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Disuse   Listen
noun
Disuse  n.  Cessation of use, practice, or exercise; inusitation; desuetude; as, the limbs lose their strength by disuse. "The disuse of the tongue in the only... remedy." "Church discipline then fell into disuse."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disuse" Quotes from Famous Books



... afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward, except for the self-centred and—I had almost said—the unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor capitis diminutio of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom—of cunning, if you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which was the site of a large earth lodge dance house copied after Miwok structures and described as "where the young mens learned them Miwok dances." (A second dance house is known to have existed in Sierra Valley; attributed to the Maidu, it fell into disuse after ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs

... been alleged, that if attendance at class-meeting be not made a church-law, and the capital punishment of expulsion be not attached to its violation, class-meetings will fall into disuse. I answer, this is beside the question. The question is, whether there is such a law in the Bible? Has our Lord or His Apostles given authority to any conclave or conference to make such a law? Our ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... coast of Portugal, by the royal order, according to the ancient custom of this kingdom, held always to be useful and necessary, the value of which became evident from what occurred afterwards, when it fell into disuse. ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... straits at the southern extremity of the American continent, but which has no memorial in these islands. Now that the glory which he gained by being the first to penetrate from the Atlantic to the Pacific has been in some measure obliterated by the disuse of those straits by navigators, it would seem due to his memory that some spot among these islands should be set apart to commemorate the name of him who made them known to Europe. This would be but common justice to the discoverer of a region which has been a source of so ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... in from the main street at what seemed like half a road, half an entrance to a square of houses, and found yourself in the remains of an old farmyard, of which one side was a row of cottages. The rest was old red brick—I think I remember a great dovecote—and a quiet look of age and disuse. But now new buildings are rising in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... were the forerunner of a movement which took almost a hundred years to become generally accepted. We have been accustomed to say that Ericsson's armor-clad monitor revolutionized naval warfare; but the perfection of the torpedo is forcing the armor-clad ships into disuse, as they in their day thrust aside the old wooden frigates. The wise nation to-day, seeing how irresistible is the power of the torpedo, is abandoning the construction of cumbrous iron-clads, and building light, swift cruisers, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... secundae or general substances, and substantial forms, doctrines which under varieties of language pervaded alike the Aristotelian and the Platonic schools, and of which more of the spirit has come down to modern times than might be conjectured from the disuse of the phraseology. The false views of the nature of classification and generalization which prevailed among the schoolmen, and of which these dogmas were the technical expression, afford the only explanation which can be given of their having misunderstood the real nature ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... is doubtless, in the language of Uncle Ulick, a mighty convenience, and a great softener of the angles of life. But a time comes to the most easy when he must answer "No," or go open-eyed to ruin. Then he finds that from long disuse the word will not shape itself; or if uttered, it is taken for naught. That time had come for Uncle Ulick. Years ago his age and experience had sufficed to curb the hot blood about him. But he had been too easy to dictate while he might; he had let the reins fall from his hands; and ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... honor well purchased by a year's hard work;—and everybody, in short, seemed delighted. Susan was not there, and I had nothing to make me nervous; so that I worked away freely, and got vigorously over the ground. After so many years' disuse of rhetoric, it was a pleasant surprise to myself to find that I could still handle the old weapons without awkwardness. More by good luck than good guidance, it has done my health no harm. I have been at Sir Charles ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... a sense of fatigue which at some time she should learn to treat with disrespect, especially when disuse of her powers has made their exercise difficult, and yet when returning health makes it wise to employ them. To think, and at last to feel sure that she cannot walk is fatal. And above all, and at all times, close attention ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... it; I am sure, not the proportion of one to each paper. This idle charge has been echoed from one babbler to another, who have confounded Johnson's Essays with Johnson's Dictionary; and because he thought it right in a Lexicon of our language to collect many words which had fallen into disuse, but were supported by great authorities, it has been imagined that all of these have been interwoven into his own compositions. That some of them have been adopted by him unnecessarily, may, perhaps, be allowed; but, in general they are evidently an advantage, for without them his stately ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... The disuse of these ancient pastimes and the consequent neglect of Archerie, are thus lamented by Richard Niccols, in his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various

... to the Ecclesiastic department of the Grindwell works. This was formerly the greatest labor-saving machinery ever invented. But however powerful the operation of the Church machinery upon the grandmothers and grandfathers of the modern Grindwellites, it has certainly fallen greatly into disuse, and is kept a-going now more for the sake of appearances than for any real efficacy. The most knowing ones think it rather old-fashioned and cumbrous,—at any rate, not comparable to the State machinery, either in its design or its mode ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... the Burying Ground. It was a lovely spot. Fallen into disuse, the bewitching grace of carelessness was added to the architectural beauty of the tombs. The verdure was rank, and luxuriant trees and marble tombs alike were festooned with clematis and jasmine. ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... principally of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and then the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... already constructed barrier. Formerly Conde was regarded as a fortress of formidable strength, but its position was not held to be of value in modern strategy. Its forts, therefore, had been dismantled of guns, and its works permitted to fall into disuse. But the fortress of Maubeuge lay immediately in rear of the British line. In rear again General Sordet held a French cavalry corps for flank actions. In front, across the Belgian frontier, General d'Amade lay with a French brigade ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... famous kilns in Ching-te-chen, in the province of Kiangsi, were relatively coarse, but in the fifteenth century the production was much finer. In the sixteenth century the quality deteriorated, owing to the disuse of the cobalt from the Middle East (perhaps from Persia) in favour of Sumatra cobalt, which did not yield the same brilliant colour. In the Ming epoch there also appeared the first brilliant red colour, a product of iron, and a start was then made with three-colour ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... same sort of bodies that our ancestors had, therefore we are full of needless fears. During the early years of a child's life, wise treatment causes most of the fear tendencies to disappear because of disuse. On the other hand, unwise treatment may accentuate and perpetuate them, causing much misery and unhappiness. Neither the home nor the school should play upon these ancestral fears. We should not try to get ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle

... one another. But here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse. What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! But this fellow here is the worst of all!" "The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that he is so rich," remarked the horse-dealer. "It is a wonder to me that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... overshadowed us, how wretched was my life. Nothing to do—only to sit with folded hands while others waited upon me. I shudder when I think of that time. No, let me be up and doing, and God grant I may die in harness, and not rust out in miserable disuse." ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... the central alley. Originally each case had two shelves only, one on the level of the desk (Fig. 71, G, H), and the second about half-way between it and the original top of the case (ibid. E, F). Before chaining fell into disuse the cases were heightened so as to provide an additional shelf (ibid. C, D). At present the number has been further increased by the addition of a fourth shelf above the desk (ibid. A, B), and two below it (ibid. I, K, L, M). The desks have been ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... encampment offered no exception to the general rule. Abdur Kad'r, it is true, may have raged a little more extensively than usual when it was discovered that the well had caved in from sheer disuse, and several hours' labor would be necessary before some brackish water could be obtained. He did not trouble the Effendi with this detail, however. There was another more pressing matter to be dealt with, but, Allah be praised, that might wait till a less occupied hour, for ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... is a verbatim translation done by Pundit himself, so there can be no mistake about it. From the few words thus preserved, we glean several important items of knowledge, not the least interesting of which is the fact that a thousand years ago actual monuments had fallen into disuse—as was all very proper—the people contenting themselves, as we do now, with a mere indication of the design to erect a monument at some future time; a corner-stone being cautiously laid by itself ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... machines have been and will be dealt with. Horizontal centrifugals, that is, those whose spindles are horizontal have been made, but the great inconvenience of charging and discharging connected with them has occasioned their disuse; though in other respects for liquids they are quite as good as vertical separators. Their underlying theory is practically the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... demand of an advanced understanding, of new feelings that have sprung out of the decay of old ones, of ideas that have shot forth from the summit of the tree of our knowledge; old words meanwhile fall into disuse and become obsolete; others have their meaning narrowed and defined; synonyms diverge from each other and their property is parted between them; nay, whole classes of words will now and then be thrown overboard, as new feelings or perceptions of analogy gain ground. ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... city authorities, with music and banners, escorting Lady Godiva, a woman made up for the occasion in gauzy tights and riding a cream-colored horse; representatives of the trades and civic societies followed her. This pageant has fallen into disuse. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... first view that a system of telegraphy sufficiently rapid and economical to be practically available for important business correspondence should have fallen into disuse. This, however, is made clear—so far as concerns Edison's invention at any rate—in Chapter VIII of the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... of snow had drifted, and contained nothing more than a rude table built against one of the log walls, three supply boxes that had evidently been employed as stools, and a cracked and rust-eaten sheet-iron stove that had from all appearances long passed into disuse. He motioned the Frenchman to a seat at one end of the table. Without a word he then went outside, securely toggled the leading dog, and returning, closed the door and seated himself at the end of the ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... old pet name, although it had to be fetched across more than half a century of disuse, flashed like lightning from madame's ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... your cellars will be full of choke-damp when the door is opened, from long disuse and confined air. I have men, accustomed to descend dangerous wells and shafts, who will undertake the job at a moderate price. Should you labour under any temporary pecuniary embarrassment in paying me, I shall be happy to take it out in your wine, which I should think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... to the unused or long-disused throat and lungs. In this the teachers are likewise sufferers. The tax upon the vocal organs is necessarily much greater than that in ordinary speaking schools. But the disuse of the vocal organs in articulate speech does not indicate that they are wholly unused. A lady visiting an institution for the deaf and dumb a few years ago poetically called the pupils the "children of silence." Considering the tremendous volume ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... and in England, one point should not be overlooked. In England, children may be sent to school, but they are taken away as soon as they are useful, and have little time to follow up their education afterwards. Worked like machines, every hour is devoted to labour, and a large portion forget, from disuse, what they have learnt when young. In America, they have the advantage not only of being educated, but of having plenty of time, if they choose, to profit by their education in after life. The mass in America ought, therefore, to be better educated than the mass ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... examined by the king and his council," &c. "He requires that none may argue against the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, under the pain of death, and of the loss of their goods; and orders all to be punished who did disuse any rites or ceremonies not then abolished; yet he orders them only to be observed without superstition, only as remembrances, and not to repose in them a trust of salvation."—Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation. But long before this obscure and arbitrary act was passed, Henry's ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... to Spaniards that all vacant posts were assigned. Besides, certain of his measures gave great dissatisfaction. He re-enacted the persecuting edicts against the Protestants which his father, in the end of his reign, had suffered to fall into disuse; and the severities which ensued began to drive hundreds of the most useful citizens out of the country, as well as to injure trade by deterring Protestant merchants from the Dutch and Flemish ports. Dark hints, too, were thrown ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... straight and active. His muscles, almost atrophied from disuse in his former life, ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... its particles; he will, while abstaining from the gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were given a bad predisposition, will have departed. At the same time, the disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said acts. And while this is the particular result as regards certain "vices," the general result of an abstention from "gross" ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... would become the fashion. At which point nothing but the achievement of economic independence by women, which is already seen clearly ahead of us, would be needed to make marriage disappear altogether, not by formal abolition, but by simple disuse. The private contract stage of this process was reached in ancient Rome. The only practicable alternative to it seems to be such an extension of divorce as will reduce the risks and obligations of marriage ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... But disuse, or cold, or her own lack of strength prevented and she was presently reduced to asking Riatt to help her. He did not volunteer his assistance. She had definitely and directly to ask for it. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... his ancestral origin. He counted his kingdom in negative terms, terms that were no longer applicable in a modern world. Where national boundaries everywhere were melting further and further into disuse, it would seem to his mind foolish to lay claim to a kingship that had been nonexistent for more than one hundred years over a people that had been scattered to the four winds and ground together with other peoples ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding little or nothing of the fundamentals underlying the solution of the problems in hand. This means, in the near future, brain atrophy through disuse. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... result of some great religious upheaval. The language in which it is framed continues fixed, amid the slowly developing conditions of the workaday world. Often, indeed, the use of an ancient language, which has gradually fallen into disuse among the people, is deliberately maintained for the air of mystery and of awe which is conveyed by its use, and which has something of the same effect upon the intellect as the "dim religious light" of a cathedral has upon ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... faithfully kept during three hundred and sixty years and more; then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During the tumult of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the grace withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never asked to be remembered, but France has remembered her with an inextinguishable love and reverence; Joan never asked for a statue, but France has lavished them upon her; Joan never asked for a church for Domremy, but France is building one; Joan ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... side with the finished and universally accepted language. Norman French, for example, or Scotch down to the time of James VI., could hardly be called patois, while I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a lingo rather than a dialect. It has retained a few words now fallen into disuse in the mother country, like to tarry, to progress, fleshy, fall, and some others; it has changed the meaning of some, as in freshet; and it has clung to what I suspect to have been the broad Norman pronunciation of e (which Moliere puts into the mouth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... his lectures and writings awakened an interest in the cause of education which had never before been felt. His reports were reprinted in other states, attaining the widest circulation. It is noteworthy that as early as 1847, he advocated the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline. After a service of some years as member of Congress, during which he threw all his influence against slavery, he accepted the presidency of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, where ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... to reproduce in its integrity. He had apparently once possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged with the cockneyism of the British metropolis. But his learning had grown rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was defective and capricious. He had repaired it with large patches of French, with words anglicized by a process of his own, and with native idioms literally translated. The result, in the form in which he in all humility presented it, would be scarcely ...
— The American • Henry James

... that the brethren of Tewkesbury, of which abbey Deerhurst had become a cell in 1469, felt it to be beyond their means to restore the fabric. This, of course, is merely a theory, but it would account satisfactorily for the structural alterations carried out about that time. The forced disuse of the old sanctuary would involve the blocking up of the choir arch which gave access to it, and also the making of an additional window in the then east wall of the chancel. As there was no tower to support, the west wall of the choir ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... proposes that none should be suffered to become obsolete. But what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity? ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson

... the seventeenth century the art of engraving on wood had fallen into disuse. Writing circa 1770, Horace Walpole goes so far as to say that it "never was executed in any perfection in England;" and, speaking afterwards of Papillon's "Traite de la Gravure," 1766, he takes occasion to doubt if ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... a sort of curious disgust, as though a dead man had come up to the surface of a black tide, and was preparing presently to leap out. On either side stood two long silver candlesticks, very dark with disuse; but instead of holding candles, they were fitted at the top with flat metal dishes; and in these he poured some of his powders, mixing them as before with his fingers. Between the candlesticks and behind the skull was an old and dark picture, at which he ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... points, is obscure, and fluctuating, and capable of various interpretation. Even among the most backward peoples, the traceable shadow of a monotheistic idea often seems to bear marks of degradation and disuse, rather than of nascent development. There is a God, but He is neglected, and tribal spirits receive prayer and sacrifice. Just as in art there is a point where we find it difficult to decide whether ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... to generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds. Moses! Why, Lord Rothschild's great-grandfather, a few score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with him. Babylon! It is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic routes. History! it is a tale of to-day. Man was crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him. It is only ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the centre of the fashionable life of Olancho, but the town had moved farther up the hill, and it was now far in the suburbs, its walks neglected and its turf overrun with weeds. The houses about it had fallen into disuse, and the few that were still occupied at the time Clay entered it showed no sign of life. Clay picked his way over the grass-grown paths to the statue of Bolivar, the hero of the sister republic of Venezuela, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates, seem more as if he were discussing an event of