Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Ordeal   Listen
noun
Ordeal  n.  
1.
An ancient form of test to determine guilt or innocence, by appealing to a supernatural decision, once common in Europe, and still practiced in the East and by savage tribes. Note: In England ordeal by fire and ordeal by water were used, the former confined to persons of rank, the latter to the common people. The ordeal by fire was performed, either by handling red-hot iron, or by walking barefoot and blindfold over red-hot plowshares, laid at unequal distances. If the person escaped unhurt, he was adjudged innocent; otherwise he was condemned as guilty. The ordeal by water was performed, either by plunging the bare arm to the elbow in boiling water, an escape from injury being taken as proof of innocence, or by casting the accused person, bound hand and foot, into a river or pond, when if he floated it was an evidence of guilt, but if he sunk he was acquitted. It is probable that the proverbial phrase, to go through fire and water, denoting severe trial or danger, is derived from the ordeal. See Wager of battle, under Wager.
2.
Any severe trial, or test; a painful experience.
Ordeal bean. (Bot.) See Calabar bean, under Calabar.
Ordeal root (Bot.) the root of a species of Strychnos growing in West Africa, used, like the ordeal bean, in trials for witchcraft.
Ordeal tree (Bot.), a poisonous tree of Madagascar (Tanghinia venenata syn. Cerbera venenata). Persons suspected of crime are forced to eat the seeds of the plumlike fruit, and criminals are put to death by being pricked with a lance dipped in the juice of the seeds.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books



... "the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... of water to a quarter-of-a-pound of the dried root, then boiling down to three pints, and straining through calico. Also Marsh Mallow ointment is a popular remedy, especially for mollifying heat, and hence it was thought invaluable by those who had to undergo the ordeal of holding red hot iron in their hands, to rapidly test their moral integrity. The sap of the Marsh Mallow was combined together with seeds of Fleabane, and the white of an hen's egg, to make a paste which was so adhesive ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... with horror at the thought of such an ordeal. To drive away from the palace, where she had been more than queen, under the scornful eyes and bitter gibes of so many personal enemies! After all the humiliations of the day, that would be the crowning cup of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... on most Sunday evenings Mr. Meredith read the Church Service in the general room of the Club to a congregation consisting mostly of ladies, while Jack Darling, usually flushed and breathless after tennis and a lightning change, went through the ordeal of reading the lessons. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... Seraphina's cry—this "At last," showing the stress and pain of the ordeal—that shook my faith in my conduct. It had brought upon our heads a retribution of mental and bodily anguish, like a criminal weakness. I was young, and my belief in the justice of life had received a shock. If it were impossible to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... only king, but priest and prophet; indeed, his elevation to the throne was due, as his friends asserted, to supernatural agency. After the death of his father, his two brothers and he claimed the throne. Their pretentions were to be settled by an ordeal. They possessed a small magic drum, and, it being placed on the ground, he who could lift it was to take the crown. His brothers were unable to stir it, though exerting all their strength, but Rumanika raised ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... useful worldly ramifications, and a kind of social pedestal from which she might really shine afar. The conscience I have spoken of grew positively sick as it thought of having such a problem as that to consider, such an ordeal to traverse. In the presence of such a contingency the poor girl felt grim and helpless; she could only vaguely wonder whether she were called upon in the name of duty to lend a hand to the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... other few articles of furniture—a large table, a small desk, three deteriorated cane-chairs, two gas brackets, and an old copying-press on its rickety stand. The sole object that could emerge brightly from the ordeal of the gas-flare was a splendid freshly printed blue poster gummed with stamp-paper to the wall: which poster bore the words, in vast capitals of two sizes: "The Five Towns Chronicle and Turnhill Guardian." Copies of this poster had also been fixed, face outwards, on the two curtainless ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... back to the Indian lad with a rush the memory of the recent ordeal he had been through. He gave one glance at the unconscious form on the other couch and his hand darted to the hunting-knife at his hip as he ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... collar. This picture was made from a drawing done by a friend of my father's four months before I was born. My old nurse told me that he was invalided from the war; that my father had asked him to make the drawing upon his return to London. Perhaps my father had ominous dreams of her ordeal soon ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... on, "but I've an idea that we're up against an ordeal, after a fashion. You all know what a guyer Ted Teall is—-how he nearly broke up our match with the ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... if this tone of welcome be not by far the most congenial to her own feelings. We unaffectedly sympathize with much