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Construct   Listen
verb
Construct  v. t.  (past & past part. constructed; pres. part. constructing)  
1.
To put together the constituent parts of (something) in their proper place and order; to build; to form; to make; as, to construct an edifice.
2.
To devise; to invent; to set in order; to arrange; as, to construct a theory of ethics.
Synonyms: To build; erect; form; compile; make; fabricate; originate; invent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Construct" Quotes from Famous Books



... errors of 3 or 4 per cent. are easily made; but, fortunately, the corrections are simple, and it is easy to construct a piece of apparatus by means of which they may be reduced to a simple calculation by the rule ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... consequence of the doubts which its own limited powers sometimes suggest, impairing its own sense of the truth; and lastly, because wanting the knowledge of many details and circumstances, about which it can form no judgment, the intellect cannot construct a complete rationalistic system of moral theology. Whereas, on the other hand, emanating as they do from the infinite wisdom and mercy of God, formulated in the shape of positive precepts, and corroborated by the portentous manner of their promulgation, those ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... centuries the empire knew that religion disturbed economy, for even the cost of heathen incense affected the exchanges; but no one could afford to buy or construct a costly and complicated machine when he could hire an occult force at trifling expense. Fetish-power was cheap and satisfactory, down to a certain point. Turgot and Auguste Comte long ago fixed this stage of economy as a necessary phase ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... ribbon of black and white stripes encircling the lower neck and the narrower one which crosses the throat. The back is spotted with white. In some sections Loons build no nest, simply scooping a hollow out in the sand, while in other places they construct quite a large nest of sticks, moss and grasses. It is usually placed but a few feet from the waters edge, so that at the least suspicion the bird can slide off its eggs into the water, where it can cope with any enemy. The nests are nearly ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... camel, out of its author's own pregnant inner consciousness. The Roman poet would no doubt have built an excellent superstructure if he had only possessed a little straw to make his bricks of. As it was, however, scientific brick-making being still in its infancy, he could only construct in a day a shadowy Aladdin's palace of pure fanciful Epicurean phantasms, an imaginary world of imaginary atoms, fortuitously concurring out of void chaos into an orderly universe, as though by miracle. It is not thus that systems arise which regenerate the thought of humanity; he ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... both Harrasford and himself. For that matter, he was fully equal to the interests at stake. Harrasford, a great judge of men, intrusted everything to Jimmy, the sensational bill-topper, removed above all jealousy; and he left it to his experience to construct the program. Harrasford himself, the chief and master, rarely left London; he managed all his theaters from his office, with the 'phone at his ear, or else flew like the wind in every direction, buying a theater here, picking up a star there, on the wing. It was not ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... perhaps enacted into law. The main items were to be a new National Bank, a higher tariff, and the distribution among the States of the proceeds of the public land sales. This would enable States to construct their own public improvements and at the same time avoid a rupture between Southern and Western Whigs. Thus the chief items of the old Clay and Adams "American System" was to be reenacted by a Congress whose majority was none too large and more ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... extensive works constructed by Beauregard when he held that position against Halleck's army. Rosecrans had too few troops to man these works but had taken the precaution to hastily construct an inner line of fortifications, which was traced about a mile west from the ...
— A Battery at Close Quarters - A Paper Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, - October 6, 1909 • Henry M. Neil

... cleared away, the land has been overgrazed, cultivated and exposed to the erosive attacks of sunlight, air, water and frost. Wood from the forests has been hauled to the cities and burned, has been used to construct palaces and temples, houses and ships, with no recognition of the principles of priority or renewal. If wood was available where must it go? The oligarchy decided the issue in terms of ostentation and expediency. Rarely during recorded human history have ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... stands I invented for these telescopes it would not be easy to assign. . . . In 1781 I began to construct a thirty-foot aerial reflector, and having made a stand for it, I cast the mirror thirty-six inches in diameter. This was cracked in cooling. I cast it a second time, and the furnace I had built ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... of the bell ringers to the English public Barnum secured and sent thither a party of sixteen North American Indians, who were widely exhibited. On his return to America after his first visit to Europe he engaged an ingenious workman to construct an automatic orator. This was a life-size and remarkably life-like figure, and when worked from a key-board similar to that of a piano it actually uttered words and sentences with surprising distinctness. It was exhibited for several months in London and elsewhere in England, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... have finished the dam, they then proceed to construct a house for themselves. First they dig a foundation of greater or less capacity, in proportion to the number of their society. They then form the walls of earth and stones, mixed with billets of wood crossing ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... not shawls and cloaks enough to construct beds upon the barn floor, and the paechter's house, though substantial, was but a dark den, already stuffed full with wife and children. Must we, then, really return to the inn at Rein with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... people, and we must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us. From our Revolution to the Civil War, to the Great Depression, to the Civil Rights movement, our people have always mustered the determination to construct from these crises the pillars of our history. Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow Americans, this is OUR time. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... hasty-pudding accounts perhaps for some of the girl's peculiar ways. When a young woman looks at existence through the medium of fifteen thousand novels, she must see it in a strange light, and construct queer ideas about matters and things in general. As for me, I am waiting. It is certain at any rate that I never have had for any other woman the devotion which I have had for her. And still it is quite certain that I shall never marry her. So if she has had numbers, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... majority of these present no specialties distinguishing them from the thousands of similar inscriptions with which the world has long since been familiar. But there are some among them which contribute useful fragments of knowledge to the attempts of our antiquaries to construct a satisfactory plan of the ancient city—dedications of statues, showing what god or goddess inhabited such or such a shrine, and the like. The letters of these inscriptions have been rendered more easily legible by restoring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... Construct a series of five advertisements, each dealing with a single attractive feature of one of the articles selected in the preceding work. Each advertisement should carry its argument ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... waiting a favourable opportunity for this, he made every preparation in his power for his intended enterprize, collecting as many men in his service as he possibly could, and employed workmen secretly to construct musquets, iron chains, fetters, and manacles. At this time a vessel arrived from Lima in the harbour of Truxillo, on which Verdugo sent for the master and pilot, under pretence of purchasing some of their commodities; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... of men had been employed to clear a trail up the side of the mountain in the Adirondacks and construct a road to the summit as none ever had been made to the spot Tom intended to use. A specially large motor truck was built to carry first the telescope, ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton

... grizzly or panther. The question now was, "How were we to cross the lake?" We were none of us much accustomed to boating, although Sergeant Custis knew more about it than either Manley or I. At first we talked of building a canoe, but the sergeant suggested that, as it would take some time to construct one, it would be better to form a raft, which could be put together ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston

... succeeded in dragging the vessels into the true channel, I shall construct a dam in the rear, so as to retain the water at a higher level. I have no doubt that a series of such dams will be required to enable us to reach the Nile. Should it be impossible to proceed with the heavy vessels, I shall leave them thatched ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... recitation. Not only must the teacher be careful not to monopolize the time of the class himself, but he must even lead the children out, encouraging them to express in their own words or through their drawings and pictures, or through maps they make or through the things they construct with their hands, or in any other way possible, their own knowledge and thought. The timid child who shrinks from reciting or going to the blackboard to draw or write needs encouragement and teaching especially. The constant danger ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... of their state in his days. "There," says he, "the ocean pours in its flood twice every day, and produces a perpetual uncertainty whether the country may be considered as a part of the continent or of the sea. The wretched inhabitants take refuge on the sand-hills, or in little huts, which they construct on the summits of lofty stakes, whose elevation is conformable to that of the highest tides. When the sea rises, they appear like navigators; when it retires, they seem as though they had been shipwrecked. They subsist on the fish ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... As mankind construct their own gods, or as the prevailing ideas of the unknowable reflect the inner consciousness of human beings, a trustworthy history of the growth of religions must correspond to the processes involved in the mental, moral, and social development of ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... religious bodies today is their mediaeval insistence on what they are pleased to call the supernatural. Which is the more marvellous—that God can stop the earth and make the sun appear to stand still, or that he can construct a universe of untold millions of suns with planets and satellites, each moving in its orbit, according to law; a universe wherein every atom is true to a sovereign conception? And yet this marvel of marvels—that makes God in the twentieth century infinitely greater than in the sixteenth—would ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... To construct an entire line of flexible girders would be not only unnecessary, but so costly as to neutralize any advantage which it may possess, yet for surmounting occasional obstacles the claim made for it—that it will sometimes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... Wizard Camera, as he called it, the next day—that is he began drawing the designs, and planning how to construct it. Ned helped him, and Koku was on hand in case he was needed, but there was little he could do, as yet. Tom made an inspection of his shop the morning after the chicken thief scare, but nothing seemed to ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... the accuracy obtainable in observations, would probably have regarded such an agreement as remarkably good; but Kepler refused to admit the possibility of an error of eight minutes in any of Tycho's observations. He thereupon vowed to construct from these eight minutes a new planetary theory that should account for them all. His repeated failures had by this time convinced him that no uniformly described circle could possibly represent the motion of Mars. Either the orbit could not be circular, ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... and being built for the corresponding passive participle, we possessed the former, with is prefixed, as the active present imperfect, it is in rigid accordance with the symmetry of