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Defamation   Listen
noun
Defamation  n.  Act of injuring another's reputation by any slanderous communication, written or oral; the wrong of maliciously injuring the good name of another; slander; detraction; calumny; aspersion. Note: In modern usage, written defamation bears the title of libel, and oral defamation that of slander.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defamation" Quotes from Famous Books



... been customary of late, in reaction against the defamation of Raleigh in the eighteenth century, to protest that gold was not his chief aim in the Guiana enterprise, but that his main wish, under cover of the search for gold, was to form a South American colony for England, and to open out the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... woman at this moment existing in English society, Miss L—— ingenuously replied, "Oh dear! that she'd never thought of that: that she only knew it was a celebrated dramatic name, and so she had put it into her book." Sancta Simplicitas! I should think I might sue her for libel and defamation. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... defamation when applied to the early settlers of Iowa ought not to be dismissed with a shrug. The men who made these harsh charges were doubtless honest and sincere. But were they mistaken? All testimony based upon direct personal observation is overwhelmingly ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh

... accompanied her home, entreating her to be patient under a misfortune to which even kings are liable: namely, defamation. ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... tales regarding my life have been told, and must be refuted. I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding a letter from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation of character. I have also written to the church committee requesting them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their demand for ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and it has to be told all over again, and as they separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other circle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the top room of the garret all are aware of the defamation, and that evening all who leave the house will bear it to other houses, until autumnal fires sweeping across Illinois prairies are less raging and swift than that flame of consuming reputation blazing across the village ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... free platform, where is the human being who cares to argue the question? Where is the man who presents himself decently, and proffers a word of reasonable argument against our cause? I have yet to see that man. Instead, we have blackguardism, defamation, rowdyism, profanity; we have all the indications that hell from beneath is stirred up against this divine Convention, for it is divine—it takes hold of heaven and the throne of God! (Hisses). Hiss, ye serpents! ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... general, and the Methodists in particular, with not only violently contesting, but also with shockingly caricaturing, and shamefully misrepresenting and vilifying Calvinism—with "systematic and wide-spread defamation"—with "wholesale traduction of moral character, involving the Christian reputation of some three or four thousand accredited ministers of the gospel." His charity suggests an apology for much of our "misrepresentation of their doctrinal system" on the ground of our "intellectual weakness ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... many dark and intricate Motives there are to Detraction and Defamation, and how many malicious Spies are searching into the Actions of a great Man, who is not always the best prepared for so narrow an Inspection. For we may generally observe, that our Admiration of a famous Man lessens upon our nearer Acquaintance with him; and that we ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have determined ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... of a more serious character and of more dangerous import—all such as misrepresent Germany's attitude and defame German character. Such defamation is designed to disturb old friendships and transform them into bitter estrangement; such defamation can also attain its hostile purpose wherever people do not say daily to themselves, "It is an enemy that reports such things about Germany; let us be wise and suspend our ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... H. Thomas was short, but it was long enough for certain newspapers of Chattanooga to give expression to their dislike to negro troops in general and to those in their proximity especially. The Washington Post, also, ever faithful to its unsavory trust, lent its influence to this work of defamation. The leading papers, however, both of Chattanooga and the South generally, spoke out in rather conciliatory and patronizing tones, and "sought to restrain the people of their section from compromising their brilliant display of patriotism ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... prosecute the two forgers who had been employed to compass the ruin of an honest family, whose only crime was poverty. He ended his speech by an appeal for costs in all the suits, and for compensation for loss of time and defamation ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... nearly all public men have to undergo similar virulent defamation. I have heard a well-known publicist, a lawyer of ability, argue that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln did not escape from what seems now incredible abuse, and that they were, nevertheless, the noblest of men and peerless ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Litter was obliged to ring the bell and order the servant to show him out. From Dean's Yard he took a cab, and drove direct to his solicitor, and requested him instantly to take proceedings against the head-master for defamation of character. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... Germany and in America, you would scarcely have fallen into the error of asserting that a considerable proportion of our papers, in common with those of other nations, have "laboured in the employ or at the instigation of" the Government, "with all the implements of mendacity and defamation, to spread hatred and contempt for Germany." Unlike your own, our press is wholly free from Government control. Any attempt on the part of our Government to dictate the policy of any newspaper would be hotly resented, and would be doomed ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson

... OTHER, IS GROUNDED IN SEVERAL CAUSES; ARISING IN SOME INSTANCES FROM VARIOUS MENTAL WEAKNESSES. The causes why married partners who do not mutually love each other, are yet jealous, are principally the honor resulting from power, the fear of defamation with respect both to the man himself and also to his wife, and the dread lest domestic affairs should fall into confusion. It is well known that the men have honor resulting from power, that is, that they are desirous of being respected in consequence thereof; for so long as they have this honor, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... courses of tongue—tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape—and the philosopher again lost his patience, and said, "Didn't I tell you to get the worst thing in the market?" The servant replied, "I did; for isn't the tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... (Don), a Spanish beau. This exquisite one day received a challenge for defamation, soon after he had retired to bed, and said to his valet, "I would not get up before noon to make one in the best party of pleasure that was ever projected. Judge, then, if I shall rise at six o'clock in the morning to get my throat cut."—Lesage, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... says she, considerably mollified by his defamation of his people, "I dare say they are not so much to be blamed after all. And," with a little, quick laugh at her sister, "as Joyce says, my beauties are still unknown to them; they will be delighted when ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... visage bare of these hirsute adornments or a countenance too efflorescent in that respect was, under a regime of tonsorial politics, to invite personal disaster! Nothing apparently was too cringing or servile to show how submissive the people were to the mastery of Rosas. Private vengeance and defamation of the innocent did their sinister work unchecked. Even when his arbitrary treatment of foreigners had compelled France for a while to institute a blockade of Buenos Aires, the wily dictator utilized the incident to turn patriotic resentment to his ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... published by men in business, and the wares they carry are those in demand: mostly gossip, scandal and defamation. And humanity is of such a quality that it is not scandalized or shocked by facts, but by the recital of the facts in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... was uneventful, except for the court-martialling of Lee and his duel with Laurens, who challenged him for his defamation of Washington. Then came the eventful winter of 1779-80, when the army went into quarters at Morristown, Washington and his military family taking possession of a large house belonging to the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... Reformation in sheer depravity, the Catholics produced, prior to 1700, only one noteworthy contribution to the subject, that of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. [Sidenote: Bossuet] His History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, written without that odious defamation of character that had hitherto been the staple of confessional polemic, and with much real eloquence, sets out to condemn the Reformers out of their own mouths by their mutual contradictions. Truth is one, Bossuet maintains, and that which varies is not truth, but the Protestants ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... the speech you practiced at home before you came, and without finding anything to say on the spur of the moment. In making affirmations and promises you surpass all mankind in audacity, but in the contests themselves beyond uttering some words of abuse and defamation you are most weak and cowardly. Do you think any one is ignorant of the fact that you never delivered one of those wonderful speeches of yours that you have published, but wrote them all up afterward, like persons ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... general statements that had been made against him in the course of the trial, that it was time to put a stop to the malignant and mischievous slanders which had been current in the neighborhood. He instituted prosecutions of Procter and others for defamation, and recovered against them all. After this, we hear no more of him until he experienced religion and was received into the First Church. Whether he and Procter became reconciled again is not known. Probably they did; for they seem to have had ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... comic drama. Of the comedies of Cratinus, Quintilian speaks in great commendation; the little of his poetry, however, that remained is not thought to justify that praise. Eupolis is related to have composed seventeen plays at the age of seventeen years. He was put