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Innovation   Listen
noun
Innovation  n.  
1.
The act of innovating; introduction of something new, in customs, rites, commercial products, etc.
2.
A change effected by innovating; a change in customs; something new, and contrary to established customs, manners, or rites. "The love of things ancient doth argue stayedness, but levity and lack of experience maketh apt unto innovations."
3.
(Bot.) A newly formed shoot, or the annually produced addition to the stems of many mosses.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Innovation" Quotes from Famous Books



... worst before the bastinado (an innovation of Bosambo's) had performed its silencing mission, and Ochori mothers shepherded their little flocks with greater care when the sun went down that night, for this new terror which had come to the land, this black ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... blue, decorated with an old rose "F" on the front of the blouse. A wide rolling sailor collar of the same color further added to the effect. The sophomores had elected to be patriotic, and wore khaki-colored suits, unrelieved by a contrasting color. It was a decided innovation of its kind and ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft

... to look ahead, time to think, time to weigh what we had done and what we wanted to do. So that week The Wand came out with ideas for cooperative action that were an innovation in the development of new lands, a banded strength for the homesteader's protection. It seemed logical and simple and inevitable to me then—as it does now. "Banded together as friends"—the Indian meaning of Lakota—was ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... interior of an ancient bowl is shown in Fig. 487, in which merely a suggestion of the radiation is preserved, although the figure is still decorative and tasteful. This process of modification goes on without end, and as the true geometric textile forms recede from view innovation robs the design of all traces of its original character, producing much that ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes

... the political agitator and suppress the writings of political prophets can be understood. For the existence of every government is threatened by prophets and agitators, and in self-defence it resists innovation. A healthy democracy will allow too many opportunities for popular expression to fear innovation; yet even under a democracy the prophets have been stoned—their sepulchres to be subsequently erected by public subscription and ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... degree with John Gurney in these sentiments. But as our Lord appointed no female evangelists, or apostles, or missionaries; and as the Holy Ghost has directed, that all bishops or elders should be married MEN, it would appear a strange innovation to place a female in the pastoral office. Bunyan believed that God usually commissions men and not women to this important work. J. J. Gurney fully admits that women "are forbidden to usurp authority over the man," and therefore no active part is assigned to them in public assemblies ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... talents and aspiring mind, struggle with Hertford for the highest place in the administration; in vain did Tunstal bishop of Durham,—no bigot, but a firm papist,—check with all the authority that he could venture to exert, the bold career of innovation on which he beheld Cranmer full of eagerness to enter; in vain did the catholics invoke to their aid the active interference of Dudley; he suffered them to imagine that his heart was with them, and that he watched ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... great pretension!" exclaimed the queen, angrily. "A pedlar's daughter who carries arrogance so far as to wish to appear at the court of the King of Prussia! This can never be, and never could I advocate such an innovation: it is destructive, and only calculated to diminish the prestige of the nobility, and to deprive it of its greatest and best privilege—that privilege which entitles it alone to approach royalty. It was this view which prevented me from receiving the so-called Count Neal at ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... which he shared with his cousin made a tremendous impression on Tom and me, and seemed palatial in comparison to our quarters at Mrs. Bolton's, eloquent of the freedom and luxury of undergraduate existence; their note, perhaps, was struck by the profusion of gay sofa pillows, then something of an innovation. The heavy, expensive furniture was of a pattern new to me; and on the mantel were three or four photographs of ladies in the alluring costume of the musical stage, in which Tom ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... alinea, Caratheodory Pacha dit que, sans doute, les principes de la proposition sont acceptes par la Turquie, mais son Excellence ne voudrait pas qu'ils fussent consideres comme une innovation, et donne lecture, a ce sujet, de la communication suivante qu'il vient ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... be correct, this was a great stride forward in the development of the Church. It needed a vision to overcome the scruples of Peter, and impel him to the bold innovation of preaching to Cornelius and his household, and, as we know, his doing so gave grave offence to some of his brethren in Jerusalem. But in the case before us, some Cypriote and African Jews—men of no note in the Church, whose very names have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... comparison between humanity and animality. It would be an error to believe that the great quarrel which in recent times has arisen between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is concerned with a scientific innovation. The unity of composition involved in it had already, under other terms, occupied the greatest minds of the two preceding centuries. On reading over again the extraordinary works of such mystic writers as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, etc., who have studied ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... the lake, and yield a handsome profit to the stockholders of the railroad. That was the great benefit anticipated. No one then thought of the movement by railroad, over vast distances, of grain, stock, and merchandise, but regarded the innovation as a substitute for the old wagon ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... English dictionary of such unimpassioned vocables as "codification" and "international," Bentham would have been glad to purify the language by purging it of those "affections of the soul" wherein Burke had found its highest glory. Yet in censuring the ordinary political usage of such a word as "innovation," it was hardly prejudice in general that he attacked, but the particular and deep-seated prejudice against novelty. The surprising vivacity of many of his own figures,—although he had the courage of his convictions, and laboured, throughout the course of a long life, to ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... the addition of regarding them as busy and troublesome zealots? Or from the magistrate, who, satisfied with the "utility" of the subsisting religion, would not be likely to countenance a spirit of proselytism and innovation:—a system which declared war against every other, and which, if it prevailed, must end in a total rupture of public opinion; an upstart religion, in a word, which was not content with its own authority, but ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... market-tables, read at churches, To face the garment of rebellion With some fine colour that may please the eye Of fickle changelings and poor discontents, Which gape and rub the elbows at the news Of hurly burly innovation; And never yet did Insurrection want Such water-colours ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... was moved to abandon the passive and procrastinating attitude he had hitherto assumed; and towards the close of the Reichstag he answered the Cologne appellants by citing the archbishop to appear within thirty days, and answer the charges of innovation brought against him. In the meanwhile he was to cancel all the novelties he had introduced ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... the familiar "goose club" may be compared with the German Martinmas goose. The more luxurious turkey must be relatively an innovation, for that bird seems not to have been introduced into England until ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... conversion, novelty, revolution, variation, diversity, regeneration, transformation, variety, innovation, renewal, transition, vicissitude. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will really eat them.' Johnson's Works, ix. 121. 'The young laird is heir, perhaps, to 300 square ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... office in Royston till the beginning of the present century. Another innovation was more sweeping, and that was that the custom of meeting at the inns of an evening was, at least for a time, abandoned. The meetings were held at Whitehall, at the top of the High Street, and to make things smart and business-like, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... young man had driven his trap to the Mill and listened to John Best on the subject of immediate interest. The foreman decided against any innovation for the present and Daniel was glad. Then he asked for ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... filling it in himself. At a secret meeting of the Committee Rushton proposed—amid laughter and applause, it was such a good joke—a new and better way, calculated to keep down the number of applicants. The result of this innovation was that no more forms were issued, but the applicants for work were admitted into the office one at a time, and were there examined by a junior clerk, somewhat after the manner of a French Juge d'Instruction interrogating a ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... at innovation in agriculture, as in industry, is forthwith discouraged by new and subtle impositions, which lie in wait for the enterprising Italian and punish him for his ideas. There is, of course, a prohibitive duty on every article or implement ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... imperatively very exceptional qualities, both physiological and psychological, in the primitive agents. The new happy ending to that old-world drama which had run so long through blood and tears, was an innovation requiring very unusually gifted actors. How many failures had doubtless taken place in its rehearsal during the centuries, with less ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... the pope upon the extent of the papal privileges; there were disputes between the laity and the clergy,—accompanied, as if involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental system and the Catholic faith,—while innovation in doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency which characterized the extreme development of the later Protestants—towards political republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and community of goods. Some account of this movement ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... destruction of matter, not, however, by dissolution but rather by a kind of a parcelling out of its various divisions and a constructive scattering of these divisions about the canvas. But he seems in this most recent work distinctly desirous of keeping an appearance of matter. He shrinks from no innovation, and if colour seems likely to balk him in his search for a pure artistic form, he throws it overboard and paints a picture in brown and white; and the problem of purely artistic form is the real ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... only every third year it is not to be offered in Jerusalem, but is to be given as alms to the people of the locality who have no land, to which category the Levites in particular belong. This last application is an innovation, connected on the one hand with the abolition of the sanctuaries, and on the other with the tendency of the Deuteronomist to utilise festal ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... is now a notable innovation, which marked the advent of a new age. Instead of the prevailing hempen cables with which these cruisers had been supplied and had been in use for centuries among our ships, these cutters were ordered to be furnished with chain cables "in order that the vessels may have the less occasion for ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... artificial means, the smallest of created things may contrive to look down on the greatest, and to affect to compassionate his want of range. For purposes of controversy, the Anglican could talk of himself as a terrestrial ancient-of-days, and regret the rage for innovation, which led, not, of course, to his separation from Rome, but to Rome's separation from him! So the pebble, if determined to put a good face on it, might wonder what had become of the rock, and