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Complicate   Listen
adjective
Complicate  adj.  
1.
Composed of two or more parts united; complex; complicated; involved. "How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is man!"
2.
(Bot.) Folded together, or upon itself, with the fold running lengthwise.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Complicate" Quotes from Famous Books



... however, were not so very much in the way, for there were no wagons or carriages there. There was not a horse on the island. The domestic animals were represented by chickens, a lonely cow, a few sheep, and hogs of a breed well calculated to deepen and complicate the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... being the {168} other two—had all manner of negotiations, arrangements, and transactions with the King of Spain. All these affairs now became mixed up with the national claims, and were dealt with alike in the convention. The British plenipotentiary at the Spanish Court was—still further to complicate matters—the agent for the South Sea Company. The convention provided that certain set-off claims of Spain should be taken into consideration as well as the claims of England. Spain had some demands against England for the value of certain vessels of the Spanish ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... said Mrs. Beach, "I think it would be the very best thing. She would bring Cicely to a right frame of mind—nobody could do it better; and you would be at home, Edward, to see that nothing was done here to complicate matters. I think that would be very important, and nobody ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... reactions will not take place. This is often the case with sulphur, selenium, arsenic, and tellurium. It frequently happens, likewise, that these substances are in such combinations that heat alone will not sublime them; or else two or more of them may arise together, and thus complicate the sublimate, so that the eye cannot readily detect either substance. Sometimes sulphur and arsenic will coat the tube with a metal-like appearance, which is deceptive. This coating presents a metallic lustre at its lower portion, but changing, ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... system depends for resisting the effects of toxic agents; namely, oxidation and elimination. This not only encourages the retention of toxic agents and natural excretory materials by which specific fevers are protracted, but it greatly increases the number of cases of pneumonia that complicate the epidemic influenza, or la grippe, as it has occurred ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... Avignon, where ambassadors from Edward and Philip appeared to declare their masters' rights. The protracted negotiations were lacking in reality. The English, distrusting Clement as a French partisan, did their best to complicate the situation by complaints against papal provisions in favour of aliens "not having knowledge of the tongue nor condition of those whose governance and care should belong to them". English indignation rose higher when, despite the terms of the truce and the promise of the cardinals, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... work of the North. The instinct of races came in it to complicate the questions of dogmas. The awakening of individual nationalities was one of the characters of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... gone forth in indignation. There was one circumstance which, it must be admitted, aggravated his exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort which complicate domestic dramas. They augment the grievances in such cases, although, in reality, the wrongs are not increased by them. While carrying Marius' "duds" precipitately to his chamber, at his grandfather's command, Nicolette had, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... usual cause in cattle. The wound may be of the abdominal wall or of the intestines, stomach, or uterus; or inflammation may extend from one of the organs of the abdominal cavity to the peritoneum; so this disease may complicate enteritis or inflamed womb. A sharp metal body may perforate the second stomach and allow the gastric contents to escape, irritating the peritoneum. This disease may follow castration or ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class. "Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. Now to work! In the first place, how did these folk come, and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. How of the window?" He carried the lamp across to it, muttering his observations aloud the while, but addressing them to himself rather than to me. "Window ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... wives, should you return home, after a drunken sleep of twenty or thirty years, and find them all married to richer husbands! Think how they would revile the weakness of the beer which could not keep you asleep forever. Think how you would complicate the real estate business, when you came to turn out the mistaken people who had occupied, improved, and sold your property during your brief absence. Think of the difficulties that would arise from the increase ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various

... she thought of Jimmy. The boy was going to complicate her life. She was by nature an unusually fearless woman, but she was beginning to realize that there might come a time when she would know fear—unless she could begin to live differently as Jimmy began to grow up. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... for he replied quickly: "I hope you will not think me officious, or unmindful of your right to dictate in a matter so peculiarly your own affair. My only desire is to help you. Mr. Browne's departure would still further complicate a case already far to difficult of solution. My legal training has given me some little experience in these matters, and I only wish that you may have the benefit thereof. It is now nearly three-quarters of an hour since your father's death, and, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... in which his story is told though less complicate and beautiful than the Spencerian, is equally ancient; and favorable to a pensive melody, is also ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... to invest in a sample of each new golfing invention as soon as it makes its appearance. If you do you will only complicate and spoil your game and encumber your locker with much useless rubbish. Of course some new inventions are good, but it is usually best to wait a little while to see whether any considerable ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... out, he was glad of this chance to address a few remarks to the electors. He had been seriously upset ever since he heard that the young doctor was to be offered the nomination for the Liberals. That would complicate matters for him, and make it imperative that he should lose no opportunity of making himself ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... fully assent. It implies that although we have fully defined a hypothetical case of goodness, we have so far simplified the conditions as to make our conclusions inadequate to moral experience. Accepting this qualification, it is now in order to complicate the situation; but retaining our analysis {48} of the elementary process, and employing terms in the meaning ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... evident that from that moment the fatal plan was decided on. The Queen perceived my alarm; I did not conceal it from her. I knew too well that she had many enemies not to be apprehensive on seeing her attract the attention of the whole world to an intrigue that they would try to complicate still more. I entreated her to seek the most prudent and moderate advice. She silenced me by desiring me to make myself easy, and to rest satisfied that no ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... situation, to define, in a chill and empty atmosphere, the focus where rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist may have, indeed, to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and passion a