained eye sometimes appear as 'magnificent children.' But the fatness of such children is not a recommendation to the more knowing observer; they are extremely prone to die of inflammation of the chest (bronchitis) after a few days' illness from an ordinary ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... A man untrained in youth, and who has never systematically sought to repair the defect, can scarcely hope fully to compass technique in style. He will thus lose some part of that which he may gain by being more nearly his natural self; for there is a real gain in this. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... officers and men can only learn their trade thoroughly by ceaseless practice on the high seas. In the event of war it would be far better to have no ships at all than to have ships of a poor and ineffective type, or ships which, however good, were yet manned by untrained and unskillful crews. The best officers and men in a poor ship could do nothing against fairly good opponents; and on the other hand a modern war ship is useless unless the officers and men aboard her ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... why is it that our nice young American girls won't come into our homes? Why do we have to depend upon the most ignorant and untrained of our foreign people? Our girls pour into the factories, although our husbands don't have any trouble in getting their brothers for office positions. There is always a line of boys waiting for a possible job ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... deceits to which human frailty is prone and lays bare their nakedness. High and low, rich and poor, suffer alike, as Folly makes merry over them. There was much in the life of the age which called for censure, as there had been in the past and was to be in the future. On untrained lips censure easily degenerates into abuse and loses its sting: Erasmus with his gifts of humour and expression caught the public ear and set ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus

... place, and for a time exulted in the promised efficiency and capabilities of the "young Napoleon." But the autumn passed away in grand reviews and showy parades, where the young General appeared with a numerous staff composed of wealthy young gentlemen, inexperienced, untrained, and unacquainted with military duty, who as well as foreign princes had volunteered their services. Parades and reviews were not useless, and the committal of wealthy and influential citizens who were placed upon his staff had its advantages; but as time wore on and no blow was struck or any decisive ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... power from constant communion with our dear Lord, use it to its last drop for Him. Then, like the mortal leader of Israel, as he pondered doubtingly with sunken eyes on the hard task before his untrained host, we shall look up and be aware of the presence of the sworded angel, the immortal Captain of the host of the Lord, standing ready to save, 'putting on righteousness as a breastplate, an helmet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... include power of Will as well as of Memory.] It is an element in mental life which puzzles both the specialist in psychology and the layman. "What is this wonderfully subtle power of mind?" "How do we remember?" Even the mind, untrained in psychological investigation, cannot help asking such questions in moments of reflection; but for the psychologist they are questions of very vital significance in his science. For Bergson, as ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... not the only singularity of Gottfried's structure, although it is the only one that would appeal to the untrained mind. Careful sounding of Gottfried's internal arrangements by a well-known surgeon seems to point to the fact that all the other unsymmetrical parts of his body are similarly misplaced. The right lobe of his liver is on the left side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are similarly ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... don't care what he told you! Alice, he is a perfectly unknown and untrained young—creature. All young men talk that way. He is perfectly gauche and boorish in ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... hae" grew ever louder and, to an untrained ear, more terrific. In a moment they were mingled with a clapping of hands and a Highland cheer, the launch glided alongside the pier, and, supported on his faithful friend's arm, the panic-stricken Tulliwuddle staggered ashore. Before his dazed eyes there seemed to be arrayed ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... banks. If I walked in the town, I must not be eyes and no eyes; woe betide me if I could only report the dresses! Really, I have known me, when I was but eight, come home to my mother laden with details, when perhaps an untrained girl of eighteen could only have specified that she had gone up and down a thoroughfare. Another time mother would take me on a visit: next day, or perhaps next week, she would expect me to describe every article of furniture in her friend's room, and the books on the table, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... feared, but they are so wholly unconventional as to be somewhat embarrassing as protegees. Analyzing the two I have met—the majority—one strikes me as being transparently affected and the other a stubborn, attractive fool. They are equally untrained in diplomacy and unable to cover their real feelings. Here am I, practically dragging them into the limelight, when it would be far better for themselves—perhaps for me—that they remained in oblivion. Ah, well: I called it an adventure: ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... no time to train them in the practical business of war—and such a war! Yet their business was to train recruits, while they themselves