our verb that, to construct the passive present-imperfect, we prefix is to the latter, producing the form is being built. Such, in its greatest simplicity, is the procedure which, as will be seen, has provoked a very levanter of ire and vilification. But anything that is ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... into consideration, that they were unduly numerous. The position then occupied by the Fifth Corps had always been a very vulnerable part of our line. The ground was marshy, and trenches were most difficult to construct and maintain. The Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Divisions of the Fifth Corps had no previous experience in European warfare, and a number of the units composing the corps had only recently returned from service in tropical climates. In consequence, the hardships ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... wise enough and sufficiently well organized and equipped to demolish and construct at the same time. As yet no such stage has been reached. During the intervals of chaos which separate two periods of forward movement (the dark ages of the world, as they are sometimes called) the masses agonize and suffer, groping ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... Eugene had gone ahead, working during the night to construct a bridge, but frozen and hungry they had suspended their work for a few hours, to finish it after ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... building it; and really this was all I expected to do. If worse came to worst, I could get away from the town with my sister better by the way of the swamp than by the road. I explained to Sim more clearly what I intended to do, and how to construct the raft. He was even more enthusiastic than I was, for the scheme would enable him to help me, and thus pay for the provisions he consumed. He wanted to go to work at once; but nothing could be done ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... whereupon Hirst, perceiving that Hewet's mind was a complete blank, fixed his attention more closely upon his fellow-creatures. He was too far from them, however, to hear what they were saying, but it pleased him to construct little theories about them from their gestures ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... Mount Dunstan himself had felt, when each day was filled with the result of her thought of the needs of the poor souls thrown by fate into his hands. In these days, after listening to old Mrs. Welden's anecdotes, through which she gathered the simpler truth of things, Betty was able to construct for herself a less Scriptural version of what she had heard. She was glad—glad in his sitting by a bedside and holding a hand which lay in his hot or cold, but always trusting to something which his ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... drinking tea, of which they had a small supply, twice in twenty-four hours, and in the morning taking some thin rice water, with a small lump of chocolate each, to make it palatable. They were obliged to construct bridges of logs over numerous rivulets, swelled with the snows, which crossed their path, and they were exposed to a succession of furious storms. On the twentieth day they arrived at what they supposed a long narrow lake, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... Khufu did suddenly conceive a design without a parallel—did require his architect to construct him a tomb, which should put to shame all previous monuments, and should with difficulty be surpassed, or even equalled. He must have possessed much elevation of thought, and an intense ambition, together with inordinate selfishness, an overweening pride, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... region under notice were wonderfully skilful in turning the result of the natural weathering of the rocks to account. To construct a cave-dwelling, the entrance to the cave or the front of the open gallery was walled up with adobes, leaving only a small opening serving for both door and window. The cliff houses take the form and dimensions ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... occupy....; but the house has changed so in three years, that my description would be incomprehensible to you. M. Audret, the architect of the imperial chateau, directed the work. He actually wanted to construct me a laboratory worthy of Thenard or Duprez. I earnestly protested against it, and said that I was not yet worthy of one, as my celebrated work on the Condensation of Gases had only reached the fourth chapter. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... some part of the labour of composing these novels might be saved by the use of steam." There was a murmur of disapprobation at this proposal, and the words, "Blown up," and "Bread taken out of our mouths," and "They might as well construct a steam parson," were whispered. And it was not without repeated calls to order, that the Preses obtained an ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... shall do in our day. He says we have acquired California; we have opened up those rich regions on our western borders, which promises such magnificent results; and he asks, is not that enough for the present generation? Leave it to the nest generation to construct a work of such magnitude as this—requiring forty millions of dollars from the government. Mr. President, I have said that if the condition was a road or no road, I would regard one hundred and fifty millions of dollars ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... took them deep into the woods lying north of Tlatlanquitepec. Here they set to work to construct a rough hut of boughs, near a mountain spring; and when this was completed, they ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... elected monarch, before receiving the crown, was required to give his pledge that he would reside two years uninterruptedly in the kingdom, and that then he would not leave without the consent of the nobles. He was also required to construct four fortresses at his own expense, and to pay all the debts of the last monarch, however heavy they might be, including the arrears of the troops. He was also to maintain a sort of guard of honor, consisting ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... instinct observed in the lower animals, and to a certain degree in man. This Instinctive plane of mentality causes the bird to build its nest before its eggs are laid, which instructs the animal mother how to care for its young when born, and after birth; which teaches the bee to construct its cell and to store up its honey. These and countless other things in animal life, and in the higher form of plant life, are manifestations of Instinct—that great plane of the mind. In fact, the greater part of the life ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... come it will, 'Spite the fluting on the hill,) And we'll pitch a cozy camp Where it isn't quite so damp. While you dry your hair and laze By the campfire's violet blaze, I will rob a balsam tree To construct a house for thee. What so dear as to be wooed ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... was in the plenitude of power, and the Southern States were dominant in the Administration. It had been the dream of this element for many years to construct a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and the additional territory was required for "a pass". It was not known at that early day that railroads could be constructed across the Rocky Mountains at a higher latitude, and it was feared that snow and ice might interfere with ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston

... been given, as Bayan was far from cruel. Pauthier gives original extracts on the subject, which are interesting. They picture the humane and chivalrous Bayan on this occasion as demoniacal in cruelty, sweeping together all the inhabitants of the suburbs, forcing them to construct his works of attack, and then butchering the whole of them, boiling down their carcasses, and using the fat to grease his mangonels! Perhaps there is some misunderstanding as to the use of this barbarous lubricant. For Carpini relates ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... the flower-characters as the essential feature of Angiosperms supply the clue to phylogeny, but the uncertainty regarding the construction of the primitive angiospermous flower gives a fundamental point of divergence in attempts to construct progressive sequences of the families. Simplicity of flower-structure has appeared to some to be always primitive, whilst by others it has been taken to be always derived. There is, however, abundant evidence that it may have the one or the other character in different cases. Apart from this, botanists ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... species, as in Galloperdix, Acomus, and the Javan peacock (Pavo muticus), the females, as well as the males, possess well- developed leg-spurs. Are we to infer from this fact that they construct a different sort of nest from that made by their nearest allies, and not liable to be injured by their spurs; so that the spurs have not been removed? Or are we to suppose that the females of these several species especially require spurs ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... where in the whole history of science is there one single scientific inquirer to be found who would not have felt himself quite justified in teaching his own subjective convictions with as much right as he had to construct them from inquiry into objective facts. And where, generally speaking, is the limit to be found between objective and subjective knowledge? Is there, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... Advocates' Library in his historical studies, and there was space at Craighouse for any number of books. There were always rooms which could be taken into occupation when wanted; and to his life's end it was a favourite amusement of Dr Burton's to construct and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... element in Browning's poetry renders it difficult to construct his character from his works, while this is comparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although it throws a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as to any specific doctrine held by him, still ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... this palace is principally due to Nicholas the Fifth, the builder pope, whose gigantic scheme would startle a modern architect. His plan was to build the Church of Saint Peter's as a starting point, and then to construct one vast central 'habitat' for the papal administration, covering the whole of what is called the Borgo, from the Castle of Sant' Angelo to the cathedral. In ancient times a portico, or covered way supported on columns, led from the bridge to the church, and it was ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... pullies, he dragged it towards him with as smooth and even a motion as if it were passing over the sea. The king wondered greatly at this, and perceiving the value of his arts, prevailed upon Archimedes to construct for him a number of machines, some for the attack and some for the defence of a city, of which he himself did not make use, as he spent most of his life in unwarlike and literary leisure, but now these engines were ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... the Guild: "United we Stand". It was decided at a special meeting that every member must wear a briar rose for a badge, and as real wild roses seemed too perishable to be of much use, an extra committee undertook to construct a sufficient quantity of artificial ones out of crinkled paper. Officers were to wear pale pink sashes, tied over the right shoulder and under the left arm, and a wreath of pink roses round their hats. The form of ceremony for the occasion was entrusted to Gipsy's fertile brain, ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... of this New Spain undertake a survey of the Isthmus, in order to construct a water-way from ocean to ocean. The ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... Bailleul, the Brigade arrived at its wagon lines, a short distance west of Neuve Eglise, and immediately each battery sent work parties to the scene of action, in order to construct emplacements and make its position habitable. The spot allotted to our battery was in a little hollow close to the cut roads, near the small ruined village of Wulverghen. Our front line was placed on the top of an undulating rise, with the ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... commendable in taste, conception, or execution. To torture the Muses to madness, to wire-draw poetry through inextricable coils of difficult rhymes and impossible measures; to hammer one golden grain of wit into a sheet of infinite platitude, with frightful ingenuity to construct ponderous anagrams and preternatural acrostics, to dazzle the vulgar eye with tawdry costumes, and to tickle the vulgar ear with virulent personalities, were tendencies which perhaps smacked of the hammer, the yard-stick and the pincers, and gave sufficient proof, had proof been necessary, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... construct from the facts brought to our consciousness by the senses, an accurately measured world of