thousand-fold. Let us take a brilliant example from the poems of Robert Browning. His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of situations. The characters themselves ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... had numerous local representatives. There were the bailiffs and seneschals, whose actual powers had quite disappeared, but whose offices served to complicate matters. Then there were the governors of provinces, well-fed gentlemen with fat salaries and little to do. The bulk of local administration fell into the hands of the intendants and their sub-delegates. Each of the thirty-four intendants —the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... breast of the Scout. What if he met Jim Wigson on the way? What if Aunt Hannah, still unreconciled, turned him from the door? No matter! Rancour and grief have no hold on mortals walking in such an April world—in such an exquisite and sunlit beauty. On! let thought and nature be enough! Why complicate and cumber life with relations that do but give a foothold to pain, and offer ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... issue. Let us not complicate it by mixing it up with others. When we are discussing the expediency of emancipation and of measures proposed to effect it, it is proper to take into account not only State constitutions and State legislation, but also the popular conception of slavery under the loose phraseology of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... seeing how few people can either read or write English with any subtlety, and how disastrously this reacts upon the general development of thought and understanding amidst the English- speaking peoples, it would be preposterous even if the attempt were successful, to complicate the first linguistic struggles of the infant with the beginnings of a second language. But people deal thus lightly with the mother-tongue because they know so little of it that they do not even suspect their own ignorance of its burthen ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... They would have to agree not to kill nor harm each other. They must arrange their work and all their activities to secure the best advantage. These arrangements, agreements, understandings—what are they but laws? To live without law is to live alone. Every family is a miniature State with a complicate system of laws, a supreme authority and subordinate authorities down to the latest babe. And as he who is loudest in demanding liberty for himself is sternest in denying it to others, you may confidently go to the Maison Vaillant, or the Mosthaus, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... in discussing the effect of price movements on distribution is to discover how they complicate the problems of wage settlement. Before proceeding to this main purpose, however, it is desirable to pay particular attention to one doctrine of the relation of wage change to price change which figures prominently in ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess. Now men in their aspect of equality and debate adore the idea of rules; they develop and complicate them greatly to excess. A man finds far more regulations and definitions in his club, where there are rules, than in his home, where there is a ruler. A deliberate assembly, the House of Commons, for instance, carries ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is man! How passing wonder He who made him such, Who centred in our make such strange extremes! From different natures marvellously mixed, Connection exquisite of distant worlds! Distinguished link in ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... The growing severity of Irish taxation under recent Radical budgets forbids the possibility of addition to the ratepayer's burdens. The anomalous distribution of the grants in aid of Irish local taxation has done much to complicate the Poor Law question. The Royal Commission reported that "no account whatever is taken of the burden of pauperism, the magnitude of the local rates, or the circumstances of the ratepayers and their ability to pay rates in the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... Two circumstances complicate this development and make it in some respects difficult to be sure of the real tendencies; they are the panic of 1893, and the low price of cotton in 1898. Besides this, the system of assessing property in the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Narratives of History, which involve a thousand Fortunes in the Business of a Day, and complicate innumerable Incidents in one great Transaction, afford few Lessons applicable to private Life, which derives its Comforts and its Wretchedness from the right or wrong Management of Things that nothing but their Frequency makes considerable, Parva si non fiunt ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson

... and the Assembly met on December 3rd. Two plain but difficult tasks lay before him: to persuade both houses of Parliament to accept his scheme of Union, and to arrange, on some moderate basis, the whole Clergy Reserve question. To complicate these practical duties, the speculative problem of responsible government, long keenly canvassed in Toronto, and the peculiar conditions and methods of local politics, lay as dangerous obstacles in his path. The manners and methods ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... often came and sat by the girl's desk, evidently wishing to say something, and yet quite as evidently having nothing to say; and thus the situation became embarrassing. Jennie was a practical girl and had no desire to complicate the situation by allowing her employer to fall in love with her, yet it was impossible to go to him and ask that his attentions might be limited strictly to a business basis. The crisis, however, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... indefinite variations may be so controlled by the environment during millions of years that the fish at last becomes an elephant or a man. The alternative view, urged by a few writers, is that the variations were "definitely directed." The phrase seems merely to complicate the story of evolution with a fresh and superfluous mystery. The nature and precise action of this "definite direction" within the organism are quite unintelligible, and the facts seem explainable just as well—or not less imperfectly—without ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... element behind the whole British awakening? Will organised labour, an ancient sore on the British body, rise up and complicate these well-laid schemes for economic expansion? As with the question of practicability of the Paris Pact, there is ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... it seemed as though she had put these other ugly happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had seen fit to complicate matters by vanishing without explanation; while his mother, in an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had become of him, must needs write to her as though it inevitably followed that she was responsible for ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... an awful care to its mother," he said; "a responsibility that takes up her whole time and attention. I don't think I'd better complicate matters by getting into ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... him. He felt certain that if he possessed any gift in the world it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and his aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of Mademoiselle ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... had been watching him for weeks now. And she had gone to Manschoff and suggested it, and she was very glad. And they had to meet here, out in the open, so as not to complicate the situation or disturb any of ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... and the Government had been informed of it, one cannot understand why General Beyers, with his fingers steeped in treason, was let loose upon the community to poison the loyalty of the Dutch along the country-side and to complicate the task of the Government. It seems that he should have been detained that evening, and