which she must feel, and, as a lady, more peculiarly feel, in passing through that ordeal of gratulation which is sure to attend her steps in every part of our country; and I am persuaded that we cannot manifest our gratitude for her past services in any way more acceptable to herself than by earnest prayer on her behalf that she may ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... got out of the building that I began to walk on air. And the human animal being averse from change and timid before the unknown, I said to myself that I really would not mind being examined by the same man on a future occasion. But when the time of ordeal came round again the doorkeeper let me into another room, with the now familiar paraphernalia of models of ships and tackle, a board for signals on the wall, a big, long table covered with official forms and having an unrigged mast fixed to the edge. The solitary tenant was unknown ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... staccato voice in Clee's brain stopped; his nausea began to leave him; his helmet was removed; and had he been looking he might have seen the other one slowly materialize on the table. The ordeal was over just in time, for the last remnants of his strength was giving out—as was Jim's. The two Earth-men slumped down, and would have fallen but for the telepathic will, stronger than theirs, that forced them erect again. There came a very strong compulsion ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... of Sir Alfred Milner was mentioned as the coming High Commissioner all South Africa stood to attention. Seldom surely has a representative of the Queen been put through such an ordeal of examination and inquiry as that to which Sir Alfred Milner's record was subjected by the people of South Africa. Not one man in a thousand had heard his name before; it was as some one coming out ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... Meredith (1828-1909) belong to our own day that it is difficult to think of him as one of the Victorian novelists. His first notable work, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was published in 1859, the same year as George Eliot's Adam Bede; but it was not till the publication of Diana of the Crossways in 1885, that his power as a novelist was widely recognized. He resembles Browning ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... a severer ordeal. For a long time my teachers refused to admit my incapacity; they preferred attributing it to idleness, stubbornness, and want of attention; even Aunt Agatha was puzzled by it, for I was a quick child ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various

... the poor sufferer, feeling the fire, uttered the cry of Oh! upon which Mr. Miller, putting his hand behind him towards her, desired her to be of good courage, "for (said he) good sister, we shall have a joyful and a sweet supper." Encouraged by this example and exhortation, she stood the fiery ordeal without flinching, and, with him, proved the power ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... bullet had crashed through his arm, and left a shattered limb behind it. His final journey had had to be delayed while Bill had exercised his skill in healing that the prisoner might face his ultimate ordeal whole. Now the healing was nearing completion, but the irony of it all lay in the fact that the prisoner's well-being was of necessity the first thought of those who ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... comes along the burning road, Bearing, with tender care, his living load; Aha! he totters! Heaven in mercy save The good, true heart that can so nobly brave. He's up again! and now he's coming fast! One moment, and the fiery ordeal's passed! And now he's safe! Bold flames, ye fought in vain! A happy ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... five-dollar subscriptions to a publication fund, and Dr. Bailey called from Cincinnati to take charge of it, and few men have kept a charge with more care and skill. He and the Era had just passed the ordeal of a frightful mob, in which he was conciliatory, unyielding and victorious; and he was just then gravely anxious about the great crisis, but most of all anxious that the Era should do yeoman service to the cause ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... afterwards with my wife we heard not many comments, a word here and there about Henderson's wonderful success, a remark about Margaret's beauty, some sympathy for her in such a wearisome ordeal—the world is full of kindness—the house duly admired, and the ordinary compliments paid; the people assembled were, as usual, absorbed in their own affairs. From all we could gather, all those present were used to living in a palace, and took all the splendor quite as a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... sister whose face she had never seen, save in a miniature, and who was now a great lady, the wife of Baron Fareham, of Chilton Abbey, Oxon, Fareham Park, in the County of Hants, and Fareham House, London, a nobleman whose estates had come through the ordeal of the Parliamentary Commission with a reasonable fine, and to whom extra favour had been shown by the Commissioners, because he was known to be at heart a Republican. In the mean time, Lady Fareham had a liberal income allowed her by the Marquise, her grandmother, and she and her husband had ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... socially, one amongst the people and the other amongst the aristocratic and the learned; it was not national, nor was it embraced by the government of the country. Persecution was its first and its only destiny in the reign of Francis I., and it went through the ordeal with admirable courage and patience; it resisted only