yesterday than something which is considered contemporary with our earlier history,—and we find them disappearing, disuse gradually producing an obliteration of this tissue in some cases, and the modifying influence of evolution producing it in others; the climbing muscle, probably the oldest remnant and legacy that has descended from our ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... where Beard's little expedition wintered was called "The Caches" for years, and the name has only fallen into disuse within the last two decades. I remember the great holes in the ground when I first crossed the plains, a third ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... degenerated with the license of later times. It was absorbed and sunk in the fashions and vices of imperial Rome. Though Nero built a public gymnasium, and Roman gentlemen attached private ones to their country-seats, it gradually fell into disuse, or existed only for ignoble purposes. The gladiator succeeded naturally to the athlete, the circus to the stadium, and the sanguinary scenes of the amphitheatre brutalized the pure tastes of earlier years. Then came the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the boy. The boat in time somehow got itself built and out upon the little river; but owing to the fact that its materials were stolen, the river failed to freeze over that winter, and for three winters following—not till the boat itself had fallen apart from disuse and lack of care—which points its own moral, as hinted at above. If you must build ice-boats, and you are a kid with mechanical yearnings, pay for the material that goes into the making of your product. But the thing—as I say—was the beginning of a career for the ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... for the size of Roman palaces, there was the patriarchal system of life, now rapidly falling into disuse. The so-called 'noble floor' of every mansion is supposed to be reserved exclusively for the father and mother of the family, and the order of arranging the rooms is as much a matter of rigid rule as in the houses of the ancient Romans, where the vestibule preceded the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... system of sharing results between the landowner and the labouring peasant, still flourishes in France, notwithstanding the severe denunciations passed upon it by various writers. If it were a very bad system, it would have fallen into disuse long before now, for although the French have a tendency to keep their wheels in old ruts, they are as keen as any other people in protecting their own interests. It is a system that would soon become impossible without trustfulness and honesty. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... are too marked and oddly made to get into the mould, they give up reading altogether, or read old books and foreign books, formed under another code and appealing to a different taste. The principle of 'elimination,' the 'use and disuse' of organs which naturalists speak of, works here. What is used strengthens; what is disused weakens: 'to those who have, more is given;' and so a sort of style settles upon an age, and imprinting itself more than anything else in men's memories becomes ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... like a door, enclosing a small space fitted up like a miniature scullery, with a curious and elaborate collection of pots and pans and kitchen utensils, all hung in orderly rows, but every article with marks of service on it, and more recent and obtrusive trace of long disuse. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... money" (1159).[1] The barons gladly accepted the offer. With the money Henry was able to hire "mercenaries," or foreign troops, to fight for him abroad, and, if need be, in England as well. Thus he struck a great blow at the power of the barons, since they, through disuse of arms, grew weaker, while the King grew steadily stronger. To complete the work, Henry, many years later (1181), reorganized the old English national militia,[2] and made it thoroughly effective for the defense of the royal authority. For ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... faith was not suppressed, but was simply placed on the same footing as Presbyterianism. Toleration for each and every faith was manifest, and the pillory and whipping-post fell into disuse. The prison-ships lying in the Thames, waiting for their living cargo to be carried away and dumped on distant lands, were cleaned out, refitted, holystoned, and sent out as merchant-ships. Roads were built, waterways deepened, canals dug, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... is the employment of new words or words that have fallen into disuse. Ordinary words retain, in spite of everything, somewhat of their customary meaning, associations and thoughts condensed in them through long habit; words forgotten during four or five centuries escape this condition—they are coins ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... was afflicted with a long and too heavy programme, as is the custom in performances of this kind. They played fragments of the best known pieces, and sang songs from operas long since fallen into disuse even on street organs. This public saw the same comedians march out; the most famous are the most monotonous; the comical ones abused their privileges; the lover spoke distractedly through his nose; the great coquette—the actress par excellence, the last of the Celimenes —discharged her part ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... still want another word for the sustaining 'sceptre' of a foxglove, or cowslip. Before determining that, however, we must see what need there may be of one familiar to our ears until lately, although now, I understand, falling into disuse. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... went into the house, he followed Uncle Shadrach about and carefully barred the windows, shooting bolts which were rusted from disuse. After the old negro had gone out he examined the locks again; and then going into the hall took down a bird gun and an army pistol from their places on the rack. These he loaded and laid near at hand beside the books upon ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... Father?' interrupted the Lady Prioress; 'Not I, believe me. The laws of our order are strict and severe; they have fallen into disuse of late, But the crime of Agnes shows me the necessity of their revival. I go to signify my intention to the Convent, and Agnes shall be the first to feel the rigour of those laws, which shall be obeyed to the very letter. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... laying a wreath on the brow of a dead soldier, who had died for the fatherland. Once the subject would have called out all his enthusiasm, but the Tribunal consumed all his days and absorbed his whole soul, while his hand had lost its knack from disuse and had grown ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... privet, which quite hid it from the roadway. Stephen took the lower road. Finding no entrance save a locked wooden door she followed round to the western side, where the business side of the mill had been. It was all still now and silent, and that it had long fallen into disuse was shown by the grey faded look of everything. Grass, green and luxuriant, grew untrodden between the cobble-stones with which the yard was paved. There was a sort of old- world quietude about everything ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... Bichi" Mail Company, etc., all regular mail lines, it has a number of lines of steamers trading to England, America, and Germany, with local lines both Chinese and English, and lines of fine sailing clippers, which, however, are gradually falling into disuse, owing to the dangerous navigation of the China seas, and the increasing demand ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... first spoken by President Brand, of the Orange Free State, no doubt in all thoughtlessness of what it might lead to, for no one could have foreseen that the first part, "Geduld en moed," would fall into disuse and be forgotten, because these good qualities do not come easily to men, and the second, "Alles sal reg kom," would be made an excuse for a sort of lazy optimism, by which anything could be justified which comes easiest to us at ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... duty, and grow weak; so that, after this has been continued for some time, leaving off the unnatural support produces a feeling of weakness. Thus a person will complain of feeling so weak and unsupported, without corsets, as to be uncomfortable. This is entirely owing to the disuse of those muscles, which ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... themselves close to the mill, which was almost ready to fall down from disuse and neglect. As they rode up Tom chanced to glance towards a side window and was surprised to catch sight of a man looking curiously at them. As soon as he saw that he was discovered the man stepped ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... in which the muscle elements are merely diminished in size without undergoing any structural alteration, is commonly met with as a result of disuse, as when a patient is confined to bed for ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... near the average of scholastic English gentlemen. He displayed a manifest handsomeness somewhat weakened by disregard and disuse, a large moustache and a narrow high forehead. His rather tired brown eyes were magnified by glasses. He was an active man in unimportant things, with a love for the phrase "ship-shape," and he played cricket better than any one else on the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... developed powers of social sympathy, of social energy. How has he developed these powers? Not by any supposition that the early sex instincts he felt in his boyhood were wholly animal and must be atrophied by disuse, but by gathering and directing them into the right channels. Direction, like control, depends upon enlightened, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... namely, canning and drying, are considered in this Section. Before satisfactory methods of canning came into use, drying was a common method of preserving both fruits and vegetables, and while it has fallen into disuse to a great extent in the home, much may be said for its value. Drying consists merely in evaporating the water contained in the food, and, with the exception of keeping it dry and protected from vermin, no care need be given to ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... by some that men will think and act for themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else because his neighbors do; and that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us examine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this position most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. It is almost obsolete as a technical word. Arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse. ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... from this hateful thing, and coming to the bed began to examine the huddle of goatskins, and though full of dust and something stiff, found them little the worse for their long disuse; the same applied equally to the sailcloth, the which, though yellow, was still strong and serviceable. Reaching the firelock from the corner I found it to be furnished with a snaphaunce or flintlock, and though very rusty, methought cleaned and oiled it might make me a very good ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... the oldest existing form of the Arabic alphabet; to judge from its being identical with the Hebrew. It is supposed to date from after the beginning of the Christian era, when the Himyaritic form fell into disuse, and it is now used in ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... legislation and must stand or fall by its important measures. The passage of a measure of which it disapproved as a ministry would mean in the majority of cases a resignation, and it is not possible to suppose that the governor would be asked to exercise a prerogative of the Crown which has been in disuse since the establishment of responsible government and would now be a revolutionary measure even ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... in the Historic Period. The upper or northern end of the Red Sea has risen, so that the place of the passage of the children of Israel is now between forty and fifty miles from Suez, the modern head of the Gulf. This upheaval, and not the sand from the desert, caused the disuse of the ancient canal across the Isthmus: it took place since the Mohamadan conquest of Egypt. The women of the Jewish captivities were carried past the end of the Red Sea and along the Mediterranean in ox-waggons, where such cattle would now all perish for want of water and pasture; ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... furnished an apology for the irregular, but necessary, interference of a controlling authority. The ancient remedy, by means of attaint, which renders a jury responsible for an unjust verdict, was almost gone into disuse, and, depending on the integrity of a second jury, not always easy to be obtained; so that in many parts of the kingdom, and especially in Wales, it was impossible to find a jury who would return a verdict against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... mode of reaching the coveted place was known as the "easy accession." By its operation Madison succeeded Jefferson, Monroe succeeded Madison, John Quincy Adams succeeded Monroe. After successful application for a quarter of a century the custom fell into disfavor and, by bitter agitation, into disuse. The cause of its overthrow was the appointment of Henry Clay to the State Department, and the baseless scandal of a "bargain and sale" was invented to deprive Mr. Clay of the "easy accession." After a few years, when National ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... in a broad philosophical light it may not be the best course for mankind to shun all dangers. Strength in the organism comes from the use rather than the disuse of our powers. It is certain that the general health and vigour of mankind is to be developed by meeting rather than by shunning dangers. Resistance to disease means bodily vigour, and this is to be developed in mankind by the application of the principle ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... little history of the island which one of the brothers has written, S. Lazzaro was once a leper settlement. Then it fell into disuse, and in 1717 an Armenian monk of substance, one Mekhitar of Sebaste, was permitted to purchase it and here surround himself with companions. Since then the life of the little community has ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... took up in her own hands these evidences of an earlier occupancy of the room. They were garments of a day gone by. The silks were faded, dingy, worn in the creases from sheer disuse. Apparently they had ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... been necessary; that is no reason to conclude that it must always be necessary, that it is eternally necessary. There is such a thing as rudimentary organs which served functions long since fallen in disuse and now unremembered. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... yellow. Their notion of inserting the foot into a shoe half an inch shorter, ruins the foot, and destroys their grace in walking, and, consequently, in every movement. This fashion is, fortunately, beginning to fall into disuse.... It is therefore evident that when a Mexicana is endowed with white teeth and a fine complexion, when she has not grown too fat, and when she does not torture her small foot to make it smaller, she must be extremely handsome.... ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... became the predominant dialect of England; and the East Midland variety of this dialect became the parent of modern standard English. This predominance was probably due to the fact that it, soonest of all, got rid of its inflexions, and became most easy, pleasant, and convenient to use. And this disuse of inflexions was itself probably due to the early Danish settlements in the east, to the larger number of Normans in that part of England, to the larger number of thriving towns, and to the greater and more ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... the hereditary predisposition more than anything else that has reduced the formerly wide prevalence of this disease in the European countries generally. A consideration for the future of our horses would demand the disuse of all sires that are unlicensed, and the refusal of a license to any sire which has suffered from this or ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... Covenant, for there (Exodus xxii. 29, 30) the command is to leave the firstling seven days with its dam and on the eighth day to give it to Jehovah. Probably through the predominance gained by agriculture and the feasts founded on it the passover fell into disuse in many parts of Israel, and kept its ground only in districts where the pastoral and wilderness life still retained its importance. This would also explain why the passover first comes clearly into light when ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... to some extent true. During the twenty years that had elapsed since the World War armament of all kinds had fallen into disuse. Few improvements in offensive weapons had been made. The military organization and equipment of the United States, and, indeed, that of many of the other great powers, was admittedly inadequate to cope ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... solution—which was given merely as a guide—they would never learn to calculate. Hand in hand with the advance of the understanding goes the progress of the will. Future recompenses, which the New Testament promises as rewards of virtue, are means of education, and will gradually fall into disuse: in the highest stage, the stage of purity of heart, virtue will be loved and practiced for its own sake, and no longer for the sake of heavenly rewards. Slowly but surely, along devious paths which are yet salutary, we are being led toward that great goal. It will ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... take leave of Dr. Johnson, as an author. Four volumes of his Lives of the Poets were published in 1778, and the work was completed in 1781. Should biography fall again into disuse, there will not always be a Johnson to look back through a century, and give a body of critical and moral instruction. In April, 1781, he lost his friend Mr. Thrale. His own words, in his diary, will best tell that melancholy event. "On Wednesday, the 11th ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... valleys. The same thing is found to be true on the western side of the coast range of mountains, as one goes north or south from the Abra river, although there is evidence here that some of the settlements formerly had these rites, but have allowed them to fall into disuse, as a result of ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... with vexation. She was so anxious to prevent Mrs. Danvers from feeling dependent that she allowed her to take all sorts of liberties, and the amiable woman was not disposed to let the privilege fall into disuse. On the present occasion there was such an absurd incongruity of time and place that she might possibly have tried to evade the "exposition," but she happened just then to meet Keene's eye. The sarcasm there was not so carefully veiled as it usually was in her presence. Never yet was ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... disease is the want of the appropriate exercise of the various faculties of the mind. On this point, Dr. Combe remarks: "We have seen that, by disuse, muscles become emaciated, bone softens, blood-vessels are obliterated, and nerves lose their characteristic structure. The brain is no exception to this general rule. The tone of it is also impaired by permanent ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... 1624 after many violent scenes, and King James was glad to be rid of what he called "a seminary for a seditious parliament." The company had made use of lotteries to raise funds, and upon their disuse, in 1621, Smith proposed to the company to compile for its benefit a general history. This he did, but it does not appear that the company took any action on his proposal. At one time he had been named, with three others, as a fit person for secretary, on the removal of Mr. Pory, but as only three ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the same with a great human device, the introduction of clothes. They have led to all sorts of new susceptibilities to disease and even tendencies to direct injury of many kinds. Yet no one advocates the complete disuse of all clothing on the ground that corsets have sometimes proved harmful. It would be just as absurd to advocate the complete abandonment of contraceptives on the ground that some of them have sometimes been misused. ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... nor would I make choice of one with muscles so inert from disuse were this to be an onset, where men give and take hard blows. I ask you not upon the ship's deck at all, my friend, nor shall I require your company one step farther than the roof of the great sugar ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic, who had not even enough sense of humour to see the absurdity of his own request, that she should go out to the shore of this ocean of corruption, and repeat the ancient role of King ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... famous athletes, and as long as their athletic training had a normal place in their lives, it was a good thing. But it was a very bad thing when they kept up their athletic games while letting the stern qualities of soldiership and statesmanship sink into disuse. Some of the younger readers of this book will certainly sometime read the famous letters of the younger Pliny, a Roman who wrote, with what seems to us a curiously modern touch, in the first century of the present era. His correspondence with the Emperor Trajan is particularly interesting; and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... poor feet were so cramped, and the muscles so much weakened from long disuse, that he could not walk. He tottered at every step, and in a few minutes appeared greatly fatigued. But his liberated feet soon acquired uncommon agility, his plumage grew more resplendent, and he appeared perfectly happy. He no longer uttered harsh screams, but very readily ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie

... xxiii; Pausanias, x, 25-27), that the "Little Iliad" also contained a description of the sack of Troy. It is probable that this and other superfluous incidents disappeared after the Alexandrian arrangement of the poems in the Cycle, either as the result of some later recension, or merely through disuse. Or Proclus may have thought it unnecessary to give the accounts by Lesches and Arctinus ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... to point out the extreme necessity of a full observance of these Rules of Conduct, and portrayed the evil consequences which would inevitably result to us if we neglected or suffered them to fall into disuse. He enforced the necessity of our unremitting attention to personal cleanliness, and to the duties of morality; he dwelt upon the degradation and sin of drunkeness; described the meanness and atrocity of theft; and the high degree of caution against temptation necessary ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... employment, application, service, utilization, exploitation; necessity, need; utility, avail, advantage, usefulness, service; custom, usage, practice. Antonyms: disuse, obsolescence, desuetude, inutility. Associated Words: obsolescent, obsolete, obsoletism, utilitarian, utilitarianism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the commencement of treatment she was dressed, sitting up to meals, able to walk up and down stairs with an arm and a stick, and had also walked in the same way in the park. Considering how completely atrophied her muscles were from twenty years' entire disuse, this was much more than I had ventured to hope. She has now left with her nurse for Natal, and I have no doubt that she will return from her travels with ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... The long disuse of such powers of judgment as she had, and long habit of always giving way, had helped to convert Mrs. Lake's naturally weak will and unselfish disposition into a sort of mental pulp, plastic to any pressure ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... They stood amazed at the recital; they wondered I was alive, and expressed much satisfaction at being able to relieve me. Observing me very weak and depressed, they gave me about a spoonful of rum to recruit my fainting spirits; but even this small quantity, from my long disuse of strong liquors, threw me into violent agitation, and produced a kind of stupor, which at last ended in privation of sense. Some of the party perceiving a state of insensibility come on, would have administered more rum, which those better skilled among them prevented; ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... a manufacturer of verse, was in the highest sense of the word a poet; his imagination wrought nobly and grandly, and imposed its creations on the mind of the reader for realities. With him there was no withering, or decline, or disuse of the poetic faculty; as he stepped downwards from the zenith of life, no shadow or chill came over it; it was like the year of some genial climates, a perpetual season of verdure, bloom, and fruitfulness. As these works came out, I was rejoiced to see ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... diplomatic circles, a curious custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pele Mele, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and quarrels for precedence between courtiers and diplomatists of contending pretensions. Under this rule no ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... issue is not between the theory of a supernatural cause and the theory of any one particular natural cause, or set of causes—such as natural selection, use, disuse, and so forth. The issue thus far—or where only the fact of evolution is concerned—is between the theory of a supernatural cause as operating immediately in numberless acts of special creation, and the theory of natural causes as a whole, whether these happen, or do not happen, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... days no European gentleman or lady could be seen in a carromata [235] (gig) about Manila; now this vehicle is in general use for both sexes of all classes. Bicycles were known in the Islands ten years ago, but soon fell into disuse on account of the bad roads; however, this means of locomotion is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... the parent of all that have come after it, the Water-Lily had, as a distinct organization, a very brief existence. Its organizers seem to have dropped the name, or to have allowed it to sink into disuse in consequence of the strenuous official measures taken against the society by the government for the attempt, in 1803, on Kiaking's life in the streets of Pekin. They merged themselves into the widely-extended confederacy of the Society of Celestial ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... each new enterprise, is now discontented with all that has been done. He begins again to look forward,—he becomes a prophet, instead of the historian he was. He easily sees that a true manhood would disuse our ways of teaching and worshipping, would unbuild and rebuild every town and house, would tear away the jails and abolish pauperism as well as slavery. He sees the power of government lying unused and unsuspected in spelling-books and Bibles. Now he has found a work, not for one finger, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... had an appearance of athletic power, as if they could have leaped over the hearse, the elder gave you the further impression that he was actually longing to perform some such feat. The younger brother's half languid gait, that told of bodily strength impaired by disuse, had become in the elder an impatient elasticity as if he moved on springs. His thoughts were clearly elsewhere; his eyes wandered absently to and fro, and his pre-occupation was obvious enough to me later on, when I ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... speech establishes nothing more than the fact that your opponents are capricious in the distribution of their sympathy, which is, after all, a reproach and nothing more. Now, reproach is not only not your strength, but it is the very thing in the disuse of which your strength consists; and indulging as I do the hope that you will one day occupy one of the foremost stations in the House of Commons, if not the first of all, I cannot help wishing that you may also be the founder of a more magnanimous system of parliamentary ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... full or dry. Here the Shoshones winter flockwise, weaving baskets and hunting big game driven down from the country of the deep snow. And this brief intercourse is all the use they have of their kind, for now there are no wars, and many of their ancient crafts have fallen into disuse. The solitariness of the life breeds in the men, as in the plants, a certain well-roundedness and sufficiency to its own ends. Any Shoshone family has in itself the man-seed, power to multiply and replenish, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... their inner states, tend at the same time to heighten the richness and intensity of the cerebral nerves, to unify the connections of the lower nerve centres with them, and to fuse the unconscious physiological processes with the conscious psychological processes. Then the persevering disuse and suppression of the action of their outer senses cause the objects of the material world around them to seem more vague and dreamy than the impressions of the ideal world within. And so the earth with all its affairs seems an illusion, while their own unsought trains ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... are similar to those of mutilations and of use vice versa. Delage, as seen above, does not consider that increase or decrease of particular muscles can be inherited, but only the muscular system in general. If, however, in consequence of the disuse of a group of muscles there was a general diminution of the inherited muscular system, the special group would remain diminished while the rest were developed by use in the individual: there would thus be a heredity produced indirectly. With regard to general ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... frantic attempt! But the window catch, rusted with long disuse, stuck. Panting, sick with fear, the girl leaped away and crushed herself into a corner, crouching on the floor behind a heavy box, her dark cloak drawn up ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... elk, and sheep, but are usually performed for the specific purpose of obtaining rain. Formerly, too, when their lives were far less peaceful than they are to-day, the Pueblos indulged in