thereby, having been turned from the path of suicide, other lives would also have been saved. When one considers the amount of harm that ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Parliamentary Talkers, with their escort of Able Editors and Public Opinion; and for head, certain Lords and Servants of the Treasury, and Chief Secretaries and others, who find themselves at once Chiefs and No-Chiefs, and often commanded rather than commanding,—is doubtless a most complicate entity, and none of the alertest for getting on with business! Clearly enough, if the Chiefs be not self-motive and what we call men, but mere patient lay-figures without self-motive principle, the Government will not move anywhither; it will tumble ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... said he, "I had forgotten that. And do you know, Mr. Balfour, I would dwell, if I were you, as little as might be on your relations with these Stewarts. It might be found to complicate our business. I am not yet inclined to regard these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Rebellion (1534-5) that the realisation of these dreams seemed to be within measurable reach. The boldness and military genius of Lord Leonard Grey bade fair to bring all Ireland within the sphere of English jurisdiction, until the religious crisis arose to complicate the issues. Many of the Irish princes took offence at the doctrine of royal supremacy, the attack on images, pictures, pilgrimages, relics, etc., and at the desperate efforts that were being made to drive out entirely the monks ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... England at the time; and the problems and mysteries of those years, never unravelled to this day, never with any certainty to be unravelled at all, continued to perplex English statesmen and to complicate the situation in England for nearly nineteen years more. We shall have to follow them therefore in much greater detail than would a priori seem justifiable in a volume ostensibly dealing not with Scottish but with ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... applicable to both. Ireland should frame her own. Under present conditions it is impossible to know the considered judgment of Ireland. There is certainly much opposition to Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have studied the Old Age Pensions scheme ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... energy by displacement on more useful ideas. But if the conflict has to be met with the mind hampered by immature thinking and immature feeling; if the demands of the here-and-now are met as if it were long ago; if unhealthy and untrue complexes, old loves and hates complicate the situation; if to the necessary conflict is added an unnecessary one; then something else happens. Compromise of some kind must be made, but instead of a happy union of the two forces a poor compromise is effected, gaining ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... waiting when he tires Of carnal pleasures and desires, Depleted, sickened, and depressed, As souls must be with such a test, Yet strong enough to help him grope Back into happiness and hope. But woman, far more complicate, Can take no chances with her fate; A subtle creature, finely spun, Her body and her soul are one. And now this erring woman wept The soul she murdered while it slept. She felt too stunned with pain to think. She seemed to stand upon a brink; Behind her loomed the sinful ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... me perhaps at the end of the Congress." He told me Lady Salisbury was there with her husband. He seemed rather sceptical as to the peaceful issue of the negotiations—thought so many unforeseen questions would come up and complicate matters. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... well-defined one. If it is given in the form of a fluid extract or tincture, its operation can be more definitely measured and counted on, but the amount of alcohol required to dissolve it is sufficient often to complicate its effects very prejudicially, while in any case the immense proportion of inert rubbish, gum, green extractive, woody fibre, and earthy residuum is so great as to be a severe tax on the digestive apparatus—often seriously to derange the stomach of the well ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... labor, it is likely to grow every year more difficult, as new departments of manufacture and trade divide the workers. The price of labor, even now higher in this country than in any other, will rise still higher, and thus complicate still more the problem of domestic life. Even if a reasonable quota of intelligent women choose domestic service, the demand will ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... that time adopted compulsory measures and taken redress into their own hands, all our difficulties with Mexico would probably have been long since adjusted and the existing war have been averted. Magnanimity and moderation on our part only had the effect to complicate these difficulties and render an amicable settlement of them the more embarrassing. That such measures of redress under similar provocations committed by any of the powerful nations of Europe would have been promptly resorted to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk

... answered the questions put to him promptly and correctly. On the other hand, the confusion of Peter Guerre and Bertrande de Rols was so great as to create strong suspicions of their honesty. New witnesses were called, but they only served to complicate matters; for out of thirty, nine or ten were convinced that the accused was Martin Guerre, seven or eight were as positive that he was Arnold du Tilh, and the rest would give no distinct affirmation either one ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... any simple Hydra, so that the tentacles hang down from the margin, and let four tubes radiate from the central cavity to the periphery, and we have the lowest form of Jelly-Fish. Expand the cup of the Hydra to form a gelatinous disk, increase the number of tubes, complicate their ramifications, let eyes be developed along the margin, add some external appendages, and we have the Discophore. Elongate the disk in order to give the body an oval form, diminish the number of main tubes, and let them give off ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... came here," replied the girl steadily, "I should only fall in love with him again, and that would complicate matters." ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... said, "I think you did splendidly. Sherlock Holmes couldn't have done better." I got up and walked to the end of the cockpit. "But good Lord!" I added, "this does complicate matters. You're absolutely certain it was McMurtrie ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges

... complicate the question, it may be very justly objected that, though premonitions in general are useless and appear systematically to withhold the only indispensable and decisive words, there are, nevertheless, some that often seem to save those who obey them. These, it is true, are rarer than the ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... and hauled with energy, if not with skill. When he abandoned the steering oar, the raft began to whirl, and thus to complicate his labor. I caught a glance of the simple-minded fellow, as the craft turned, and I heard him yell, "Hookie!" He was nonplussed by the change of the raft; but he did not know enough to follow it round upon the outside. I am not sure this freak of the current did not save us ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... for some, at least, of our manifold ills. That is my own theory of life, and I do not see that it is effeminate, or even unpractical; and it is a mere caricature of it to call it Epicurean. What does complicate life is the feeble acceptance of conventional views, the doing of things, not because one hopes for happiness out of them, not even because one likes them, but because one sees other people doing them. Even in the most sheltered existence, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... campaign of strategic waiting. To