phenomena, uncoloured by the human equation in each of us. It seeks to create a point of view outside the human standpoint, one more stable and accurate, unaffected by the ever-changing ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... Lord in to "the springs of thought and will," with the conscious aim that He should so warm and enrich them with His presence that they shall overflow for blessing around us, in the life of Christian love. I do not mean for a moment that we should set ourselves to construct a spiritual mannerism of speech or of habit. The matter is one not of manufacture but of culture; it is a call to "nourish and cherish" the gift of God which is in us, and to give to it the humble co-operation of our definite wish and will that ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... seem desirable that I should recommend at this time a specific and final form of government for these islands. When peace shall be restored it will be the duty of Congress to construct a plan of government which shall establish and maintain freedom and order and peace in the Philippines. The insurrection is still existing, and when it terminates further information will be required as to the actual condition of affairs before inaugurating a permanent ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... important than that of the geographical development of the continents; the fossils imbedded in the rocks of each formation tell of the kinds of animals and plants which inhabited the earth at that time, and from these fossils we are therefore able to construct the history of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... less respectful thing. We know him elsewhere capable of essaying heights, yet we seem to look down upon the drama of his heart. It may be well to remember that the level is not everything in love. He who carefully adjusts an intellectual machine may descry a higher mark; he can construct nothing in a mistress; he is, therefore, able to see the facts and to discriminate the desirable. But Lorne loved with all his imagination. This way dares the imitation of the gods by which it improves the quality of the passion, so that such a love stands by itself to be considered, apart from ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... proposed to construct in Paris that handsome building called the Observatory, the King himself chose the site for this. Having a map of his capital before him, he wished this fine edifice to be in a direct line of perspective with the Luxembourg, to which it should eventually be joined by ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... be one or two ingenious or ambitious women who do something which is not general, and which they would gladly turn to account. One woman may be a skilled knitter of tidies, or laces, or rag mats; another may pull rags through burlap, and so construct a thick and rather luxurious-looking door-mat; another may have an old-fashioned loom and weave carpets for all the neighbourhood; and each one of these simple arts is a foundation upon which an industry may be built, important to the neighbourhood, and in ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler

... when he tried to construct the hidden story of his own birth, his mind had perhaps never been so active in weaving probabilities about any private affair as it had now begun to be about Gwendolen's marriage. This unavowed relation of Grandcourt's—could she have gained ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... shipbuilder in New Orleans to hastily construct the beginnings of a Southern navy. Two powerful iron-clad gunboats, Louisiana and Mississippi, were under way but not ready for service. Eight small vessels had been bought ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... may attempt to influence her against others more likely to decide in her favor. She will be told that, having rejected a book, this certain party does not wish any one else to print it. Send the severest note you can construct, Lawrence. I have few talents, but I know ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... and very grand and picturesque sometimes in external appearance, but very illy furnished and comfortless within. The artisans were skillful in fabricating splendid caparisons for the horses, and costly suits of glittering armor for the men, and the architects could construct grand cathedrals, and ornament them with sculptures and columns which are the wonder of the present age. But in respect to all the ordinary means and appliances of daily life, even the most wealthy and powerful nobles lived in a ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... of common brotherhood; but your individualism—what it is that makes you you—withdraws itself naturally, involuntarily, inevitably into the background,—the dim distance which their eyes can not penetrate. But, from the fraction which you do project, they construct another you, call it by your name, and pass it around for the real, the actual you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims, to keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to be your every-day equipment. They think your life holds constant carnival. It is ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... are we truly saving a man if we bring about that he loves evil somewhat less than he loved it before; for we are helping that man to construct, deep down in his soul, the refuge where—against destiny shall brandish her weapons in vain. This refuge is the monument of consciousness, or, it may be, of love; for love is nothing but consciousness, still vaguely in search of itself; and veritable consciousness nothing but love ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... and said, "Well, I am trying, not very successfully I fear, to find out what I really do believe. I am trying to construct my faith from the bottom; and I am anxious not to put into the foundations any faulty stones, anything that I ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity as distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between humanity and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. The principles involved in what we call the Reformation were momentous. Connected on the one side with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... construct a lifting-apparatus in the back-yard, and I will soon prove to you that you are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... will be taken not to exhaust the means applicable to our main purpose in a first trial, or in a second, or even any number of trials. But we have great confidence that not many trials will be necessary to construct