to death by Alcibiades for defamation, and died unlamented except by a dog, which was so faithfully attached to him that he refused to take food and starved to death upon his master's tomb. So that of the three, Aristophanes alone lays claim here ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... Orsola! Are you aware that you are accusing me of being guilty of punishable defamation and slander? I say that the Signorina Paolina Foscarelli committed murder? Who on earth could ever have told you so monstrous an untruth? Allow me to assure you that I never said ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... realized by our foes, that so long as its influence in Washington political circles remained unimpaired, no rupture of diplomatic relations could be hoped for. Entente diplomacy left no stone unturned which could be of service against us; lies, robbery, personal defamation, gossip, were ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... this is not all. Bestow a still more searching glance upon the scene. Here is more than invective; more than the imputation of dishonesty and fraud; more than the cruel defamation of character in the presence of so many. Mark the words of that agent or landlord again. He is sealing the fate of this struggling man; he tells him he is to have no home—no house to shelter himself, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... one or the other of you had said so. We won't stand that—we'll have you arrested for—for defamation of character!" stormed the rival auctioneer, working himself up into a fine ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... this sort of thing? And do you think Doctor Clay will stand for it? If you do, you are greatly mistaken. If you have us arrested on this charge, which is absolutely false, I'll get my folks to sue you for false imprisonment and defamation of character, and I know the other fellows will do the same. And you can rest assured that the charges against you will be pushed to the limits ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... endure him for what he was worth to the mills. Now, however, his own folly had put the match to the manager's smouldering dislike, and he saw himself, in consequence, discharged and black-listed, and perhaps roaming for months in quest of a job. He knew the efficiency of that far-reaching system of defamation whereby the employers of labour pursue and punish the subordinate who incurs their displeasure. In the case of a mere operative this secret persecution often worked complete ruin; and even to a man of Amherst's worth it opened ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... the one same sin does not deserve a twofold punishment, according to Nahum 1:9 [*Septuagint version]: "God shall not judge the same thing a second time." But he who fails to prove his accusation, incurs the punishment due to defamation [*Can. Infames, caus. vi, qu. 1], which punishment even the Pope seemingly cannot remit, according to a statement of Pope Gelasius [*Callist. I, Epist. ad omn. Gall. episc.]: "Although we are able to save souls by Penance, we are unable to remove ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... tell you, sir, it is no little grief to me, you should so hardly conseit of my daughter, whose honest report, though I say it, was never blotted with any title of defamation. ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... painters.' For days the unblushing apostles of sham Democracy have in this House drawn pictures of the ignorance and degradation of the people of color in the District of Columbia. Had the subjects of their wanton defamation had a Representative here, there would have been a different coloring to the picture, and I would gladly leave their defense to the Representatives of classes who have by hundreds darkened these galleries with their sable countenances, waiting for days to hear the decisive vote which announces that ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... dangerous disorganizer. In due time the cause grows and advances to its sure triumph; and in proportion as it nears the goal, the popular estimate of his character changes, till finally excessive panegyric is substituted for outrageous abuse. The praise, on the one hand, and the defamation on the other, are equally unmerited. In the clear light of reason, it will be seen that he simply stood up to discharge a duty which he owed to his God, to his fellow-men, to the land of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... indiscretion. A great scandal connected with a diamond necklace, which an unprincipled woman, the Countess Lamotte, falsely asserted that the queen desired the Cardinal de Rohan to purchase for her, did much to make her the victim of gross defamation (1785). Her forbearance towards unworthy favorites, and her intermeddling in the affairs of government, in opposition to political reforms, gradually kindled against her wide-spread ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... has said that a persecution made up of defamation, proscription and slander may be as hard to hear as that which issues in bonds and imprisonments; and this these early Disciples had to bear. But the world was ripe for reformation, and the cause spread like fire ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... upon whom the leaders of the Anti-Masonic movement at that time depended in their defamation of WASHINGTON, was Jared Sparks of Boston, who at the time was engaged writing a life of WASHINGTON, and then had access to all the Washington letter-books and papers, and from his connection with the Washington correspondence, was supposed to be the best qualified ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse

... remarkably active, and spared the reputation neither of friend nor foe. She was, it is true, a very handsome girl, and the charms of her person would have procured her many admirers if they had not been disgraced by her natural propensity to slander and defamation. In her very infancy, as soon as she could speak to be understood, she began with telling fibs of the servants, and very frequently of her brothers and sisters; for which, you may be certain, they all despised her very heartily. But as she was too much ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous

... whose joy is defamation, Of malice, envy, cruelty, and greed Each day supplies its sickening revelation, And makes imperative my spirit's need ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... others, evil companions should be avoided. Defamation of character is likely to follow. If the water is muddy, evil, indeed death, and enemies ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... you, the blasphemers!—may their days shorten as they grow fewer!"—the sheik spoke with the feeling of a man repelling a personal defamation—"they will tell you, I say, that our horses of the best blood are derived from the Nesaean pastures of Persia. God gave the first Arab a measureless waste of sand, with some treeless mountains, and here and there a well of bitter waters; and said to him, 'Behold ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... work cannot be set forward, without the great slander of the gospel, defamation of many preachers, and evident hurt and loss of the people's souls committed to our charge. For the people are brought almost to the like case, as they were in Syria, Arabia and Egypt, about the 600th year of our Lord, when the people were so shaken and brangled ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... swear never to see calmly nor without earnest desires and decided measures to prevent the ill-treatment, slander, or defamation, of any brother knight, nor ever to view danger or the least shadow of injury about to fall on his head, without well and truly informing him thereof; and, if in my power to prevent it, never to fail, by my sword or counsel, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... for adultery, condemnation to an infamous punishment, habitual and intolerable intemperance, insupportable excess or outrages, public defamation on the part of one of the married persons toward the other, desertion, attempted murder, proof of guilt of husband or wife who has fled from justice when charged ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... Savage raved, and swore he would arrest me for defamation. Neither did the policeman whose name I used as reference go unscathed. The chief of the police force requested Mr. Ross to see me and learn by what authority I was acting, as there seemed to be none indicated in my article in the Chronicle. Mr. Ross said the chief ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... remained altogether within the house. Were he so minded, ample time was allowed to him for the destruction of any document. In the town, preparation went on in the usual way for the assizes, at which the one case of interest was to be the indictment of Mr Evans for defamation of character. It was now supposed by the world at large that Cousin Henry would come into court; and because this was believed of him there was something of a slight turn of public opinion in his favour. It would hardly be the case that the man, ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... the thread of our story. Teresa's practices were not confined to simple defamation. Her reproaches were contrived so as to imply some intelligence in favour of the person she reviled. In exemplifying his pertness and arrogance, she repeated his witty repartee; on pretence of blaming his ferocity, she recounted proofs of his spirit ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... the old man," said the foreman. When the jury retired, it was felt that she had cleared her character: when they re-entered the room with their verdict, it was known that she had been awarded three millions damages for its defamation. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Boston, who decided that the woman was mistaken. Mrs. Sherman then accused the captain of theft, and brought the case before a jury, which exonerated the defendant with L3 costs. The captain then sued Mrs. Sherman for defamation of character and got a verdict for L40 damages, a round sum indeed to assess upon the poor woman. But long before this it had appeared that she had many partisans and supporters; it had become a political question, in which the popular protest against aristocracy was implicated. Not ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... money, a year's income would have bought Mrs. Lapham's instant presence. He warmed and softened to the young man in every way, not only because he must do so to any one who believed in his paint, but because he had done this innocent person the wrong of listening to a defamation of his instinct and good sense, and had been willing to see him suffer for a purely ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... warfare: and were judges like these to give the meed of victory? How many creatures had the powerful and the proud obedient to their beck; ever ready to affirm, deny, say and unsay; and, by falsehood and defamation, involve in ruin men whose souls were the most pure, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... and impure spirit, to be rid of the surveillance of one who had your welfare at heart, and who tried to prevent your leading the immoral life which had become a public scandal, and which has now brought you before this court of justice, to answer to a charge of wantonness, impurity, defamation of character, and corruption of public morals. In proof of which I now place before the court your own admission, that more than one citizen of the Republic has been led by you into immoral relationship with yourself; and further, your own admission, that your accusation against Citizen-Deputy ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... this was the chief. I was every day and every hour assailed with accusations of deeds of which I was wholly ignorant; of acts of cruelty, injustice, defamation, and deceit; of pieces of business which I could not be made to comprehend; with lawsuits, details, arrestments of judgment, and a thousand interminable quibbles from the mouth of my loquacious and conceited attorney. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... N. detraction, disparagement, depreciation, vilification, obloquy, scurrility, scandal, defamation, aspersion, traducement, slander, calumny, obtrectation^, evil-speaking, backbiting, scandalum magnatum [Lat.]. personality, libel, lampoon, skit, pasquinade; chronique scandaleuse [Fr.]; roorback [U.S.]. sarcasm, cynicism; criticism (disapprobation) 932; invective &c 932; envenomed tongue; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the Democracy.... My sense of justice and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... pervading weaknesses, not only to his poetry, but of his life. The pride of personating every kind of character, evil as well as good, influenced his ambition and his conduct; and to such a perverse length did he carry this fancy for self-defamation that, if there was any tendency to mental derangement, it was in this point that it manifested itself. I have known him more than once, as we have sat together, to throw out dark hints of his past life with an air of gloom and mystery designed to awaken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, with scarcely a gleam of light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Bjoernson himself has suffered from the terrorism which he here describes, and you would surmise too, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... its fragrants rose up, here and there; in the towns, the Brahmans spoke of it and in the forest, the Samanas; again and again, the name of Gotama, the Buddha reached the ears of the young men, with good and with bad talk, with praise and with defamation. ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... window embroidering, where she not only could see every one that passed, but with a small telescope could look into the dressing-room of a lady of her acquaintance, and watch all she did. A spinster lady of good family, a cousin of ours, carried her gossip so far, that she was tried for defamation, and condemned to a month's imprisonment, which she actually underwent in the Tolbooth. She was let out just before the king's birthday, to celebrate which, besides the guns fired at the Castle, the boys let off squibs and crackers in all ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... against me, in the most noisy and riotous manner, nearly all night, for my opposition to a convention and for my refusal as they termed it, to rebuild the State House. All this and other instances of defamation and persecution, create in my bosom opposite feelings; one of pain, the other of pleasure. Pain to see my fellow man so ill-natured and vindictive merely because I am the friend of my species, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... askance if they happen to meet with a true man in music. They pretend to be shocked, as though they had come across something improper. The spirit of their shyness, which originally served to conceal their own impotence, now attempts the defamation of other people's potency. Defamatory insinuations and calumny find ready acceptance with the representatives of German Philistinism, and appear to be at home in that mean and paltry state of things which, as we have seen, ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... suppressor lessen every thing that is praise-worthy, is as frequent among the men as women. If I can remember what passed at a visit last night, it will serve as an instance that the sexes are equally inclined to defamation, with ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... the slightest doubt that the animal she beheld, although somewhat faked, was one of the monkey tribe. She confessed her error, she became contrite and tearful, and promised an apology if the Professor would not persist in his threatened action for defamation ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... Children, Custody of Compensation for Injuries Compensation for Accident Compensation for Defamation Compensation for Loss of Employment, &c., &c. Confiscation by Landlords Contracts, Breach of Copyright, Infringement of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... attract a large audience; and one of them, which he has published, is just on a level with the quack publications that are thrust into young men's hands in the street. Henry Varley had already issued one private circular about Mr. Bradlaugh, full of the most brazen falsehoods and the grossest defamation; and containing, as it did, garbled extracts from Mr. Bradlaugh's writings, and artfully-manipulated quotations from books he had never written or published, it undoubtedly did him a serious injury. The new circular was worthy of the author of the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... "but this foolhardiness will one day bring as pretty a brigantine as ever sailed in the narrow seas, to condemnation; and then will there be rumors abroad, and characters cracked, till every lover of gossip in the Americas shall be tired of defamation." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... as the word itself implies, is an inscription on a tomb, and, in its most extensive import, may admit, indiscriminately, satire or praise. But as malice has seldom produced monuments of defamation, and the tombs, hitherto raised, have been the work of friendship and benevolence, custom has contracted the original latitude of the word, so that it signifies, in the general acceptation, an inscription engraven on a tomb in honour of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... detraction which we have already noticed as characterizing both parts of the Annals: it is the same spirit which runs through the works of Bracciolini: first he praises an individual, and then mars the eulogy of him by introducing some little bit of defamation. To give examples:—We open his collected works, and begin to read his treatise on Avarice: turning over the first page we find him speaking of a great preaching friar, named Bernardino, whom he lauds as most extraordinary in the command he held over the feelings of his congregation, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... returned to England, the country which, of all others, it would have been his interest to avoid at this juncture, if he was really conscious of the guilt the imputation of which his character now sustained. With the first tidings of the battle fought at Minden the defamation of this officer arrived. He was accused of having disobeyed orders, and his conduct represented as infamous in every particular. These were the suggestions of a vague report, which no person could trace to its origin; yet this report immediately gave birth to one of the most inflammatory pamphlets ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... from defamation; The poet says 'tis worse To steal his reputation Than rob him of ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... His Mother are essentially His own. And yet we daily see ministers of the Gospel ignoring Mary's exalted virtues and unexampled privileges and parading her alleged imperfections; nay, sinfulness, as if her Son were dishonored by the piety, and took delight in the defamation ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... addressed to the present pretender. The caricature of the royal physiognomy as a pear is one of the most famous in history. Louis-Philippe wore his hair piled in a species of pyramid over his forehead, which lent plausibility to this defamation; this pyramid was known as the toupet, and was naturally largely imitated; those whose locks were not sufficient in quantity for the purpose, purchased false ones. Whiskers were also in fashion, but not moustaches, and no official functionary was permitted ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... time I realized that Miss Sampson, through sharpened eyes of love, saw Steele as he really was—a wonderful and necessary violence. Her intelligence and sympathy had enabled her to see through defamation and the false records following a Ranger; she had had no choice but to love him; and then a woman's glory in a work that freed men, saved women, and made children happy effaced forever the horror of a ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... I, who am, thank God, innocent, and without a stain on my life—I, who would lay bare my heart to my enemies, could they thus read its purity, will resist to the last. For you might come ruin, defamation, and perhaps imprisonment. Take away the money you so nobly offered me, and the assurance that not one movement of your generous heart has escaped me, and that your doubts, though they have wounded, have not estranged me. Go, I say, and seek elsewhere ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... to one of the Antipodes, but they must have it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it reaches him,—and forty cents of it gets spilt, like the water out of the fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;—but when it comes to anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then advertising those people through the country as the authors of them,—oh, then it is that they let not their left hand know what their ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... can bring Mademoiselle Chocardelle to Arcis? A pleasure trip, you will say, offered to her by the journalist, who combines with that object our daily defamation and his consequent earnings from the secret-service fund of the government. Not at all; Mademoiselle Chocardelle has come to Arcis on business of her ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... rough-tongued, weather-beaten, and heart-tortured prophet, who had saved not tens but thousands, who could see with his own eyes in almost every country of the world thousands of little girls rescued from defamation, thousands of women rescued from the sink of horrid vice, thousands of men new-born from lives of unimaginable crime and iniquity, thousands of homes once dreary with squalor and savagery now happy and full of purest joy; nay, who could see, as I have seen in India, whole tribes of ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... believe, that the great law of mutual benevolence is oftener violated by envy than by interest, and that most of the misery which the defamation of blameless actions, or the obstruction of honest endeavours, brings upon the world, is inflicted by men that propose no advantage to themselves but the satisfaction of poisoning the banquet which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... king Amar Malek, promising to bring him certain things out of England which he had never done, and supposed that might be his reason for not coming this voyage. They said likewise that neither the