complicate (or simplify) the situation, in the bailes and festas given to the distinguished Russian, Rezanof danced and chatted with Concha Argueello, the daughter of the stern old ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... given when a previous trip was intended, and that the Hammal must not be disappointed: Jami replied that once an Abban always an Abban, that he hated the Hammal and all his tribe, and that he would enter into no partnership with Burhale Nuh:—to complicate matters, Lieut. Stroyan spoke highly of his courage and conduct. Presently he insisted rudely upon removing his protege to another part of the town: this passed the limits of our patience, and decided the case ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... taken with regard to sanitation. She is the child of rich people, but they have been wantonly neglectful, almost cruel in their negligence and ignorance. The mother, a young woman, is nearly certain to take the complaint and, to complicate everything, there is another baby expected before long. Now you understand. If you get into that house you are scarcely likely to go out of it ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... boat, which is lying head to wind to pay off and sail away, is comparatively simple. The fact that the shore lies a few yards to windward does not complicate the matter much. The main sheet must be allowed to run out so that the sail does not draw at first. The foresail, its sheet being hauled down, works the boat's head round. Unfortunately for Priscilla, her main sheet would ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... unfold naturally, normally and freely. Don't complicate your own problem by trying to advise him too soon. Don't praise certain professions. Children are intensely suggestible. The knowledge that father and mother consider a certain profession especially desirable oftentimes influences a child to waste time working toward it when ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... rights impose. When any power, insurgent or recognized, claims such right,—the right to fly its flag, to deal in hostility with the commerce of the world, to exercise dangerous privileges which may affect the interests and complicate the relations of other nations,—it must give to the world a guaranty that it is both able and willing to administer the system of maritime law under which it claims such rights and powers, by submitting its action to the regular and formal jurisdiction of Prize Courts. Strike the Prize ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... speculation—so much waste paper,' interrupted Robson. 'Your lordship had better let me clear away the trash, which will only complicate the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... about her heart and soul. It took Jared some minutes to digest the information that had been flung at him so unexpectedly, and then anger and baffled hope swayed him. Joyce married to Jude would make his, Jared's, future no securer than it now was. Indeed it might complicate matters, for Jared had no belief in Jude rising above the dead level of St. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... evasive answer in order to reassure his neighbor, but, as a matter of fact, the ship had not yet got under way again. To complicate the situation, another member of the crew came in at this moment and whispered something to the officer, who at once hurried ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... Further to complicate the financial trials of the burdensome mid-nineties, the depletion of the gold reserve demanded immediate attention. During the closing months of President Harrison's administration, in fact, the Secretary of the Treasury ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... a good bargain as it is, and one which of themselves, they could not possibly secure from the government. I write you this note in case you should run across Colonel Thorp in town to-morrow, and inadvertently say something that might complicate matters. I have no doubt that we shall be able to close the deal ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... I knew that African Mahometans never sold their caste or kindred into foreign slavery, unless their crime deserved a penalty severer than death. I reflected a while on the message, because I did not wish to complicate my relations with the leading chiefs of the interior; but, in a few moments, natural sensibility mastered every selfish impulse, and I told the envoy to hasten back on the path of the suffering brother, and ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... have to be of their making," said Grace firmly. "I'll never set foot on that land Mr. Jallow claims if I can help it. It might complicate legal matters." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope

... Windlow in due course, and brought with him Guthrie to stay. Howard thought, and was ashamed of thinking, that Jack had some scheme on foot; and the arrival of Guthrie was embarrassing to him, as likely to complicate an already too ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... fell unquestionably into what, if Rothstein and those who think with him are right, must be deemed a grave error. But even if it could be proved that these pieces were by the author of Daniel, the recent questions as to who that writer may have been, still further complicate the at present insoluble problem of the authorship ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... people throughout the history of this nation. The Army cannot accomplish such a solution and (p. 022) should not be charged with the undertaking. The settlement of vexing racial problems cannot be permitted to complicate the tremendous task of the War Department and ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... that the bonds among these nomads were very strong, but there was another element in this particular case that might, she thought, complicate matters. The man who had carried Dolly off was engaged to be married to the dark-eyed girl they had talked with, and it was possible that that fact might make trouble for him, and prevent him from receiving the aid of his tribe, as he would surely have ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart

... voice-deterioration is sure to follow. A physiological basis has reinforced the empirical deductions of the old Italian school. In dealing with children's voices, it is necessary to recognize only two registers, the thick, or chest-register, and the thin, or head-register. Further subdivisions will only complicate the subject without assisting in the practical management of their voices. Tones sung in the thick or chest-register are produced by the full, free vibration of the vocal bands in their entire length, breadth and thickness. The tones of the thin or head-register ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... delay," he exclaimed, "we object to publicity. The thing is plain enough as it stands. You will only complicate it by bringing others into council, and in such a case, surely, the fewer people aware of our ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... will be quite wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make you very comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and anxiety of wondering whether you should wear your purple and gold or your green and crimson dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of simplifying it by doing these ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw

... loved the husband like a son. If she abandoned herself to her feelings she would have to lie, or else to tell the truth, and in her position either would have been equally terrible and inconvenient. And she was tormented by the question whether her love would bring me happiness—would she not complicate my life, which, as it was, was hard enough and full of all sorts of trouble? She fancied she was not young enough for me, that she was not industrious nor energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often talked to her husband of the importance of my marrying a girl of intelligence ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... of St. Real's hero, we are not particularly concerned. The French Abbe's drift is to exalt the French princess and to give a telling picture of a pair of high-minded lovers who are brought to their death by a complicate intrigue begotten of jealousy, political hatred and religious fanaticism. After the death of Carlos the queen is poisoned and then, one after the other, all the conspirators meet with poetic justice. "Ainsi", the Abbe concludes, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... in the Conscription Bureau. Col. Preston, the new superintendent, finds it no bed of roses, made for him by Lieut.-Col. Lay—the lieutenant-colonel being absent in North Carolina, sent thither to compose the discontents; which may complicate matters further, for they don't want Virginians to meddle with North Carolina matters. However, the people he is sent to are supposed to be disloyal. Gen. Pillow has applied to have Georgia in the jurisdiction of his ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... Constance's daughter Alianora was born before her marriage with Thomas Le Despenser; whereas it is shown by the Register that when Le Despenser and Constance were married, the latter was only four or five years old, while Kent was not even born. The rescue of the Mortimers comes in to complicate matters; but what shall be said, from the point of view of some writers, who submit that the whole was a mere pretext to imprison Constance and her brother, that the Mortimers were never stolen away at all, or that ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... that shall, in its separate colleges and halls, prepare our youth for the various departments of life, may not consist with the spirit of our civil governments, and be guarded against the evils which have generally attended establishments so complicate, and of such numerous resort. However this may be judged, it will be found, I apprehend, the wisdom of our scattered institutions, to preserve their individuality, and remain true, as to their general regulations, to the purpose of their foundation. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... what had so little promise in it, I should find that the highest Catholic authority was against the attempt, and that I should have spent my time and my thought, in doing what either it would be imprudent to bring before the public at all, or what, did I do so, would only complicate matters further which were already complicated more than enough. And I interpret recent acts of that authority as fulfilling my expectation; I interpret them as tying the hands of a controversialist, such as I should be, and teaching us that true wisdom, which Moses inculcated on his people, when ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... not to complicate matters unduly, the recurrence of solar eclipses alone will first be dealt with. This limitation will, however, not affect the arguments in the slightest, and it will be all the more easy in consequence to show their application to the case ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... Devanne, laughing, "our worthy father is fond of reading memoirs and delving into the musty archives of the castle. Everything relating to Thibermesnil interests him greatly. But the quotations that he mentions only serve to complicate the mystery. He has read somewhere that two kings of France have known the key ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... again on the protection of Murkertach of Aileach. The elder branch of the family of O'Melaghlin were equally indisposed to accept half of Meath, where they had claimed the whole from the Shannon to the sea. To complicate still more this tangled web, Dermid, King of Leinster, about the same time (A.D. 1153), eloped with Dervorgoil, wife of O'Ruarc of Breffni, and daughter of O'Melaghlin, who both appealed to the monarch for vengeance on the ravager. Up to this date Dermid had acted as a steadfast ally ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... picture of the life beyond. They despise documents which cannot be proved, and they do not, in my opinion, sufficiently realise that a general agreement of testimony, and the already established character of a witness, are themselves arguments for truth. Some complicate the question by predicating the existence of a fourth dimension in that world, but the term is an absurdity, as are all terms which find no corresponding impression in the human brain. We have mysteries enough to solve without gratuitously ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bodies substantive Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible, Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils, Twining and serpenting round and through. Also retracting threads like gossamers— Except in being irresistible— Which complicate with some, and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... articulately. It is significant of this that gesture is still found easier than speech even by adults, as may be observed on our river steamers, where the captain moves his hand but does not speak, a boy interpreting his gesture into language. To develop this here would complicate the argument; let us be content to note it ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... I do not wish to complicate the discussion by examining the differences, in degree or otherwise, in the various cases, or by introducing numerous qualifications; and therefore I do not add the names ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... and make whooping cough a critical disease for very young children. Bronchitis and pneumonia often complicate whooping cough in winter, and diarrhea frequently occurs with it in summer. Convulsions not infrequently follow the coughing fits in infants, and, owing to the amount of blood forced to the head during the attacks, nosebleed and dark spots on ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... be imperilled by the rumoured intention of Government to send thither large bodies of troops that had just returned from the Crimea. He thought it his duty to protest earnestly against any such proceeding, as likely, in the first place, to complicate the relations of Canada with the United States, and, in the second place, to arrest ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... peasants on the census lists who had ended their earthly careers were nevertheless, on the rendering of new lists, returned equally with the living, to the end that the courts might be relieved of a multitude of trifling, useless emendations which might complicate the already sufficiently complex mechanism of the State. Nevertheless, said Chichikov, the general equity of this measure did not obviate a certain amount of annoyance to landowners, since it forced them to pay upon a non-living article the tax due upon a living. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... relief of glaucoma, and it has the advantage of being applicable to any form of the disease, to be relatively free from danger, either immediate or remote, and to produce the highest percentage of favorable results. The addition of an iridectomy in every case of trephining does not unduly complicate the operation and has much to commend it in offering the patient every possibility ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various