a system of industry and of social life far in advance of any form of either now ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... I know an ingenious artificer in copper and other metals, whose only child I was instrumental in curing of scrofula, and in whose fidelity, as well as good will, I can safely rely. But we must give him time. He can construct our machine at home, and we must take our departure from ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... impossible for the party to bring any material with them from which to construct a dwelling. The regulation miner's cabin is twelve by fourteen feet, with walls six or seven feet high, and gables two feet higher. It consists of a single room, with the roof heavily earthed and the worst sort ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... their first conclusions regarding it were erroneous, and thereafter it was viewed by them with less disdain and spoken of more hopefully. One of the great objections by engineers to the use of the screw was their inability, at the time of its introduction, to construct properly a screw engine,—that is to say, a direct-acting horizontal engine, working at a speed of from sixty to one hundred revolutions per minute,—all their experience having been in paddle-wheel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... these sketches before the commission. Fortunately, however, he had excellent advisers (among whom was honest John Graham) and they assured him he would stand a far better chance of securing a favorable hearing should he first construct the instrument of which he at present had nothing but pictures. Now such counsel as this was pretty disheartening to a young man who, fired with hope and ambition, had come all the way to London confidently expecting to have his plan hailed with joy when he arrived. Nevertheless Harrison was open-minded ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... the lapwing, gradually increased the distance between them, till he gave up the pursuit with some disappointment, and returned to his brother and sister. More ambitious than they, he proceeded to construct—chiefly for the sake of the moat he intended to draw around it—a sand-castle of considerable pretensions; but the advancing tide drove him from his stronghold before he had begun to dig ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... and fanciful is abundantly evident; but it is highly probable that Ptolemy did construct one ship, if not more, of ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... The association of ideas is a constituent and necessary phase of the unity of our mental and moral being, the indispensable condition of all development, whether of mind or soul. Without the power of association, the intellect would strive in vain to construct consecutive trains of thought; it would indeed be condemned to eternal infancy, because, as it ascertained new relations, those already acquired would escape, and a labor constantly renewed would be requisite to regain them. Without association of ideas, no voluntary virtue would be possible; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... he anticipated awaited him. While moving along the shore in search of logs and decayed wood from which to construct his float, he was astonished to run plump upon an Indian canoe, which was drawn up the bank beyond ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... elsewhere. For this enactment they advance many reasons—lest seduced by long-continued custom, they may exchange their ardor in the waging of war for agriculture; lest they may be anxious to acquire extensive estates, and the more powerful drive the weaker from their possessions; lest they construct their houses with too great a desire to avoid cold and heat; lest the desire of wealth spring up, from which cause divisions and discords arise; and that they may keep the common people in a contented state of mind, when ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... characteristics of the scout is to be able to live in the open, know how to put up tents, build huts, throw up a lean-to for shelter, or make a dugout in the ground, how to build a fire, how to procure and cook food, how to bind logs together so as to construct bridges and rafts, and how to find his way by night as well as by day ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... birds breeding in a southern climate construct far less elaborate nests than when breeding in a northern climate. Certain species of waterfowl, that abandon their eggs to the sand and the sun in the warmer zones, build a nest and sit in the usual way in Labrador. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... his capable manager were busily using the two office telephones. Before nine o'clock, all the teams of several lumber firms were engaged in hauling fence posts, two by four scantling, and sufficient sixteen foot boards to construct a fence eight feet high about the entire premises of the Harrisville Iron & Steel ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... It must depend on the issue of this business which I have in hand. You have heard perhaps that we are about to construct a branch line from ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... themselves liable to censure only for a change of system. Thus, my lord, a still heavier responsibility has, in fact, been incurred by continuing, long after the most superficial observation demanded a change, to construct small ships of the line, and little frigates, which the great practical skill and bravery of our countrymen were taxed to defend against the powerful eighty-gun ships of France and the large frigates of America. This timidity as to change caused many years to elapse, after the commercial ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... hundred yards we suddenly left the tropics behind us and came out into a wonderful region of pine parks. Trees stood on the rounded knolls at comparatively wide intervals, and there were scores of places where, in order to have a beautiful house lot, one needed only to construct driveways and go to work with a lawn-mower. At the same moment, a delightful cold breeze swept down from the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... upon encumbering his march with heavily laden wagons, which were to penetrate savage regions through which he must, every mile, construct his road. There was a young American in the camp by the name of George Washington. He was a man of the highest rank, and of commanding influence, having obtained much experience in Indian warfare. Modestly, but warmly, he remonstrated against this folly. He not only