in the form of martyrdom. We will give no more of such painful and hideous pictures; in connection with this subject, and as regards the latter portion of this reign, we will dwell upon only those general facts which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... that mine adversary had written a book!" To be snarled at, and bow-wowed at, in this manner, by those who find fault because their intellect is not sufficient to enable them to appreciate! Authors, take my resolution; which is, never to show your face until your work has passed through the ordeal of the Reviews—keep your room for the month after your literary labour. Reviews are like Jesuit father confessors—guiding the opinions of the multitude, who blindly follow the suggestions of those to whom they may ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... long-suffering nature would have carried him nobly through such an ordeal. He was a man who would have acted up to the spirit of the Gospel command 'to pluck out the offending eye, or to cut off the right hand;' there would have been no parleying, no weak ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... at the double. He had known that this ordeal might come, but he had hoped against hope that, if he made himself small and meek, he would be overlooked. All was in vain; his time had come. "Drill them as a company of two platoons," said the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various

... gentleman visitor insisted on singing 'By the sad sea waves,' which he did vilely, and he wound up his performance by a most unexpected and misplaced embellishment, or 'turn.' Dickens found the whole ordeal very trying, but managed to preserve a decorous silence till this sound fell on his ear, when his neighbour said to him, 'Whatever did he mean by that extraneous effort of melody?' 'Oh,' said Dickens, 'that's quite in accordance with rule. When ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... line the piano cannot have been more than ten feet from the reader's chair; and the strain of reading aloud for an hour against a powerful rendering of the most vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most trying ordeal for voice, brain and nerves. Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the music and the reading at the same time. Often, when something was played of which he knew the air, he would follow the notes by means of a sort of subdued whistle, beating time with his hand; but this ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... arrangements for the men, who, considering their long day and its happy experiences, went through the ordeal in first-class style. After all, one could scarcely expect less from soldiers who carry six or seven, or even nine clasps, on ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... masquerades—of which more anon—you may not, by Village convention, go home to bed. You must go to breakfast with the rest of the Villagers. And you must be prepared to face the cold, grey dawn of "the morning after" while still in your war paint and draggled finery. It is an awful ordeal. But "it's being done in ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... and arms, disjointed, and finally the trunk and head of the little boy fall with a profusion of blood upon the ground at the foot of the rope. By means of an incantation these resume their natural positions, and the little boy gets up and walks off, apparently none the worse for his most trying ordeal. ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... gone the round of the house, bidding dreary farewells to all the servants; an unpleasant ordeal which he would gladly have dispensed with, if possible, and which did not ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... is thought to stand approximately on the site of the earlier Saxon church restored by Ethelwold in 980, in which Queen Emma underwent the "fiery ordeal" by walking blindfold and barefooted over nine red-hot plough-shares, thus proving her innocence of the charges brought against her, and furnishing her accusers with an example of what female chastity is able to accomplish. ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath

... Bhrigu, without guile or insincerity of any kind, gratified the king with many soft words, and then said, 'O king, thou hast completely subjugated the five organs of action and the five organs of knowledge with the mind as their sixth. Thou hast for this come out unscathed from the fiery ordeal I had prepared for thee. I have been properly honoured and adored, O son, by thee, O foremost of all persons possessed of speech. Thou hast no sin, not even a minute one, in thee! Give me leave, O king, for I shall ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... have compelled me to be with her at the open door to meet "our darling boy," but that I could not bear. It would be as trying for him as for me, and I had to spare him the ordeal at any price. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... whatever any man's opinions were before it passed, he would assume a grave responsibility who would seek to evade its terms, weaken its authority or change its provisions. It has entered into every contract made since that time. It has passed the ordeal of four Congresses and two elections for Presidents. It cannot be revoked without public dishonor. So far as the bondholder is concerned, it is an executed law. Over $700,000,000 of bonds have been redeemed in coin under it, and the civilized world regards all the remainder ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... galley became his haunt, where, exposed to a roasting fire, he inspected the details of a cuisine; for which, whatever his demerits, he was sure of an ample remuneration in abuse at dinner. Then came the dinner itself, that dread ordeal, where nothing was praised and everything censured. This was followed by the punch-making, where the tastes of six different and differing individuals were to be exclusively consulted in the self-same beverage; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... of equals, where necessity obliges men to practise it. Henry had been a king from his boyhood; he had been surrounded by courtiers who had anticipated all his desires; and exposed as he was to an ordeal from which no human being could have escaped uninjured, we have more cause, after all, to admire him for those excellences which he conquered for himself, than to blame the defects which ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... terribly to test the strength of our idol; we forcibly proved to each other that our divinity was a strong divinity and would come victorious out of this ordeal. We began at last to fancy that we had not worked enough on the soldier, that he would forget the dispute, and that we ought to pique his vanity more keenly. From that day we began to live a different life, a life of nervous tension, such as we had never known before. We spent ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... husband, a dainty little figure of fear, shrinking from the observation focused upon her from all sides. The sight of her forlorn sensitiveness so touched Ridgway's heart that he telegraphed Virginia Balfour to come and help support her through the ordeal. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... seen that not a man of the ship's company ever enters the vessel from shore without it being rendered next to impossible, apparently, that he should have succeeded in smuggling anything. Those individuals who are permitted to board the ship without undergoing this ordeal, are only persons whom it would be preposterous to search—such as the Commodore himself, the Captain, Lieutenants, etc., and gentlemen and ladies ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the mirrored, gilded, and highly varnished apartment was grandiloquently termed, had been the very spot chosen for our presumably not very terrible ordeal. Things were well under way. At the desk in the corner one officer was jotting down notes as to the clearance papers and the cargo; while at a table in the foreground sat his comrade, in a lieutenant's uniform, with the captain of the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... School; while a favourite pupil-teacher from Abbotstoke took her place at Cocksmoor. Dr. Spencer looked at the Training School, and talked Mrs. Ledwich into magnanimous forgiveness of Mrs. Elwood. Cherry dreaded the ordeal, but she was willing to do anything that was thought right, and likely to make her fitter for ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... first, to force his way and compel belief by a succession of miracles, disjoined from moral and spiritual purpose,—miracles for miracles' sake;—second, doubts of his Messianic character and divinity, and temptations to try it by some ordeal at the risk of certain death;—third, to interpret his mission, as his countrymen generally did, to be one of conquest and royalty;—these perhaps—but I am ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main current ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... constrained him to enter for a scholarship examination in December, and when the unfortunate fellow pleaded physical inability, they dosed him with "strong medicines" to enable him to face the examiners. After the ordeal he was so unstrung that he hurried off to London to spend Christmas with ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... Fernald. "No one knows what can be done yet and we might be disappointed—sadly disappointed. Still, there is no denying that there is a fighting chance. But keep this to yourself, Ted. I must trust you to do that. If Laurie were to know anything about it, it would be very unfortunate, for the ordeal will mean both pain and suffering for him and he must not be worried about it in advance. He will need all his nerve and courage when the time for action comes. Moreover, we feel it would be cruel for him to glimpse such a vision and then find it only a mirage. So we have told him nothing. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... submits to this ordeal, it seems impossible to devise a mode of verification of their theories which does not rouse resentment in theological minds. Is it that, while the pleasure of the scientific man culminates in the demonstrated ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... arrival of his old friend for a conference over Bivens's offer of compromise and he dreaded the ordeal. If he should refuse this final chance of settlement he would make a mistake that could not be undone. The result was even worse than he could ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... his preaching would not please his father or his people, and he shrank from the ordeal. It seemed like setting them all at defiance and attempting to enforce his ideas over their own. Then a perception of his cowardice struck him, and he threw off the feeling that was possessing him. He looked up to find his father watching ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... so crowded. The Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Duke of York, returned to his seat over the clock, whilst noble lords jostled each other in the effort to obtain seats in the limited space allotted to them. It happened that the debutant was destined to undergo a serious and unexpected ordeal. His time should have come not later than five o'clock, questions being then over, and the House permitted to settle down to the business of the