war and scalp dances; but these are now falling into disuse. The most remarkable exhibition of dancing, still in vogue, is the repulsive Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, which takes place every year alternately in four villages between the 10th and the 30th of ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... the custom of holding councils had fallen into disuse. They convoked a national council, notwithstanding the unfavourableness of a silent persecution; and, in spite of the penury which afflicted the pastors, the latter had the courage to expose themselves in order to concur in it. This council was opened with the greatest solemnity on the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... independent public opinion, elections could be managed by the officials through the official Press in their own interest; elections would become a sham, and would no doubt soon fall into disuse. The official class would become a caste of hereditary ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... great Lombardic plain, from distances of half-a-day's journey, dark against the amber sky of the horizon. These are of course now built no more, the changed methods of modern warfare having cast them into entire disuse; but the belfry or campanile has had a very different influence on European architecture. Its form in the plains of Italy and South France being that just shown you, the moment we enter the valleys of the Alps, where there is snow ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... introduce a consistent and undeviating use of the term according to this definition. Suppose that they had seriously endeavored, and had succeeded in the endeavor, to banish the word disinterestedness from the language; had obtained the disuse of all expressions attaching odium to selfishness or commendation to self-sacrifice, or which implied generosity or kindness to be any thing but doing a benefit in order to receive a greater personal advantage in return. Need we say that this abrogation of the old formulas for the sake of preserving ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... with the disuse of ink-horns. It would be very easy to multiply instances where the word is employed in our old writers. It most frequently occurs in Wilson's "Rhetoric," where is inserted an epistle composed of ink-horn ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... said he, "is one of the most difficult forms of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... elaborate, and the mass of ritual grew to such an extent that the king could no longer cope with it unaided. The employment of purohits or family priests, formerly optional, now became a sacred duty if the sacrifices were not to fall into disuse. The Brahman obtained a monopoly of priestly functions, and a race of sacerdotal specialists arose which tended continually to close its ranks against the intrusion of outsiders." Gradually then from the household priests and those who made ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... absence of his family; he was used to it. He never failed to send the required remittances. "The money belongs to Augusta," he always said to himself. Besides, his own expenses were small. One by one the rooms of his large house had been closed through disuse, and a half-grown boy waited on him in the wing. Dust had settled on the rich furniture ordered years ago with such pride to make a fitting nest for his bride; rust gnawed the mute strings of his daughter's piano; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... Father Noble, whose memory of her was so blurred that Doris did not venture to refer to it in detail; "I thought when the Sisters went away this beautiful old house would fall into disuse. It is a great happiness to feel ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... saying in Europe that the first-class passengers consist of lords and fools, and few of the hundreds of thousands of American tourists traveling abroad give the natives occasion to class them with either. The first-class car has almost fallen into disuse in Europe, and even the patronage of the second-class is less than ten per cent, of that of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... needed for the disuse of a language of signs for the special purpose now in question when the speech of surrounding civilization is recognized as necessary or important to be acquired, and gradually becomes known as the best common medium, even before ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... sometimes almost destroying constitutional irritability and vicious passions. The natural power of the will in different men differs greatly, but there is no part of our nature which is more strengthened by exercise or more weakened by disuse. The minor faults of character it can usually correct; but when a character is once formed, and when its tendencies are essentially vicious, radical cure or even considerable amelioration is very rare. Sometimes the strong ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Camboritum, but this, like the majority of Roman place names in England, fell into disuse, and the earliest definite reference to the town in post-Roman times gives the name as Grantacaestir. This occurs in Bede's great Ecclesiastical History, concluded in A.D. 731, and the incident alluded to in connection with the Roman town throws ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home

... while it was the object of Cimon to sustain the naval ardour and discipline of the Athenians; while the oar and the sword fell into disuse with the confederates, he kept the greater part of the citizens in constant rotation at maritime exercise or enterprise— until experience and increasing power with one, indolence and gradual subjection with the other, destroying the ancient equality in arms, made the Athenians masters and their ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... desired channel of Number 13, had not the lawyer at this moment begun to sing, and to sing in a manner which could leave no doubt in anyone's mind that he was either exceedingly drunk or raving mad. It was a high, thin voice that they heard, and it seemed dry, as if from long disuse. Of words or tune there was no question. It went sailing up to a surprising height, and was carried down with a despairing moan as of a winter wind in a hollow chimney, or an organ whose wind fails suddenly. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... a delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's distinguished relatives had fallen into disuse. Her daughter, was like her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such a mother, but much more largely made in mind and body, pleasant-looking, healthy, high-browed. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... been testing practically what disuse does in reducing parts. I have made [skeletons] of wild and tame duck (oh the smell of well-boiled, high duck!), and I find the tame duck ought, according to scale of wild prototype, to have its two wings 360 grains in weight; but it has only 317, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... which they have gained they hold to though it cost them their lives. Luke FitzHenry was one of these, and Agatha found that in the London ball-room she could take back nothing that she had given on board the Croonah. Luke, it is to be presumed, had old- fashioned theories which have fallen into disuse in these practical modern days wherein we flirt for one night only, for a day, for a week, according to convenience. He could not lay aside the voyage to Malta and that which occurred then as a matter of the past; and Agatha, surprised ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman



Words linked to "Disuse" :   decline, omission, neglect, declination



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