feared, but was fully assured ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... recommendation of last year that the Congress appropriate for a memorial amphitheater at Arlington, Va., the funds required to construct it upon the plans ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... bring about, construct, fashion, occasion, bring into being, create, force, perform, bring to pass, do, frame, reach, cause, effect, get, render, compel, establish, make out, require, compose, execute, make up, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... white side of his ancestry somewhat of the love of a constant habitation, for a genuine Indian has no particular dislike to a distant journey. He takes his habitation with him, and is at home wherever there is game and fish, and poles with which to construct his lodge. In a further conversation with the half-breed, he spoke of the Sault as a delightful abode, and expatiated on the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... world from a hell of discomfort and pain and death to a heaven where men and women, free and enlightened and perhaps immortal, shall live in happiness. They even dream that perhaps this race of gods shall learn to construct the means to take them to another and younger planet, when this Earth has become too old and too cold and too nakedly clad in ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... editors with more care, if he wishes that his "Library of Old Authors" should deserve the confidence and thereby gain the good word of intelligent readers,—without which such a series can neither win nor keep the patronage of the public. It is impossible that men who cannot construct an English sentence correctly, and who do not know the value of clearness in writing, should be able to disentangle the knots which slovenly printers have tied in the thread of an old author's meaning; and it is more than doubtful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... cost Great Britain millions—but not a soul in it has had the necessary common sense to point out that an electrician and an expert locksmith could in a few weeks, and for a few hundred pounds, devise and construct a member's desk and key, committee-room tapes and voting-desks, and a general recording apparatus, that would enable every member within the precincts to vote, and that would count, record, and report the votes within the space of a ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... of all the best Architecture is to construct a building of such a kind that it will withstand the ruin of the ages and will prove an opportunity for doing well whatever it is built for. The purpose of a house is that a man should be able to live in it. The essence of ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... current, while nearly 100 yards of solid ice lay between the true bank of the river and the dangerous portion; thus our first labour was to make a solid footing for ourselves from which to launch any raft or make-shift boat which we might construct. After a great deal of trouble and labour, we got the waggon-box roughly fashioned into a raft, covered over with one of our large oil-cloths, and Lashed together with buffalo leather. This most ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... best to upset your plans and you no able to enlighten them. I could send word to the Chief Constable and get ye through to London without a stop like a load of fish from Aiberdeen, but that would be spoilin' the fine character ye've been at such pains to construct. Na, na! Ye maun take the risk and travel by Muirtown ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... wonder, therefore, that, when men who had been thus ruled succeeded in wresting supreme power from a government which they had long in secret hated, they should have been impatient to demolish and unable to construct, that they should have been fascinated by every specious novelty, that they should have proscribed every title, ceremony, and phrase associated with the old system, and that, turning away with disgust from their own national precedents and traditions, they should have sought for ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... B. Daydon Jackson, Secretary of the Linnean Society, whose extensive knowledge of botanical literature qualifies him for the task. My father's original idea of producing a modern edition of Steudel's 'Nomenclator' has been practically abandoned, the aim now kept in view is rather to construct a list of genera and species (with references) founded on Bentham and Hooker's 'Genera Plantarum.' The colossal nature of the work in progress at Kew may be estimated by the fact that the manuscript of the 'Index' is at ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... than a couple of contractors, however enthusiastic, to construct a railway. Though the more visible, the organiser of the labour is not the only parent. Not less essential, in his creative function, is the capitalist; and even the powerful combination of capitalist and contractor is insufficient to carry matters to a practical ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... the city undertook "to secure to the contractor the right to construct and operate, free from all rights, claims, or other interference, whether by injunction, suit for damages, or otherwise on the part of any abutting owner or other person." But another eminent judge of the same court had characterized this as "a condition absolutely impossible of fulfillment," ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... rules of art and canons of taste, but the unities had never prevailed in practice in England, though constantly recommended in theory. The French had no Shakspere, and the English no Academy. We may construct an imaginary parallel to such a scene if we will suppose that all reputable English tragedies from 1600 down to 1830 had been something upon the model of Addison's "Cato" and Johnson's "Irene", or better still upon the model of Dryden's heroic plays ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... with expectation, not because of herself but because of the photograph on its low marble shelf. A large photograph on a little shelf-easel. A photograph of a man with evident eyes, evident lips, evident cheeks—and each of the six were rounded and convex. You could construct the rest of him. Down there under the glass you could imagine him extending, rounded and convex, with plump hands and curly thumbs and snug clothes. It was ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... of the Grande Guerre, which will be found after my death, in its present state can only be regarded as a collection of materials from which it is intended to construct a theory of War. With the greater part I am not yet satisfied; and the sixth book is to be looked at as a mere essay: I should have completely remodelled it, and have ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... without education. The mind cannot operate without means or construct without materials. Theology opposes education: Freethought supports it. The poor as well as the rich should share in its blessings. Education is a social capital which should be supplied to all. It enriches and expands. It not only furnishes the mind, but strengthens ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... obscure, of too little importance even for the messengers of Death to remember and to relieve from their misery. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons of offence regularly win in their race with the weapons of defence. Fortresses that took years to construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... of his will and his passion for posthumous fame, was the true son of the Renaissance, asked Michael Angelo to construct a monument worthy of a pontiff who should surpass all his predecessors in glory. When the design proved too gigantic for any existing Church, he commanded Bramante to pull down the Basilica of Constantine, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... He will construct some handsome villas, facing a grand canal, and separated from one another and also from the mainland by ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Frenchman, who made himself famous by building the Suez Canal, organized a company in France, and work was commenced on the Panama route. His plan was to construct what is known as a sea-level canal across the very narrow part of the Isthmus (see map). "Sea level" means that it was to be merely a cut in which the water would be all the way at the same level—an open clear waterway from one ocean to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... presenting himself as the bearer of a flag of truce, in the hope that once within Carthage he might make his way to her. Often he would cause the assault to be sounded and waiting for nothing rush upon the mole which it was sought to construct in the sea. He would snatch up the stones with his hands, overturn, strike, and deal sword-thrusts everywhere. The Barbarians would dash on pell-mell; the ladders would break with a loud crash, and masses of men would tumble ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... feeding shelf for winter use which makes an acceptable robin nesting shelf in spring. In Fig. 53 is given a feeder mounted on a base with a vane so the adjustment takes place automatically. Figs. 51 and 52 show two food shelters considerably more difficult to construct. They have glass on all sides, and are open at the bottom so that birds can enter or leave at will. Fig. 30 shows a simple food shelter offering some protection against rain and snow, while a very attractive group of shelters are given in Figs. 54, 55, 56 and 57. If you look closely you may see ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert

... and each way from the ends of the box a cellular hull to float it; place within it, and below the box, magazines, boilers, and engines; construct above, between the turrets, a lighter superstructure to hold additional quick-fire guns and torpedo-tubes; cap the whole with a military mast supporting fighting-tops, and containing an armored conning-tower in its base; man and equip, provision and coal ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... Ibsen, in unconscious bondage to his ideas, did not construct his drama sturdily enough on realistic lines. While not one of his works is more suggestive than Rosmersholm, there is not one which gives the unbeliever more opportunity to blaspheme. This ancestral house of a great rich race, which is kept up by the ministrations ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... had managed to sell all the stock; and from the very beginning the operations would be carried out by a closed corporation. The question before the directors was whether to have machines manufactured and hire them out, or to construct a plant and manufacture ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... I presume, see in any one who interests them, not so much what is there, as a reflection of what they construct from the hints that have pleased them. Some of them it takes a miserable married lifetime to undeceive; for some, not even that will serve; they continue to see, if not an angel, yet a very pardonable mortal, therefore altogether loveable man, in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... mind to construct a crude crutch to aid in hobbling around, but he decided not to do so. If his recovery continued without relapse he could do well ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... of song lasted he would even refuse to notice his most favourite food, as if he must express his joy before appetite could be gratified. After a few years he seemed to adopt me as a kind of mate! for as spring came round he endeavoured to construct a nest by stealing little twigs out of the grate and flying with them to a chosen retreat behind an ornamental scroll at the top of the looking-glass. He spent a great deal of time fussing about this nest, which never came to anything, but he very obligingly attended ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... W. Upham, in the preparation of his work on Salem Village and the Witchcraft tragedy of 1692, by collecting what information could be obtained from the records as to the people and their homes in that locality. In doing this I was enabled to construct a map showing the bounds of the grants and farms at that time. On that map is represented quite accurately the Downing Farm, so called, owned, in 1638, by Emanuel Downing, father of Sir George Downing, and occupied as tenant, in 1692, by John Procter, the victim of the witchcraft delusion. ...
— House of John Procter, Witchcraft Martyr, 1692 • William P. Upham



Words linked to "Construct" :   division, fact, constructor, notion, channelize, revet, natural law, whole, possibility, rule, attribute, customize, etymologise, build, theorise, part, lexicalized concept, idea, create, customise, raise, make, cantilever, erect, misconception, set up, section, conceptualization, create mentally, hypothesize, wattle, fabricate, law of nature, draw, conjecture, put up, geometry, rebuild, hypothecate, reconstruct, theorize, trace, conceptualisation, line, frame up, lock, retrace, speculate



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