day. But there intervened a riotous scene, arising on a question ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Greatest Masters of Fiction of the Last Century—The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Diana of the Crossways ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... this influence very soon, and her second letter to Aunt Barbara was filled with praise of Clifton, where she had made so many friends, in spite of her evident desire to avoid society and stay by herself. She had passed through the usual ordeal attending the advent of every new face, especially if that face be a little out of the common order of faces. She had been inspected in the dining room, and bathroom, and chapel, both when she went in and when she went out. She had been talked up and criticised from ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... chiefly used by our German ancestors:—1. "The Kamp fight," or combat; during which the spectators were to be silent and quiet, on pain of losing an arm or leg; an executioner with a sharp axe. 2. "The fire ordeal," in which the accused might clear his innocence by holding red-hot iron in his hands, or by walking blind-fold amidst fiery ploughshares. 3. "The hot-water ordeal," much of the nature as the last. 4. "The cold-water ordeal:" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... French armies were under the command of General Joffre, while Sir John French commanded the British Expeditionary Force. In the following narrative General French describes the heroic performances of his gallant troops during the terrible ordeal. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... of lunch, the approaching ordeal at Balham began to loom large on his horizon. In a vain effort to put off the evil hour, he decided that he would first go round to his rooms in Half Moon Street. He had kept them on during the war, only opening them up during his periods of leave. The keys were in the safe possession of Mrs. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... dismantled and helpless from her terrific ordeal, the throng on the Breakwater gave one great groan of agony. "They're lost! They're lost!" The cry was audible even to the men ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... justly-celebrated "Faust" of Goethe translated, and that some one or other of my partial friends have induced you to consider me as the man most likely to execute the work adequately, those excepted, of course, whose higher power (established by the solid and satisfactory ordeal of the wide and rapid sale of their works) it might seem profanation to employ in any other manner than in the development of their own intellectual organization. I return my thanks to the recommender, whoever ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... tremblingly but unhesitatingly died for conscience' sake. While there was no wavering of purpose, there was an agony of fear and sorrow, as, after the momentary confusion of mind caused by the suddenness of the occurrence, the terrible nature of the ordeal before her ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more 'normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also {wannabee}. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... Bhuddist faith at Thibet, presides over the lamisary. He is supposed to partake of the immortal essence of Bhudda, and when his body dies, his spirit enters a younger person who becomes the lama after passing a certain ordeal. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... Through the whole ordeal Alfred showed a certain flavour of Eton and Oxford that won all hearts. His replies were frank and honest, and under cross-examination he was no more to be irritated than if Saunders had been Harrow bowling at him, or the Robin sparring with ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... over the Red Sea. The baptism of blood is not yet complete. The cause of the war is not yet removed,—retribution for crime is not yet finished. We must suffer again. With firmer faith than ever in the ultimate triumph of right, truth, and justice, let us accept the fiery ordeal." ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... the ordeal was over. A blinding flash of lightning lit the room, glimmered weirdly, splitting the gloom as a sword rending a curtain, and was gone. There came a sound like the snarl of a startled animal, and the next instant a frightful crash ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... methods of demand on the part of the strikers, these exceptions must, of course, be mentioned in the interests of truth. Further, it would convey a false impression to imply that every striker arrested had as much sense and force of character as Natalya Urusova. Natalya was especially protected in her ordeal by a vital love of observation and a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present writer's experience of young Russian girls and women. With these qualities she could spend night after night locked ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... greetings, Mr. Spencer passing a hand that had emerged white and slim through the ordeal of thousands ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... may work him a little present; but it is all lifeless, passionless, and business-like. Among the peasantry there is more of the picturesque, and many quaint customs still survive. Marriage-brokers do a good trade, and get a percentage on each pair that they see through the ordeal of a wedding. In Frascati, parents with marriageable sons and daughters assemble on Sunday afternoons in the chief piazza. The men sit on one side and the women on the other. In the intervening space the candidates for ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... children, telegraphed