... fast. The lieutenant had some time ago reported the ship as cleared for action; and the look-out aloft stated that there was no other sail in sight; consequently, Jim reckoned on bringing the enemy to book in about half an hour's time, and dealing summarily with him before the Union could complicate matters by putting in an appearance; a prospect which caused him no little satisfaction, as he felt that he might have had all his work cut out to deal effectively with the three, had the corvette been opposed to him at ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... infantry. In the excitement the muzzles of the exploding rifles were turned in all directions. The slaughter was terrible—horses, troops, spectators, and the King and Queen, were riddled with bullets. To complicate the affair, in different parts of the crowd behind the foot-soldiers, two terrorists had bombs explode on their persons. These bombs they had intended to throw if they got the opportunity. But who ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... interrupt me not yet! let it be! I but say what is due to yourself—due to me, And must say it. He rushed incoherently on, Describing how, lately, the truth he had known, To explain how, and whence, he had wrong'd her before, All the complicate coil wound about him of yore, All the hopes that had flown with the faith that was fled, "And then, O Lucile, what was left me," he said, "When my life was defrauded of you, but to take That life, as 'twas left, and endeavor to make ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... close that the traffic patterns almost interlocked, was busy Washington National Airport. Below him along the Anacostia River were two military airports; Anacostia, at which he would land, and Bolling Air Force Base. And to complicate matters slightly, Andrews Air Force Base was only a short ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... Today, with Levin's reappearance, a fresh source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter, who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from extreme sense of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin's arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... long terms of settlements are obvious; the disadvantages, though equally real, are less obvious. Fluctuations in prices, and above all, in the price of silver, are among the many conditions which complicate the question. Except the Bengal landowners, most people now admit that the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793 was a grievous mistake. It is also admitted that the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... on into pain and sorrow—now Levy began to practise his vindictive arts; and the arts gradually prevailed. On pretence of assisting Egerton in the arrangement of his affairs, which he secretly contrived, however, still more to complicate, he came down frequently to Egerton Hall for a few hours, arriving by the mail, and watching the effect which Nora's almost daily letters produced on the bridegroom, irritated by the practical cares of life. He was thus constantly at ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to determine the centre of gravity of a spherical sector. "The question is easy," I said to him. "Very well; since you find it easy, I will complicate it: instead of supposing the density constant, I will suppose that it varies from the centre to the surface according to a determined function." I got through this calculation very happily; and from this moment I had entirely gained the favour of the examiner. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... tragedy, so Jo piled up the agony to suit her, while Amy objected to the fun, and, with the best intentions in life, Jo quenched the spritly scenes which relieved the somber character of the story. Then, to complicate the ruin, she cut it down one third, and confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into the big, busy world to try ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... entanglement; coil &c (convolution) 248; sleave^, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl^; webwork^. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c 704. V. complexify^, complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled^. complex, complexed; intricate, complicated, perplexed, involved, raveled, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the time to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to complicate his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of increasing his little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his notary, Cardot, his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary had received about three thousand francs ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac

... rose, came forward: a shape inharmonious with the environment, serving only to complicate the riddle further. This was no more than a sort of native bonne, in a common-place bonne's cap and print-dress. She spoke neither French nor English, and I could get no intelligence from her, not understanding her phrases of dialect. But she bathed my temples ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... illustrate the working principle; and while the upright structure on the right is intended to represent a set of molds in position to form a three-story house, with cellar, no regular details of such a building (such as windows, doors, stairways, etc.) are here shown, as they would only tend to complicate an explanation. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... five year old boy was very suddenly seized with pleurisy in its most violent form, and for hours he seemed in mortal agony. We had no efficient remedies, no doctor within thirty, perhaps fifty miles, and to complicate matters, I had lain down sick for the first time, thoroughly vanquished by fatigue and unusual exposure. But that sickness of mine had to be postponed, and we fought all that night with the fearful disease, using vigorously all the external remedies within ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... way the war may complicate the architect's personal problem, it should simplify and clarify his attitude toward his art. With no matter what seriousness and sincerity he may have undertaken his personal search for truth and beauty, he will come to question, as never before, both its direction and its ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... from contact with those who have been the willing slaves of their caprices. I have often made the effort to treat them where they have lived and to isolate them there, but I have rarely done so without promising myself that I would not again complicate my treatment by any such embarrassments. Once separate the patient from the moral and physical surroundings which have become part of her life of sickness, and you will have made a change which will be in itself beneficial and will enormously ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... (about fourteen years of age) with an enlightened apprenticeship in some productive occupation. Such training cannot be obtained satisfactorily in the market. The immature workers are present there in such large numbers that they complicate the industrial problem by their poverty and inability, and thus tend to lower the wage. Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago, says these untrained girls "enter industry at its most painful point, where the trades are already so overcrowded ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... serve to complicate further the reproduction process, and add to the long list of technical standards that are necessary to ensure widespread access. Ways to articulate and analyze the costs that are attached to the different levels of standards must ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... was something further to complicate matters, and superinduce sickness in a delicate girl. To escape to the hills the good people of Arles could not follow a road, for the whole district between them and the range of Les Alpines was covered with one vast lagoon. They could not travel ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... heroically during our absence, but the little town—then much less energetic than now—had been unable to furnish the work required in so short a time. The heating apparatus and even the doors for the students' rooms were not in place until weeks after winter weather had set in. To complicate matters still more, students began to come at a period much earlier and in numbers far greater than we had expected; and the first result of this was that, in getting ready for the opening, Mr. Cornell and myself were worn out. For two or three days ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... for example, and you have the conditions in the United States. The Crown or a dethroned dynasty, the Established Church or a dispossessed church, nationalist secessions, the personalities of party leaders, may break