Portuguese nor Spaniards could abide us, but always spoke to the great defamation and dishonour of England. They also affirmed that on the arrival of a ship called the Command, belonging to Richard Kelley of Dartmouth, one Pedro Gonzalves, a Portuguese, who came in that ship from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... without expecting every moment to get shot from a stairway or double-banked by the meek and lowly followers of the Messiah; when I have time to amuse myself with trifles, I'll sue this brace of Smart Alecs for $20,000 each for deliberate defamation of character, and if I recover the money I'll use it to make a partial payment on the grocery bills of the rest of the gang. Intellectual pigmies who accumulate much cash by trading in cash or tripe in a country town are quite apt to become too big for their britches and require to be ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... community in the edge of the wilderness culminated at last in his hurling the thunderbolts of excommunication at a girl who had jilted him, followed by his slipping away from the colony between two days, with an indictment for defamation on record against him, and his returning to London to resign to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel his commission as missionary. Just as he was landing, the ship was setting sail which bore to his deserted field his old Oxford friend and associate ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... deserve his fate? What conceivable defence is open to him, after his public defamation of all that is noblest? On the public which listened to him, too, the spectacle of his condign punishment will have a healthy effect; we shall see no more ridicule of Philosophy. Tame submission to insult would naturally enough ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... absolutely without foundation, and, when thus artfully thrown out with apparent artlessness (ars celare artem) as itself foundation for a false and malicious charge of plagiarism, it becomes fabrication of evidence for the purpose of defamation. The less said about such an offence as that, the better for Dr. Royce, and I spare ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... by an aggrieved husband to recover damages for defamation of the character of his wife. It centered in one of the dramatic incidents at Knapp's execution. In the last extremity, and in the presence of immediate death, the prisoner came down from the ladder, and asking to speak with Ludlow alone, told him that Goodwife Staplies ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... The wicked lying of previous campaigns no doubt cannot be repeated: bigotry will make no further experiments in Pigottry. But a resolute attempt, lavishly financed and directed by masters of the art of defamation, will be made to blacken Ireland. Every newspaper in every remotest country-town in England will be deluged with syndicated venom. The shop-keeper will wrap up his parcels in Orange posters, and the working-man will, I hope, light his pipe for years to come with ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... powder and shot to him, and he had to fight a battle that demanded all his courage and perseverance for a few boxes of percussion-caps. At the last moment, a troublesome country postmaster, to whom he had complained of an overcharge of postage, threatened an action against him for defamation of character, and, rather than be further detained, deep in debt though he was, Livingstone had to pay him a considerable sum. His family were much in his thoughts; he found some relief in writing by every mail. His letters to his wife are too ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... calumniating expressions must be avoided and not so much as even insinuated to the defamation of any particular person or rank, much less against those to whom an affront would alienate the minds of the judges. To be so imprudent as to attack judges themselves, not openly, but in any indirect ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... convicted of slander was to be carried to the ducking stool to be ducked unless her husband would consent to pay the fine imposed by law for the offense.... Some years after (1646) a woman residing in Northampton was punished for defamation by being condemned to stand at the door of her parish church, during the singing of the psalm, with a gag in her mouth.... Deborah Heighram ... was, in 1654, not only required to ask pardon of the person she ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... the Presidency of the United States? During his canvass (and he is expected to "run," not merely to "stand") he will have from his own party a support that should make him blush, and from all the others an opposition that will stick at nothing to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. After his election his partition and allotment of the loaves and fishes will estrange an important and thenceforth implacable faction of his following without appeasing the animosity of any one else; and during his entire service his sky will be dark with a flight of dead cats. At the finish ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... in distress, or in supporting aged parents, it is much, better to leave the case to voluntary impulses, seconded by approbation or reward. Again, an offence punished by law must be, in its nature, definable; which, makes a difficulty in such cases as insult, and defamation, and many species of fraud. Farther, the offence must be easy of detection, so that the vast majority of offenders may not escape. This limits the action of the law ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... been lately made by both Houses of