to her brother, anxiously inquiring when the Germans would be ready for a decisive offensive in Macedonia. On 16 December the Kaiser replied to his sister, condoling with her on the ordeal she and her husband had gone through, congratulating them on the courage they had displayed, pointing out that the Entente had once more {170} shown clearly what its real aims were, and expressing the opinion that no other ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... the time of Henry IV, giving an account of the training and knighting of Myles Falworth, and of his struggle as champion for his old blind father in the ordeal by battle; of Prince Hal, and the wild hard ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... Hereward, after his first involuntary start and stare of amazement, controlled himself absolutely, and sat back in his chair, perfectly silent and self-possessed under this ordeal. ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... A Chronicle of the Kings of Kasmir translated by M.A. Stein, we read (Bk. IV. 94, p. 128): "Again the Brahman's wife addressed him: 'O king, as he is famous for his knowledge of charms (Kharkhodavidya), he can get over an ordeal with ease.'" Dr. Stein adds the following note: "The practice of witchcraft and the belief in its efficiency have prevailed in Kasmir from early times, and have survived to some extent to the present day; comp. Buehler, Report, p. 24.... The term ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... undergone a similar ordeal, and when I was well enough to go and look for him, I found him scraping away at a beef bone, from which he had just removed the ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... stripped back. It seemed as yesterday. And here HE stood grown to manhood. He needed just that reminder to stir his blood and nerve him for the ordeal of St. Kernan's Hill. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... twilight, he begged to hear all. Ida withdrew, glad not to submit to the ordeal, while her mother observed, 'Poor, dear Ida! She was so fond of her dear little cousin, she cannot bear to hear him mentioned! She has never ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hardship and suffering. This is not wrong of itself; it is wrong only when it conflicts with the will of God. It is not wrong for you to avoid burning at the stake unless it be God's will that you should thus end your life. If God wills you to burn at the stake you must not seek to avoid the ordeal. If we do not watch carefully and live close to God and keep our body under, the will of sense will grow strong and cause us to avoid hardships even when God wills us to undergo them. Be careful that you do not mistake the impulse of sense for the divine will. One may say he ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... of wheels was heard on the driveway, "they have returned; and now we shall have a report of all that was done in the magistrate's office. It must have been quite an ordeal to ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley

... themselves by really deep meditation on inexplicable mysteries; who demand certainty where certainty is not given to man, or demand for truths which are established by sufficient evidence, other evidence than those truths will admit. We can even painfully sympathise in that ordeal of doubt which such powerful minds are peculiarly exposed—with their Titanic struggles against the still mightier power of Him who has said to the turbulent intellect of man, as well as to the stormy ocean 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther,—and ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... For the moment an affair of this sort presented itself, all concerned therein became reserved and official, and the representatives merely of a ceremonious etiquette and a minutely-regulated ordeal of battle. So, as I said, Puddock bowed grandly and sublimely to Nutter, and then magnificently to the company, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... building seemed to me a live victim, a scapegoat suffering sullenly for sins it had not committed. To me it seemed to be flinching under every rhythmic blow of those well-wielded weapons, praying for the hour when sunset should bring it surcease from that daily ordeal. I caught myself nodding to it—a nod of sympathy, of hortation to endurance. Immediately, I was ashamed of my lapse into anthropomorphism. I told myself that my pity ought to be kept for the real men who had been frequenters of the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... much faithfulness. Vacant congregations desiring a list of candidates made one exception, and prayed that Jeremiah should not be let loose upon them, till at last it came home to the unfortunate scholar himself that he was an offence and a byeword. He began to dread the ordeal of giving his name, and, as is still told, declared to a household, living in the fat wheat lands and without any imagination, that he was called Magor Missabib. When a stranger makes a statement of this kind with a sad seriousness, no one judges it expedient ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... afternoon siesta. There was a little departing detachment on this golden afternoon at Madras—two frightened women, now gladly seeking the shelter of their cabins, as the fleet steamer Coomassie Castle turned her prow toward Palk Strait. The terrible ordeal of "passing the surf" had appalled them, and the exhausted Nadine Johnstone at last fell asleep with her arms clasped around her sad-hearted governess. A hundred times had they read over together the old nabob's telegram: "Going home from Calcutta to settle the Baronetcy appointment. Will ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... has by him many manuscript pieces with which he might have swelled the volume to a much greater size; but as this is his first attempt at authorship, in the shape of a volume, he offers it, tremblingly, at the ordeal of public opinion, merely as a sample of ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... compliments. Never, I imagine, can such efforts have been made to turn any young man's brain, as were made, during this and the following year, to turn the head of Dickens, who was still, be it remembered, under thirty. Nevertheless he came unscathed through the ordeal. A kind of manly genuineness bore him through. Amid all the adulation and excitement, the public and private hospitalities, the semi-regal state appearance at the theatre, he could write, and write ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... his comrades offered him console him any. He was assured that there would be no doubt about his learning all of his military duties at Fort Leavenworth—if he lived to get through the ordeal. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... "walked with head erect, calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going to the stake, full of faith and manly hope" according to the testimony of an eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind during the ordeal. "The promises of God," he afterward remembered, sustained his soul, "so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready to sing ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... masquerade, yet Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith could ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... alternative for those who so proudly issued from the Boston barracks at sunrise for the suppression of pretentious rebellion. Knapsacks were thrown aside. British veterans stripped for fight. Not a single regiment of those engaged had passed such a fearful ordeal in its whole history as a single hour had witnessed. The power of discipline, the energy of experienced commanders, and the pressure of honored antecedents, combined to make the movement as trying ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... a year is the world subject to an ordeal of judgment:—At Passover, which is decisive of the fruits of the field; at Pentecost, which is decisive of the fruits of the garden; at the feast of Tabernacles, which is decisive in respect of rain; on New Year's Day, when all who come ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... fortnight came a summons to Railsford, as one of six selected candidates, to appear and show himself to the governors. He had expected thus much of success, but the thought of the other five rendered him uncomfortable as he leaned back in the railway carriage and hardened himself for the ordeal before him. Grover had deemed it prudent not to display any particular interest in his arrival, but he contrived to pay a flying visit ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... lawsuits decided according to the Roman law. This survived all through the Middle Ages in southern Europe, where the Germans were few. Elsewhere the Germans' more primitive ideas of law prevailed until the thirteenth or fourteenth century. A good example of these is the picturesque medival ordeal by which the guilt or innocence of a ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... enough, and patriotic enough to grapple with this question and bring it to the test, and carry out to its logical results the doctrine of the compromise of 1850; and that he bore himself bravely and well through the trying ordeal, and against fearful odds, even his bitterest ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... Sioux village was the sacrifice to be made. The friends and relatives of the Sioux who had been killed in the assault upon the Pawnees were drawn up around the unfortunate captives, who were about to be fastened to stakes and stand the terrible ordeal of death by fire, when suddenly, like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky, the terrible war-whoop of the Pawnees sounded in the ears of the now thoroughly frightened Sioux, who saw, to their dismay, a band of the dreaded Pawnees led by the intrepid Crouching Panther. Dashing down ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... his eyes glittered, and it seemed by his threatening gesture as if he were strongly tempted to murder this man, who had discovered the terrible, disgraceful secrets of his domestic life. But it was a mere flash of energy. The terrible ordeal which he had just passed through had exhausted him mentally and physically, and it was in a faltering voice that he resumed: "Then you have not lost a word—a word of what was said in ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... ordeal of silence. By no motion, sound or slightest sign of consciousness could he seek relief. Inanimate Chris Travers lay, holding his pose sturdily, although it seemed that the sweat was spurting from the pores, ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... with them. He had stopped at the "King's Arms" to ask if Captain Hyde was still alive; for, in spite of everything, the young man's heroic cheerfulness in the agony of the preceding night had deeply touched Joris. No one spoke to Katherine; even her mother was annoyed and humiliated at the social ordeal through which they had just passed, and she thought it only reasonable that the erring girl should be made to share the trial. Batavius, however, had much curiosity; and his first thought on seeing Bram at home was, "Neil ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... eyes on the looking-glass, on the door, now soothed by the sweet taste. When Nick Bramham came in it was plain, even to