up, complicate, and confuse the self-expression of these three necessary divisions in the modern social drama, the analyst will make them out none the less ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... the fair, legal interest of nervous power by too much business, too much care, or too much amusement. He has now a demand to meet. He has a complicate account to make up, an essay or a sermon to write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, a cigar, a glass of spirits. This is exactly the procedure of a man who, having used the interest of his money, begins to dip into the principal. The strength a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... natural fact that we still find it in full development among a large number of peoples of the lower races whom we are accustomed to regard as more primitive than ourselves. New conditions, it is true, soon enter to complicate the picture presented by savage courtship. The economic element of bargaining, destined to prove so important, comes in at an early stage. And among peoples leading a violent life, and constantly fighting, it has sometimes happened, though not always, that courtship also has ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... complicate matters, there had been the bankruptcy of his nephew, the Prince de Guimenee, whose debts had amounted to some three million livres. Characteristically, and for the sake of the family honour, Rohan had ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... sharpness, because he would not have me see it. He knows that his fear shall not disorder the practice and exercise of his art, but he knows that my fear may disorder the effect and working of his practice. As the ill affections of the spleen complicate and mingle themselves with every infirmity of the body, so doth fear insinuate itself in every action or passion of the mind; and as wind in the body will counterfeit any disease, and seem the stone, and seem the gout, so fear will counterfeit any disease ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... science, history, biography, voyages, travels, etc. In these, the primal aim is to convey information, and thus the style of expression is little or nothing—the thought or the fact is all. Yet most writers envelop the thought or the fact in so much verbiage, complicate it with so many episodes, beat it out thin, by so much iteration and reiteration, that the student must needs learn the art of skipping, in self-defense. To one in zealous pursuit of knowledge, to read most books through is paying them too ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... princess)—"this death was so greatly to his advantage, that he soon consoled himself with the love of the attractive Bestuchef—this proud and intriguing woman who now, through the weakness of her husband, rules over Russia, and threatens by her plots and intrigues to complicate the history and peace of Europe. She is neither young nor beautiful; she is forty years of age, and you cannot believe that Trenck at four-and-twenty burns with love for her. But she adores him; she loves him with that mad, bacchantic ardor which the Roman empress Julia felt ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... again to the home of Judge Strong. He had persuaded McGowan to let him act in the matter, for he feared that the Irishman's temper would complicate things and make it more difficult to secure Deborah's rights by creating some feeling in the community against ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... the workshop is not the same problem as the hygiene of the home and schoolhouse, because there are by-products of factory work that contaminate the air, overheat the room, and complicate the ordinary problems of ventilation. Certain trades are recognized as "dangerous trades." The problem of adequate government control of factories is one for a sanitary engineer. It has to do with disease-bearing raw material ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... aspect the fight in England is typical. As soon as the Catholics had obtained emancipation in 1828 (the Jews had stood aside in order not to complicate the question), Jewish emancipation became part of the Liberal creed, and the struggle was waged in Parliament, or rather in the House of Lords, for the ensuing thirty years. England was the home of toleration, and her Toleration Act, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... will grow freely. In this work there are many details connected with the forms of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to present a series of settling basins, etc., a description of which would only complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the river works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on the concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and only such a measure of despatch as can be secured without endangering thoroughness. Whether the projected expedition shall include troops, the conditions at the time must dictate. Troops with their transports will much complicate and increase the difficulties of the problem, and they may or may not be needed. The critical results can be accomplished by naval operations only; since nothing can be accomplished if the naval part of the expedition fails to secure the command of the sea; and the troops cannot be landed ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... and Freewill led to many appeals being made to the States-General and to the Estates of Holland to convene a Synod to settle the disputed questions, but neither of these bodies in the midst of the negotiations for the truce was willing to complicate matters by taking a step that could not fail to accentuate existing discords. Six months after the truce was signed Arminius died. The quarrel, however, was only to grow more embittered. Johannes Uyttenbogaert ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... not conjecture therefore that round this grand enterprise of Making the Constitution there will, as heretofore, very strange embroilments gather, and questions and interests complicate themselves; so that after a few or even several months, the Convention will not have settled every thing? Alas, a whole tide of questions comes rolling, boiling; growing ever wider, without end! Among which, apart from this question of September and Anarchy, let us notice those, which emerge ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... party, calling itself the Republican, was formed, having for its main principle opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories. [Footnote: See The Rise of the Republican Party.] Other issues might and did complicate the central question, but it was the slavery issue that inflamed men's minds, made Kansas a "battle-ground" between settlers from North and South, and sent John Brown upon his reckless raid. Watching ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... same state twice." This is the real necessity that makes any return to the imagined glories of other days an idle dream. Graham Wallas remarks that those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge cannot forget—"Mr. Chesterton cries out, like the Cyclops in the play, against those who complicate the life of man, and tells us to eat 'caviare on impulse,' instead of 'grapenuts on principle.' But since we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton is only telling us to eat caviare on principle." The binding fact we must face ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Oregon was left untouched even by these friendly diplomats. Nor could they do more than discuss the critical Creole trouble, which just now came to complicate the relations of both peoples, evidently desirous of avoiding war. The Creole was a vessel engaged in the domestic slave trade. In 1841 this ship, bound for New Orleans, was seized by the slaves on board, who killed its ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... association of children and grownups, pledged to mutual help and a variety of altruistic aims—a scheme, with all its faults, at least human and understandable. But Miss C.J. DELAGREVE has chosen to complicate it by (apparently) a dash of the supernatural, in the person of a character called Saint Ken, about whom we are told that he lived in a tunnel on the Underground and employed himself in helping distressed passengers. Well, what I in my brutal way want ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... not drink." The coroner's voice rang deep; he was greatly moved. "You will not drink, and you will come to the office at five o'clock to-morrow. We may have only good news to impart. We may find nothing to complicate the situation." ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... The day of his return, as from the bath Arose the monarch, tranquil and refresh'd. His robe demanding from his consort's hand, A tangl'd garment, complicate with folds. She o'er his shoulders flung and noble head; And when, as from a net, he vainly strove To extricate himself, the traitor, base AEgisthus, smote him, and envelop'd thus Great Agamemnon sought the ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... Mark's voice had a decided note in it. "My disappearance might complicate the international part of the situation. Baron Griffin was a member of the House of Lords, and quite a personage. And I am the only brother of that late personage. He had no children. I can ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... letter in April; but the Duchess, who then acted as regent for her son Francesco, refused to receive him. She alleged that the Duke forbade the levying of troops for foreign service, and declined to complicate his relations with foreign powers. It seems, from a sufficiently extensive correspondence on the affairs of Lodovico, that he was understood by the Italian princess to be charged with some special commission for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... said they would write to the mother, who had given her to them. We noted this—the second point we should have to prove if they lodged a suit against us—and any day the mother may come and complicate matters by working on the child's affections. Also, we have heard of a plot to decoy her away, should we be for a moment off guard; so we are very much on the watch, and we never let her ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... brand indicating the sale of an animal to another owner, began to complicate matters to a certain extent. A purchaser could put his own fierro brand on a cow, and that meant that he now owned it. But then some suspicious soul asked, "How shall we know whence such and such ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics that we shall ourselves ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... he would—give!" and then to complicate matters Sandy rolled over in a huddled heap and fainted dead away! Bob, bereft and frightened, hovered over him, emitting yelps and howls that shattered the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... in practice, something very different from what it means across the Channel. The principal reason why this is so is to be found in the totally different status of political parties in the two countries. In Great Britain, while in later years small political groups have sprung up to complicate the situation, the political life of the nation is still confined very largely to the two great rival parties, which oppose to each other a fairly united front, and between which there is not likely to be anything like fusion or affiliation. In France, on the contrary, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... the question to do the business by letter. A letter hits too hard; it lies too heavy on the wound it has made. And in money matters he could be generous. He must be generous. At least financial worries need not complicate her distresses of desertion. But to suggest such generosities on paper, in cold ink, would be outrageous. And, in brief—he ought not to have gone there to lunch. After that he began composing letters at a great ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... mixed with tribes. As a result, new relations and new industries, especially of trade, were established, and the new associations of tribe with tribe and of the Indians with Europeans led very often to the development of quite elaborate jargon languages. All of these have a tendency to complicate the study of the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... far from being a simple matter for either boy or girl; but for the girl who recognizes homemaking as woman's work, double possibilities complicate her problem more than that of the boy. The girl must prepare for life work in the home, or life work outside the home, or a period of either followed by the other, or perhaps a combination of both during some part or even all ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... with the unstable regions in the south. Numerous warlords and factions are still fighting for control of Mogadishu and the other southern regions. Suspicion of Somali links with global terrorism complicate the picture. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... favourite Roche's Embrocation, are of use when the disease is on the decline, and may also be of service if bronchitis should occur to complicate the hooping-cough, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... with the success in South Carolina, as in his opinion this success will complicate the question of slavery. He is frightened as to what he shall do with Charleston and Augusta, provided these ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... said, "the point raised by General Moritz must stand, and, of course, it needs the sanction of our respective heads. As Lord Haldane has pointed out, it does complicate matters to some extent. The Balkans concern Austria most; to my way of thinking it is quite within reason to accede this point. [As I write I recall vividly how grave they had all become. They knew what this meant—war in the Balkans.] ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... pocket he cared for; it was just one of his confounded principles not to be beaten by anything, not even an Army Form. I expressed some surprise that in the course of this tour of duty he had not managed to find his way to America for an hour or two, if only to complicate my business ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... in Germany might have exercised a restraining influence, was so engrossed in the life and death struggle with France that he had no time to follow the progress of the religious revolt. To complicate the issue still more, Clement VII., who had been friendly to the Emperor for some time after his election, alarmed lest the freedom of the Papal States and of the Holy See might be endangered were the French ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... barbarism, but with a minuteness for which there is no other word but meanness. It was as if the Dane had returned in the character of a detective. The inconsistency of the King's personal attitude to Catholicism did indeed complicate the conspiracy with new brutalities towards Protestants; but such reaction as there was in this was wholly theological. Cromwell lost that fitful favour and was executed, but the terrorism went on the more terribly for being simplified to the single ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... tape had been untied or cut, and the moment his discharge came Stratton took the first possible train out of New York. He did not even wire Bloss, his ranch-foreman, that he was coming. As a matter of fact he felt that doing so would only further complicate an ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... smiled, a little awkwardly, it seemed. "If anything, it would appear to complicate the problem still further," he replied guardedly. "Still, I am very glad to have it, and thank you for informing me so promptly. Miss Tredworth may rest assured that should we find it necessary to go still farther into this piece of evidence, it will be ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William



Words linked to "Complicate" :   modify, alter, complication, elaborate, embrangle, complexify, perplex, involve



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