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Vandalism   /vˈændəlɪzəm/   Listen
Vandalism

noun
1.
Willful wanton and malicious destruction of the property of others.  Synonyms: hooliganism, malicious mischief.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Vandalism" Quotes from Famous Books



... into the art-gallery of our eldest brother and destroyed Titian's most splendid paintings and the glorious statues of the olden time. He gloried in this act, and called it a holy offering to virtue. He could not understand that it was vandalism. Our family had serious fears for the intellect of this poor young saint, maddened by the fanaticism of the Jesuits. They sought counsel of the oldest and wisest of our house, the Bishop of Bannes. After thinking awhile, the bishop said: 'I will soon cure the ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... The vandalism of the attack amazed the men. They could have understood readily enough some shots out of the shadows or a swoop down upon the camp to stampede and run off the saddle horses. Even a serious attempt to wipe out the party by a stray band of Blackfeet or Crees was an undertaking that would need ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... State. I slept on the floor of the house, but the night was so bitter cold that I got up by the fire several times, and when it burned low I rekindled it with an old mantel-clock and the wreck of a bedstead which stood in a corner of the room—the only act of vandalism that I recall done by myself personally ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... your return. May Heaven confound your whims and your want of decision! All I can do now, is to hurry my work; but where shall I find the historical documents I still need? I am seriously anxious to save these ruins. There is here a rare landscape, a valuable picture, which it would be sheer vandalism ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... he dreaded, the resort to open warfare, the fire and vandalism, and dynamite; and day and night he kept his eye on the works, and hired a night-watchman, to boot. But as long as Blount was convinced he could win back the mine peaceably he would not resort to violence and, though Stiff Neck George still hung ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... with some few exceptions, a riveting of the peasant's chains and an increase of his burdens. More than 1,000 castles and religious houses were destroyed in Germany alone during 1525. Many priceless works of mediaeval art of all kinds perished. But we must not allow our regret at such vandalism to blind us in any way to the intrinsic righteousness ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... evidences of a breadth of mind and interest in the man far down. When the French Revolution broke out, therefore, he easily became a factor in the upheaval, but endeavored always to restrain the people from fury and vandalism. In 1789, he was elected by the clergy of the bailliage of Nancy to the States-General, where he cooeperated with the group of deputies of Jansenist ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... course from that distance they must sometimes miss." One theory why the enemy pursues this unmilitary monument with such peculiarly relentless ferocity is that they enjoy the outcry which their vandalism creates. Moreover, it is a way of boasting to the world that they have not yet been expelled from their positions behind Rheims, are not being driven back. If any special explanation were needed, I should find it rather in the ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... local architect. Old shops have to be pulled down in order to provide a site for a universal emporium or a motor garage. Nor are buildings the only things that are passing away. The extensive use of motor-cars and highway vandalism are destroying the peculiar beauty of the English roadside. The swift-speeding cars create clouds of white dust which settles upon the hedges and trees, covering them with it and obscuring the wayside ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... speaking: "The soldiers set up the red cock (i.e., fire) upon the houses, just as they like." This poet is moved, and speaks of "pure vandalism" on the part of his companions in arms. And again, a musician writes, "Throwing of incendiary grenades into the houses; a military concert in the evening—'Nun danket alle Gott'! (Now thank we all our God)." Finally, ...
— Their Crimes • Various

... convents and publicly burned to obtain the trifling amount of gold which remained in the ashes. Amateurs are now more inclined to pay their weight in gold for such as have escaped the ravages of time and Vandalism; and the same government that permitted this destruction in 1859 passed stringent decrees to prevent their leaving the country, sequestering all in public ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... had been busy with irreparable deeds of vandalism, but at Hereford he surpassed his previous efforts in this direction. He altered the whole proportion of the building, shortening the nave by a bay of 15 feet, erected a new west front on a "neat Gothic pattern," and availed himself of the chance of removing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... thick as his finger, saying, "Madame, I should like to keep this as a memento. I am about to travel through Mississippi, and having seen what a splendid piece of furniture this was, and the state your house is left in, should like to show this as a specimen of Yankee vandalism." ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... poet and epicurean philosopher Lucretius has said," &c.—Cohen's Florida, p. 107. Spell "calvinistic, atticism, gothicism, epicurism, jesuitism, sabianism, socinianism, anglican, anglicism, anglicize, vandalism, gallicism, romanize."—Webster's El. Spelling-Book, 130-133. "The large ternate bat."—Webster's Dict. w. ROSSET; Bolles's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern policeman into the same picture with a Druid. This really vital piece of vandalism was done by the educated, not the uneducated; it was done by the influence of the artists or antiquaries who wanted to preserve the antique beauty of Stonehenge. It seems to me curious to preserve ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... of vandalism, Bearwarden raised his twelve-bore, and fired an ordinary cartridge that he had not prepared for the dragons, at the space directly over the nearest forming prints. There was a brilliant display of prismatic colours, as in a rainbow, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... scenery; but the winding of the stream at the spot, the sharp wooded hills on each side, the forest openings, and the busy, eager, strange life together filled the place with no common interest. The officers of the army at the spot spoke with bitterest condemnation of the vandalism of their enemy in destroying the bridge. The justice of the indignation I ventured very strongly to question. "Surely you would have destroyed their bridge?" I said. "But they are rebels," was the answer. It has been so throughout the contest; and the same argument has been ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Vandalism" :   mischief-making, deviltry, shenanigan, mischief, devilment, destruction, roguishness, devastation, mischievousness, roguery, devilry, rascality



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