were untrained. At first, those who were granted "temporary commissions" were given a month's training. Then even that became impossible. During the latter months of 1914 "there was practically no special training given to infantry subalterns, with temporary commissions." With 1915, the system ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the monastery. I misread the world, I misread human nature. I was one of the fools who think they know all the statesmanship that controls the destinies of nations, who think their petty untrained minds can grasp the great ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... our personal defects and peculiarities. They are subjects for regret, not pride. When a woman boasts that she "knows she is often impatient, but she simply cannot help it, she is so peculiarly constituted!" she acknowledges a weakness of which she should be ashamed. If she is so undisciplined, so untrained, that she cannot avoid making life uncomfortable for those around her, she would better stay in a room by herself until she learns self-control. Often the very eccentricities of character to which we cling so tenaciously ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... An untrained eye might not have noticed much in the arrangement of the camp. However, the tents of the main camp were arranged along six company streets. There was also the larger tent of the tactical officer ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock

... liking or disliking anything she did, that she sat down at the piano, and sang a number of songs, which I suppose were as unworthy the cultivated ear as any he had heard. But though they were given with an untrained voice and a touch as little skilled as might be, they pleased, or else the singer pleased. The simple-hearted courage of the performance would alone have made it charming; and Mr. Arbuton had no reason to ask himself ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... is wisely combined, it constitutes a spiritual reenforcement of incomparable energy. It acts like an emancipation. It gives a sense of freedom and newness. The untrained observer sees it mainly in those cases where the turn has come in some dramatic form and where the contrast between the old and new life is most demonstrable. But the saving force is at work even when it seeps in through home influences so quietly that the beneficiary ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... the East women stand on minor occasions while men squat on their hunkers in a way hardly possible to an untrained European. The custom is old. Herodotus (ii., 35) says, "The women stand up when they make water, but the men sit down." Will it be believed that Canon Rawlinson was too modest to leave this passage in his translation? The custom was perpetuated by Al-Islam ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... creation of melodies fit to please the educated, as well as the uneducated, ear. According to technical theory, a musical piece may be perfect, but the melody, nevertheless, may be above the understanding of an untrained taste, or simply unpleasant. Your most renowned operas sound for us like a wild chaos, like a rush of strident, entangled sounds, in which we do not see any meaning at all, and which give us headaches. I have visited the London and the Paris opera; I have heard Rossini and Meyer-beer; ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... breed as the young regular soldiers who retreated from the same field in such excellent order, but because they neither understood what discipline was nor the necessity for it, and because the staff and regimental officers, with few exceptions, were untrained and inexperienced. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... to defeat it, the Army of Virginia would have to be withdrawn from its field of operations and a force advancing in its track from the James would be enabled to co-operate with the columns previously mentioned. It is instructive to note that, upon the other side, the untrained instinct of President Lincoln was always turning in the same direction. In perusing the field of operations his finger would always stray to the eastern coast of North Carolina as the vital point, and no persuasions could induce him ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... the most casual untrained eye, that this huge mass of sea-girt rock whereon we stand must in remote ages have formed part of the mainland opposite, until some fierce convulsion of nature, common enough in this region that is ever changing its outward face through subterranean ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... of Virginia followed their Lutheran pastor, Peter Muehlenberg, and made memorable the loyalty of American Lutherans. Steuben, the drillmaster of the Revolution, transformed the untrained and helpless troops of Washington into an effective force capable of meeting the seasoned soldiers ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... of Negro men and women who have had the advantages of the common schools, many who have a college education, and some who have university culture; to wisely influence them in their thought and action is more difficult than to control the masses of the illiterate and untrained. It is especially worthy of consideration that among the Negroes of the South to-day are some men of power and of education who are leaders; but whose leadership, unfortunately, is in the wrong direction. This renders it all the more urgent that the Mission Society and kindred organizations ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various