the young Swiss waiter, that there was a bargain between them. Nick hitched his clothes together clumsily; ran his fingers through his hair; sat down, to an ordeal, nervously. She looked at him; and set off laughing; laughed—laughed—laughed. The young Swiss waiter, standing with crossed legs by the pillar, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... sitting which my master, Carolus Duran, gave to one of my fair compatriots. He knew that the lady was leaving Paris on the morrow, and that in an hour, her husband and his friends were coming to see and criticise the portrait—always a terrible ordeal for ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... would sue for the restitution of conjugal rights. If the aggrieved husband proves the weaker, he necessarily abandons his wife, and she becomes ipso facto the wife of the aggressor; divorce is in fact pronounced by the issue of an ordeal by combat. So far the matter is clear to ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... wounded and in our hospital they did want to go back to fight. But their sole reason, given with frankness, was that they considered they were needed: the new army, in training, was not ready: it would be murder to send the new army out, unprepared, to such an ordeal. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... the ordeal of the birthday celebration. It was understood that she would give audience in her study to her friends, to Arnott Nicholson, to the Protheros and Tanqueray. Instead of all going in at once, they were to take ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... been decreed, Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men, And the world shall be purged with a ravening fire. Happy the man in that terrible day, Who bewails with contrition the sins of his life,[221-2] And meets without flinching the fiery ordeal." ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... not investigate my motives in this manner, at the time, for I was too careless and thoughtless to reason about the matter; but I do so now, when I look back with trembling to think of the ordeal to which I unthinkingly exposed myself, and the manner in which I passed through it. Nothing, I am convinced, but the poetical temperament, that hurried me into the scrape, brought me out of it without my ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... been written about the middle of the second century; that they were therefore an account of what was going on, by an onlooker, couched in these phrases of vision and prophecy. The people of Israel were passing through a terrible ordeal; they needed to be heartened and nerved for resistance and endurance. Their heroic leader, Judas Maccabeus, was urging them on to prodigies of valor in their conflict with the vile Antiochus; such a ringing manifesto as this, put forth in the progress ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... exception of the three ladies, all gathered on the poop. But Frances had proposed to her mother that they should see Reuben in the cabin alone, as she felt that it would be a severe ordeal, to the lad, to be publicly thanked. Captain Wilson ascended to the poop and joined the others there, while Mr. Hudson went alone ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... but put upon a six months' probation —the elders probably dreaded to lose so persuasive a tongue for the sake of a little "insufficiency of damnation" in his creed. One of his inquisitors, a Presbyterian minister, went from the ordeal with Lane, and continued to try to convert him to the tenets of Presbyterianism. Then suddenly, at some turn of the talk, the clergyman abandoned his position and said carelessly, "Well, Lane, why not become ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... The statements I have made are public property. If you think they are in any way erroneous I must ask you to take upon yourself the same amount of responsibility as I have done, and submit your objections to the same ordeal. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... sisters gathered themselves together to take counsel one with another, and decided that, since Mdlle. de Bourbon could not avoid the wretched fate that awaited her, before going through the trying ordeal she should indue her lovely form with an undergarment of hair-cloth (commonly called a cilice), and, protected by such armour of proof, she might then fearlessly submit herself to all the temptations lurking beneath the ensnaring vanities of her Court attire. The cilice, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... increasing source of interest; and it is not without a feeling of regret at the completion of my task, and a sincere diffidence as to its success, that I venture to submit the result of my labour to the ordeal of public criticism. ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... of this early period it is scarcely possible to convey any adequate idea. To one of a sensitive nature, the horrors, atrocities, and misery connected with war were a terrible ordeal. The embarrassment also of the times was considerable. With an income of only eighty pounds a year, I was compelled, upon moving into the Settlement, to give one hundred and twenty for rent, and sublet ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor

... look of hopeless misery came into Ginger's pleasant face. He hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful, but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes, which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he put a foot ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse



Words linked to "Ordeal" :   trial, ordeal tree, experience, trial by ordeal, ordeal bean



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org