recite the parable of the return ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... excelled, used to say that two movings were equal to one fire. And gentlemen, as if they were afraid that this besetting sin of republican governments, this rerum novarum lubido (to use a very homely phrase, but that comes pat to the purpose), this maggot of innovation, would cease to bite, are here gravely making provision that this Constitution, which we should consider as a remedy for all the ills of the body politic, may itself be amended or modified at any future time. Sir, I am against ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... gave it a twirl as a drum-major does his cane. Lapoulle, observing what all his comrades were doing, must have supposed the performance to be some recent innovation in the manual, and followed suit, while Pache, in the confused idea of duty that he owed to his religious education, refused to do as the rest were doing and was loaded with obloquy by Chouteau, who called him ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... has so well said, "The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping the ancient reign of continuity. In those days Columbus subverted the notions of the world, and reversed the conditions of production, wealth, and power.... Luther broke the chain of authority and tradition at the ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... rolling ten pins, have now bowling alleys of their own. Even in the corridors of staid old Williams the sound of the balls may be heard; and the revival record of the college does not indicate that even this stupendous innovation has wrought to the banishment of the Spirit of God. The assertors of this inverse ratio between piety and amusement must, in short, dispose as best they can, of the fact that along with the growth of Christian intelligence, Christian benevolence, and Christian activity, there has been developed ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... but first the newspapers of Germany were carefully filled with official statements saying the British and French had used this unfair means. Coincidentally with these reports the German army was trying by this dastardly innovation to break the British lines. It was not a new procedure. Months before the Lusitania crime, the newspapers and people had been poisoned with official statements inflaming the people against America, particularly for our commerce with the Entente in ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... of furniture, delft, china, or silver were unknown; the introduction of delft-ware was considered by many of the backwoods people as a wasteful innovation; it was too easily broken, and the plates dulled their ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... government was ancient and consecrated by tradition: whence to change it seemed disorderly and revolutionary: in Judaea theocracy was ancient and consecrated by tradition, and therefore the innovation which would substitute a king was represented as ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... introducing Arbor Day into the schools was brought before the National Educational Association in February, 1884, the objection was made that the subject was out of place in the schools. The value of the innovation could not be appreciated by those who did not see the practical bearing of the subject on an ordinary school course. But at the next meeting of the Association the question was again brought up and unanimously adopted—to the mutual benefit ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... no reason why a colored doctor might not operate upon a white male child,—there are fine distinctions in the application of the color line,—but several other physicians had been invited, some of whom were men of old-fashioned notions, who might not relish such an innovation. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected; suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion; and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation. ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson

... had already come to such a pass, that even well-meant and judicious changes, if not immediately carried out, no longer gave satisfaction. A wild zeal for innovation also found vent in frequent brutish expressions and disorderly scenes. If unpopular canons or chaplains appeared at mass in the church, they were publicly derided; their chronicles were stolen; leaves were torn from a guide-book for the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... think, with unanswerable force of reasoning. We do not, however, wish to destroy what we do not entirely approve. Far be that insanity from our minds which would, like Orlando, tear up the academic groves; the madness of innovation is as destructive as the bigotry of ancient establishments. The learning and the views of the rising century must have different objects from those of the wisdom and benevolence of Alfred, Balsham, or Wolsey; and, without depreciating or destroying the magnificence or ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... mind and hand by an effort, and rang the bell—(the bell, there a modern innovation.) No sound but its own distant deadened one, was heard within; but some dog in the rear barked, and then howled, as if alarmed at the sudden breach of long prevailing silence. Again she rang—again the troubled growl and bark, suppressed by fear of the only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... readers, who are men, or, if possible, women after my own heart; grave, philosophical, and investigating; fond of analyzing characters, of taking a start from first causes, and so haunting a nation down, through all the mazes of innovation and improvement. Such will naturally be anxious to witness the first development of the newly-hatched colony, and the primitive manners and customs prevalent among its inhabitants, during the halcyon reign of Van ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... completed, and it is handed over to the printers, who are already clamouring for it to be put in their formes—for there is no time to electrotype it, nor of course to stereotype the pages. Stereotyping, indeed, has been the latest of the innovations on Punch—an innovation to be reckoned but a year or two old—for Punch, in his own house at least, is a Conservative among Conservatives. What was always present in the publisher's mind was that the "foreign edition" had to be ready printed off by Monday morning, and every ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... progress, that, while