Parliament for suppressing the late great abuses and frequent disorders in printing many forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets and Books, to the great defamation of Religion and Government—which orders (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company of Stationers to put them in full execution) have taken little or no effect, by reason the Bill in preparation for the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... Toleration had come even from Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... birth or death has occurred in his house and shave their heads for a death. When the family is so large that this becomes irksome it is cut down by not inviting persons beyond seven degrees of relationship to the Meher sacrament This exclusion has sometimes led to bitter quarrels and actions for defamation. It seems likely that the Meher may be a kind of substitute for the sacrificial meal, at which all the members of the clan ate the body of the totem or divine animal, and some similar significance perhaps once attached to the wedding-cake in England, pieces ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... the Congo business that lay at the bottom of the abuse of Leopold. Henry Stanley had put him up to this. It turned out a gold mine, and then two streams of defamation were let loose; one from the covetous commercial standpoint and the other from the humanitarian. Between them, seeking to drive him out, they depicted him as a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... "I fine Ba'tiste Maxime twenty dollars for defamation of character. The money to go ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... there was not so much as a shirt-collar left in his drawers, and the very bed and blankets had been carried away by these FAITHFUL attendants. Who had slain Ivanhoe? That remains a mystery to the present day; but Roger de Backbite, whose nose he had pulled for defamation, and who was behind him in the assault at Chalus, was seen two years afterwards at the court of King John in an embroidered velvet waistcoat which Rowena could have sworn she had worked for Ivanhoe, and about which the widow would ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Cideville, in Seine Inferieure (1850), came under the eye of the law, because a certain shepherd injudiciously boasted that he had caused them by his magic art. {123a} The cure, who was the victim, took him at his word, and the shepherd swain lost his situation. He then brought an action for defamation of character, but was non- suited, as it was proved that he had been the fanfaron of his own vices. In Froissart's amusing story of Orthon, that noisy sprite was hounded on by a priest. At Tedworth, the owner of the drum was 'wanted' ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... subscribed without any hesitation and consented with profound devotion to the Epistle of the most blessed Pope Leo.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} The truth of these things having been considered, we determine and decree that nothing be done or proposed by any one in judgement upon him to the injury and defamation of a man most approved in the synod of Chalcedon, that is to say, Theodoret of Cyrus. But guarding in all respects the reverence of his person, whatsoever writings are brought forward under his name or under that of another evidently in accord with the errors of the wicked Nestorius and Eutyches ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... elections to venality, and shall not encourage it. There is much money expended by the adversaries of the administration, and it runs chiefly in the channels of the press. They work by slander to vitiate the public spirit, and pay for defamation, to ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... persons, and hath since been found true by experience, For the adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their fall, and unanimous in defence of their cause, employ a set of writers by subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defamation, and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of readers; while those who would draw their pens on the side of their prince and country, are discouraged by this tax, which exceeds the intrinsic ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... assert, that notwithstanding all the persecutions, all the falsehood and defamation daily exercised against the Catholics and their religion, they are at this moment the only people on the face of the earth, who maintain amongst them the unity of the true faith, and the regular succession in the Ministry, from Christ ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... statements against others, [74] without ability to prove them, is, to say the least, hazardous; but to make accusations to formulate which the accuser is forced, not only to ignore facts, but actually to deny them, is, to our mind, nothing short of rank defamation. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... said Mr. Slick, "p'raps their old name was so infarnal dry rotted, they wanted to change it for a sound new one. You recollect when that super-superior villain, Expected Thorne, brought an action of defamation agin' me, to Slickville, for takin' away his character, about stealing the watch to Nova Scotia; well, I jist pleaded my own case, and I ups and sais, 'Gentlemen of the Jury,' sais I, "Expected's character, every soul knows, is about ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton



Words linked to "Defamation" :   denigration, aspersion, vilification, disparagement, calumniation, derogation, traducement, malignment, obloquy, hatchet job, libel, depreciation



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