... to keep such a strict observation on the castle as might prevent the defenders from combining their force for a sudden sally, and recovering the outwork which they had lost. This the knight was chiefly desirous of avoiding, conscious that the men whom he led, being hasty and untrained volunteers, imperfectly armed and unaccustomed to discipline, must, upon any sudden attack, fight at great disadvantage with the veteran soldiers of the Norman knights, who were well provided with arms both defensive and offensive; and who, to match the zeal ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... under the highest authority, and at the head of an overwhelming force, the same system of warfare was pursued, which these two adventurers had hitherto adopted at their own risk, and with only an untrained multitude? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... acknowledge it, and will beat you, if he can, while he is talking to you. Tell the other man he is a thief, and he will sue you at court and win his case, although it is just as wrong to steal $100 from an unbalanced mind, as it is to steal $100 from an unlocked safe or off of an untrained football team. It will be an easy matter to produce professional gamblers so long as society upholds dishonest dealers by another name. What men need in this matter is moral and spiritual vision, spiritual discernment. Some persons live by taking advantage of those who ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... experienced seamen on board. This was made evident by the awkward way the men usually handled the lifeboats. Even with the enormous increase of wages, sailors could not be found to risk their lives in the danger zone, and a lot of untrained fellows, negroes and Chinamen, revealed by their clumsy rowing that they had only recently been pressed ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... from her to reverence goodness, and cleave to the right; and how he looked up to her, because her words were few, and her deeds consistent. More right in theory, than steady in practice was Lionel; very unformed, left untrained by those whose duty it was to watch him; but the seeds had been sown, and be his future life what it might, it could not but bear the impress of the years she had spent ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... instead of in broadcloth or silk, prehistoric man learned that the best arrow or spear was that tipped with the best piece of flint. In brief, to do good work, you must have good tools. Translated into the terms of today, this means that the expert or specialist must be preferred to the untrained. In nearly all walks of life this truth was taken for granted, except in affairs connected with government and administration. A President might be elected, not because he was experienced in these matters, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... discovered at length that moonlight meetings between two untrained, impulsive youths, had a natural result, and they were now doubly earnest in their endeavours to compel ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... only he had never recognized them, never understood whither the restless impulses were driving him. It had needed the pure soul of a good woman to unlock the best from his own; it had needed the genius of a clear brain to harness the untrained faculties to some definite aim. The soul of a woman had come and had planted upon him the purity of her high ideal; the genius had already shot its first illuminating ray into his darkness. Henceforth the watchword for them all was to be "Forward," and Nehal Singh, standing like a white ghost ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... be. How odd! From all the world to pick out a tall, blond, willowy man like Pollen! On the verge of middle age, too! Perhaps it was this very willowiness, this apparent placidity that made him attractive. This child, Mary Rochefort, quite alone in the world, largely untrained, adrift, imperiously demanding from an imperious husband something to which she had not as yet found the key, might very naturally gravitate toward any one presenting Pollen's appearance of security; his attitude of complacence in the face of feminine authority. But was he complacent? ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... attacked the bodyguard from the rear in much better case; for although they outnumbered the soldiers by something like ten to one, the cramped width of the road in which they fought nullified this advantage, while their untrained methods of fighting allowed the trained soldiers to ride and mow them down like grass, with the result that after a few minutes of strenuous fighting their courage evaporated and they, too, were seized with such overpowering panic that, to escape the vengeful sabres of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... nature and unwise training. We are prone to believe that bad manners in Americans are almost purely from want of thought. There is no more generous, kindly, or better people in the world than the standard American, but he is often an untrained creature. The thousands of emigrants who land on our shores, with privileges which they never thought to have thrust upon them, how can they immediately learn good manners? In the Old World tradition of power is still so fresh that they have ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... unhealthy exaltation and a one-sided morality have to be followed by regrettable reactions. When these come, the real rewards of life may seem vain to a relaxed vitality, and the very name of virtue may irritate young spirits untrained in any natural excellence. Thus religion too often debauches the morality it comes to sanction, and impedes the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... one of the three qualifications. If we further consider that the work of sexual hygiene, to be carried out on a really national scale, demands the more or less active co-operation of parents, teachers, and doctors, and that parents, teachers, and doctors are in these matters at present all alike untrained, and usually prejudiced, we shall realize some of the dangers through which sexual hygiene ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... and full opportunity of display during the campaign, but officers may well be reminded that in this, their first experience of European warfare, a greater measure of caution must be employed than under former conditions of hostilities against an untrained adversary. ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres

... not attend these soirees musicales. He considered them bourgeois, and found more diversion at the club. To Madame Ratignolle he said the music dispensed at her soirees was too "heavy," too far beyond his untrained comprehension. His excuse flattered her. But she disapproved of Mr. Pontellier's club, and she was frank enough to ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... officials were taken from one restricted class, the rural gentry; the township and parish officials were chosen by their neighbors from their own number. In a word, the government of Elizabeth, James, and Charles was trying to carry on an ambitious, centralized administration by means of an unpaid, untrained, and carelessly selected group of local officials, whose offices had been established and whose characters had been formed for a system of much more limited powers and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... OVEN TEMPERATURE.—Regulating the oven and testing its temperature present very little difficulty to the housewife of experience, but they are not always easy problems for the woman who is learning to cook. However, if the untrained and inexperienced cook will observe her oven closely and determine the results of certain temperatures, she will soon find herself becoming more successful in this matter. To assist the housewife in this matter, as well as to help in the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... produce monotony. Tennyson once said that when he wanted to write a poem that would be popular he wrote in trochaics. Certainly the stresses are more prominent in trochaic verse than in iambic or even anapestic; and the untrained ear likes its rhythms well marked.[43] The Locksley ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... his first years between the poles, had sometimes been impatient with the untrained mates who from time to time joined the team. He had taken part in mane-biting and trace-kicking, especially on days when the loads were heavy and the flies thick, conditions which try the best of horse tempers. But he had steadied down into a pole-horse who could set an example that was worth more ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... fortunate,' he answered; 'I have been so far from fortunate that' I have been writing like an untrained schoolboy. I could have done ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... he tried to disentangle the threads of a discussion that went to and fro and contradicted itself and began again far back among things that had seemed forgotten and disposed of. Lady Sunderbund's mind was extravagantly untrained, a wild-grown mental thicket. At times she reproached him as if he were a heartless God; at times she talked as if he were a recalcitrant servant. Her mingling of utter devotion and the completest ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... send back one of his followers to see whether this might not be the case, he heard the blast of a horn, and looking in the direction from which the sound came, beheld a horseman riding very fast towards them. The low size, and wild, shaggy, untrained state of the animal, reminded Quentin of the mountain breed of horses in his own country, but this was much more finely limbed, and, with the same appearance of hardiness, was more rapid in its movements. The head particularly, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... like to do it!" she protested. "Nobody can roast a rabbit to suit me but myself," and in spite of DeWitt's protests she spitted the rabbits and would not let him tend the fire which she said was too fine an art for his untrained hands. In a short time the rich odor of roasting flesh rose on the air and John watched the pretty cook with admiration mingled with perplexity. Rhoda insisting on cooking a meal! More than that, Rhoda evidently enjoying the job! The idea ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... to clear away the supper dishes, for, though the others had eaten little, they had apparently finished. Out in the kitchen, she sang as she worked, and only a close observer would have detected a tremor in the sweet, untrained soprano. "Anyway," thought Rosemary, "I'll put on ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... criticism of the crudeness of Abel. Already the difference between the two men was irritating her, yet she was still unconscious as to the the exact particular in which this difference lay. Her vision had perceived the broad distinction of class, though it was untrained as yet to detect minute variations of manner. She knew instinctively that Gay looked a man of the world and Abel a rustic, but this did not shake in the least the knowledge that it was Abel, not ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... Mr. Ch. withdrew early, and I soon followed; but we were both aroused by the barking of the dogs, followed by the pad of bare feet on the veranda, whispering and coughing, and then by a song from rough and untrained throats. The singers were natives of a Christian village some miles away, who came to sing Christmas hymns in a strange, rough language, discordant and yet impressive. When they had finished the director went out to them; he was a man whom one would not have believed capable of any feeling, but he ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser



Words linked to "Untrained" :   naive, undisciplined, trained, primitive



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com