in the other cities of Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon an image ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... upon which gaudy peacocks strutted back and forth, but in front of the Hall was a small artificial lake in which some transplanted fish led the lives of prisoners. Lady Fernborough begged the Baronet to end their miserable existence, but, to him, innovation was folly and destruction bordered ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... of juvenile thieves and pickpockets, who in the course of time obtain promotion in their profession, until they are ultimately sent off to Botany Bay. Attempts have been made to check these nurseries of vice: but pseudo-philanthropists have resisted such barbarous innovation: and upon the Mosaic principle, that you must not seethe the kid in the mother's milk, they are protected and allowed to arrive at full maturity, and beyond the chance of being reclaimed, until they are ripe for the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... shake a thraldom off that we abhor, To keep our ancient rights inviolate, As we received them from our forefathers—this, Not lawless innovation, is our aim. Let Caesar still retain what is his due; And he that is a vassal let him pay The service he ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... word 'mundus', which at first had only the primary meaning of [Greek word] (female ornament), was applied to designate the entire universe. Ennius seems to have been the first who ventured upon this innovation. In one of the fragments of this poet, preserved by Macrobius, on the occasion of his quarrel with Virgil, we find the word used in its novel mode of acceptation: "Mundus caeli vastus constitit silentio" (Sat., ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... readers the plural form, "Electricities," which frequently appears in the following pages, might seem a strange innovation. The Editor therefore states, by way of anticipation, that in certain important points the electrical science of Montalluyah differs from, if it is not opposed to, some of the principles accepted here. In Montalluyah it is an ascertained fact that everything organic or inorganic ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... some suitable groove in the social scheme, where they may be useful to themselves and to others. Side by side with depraved instincts, criminals frequently possess invaluable gifts: an abnormal degree of intelligence, great audacity, and love of innovation. The wonderful galleries and fortifications cut out in the rocks at Gibraltar and Malta by English convicts and the complete transformation of parts of Sardinia have led criminologists to the conclusion that the ancient penalty of enforced labour was more logical, useful, and advantageous ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... hesitating, "if—God forbid—your wife should meet with any misfortune, it would be attributed to the anger of God at this innovation." ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... in human ability and fearlessness of both the present and the future, a wider realization of human brotherhood than has yet existed, a greater theoretical willingness to judge by the individual than by the class, a breezy indifference to authority and a positive predilection for innovation, a marked alertness of mind, and a manifold variety of interest—above all, an inextinguishable hopefulness and courage. It is easy to lay one's finger in America upon almost every one of the great defects of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... recent quiet introduction of a perfectly comfortable apparel for morning wear, which, strange to say, has originated where one would least expect, among the most fashionable belles of the Empire city.[5] This significant innovation which is reported by the daily press, as becoming quite popular among the young ladies of the wealthy districts of New York, consists of a comfortable blouse worn over knickerbocker trousers. Clad in this comfortable attire, the belles come to breakfast, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... swindling, there is the Devil's own difficulty in punishing the swindling of the public. The art of swindling now is a different thing to the art of swindling a hundred years ago; but the laws remain the same. Adaptation in private cases is innovation in public; so, without repealing old laws, they make new. Sometimes these are effectual, but more often not. Now, my beloved pupils, a law is a gun which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits some one else. As every crime ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... except Elgin, to establish that autonomy in Canada which his theories rejected. Before self-government could flourish in the colony, there must be some solid material progress, and two years of incessant legislation and administrative innovation, all of it suggested by Sydenham, had turned the tide of Canadian fortunes. It was necessary, too, that some larger field than a trivial provincial assembly with its local jobs should be provided for the new adventure ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... in life. Unfortunately the housewife has been accustomed for so many years to have her "servants" work for her all day long on every day of the week, with only a few hours off duty "on every other Sunday and on every other Thursday," that she is rather inclined to resent such an innovation as the observance of legal holidays in domestic labor. She fails to perceive that by her present attitude she shows herself in a very unfavorable light as an employer, for the lack of holidays is decidedly one of the reasons for which housework is ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker

... household was sharing in Harriet's prosperity. Katie had a helper now, a little Austrian girl named Mimi. And Harriet had established on the Street the innovation of after-dinner coffee. It was over the after-dinner coffee ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of natives of India into these inner lines of the British Executive power undoubtedly constitutes, as Lord Lansdowne has said, a "tremendous innovation," but it may be doubted whether in practice the consequences will be as considerable as those of the changes effected by the India Councils Act of 1909 in the composition and attributions of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... dinner. The luncheon for the young men, as she observed to her husband, might be sent into the surgery. A few elegant cold trifles for herself and Molly would not scent the house, and she would always take care to have some little dainty ready for him. He acceded, but unwillingly, for it was an innovation on the habits of a lifetime, and he felt as if he should never be able to arrange his rounds aright with this newfangled notion of ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Reinhard Keiser, and the "Passion nach Cap. 19 S. Johannis" by Handel. In the former, cantatas were substituted for the narrative and chorales, one of the numbers being in the nature of a love-song,—an innovation upon the established forms which brought down upon the composer the indignation of the critics both in the pulpit and out of it. The passion-music of Handel was but a weak prelude to the colossal works which were to follow from his pen. Between 1705 and 1718 several other ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... Yukon, Assistant-Commissioner Wood, out of wide experience, says, "It is a well-known saying that prevention is better than cure, and any innovation in our system tending to the prevention of crime in Canada, and more particularly in the North-West and the Yukon Territories, is to be welcomed." And then Wood goes on to advocate the adoption of certain methods for the detection of criminals which for that period showed that these ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... innovation which democracy brings into family life is the equality of the sexes, and this is followed by woman's disrespect for man. This idea, be it admitted, is substantially correct, it only ceases to be true when it is ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... employed by democratic nations to make an innovation in language consists in giving some unwonted meaning to an expression already in use. This method is very simple, prompt, and convenient; no learning is required to use it aright, and ignorance itself rather facilitates ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... This captaincy of local fashion I assoomes at a tender age. I wears the record as the first child to don shoes throughout the entire summer in that neighbourhood; an' many a time an' oft does my yoothful but envy-eaten compeers lambaste me for the insultin' innovation. But I sticks to my moccasins; an' to-day shoes in the Bloo Grass is almost as yooniversal as the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... been to respect that ancient chaos." But even to conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend Slavery, though really in the order of its natural development, must still have appeared a monstrous innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats and Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the bad work. Indeed, in our country, conservatism, through the presence of Slavery, has inverted its usual order. In other countries, the radical of one century is the conservative ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... "This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, suddenly mounting the more funereal of her two favourite hobbies, "is one of the great symptoms of the approaching crash. We are altering and mending and reforming, when in twenty years at the utmost the world itself may be destroyed!" The fair speaker ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... date. When sickness prevailed on board, when beer ran short or had to be turned over the side to preserve a sweet ship, rum or wine was issued, and although the Admiralty at first looked askance at the innovation, and at times left commanders of ships to foot the bill for spirits thus served out, the practice made gradual headway, until at length it ousted beer altogether and received the stamp of official approval. Half a pint, dealt out each morning and evening in equal portions, was the regular allowance—a ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... was spent in visiting every nook of the garden with Agnes, and hearing the history of each little innovation; then, after a slight interval of sleepiness, came those fond, cordial "good nights," which dwell no where but ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... able to effect his purpose just as well as if two men were employed; but the French must have remarked that custom in England; only, the besotted prejudice that exists in that class against every species of innovation causes them to persevere in their old habits. The agricultural population in France are more wealthy and generally better clothed than ours, particularly as regards the women; they pride themselves ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... the Virgin, was most strenuous and eloquent in his disapprobation. He pronounced no judgment against those who received the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, he rather leaned towards it; but he opposed the institution of the festival as an innovation not countenanced by the early fathers of the Church. After the death of St. Bernard, for about a hundred years, the dispute slept; but the doctrine gained ground. The thirteenth century, so remarkable for the manifestation of religious enthusiasm in all its forms, beheld ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... the alto and tenor singers in the wings of the end gallery, separated by Dr. Partridge's pew. For, as in most New England churches at this date, the "old way," of purely congregational singing by "lining out," had given place to select choirs, an innovation however, over which the elder part of the people still groaned and croaked. On the back seats of the end gallery, behind the tenors and altos respectively sat the negro freedmen and freedwomen, the Pomps ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... Douglas was victorious, but only narrowly and after a hard-fought contest. The most striking feature of that contest was the series of Lincoln-Douglas debates in which, by an interesting innovation in electioneering, the two candidates for the Senatorship contended face to face in the principal political centres of the State. In reading these debates one is impressed not only with the ability of both combatants, but with ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... been strange indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when the greatest events which diversified the course of his life were a cattle-fair, or a prayer-meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes of innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad in themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, and that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but constant troubles, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... know when I was more concerned for the success of anything not my own," said Mr. Aikens to Miss Defourchet, as he rose to go back to the lobby, putting down his glass. "It is such a daring innovation; it would be worth thousands per annum to me, if I could make it practicable. And then that poor devil himself,—I feel as if we were trying him for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... as he pushed back his chair. "Does anything matter save one's own comfort? Personally I think slavery would be an admirable innovation." ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... distasteful to him. To one who looked on himself as a soldier of God and as a soldier who was fighting a losing battle, the struggle with the Papacy was no matter for compromise. It was a struggle between light and darkness, between life and death. No innovation in faith or worship was of small account if it tended in the direction of Rome. The peril in fact was too great to admit of tolerance or moderation. At a moment when all that he hated was gaining ground on all that he loved, the Puritan saw the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... equality of spirit between men and women, and in doing so we have overridden the accepted opinion of the great majority of mankind. Probably the first writer to do as much was Plato. His argument in support of this innovation upon natural human feeling was thin enough—a mere analogy to illustrate the spirit of his propositions; it was his creative instinct that determined him. In the atmosphere of such speculations as this, Plato looms very large indeed, and in view of what we owe to him, it seems reasonable that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... man here think, that this is any strange position, or a new paradoxe (for the learned know the contrary) or that I am studious of innovation, but rather desirous to roote out an old and inveterate errour, which in all probabilitie hath cost moe Englishmens lives, then would furnish a royall army, in neglecting those two greater helpes or remedies, to wit, Purging, and Blood-letting in hot seasons of the yeare: which in all likelihood ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... of Hermippus to the state, a princely gift even in days when every Athenian put his all at the public service. She would be Themistocles's flag-ship. The young men noted her fine lines, her heavy side timbers, the covered decks, an innovation in Athenian men-of-war, and Themistocles put a loving hand on the keen bronze beak as they ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... hard tell o'!" returned Watty, with the dismay of an orthodox undertaker, righteously jealous of all innovation. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... William Scott, 'The age is running mad after innovation; all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation.' It having been argued that this was an improvement,—'No, Sir, (said he, eagerly,) it is NOT an improvement: they object that the old method ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... "proposals" it was my office to translate. But his whimsical Majesty entertained a lively horror of French intrigue, whether of priests, consuls, or lionnes, and stood in vigilant fear of being beguiled, through one of these adventurous sirens, into fathering the innovation of a Franco-Siamese heir to the throne of the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... George Lankensperger of Munich, coachmaker to the King of Bavaria. The advantage of being able to turn a carriage around in a limited area without danger of oversetting was immediately obvious, and while there was considerable opposition by English coachmakers to an innovation for which a premium had to be paid, the invention soon "made its way from its own intrinsic merit," as Ackermann ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... wrote his "Dramaturgy" at Hamburg, recommended Shakespeare and other English authors as models, but more particularly nature. The celebrated Eckhof, the father of the German stage, who at first travelled about with a company of actors and finally settled at Gotha, was the first who followed this innovation. He was succeeded by Schroeder in Hamburg, who was equally industrious as a poet, an actor, and a Freemason. In Berlin, where Fleck had already paved the way, Iffland, who, like Schroeder, was both a poet and an actor, founded ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... bishop's chair, looking very nice in his new apron; they found, too, Mr. Slope standing on the hearth-rug, persuasive and eager, just as the archdeacon used to stand; but on the sofa they also found Mrs. Proudie, an innovation for which a precedent might in vain be sought in all the annals ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... returned the next day. The effect of the conversation had been to bring Rachel to a meek submission, very touching in its passiveness and weary peacefulness. She was growing stronger, walked out leaning on Alick's arm, and was even taken out by him in a boat, a wonderful innovation, for a dangerous accident to Mr. Curtis had given the mother such a horror of the sea that no boating excursions had ever taken place during her solitary reign, and the present were only achieved by a wonderful stretch of dear Alexander's influence. Perhaps she trusted him the more, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... my driver behind Amy's back and was preparing to get away, but these views of Amy's mother were so complete an innovation that I paused. On the verge of a first drive I had never in my life stopped to consider the ethics of golf-club cleaning. Why had not Amy a pocket and a rag of sand-paper like resourceful Jimmy Baines? I don't remember to have ever read anything on the niceties of the art of scouring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various

... Georgian poetry, it must suffice to note that here, too, the temper of adventure in form is rife. But it shows itself, characteristically, less in revolutionary innovation than in attempts to elicit new and strange effects from traditional measures by deploying to the utmost, and in bold and extreme combinations, their traditional resources and variations, as in the blank verse ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... limited to three years, was actually for life or during good behavior. Yet the power vested in him was only delegated power. A number of selectmen, or aldermen, guarded the rights of the community with the utmost jealousy, and tolerated no innovation, unless previously sanctioned by them. There were also several honorary offices, with a one-year tenure, which none could fill who had not had experience in an inferior position. The chief duties attached to these offices were to appraise the amount ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... an innovation, a new thing, an invention, any change from the custom of the Prophet and the universal practice of the Faith, where it be in the cut of the beard or a question of state policy. Popularly the word heterodoxy, heresy; but theologically it is not necessarily used ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... sister's face. Ughtred watched Betty also, and with a hungry questioning. The man-servant in the worn livery was not a sufficiently well-trained and experienced domestic to make any effort to keep his eyes from her. He was young enough to be excited by an innovation so unusual as the presence of a young and beautiful person surrounded by an unmistakable atmosphere of ease and fearlessness. He had been talking of her below stairs and felt that he had failed in describing her. He had found himself barely supported by the suggestion ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... revolted from his suzerainty and began (as we shall relate in due course) to take an active part in orthodox Chinese affairs, boats and gigantic canal works were introduced by the hitherto totally unknown or totally forgotten coast powers; and it is probably owing to this innovation that war-chariots suddenly disappeared from use, and that even in the north of China boat expeditions became the rule, as indeed was certainly the case after the third ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... both raised to the highest power, to illustrate an action which is beyond the capabilities of the ordinary stage machinery. In the character of the forms employed in the works there is no startling innovation; we meet the same alternation of chorus, recitative, aria, and ensemble that we have known since the oratorio style was perfected. A change, howeer, has come over the spirit of the expression and the forms have all relaxed ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... territory gained stretches over a million square miles equal in area to the territory previously comprised in the Union, and twice as large as that actually occupied by the original thirteen States. Compared with this innovation, the plans of the Federalists for strengthening the Central Government were inconsiderable. A new nation was engrafted on the old, and neither the people of the several States nor their immediate representatives were questioned; ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... former will divert the people, and utterly make void his greater purpose. Therefore, as in perspective, so in tragedy, there must be a point of sight in which all the lines terminate; otherwise the eye wanders, and the work is false. This was the practice of the Grecian stage. But Terence made an innovation in the Roman: all his plays have double actions; for it was his custom to translate two Greek comedies, and to weave them into one of his, yet so, that both their actions were comical, and one was principal, the other but secondary or subservient. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... part of the Constitution which gave to United States senators a term of six years, for the purpose of protecting the Senate from frequent fluctuations of popular feeling, and securing steadiness in legislation. Benton was the apostle of this unwise and destructive innovation upon the constitutional tenure of senators. He was doomed to be a conspicuous victim of his own error. When the 'Jackson resolutions' were passed by the legislature of Missouri, instructing Benton to endorse measures that led ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges; 2d, "Sententiae Excerptcae" for the use of his own School; and 3d, his best work, a Critical Latin Grammar, in the Preface to which he proposes a bold innovation in the names of the cases. My Father's new nomenclature was not likely to become popular, although it must be allowed to be both sonorous and expressive. "Exempli gratia", he calls the ablative case "the quare-quale-quidditive case!" He made the world his confidant with respect ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... the effort of origination; therefore, savages are the slaves of routine. Probably a stronger nervous system, or a peculiarity of environment, or both combined, served to excite impatience with their surroundings among the more favored races, from whence came a desire for innovation. And the mental flexibility thus slowly developed has passed by inheritance, and has been strengthened by use, until the tendency to vary, or think independently, has become an irrepressible instinct among some modern nations. Conservatism ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... this expedition Kheyr-ed-Din had made an innovation in the manning of some of the most powerful of his galleys, which was of the utmost importance, and which was to add enormously to the success of his future maritime enterprises. The custom had always been that the Ottoman galleys had been rowed by Christians, captured and enslaved; ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... the blue flame of the gas-log, almost the only modern innovation throughout the entire house, and was silent for a moment; then he leaned his elbows on his knees and, still looking ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... in whose conduct so many prying eyes were seeking for sources of accusation to gratify herself even by the overthrow of an absurdity, when that overthrow might incur the stigma of innovation. The Court of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish inquisitorial etiquette. It had been strictly wedded to its pageantries since the time of the great Anne of Austria. The sagacious and prudent provisions of this illustrious contriver were deemed the ne plus ultra of royal female policy. A cargo ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification, which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody or force. His author's sense is sometimes a little diluted by additional infusions, and sometimes weakened by too much expansion. But such faults are to be expected ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... her hand upon Miss Chillingworth's—"Dear Miss Diana," she said gently, "you do not say 'No' to us; do you think you could ever find it in your heart to say 'Yes'? I know it must seem a terrible innovation, but we could never have imagined anything half so delightful, Aunt Marthe and I. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... platform the women and other visitors sit when admitted to witness any of the ceremonies observed in the kiva. The main floor in a few of the kivas is composed of roughly hewn planks, but this is a comparatively recent innovation, and is not generally deemed desirable, as the movement of the dancers on the wooden floor shakes the fetiches out ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... of innovation, which always makes itself strongly felt in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to account for the superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings and priests and attributed by them to the gods; possibly this aversion ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... his. Walker, the orthoepist, who died in 1807, yielded the point respecting the k, and ended about four hundred and fifty words with c in his Rhyming Dictionary; but he thought it more of an innovation than it really was. In his Pronouncing Dictionary, he says, "It has been a custom, within these twenty years, to omit the k at the end of words, when preceded by c. This has introduced a novelty into the language, which is that of ending a word with an unusual letter," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... more or less prominent in the public eye—and there are some who have—have demonstrated their ability to see things as they are. Westinghouse was the first man in this country to foresee the coming of the half-holiday Saturday as an innovation that promised general adoption. He granted it to all his employees at a time when lesser industrial captains believed him to be at least "queer." Ford set the pace for a minimum rate of five dollars a day in his plant, and lesser captains still frown upon him for having perpetrated ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... upon all.... Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... judgment is rendered unlikely, not only by inherent improbability, but also by three specific facts: the tiresome succession of like stories which follow unendingly in the wake of every popular success; the palpable fear of the editor to attempt innovation, experiment, or leadership; and the general complaint against "magazine stories." In truth, the American editor plays safe, constantly and from conviction; and playing safe in the short story means the adoption ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... consistent with the characteristic dignified simplicity; nor do we agree with those who think it inharmonious in itself. Baroccio is praised, in that he added somewhat of the colouring of Correggio to the study of the antique and the works of Raffaelle; but it is more than doubtful if the innovation upon the Roman simplicity be not a deterioration of the school. The colouring, the chief characteristic of the Venetian school, represents mankind in a still further onward (we use not the word advanced, because it may be misunderstood) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... task of hurling anathemas at each other's heads. Interest in the national cause had almost completely ebbed away. A Liberal Chief Secretary, in the person of Mr John Morley, reigned in Dublin Castle, but all that he is remembered for now is that he started the innovation of placing Nationalist and Catholic Justices of the Peace on the bench, who became known in time as "the Morley magistrates." Otherwise he left Dublin Castle as formidable a fortress of ascendancy authority as it had ever been. Under conditions ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... thousand years of existence, looked on this innovation with a jealous eye, and would have pitched the whole concern into the river, had she dared; unfortunately the line was carried near a burying ground, and thus a ready excuse for stopping the work presented itself. It was alleged that the noise would ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... Sens, guided by Saint Bernard, replied that the effort was futile and likely to be mischievous. The council made little pretence of knowing or caring what method Abelard followed; they condemned any effort at all on that line; and no sooner had Bernard silenced the Abbot of Saint-Gildas for innovation than he turned about and silenced the Bishop of Poitiers for conservatism. Neither in the twelfth nor in any other century could three men have understood alike the meaning of Gilbert de la Poree, who seems to one high authority unworthy ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... demagoguism is found in the Ultra Orient: there was not only the honest opposition of the patriot, but the factious hostility of the office seeker, against whom the ministry were called to contend. As a consequence, those who were responsible for the innovation soon lost their lives or their posts. Their successors found themselves, as is often the case in political changes, obliged, when in power, to carry out the general policy which, when in opposition, they decried. Instead of abrogating the treaties, they aimed, by ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the ledger school of criticism; Milton's strength and originality; his choice of a sacred subject; earlier attempts in England and France; Boileau's opinion; Milton's choice of metre an innovation; the little influence on Milton of Spenser, and of Donne; Milton a pupil of the dramatists; the history of dramatic blank verse; Milton's handling of the measure; the "elements of musical delight"; ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... the memorable effects of this attempted innovation was that continued stream of libels which ran throughout the nation, under the portentous name of Martin Mar-Prelate.[413] This extraordinary personage, in his collective form, for he is to be splitted into more than one, long terrified Church and State. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli



Words linked to "Innovation" :   origination, excogitation, paternity, creativity, instauration, contrivance, innovational, initiation, start, founding, conception, creation, concoction, invention, innovate, introduction, authorship, creativeness, commencement



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