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Undetermined  adj.  See determined.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Undetermined" Quotes from Famous Books



... had arrived directly opposite the box; and although he was still undetermined what to do or whether to do anything, he turned his head and lifted his eyes. No sooner had he done so than he uttered a cry of disappointment and remained rooted to the spot. The box was empty. During his slow advance Mr. Vandeleur ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Committee was informed that the method of compilation had not been changed. Whether or not this type of crime increased substantially throughout the Dominion in one year must, for the present, remain undetermined. ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... letter was truly kind, and made me warmly wish to join you. My prospects, however, of being able to leave home continue very unsettled. I am expecting Mrs. Gaskell next week or the week after, the day being yet undetermined. She was to have come in June, but then my severe attack of influenza rendered it impossible that I should receive or entertain her. Since that time she has been absent on the Continent with her husband and two eldest girls; and just before I received yours I had a letter from her volunteering ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... far below, much louder boomed the roar of rushing waters. The Legionaries knew, now, what had caused the dull, roaring sound. Unmistakably a furious cascade was boiling, swirling away, down there at undetermined distances of blackness. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... holding it tight about her, gave a fantastic impression of being clasped in mute appeal. Jerry looked at her in wonder. For an instant they both stood as still as two wood-creatures surprisingly met and, so far, undetermined upon the degree of hostility it would ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... hardly point out the importance of our arriving in time. Should the canoe get beyond the mouth of the Obion—without our seeing it—we should be left undetermined as to whether they had gone up the Mississippi or down; and therefore altogether without a guide as to our future movements. In fact, we should be unable to proceed further in the pursuit. So far as the mouth of the Obion, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... to a less extent farther inland, are village sites, foundations of temples and houses, garden patches inclosed by stone walls, and long rows of stones, some of which are borders of roads or trails, others being for purposes which are undetermined. Among these, taro beds and sweet potato patches may still ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... that presentiments are "heaven-born instincts." Again, when the lonely thinker feels himself surrounded by "huge and mighty forms, that do not move like living men," it is a sign that the "dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being" has begun to work not quite healthily upon his imagination. And the doctrine of pre-existence, which appears in the famous Ode, is one which it has been hitherto impossible to admit into the scheme ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... agents be sent over in six months, fully instructed to answer and transact what was undetermined ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... contiguous shades of the same colour. Let us suppose, if the prosperity of nations were laid on the one hand, and their ruin on the other, and he were desired to choose; that he would stand like the schoolman's ass, irresolute and undetermined, between equal motives; or rather, like the same ass between two pieces of wood or marble, without any inclination or propensity to either side. The consequence, I believe, must be allowed just, that such a person, being absolutely unconcerned, either for the public good ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... has good ears—and that was what caused him to make the motion. The tapir stopped feeding for a moment, but then recommenced, though evidently not with as much eagerness as before. Presently he stopped a second time, and seemed undetermined as to whether he should not turn and take to the clear water. In this way he hesitated for several minutes; then, to the astonishment of Leon, his body began to rock from side to side, and the next moment, with a plunge, he fell heavily backward, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... 1713, its statutes were somewhat modified in 1847, and again in 1859. There are only thirty-six members, about eighty corresponding members in different provinces of Spain, and an unlimited, or at least undetermined, number of foreign and honorary correspondents. Besides the Central Society in Madrid, the Royal Spanish Academy has many corresponding branches in South America, such as the Columbian, the Equatorial, the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... army, with sentinel planets taking their turns of duty in the watching of a rebellious world. A sulphureous wave of heat half asphyxiated the swarms of people who were hurrying to and fro in that restless undetermined way which is such a predominating feature of what is called a London "season," and the general impression of the weather was, to one and all, conveyed in a sense of discomfort and oppression, with a vague struggling expectancy of approaching thunder. Few raised their eyes beyond the thick warm haze ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... some days after this the female is incapable of reproduction. But for some days before her monthly illness she is liable to conception, as for that length of time the male element can survive. This period, therefore, becomes a variable and an undetermined one, and even when known, its observation demands ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... moreover, belong in the tradition of the so-called Pindaric ode, imitated freely from the Greek choric odes of Pindar. The closer imitations are in fixed though complex stanzas regularly repeated, and are called Regular Pindarics. These have first a strophe of undetermined length, then an antistrophe identical in structure with the strophe, and then an epode, different in structure from the strophe and antistrophe. The second strophe and second antistrophe are identical metrically with the first, the second epode with the first epode; and ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... Sego had not returned, and Lewis was undetermined whether to wait longer for him, or to go on at once. The case was urgent, but the need of Sego's arm was also urgent, and he concluded to wait still further. The forenoon, the afternoon, and finally the night came and went, without bringing any signs of the absentee, and at daylight ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... continued undetermined in her purpose, and fluctuating on this sea of torture, Fathom, believing that now was the season for working upon her passions, while they were all in commotion, became, if possible, more assiduous than ever about the fair ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... as he was in the pulpit on Sundays. He had what one might call prestige; some form of authority still survived in his person, to which the spiritual democracy he presided over gave a humorous, voluntary assent. He was supposed to be a person of undetermined leisure—what was writing two sermons a week to earn your living by?—and he was probably the more reverend, or the more revered, from the fact that he was in the house all day. A particular importance attached to everything he said and did; he was a person whose life answered different ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Undetermined how to act upon this trial which was to decide his future destiny, Rushbrook suffered so poignant an uncertainty, that he became at length ill, and before the end of the week that was allotted him for his reply, he was confined to his bed in a high fever. Lord ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... distracted mein The object of their strife is seen; His eyes with wild confusion roll, Mixt passions, with alternate sway, In his ambiguous features play, And speak as yet the undetermined soul; But that half-assenting leer, Obliquely on the little wheedler thrown, Portends, though checkt with aukward fear, That soon the apostate will be all her ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison

... will mingle with your thoughts. Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts only: which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... little recollection, she mildly replied "As affluence is all comparative, you may at present think I have more than my share: but the time is only this moment past, when your own situation seemed as subject to the envy of others as mine may be now. My future destiny is yet undetermined, and the occasion I may have for my fortune is unknown to myself; but whether I possess it in peace or in turbulence, whether it proves to me a blessing or an injury, so long as I can call it my own, I shall ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... definitely know is that some very long, undetermined period of time has passed, leaving us still alive. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... out of ten they choose differently from what they would a few years later. They have no fixed characters. They do not know what their opinions will be. Their tastes are not formed. Their aims in life are undetermined. What they were made for and what they live for they have scarcely asked. The arguments against early Marriages are many. I have not time to enumerate them or to show their force. I have never heard ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... decide upon, and well aware that any attempt to send her back to her people would prove quite fruitless if she chose to remain with them, was much disturbed in mind. He sat long by the campfire that night, before he joined his companions in the tent, still undetermined what he should do to ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace

... steam—rain—necessarily remain balanced by law forever. The surface of our world is water in the proportion of three to one. The extent of nature's steam-making, silent, and mostly invisible, is immeasurable and remains an undetermined quantity. The three forms of water combine and work together as though through intentional partnership, and have, thus combined, already changed the entire land surface of the world from what it was to what it is, and working ceaselessly through endless cycles will change it yet more. The exhalations ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... admitted here"—my vexation and mortification knew no bounds. I remember, now, how proud and handsome the boys looked in their new clothes, as they jumped into the old stage coach and drove off, and how lonely I felt when they were gone and I had nothing to do, for the plans for my future were yet undetermined. Again I felt more keenly than ever the humiliation of the distinctions made ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... and will pretend to show that the crimes of the Mitylenians are of service to us, and our misfortunes injurious to the allies. Such a man must plainly either have such confidence in his rhetoric as to adventure to prove that what has been once for all decided is still undetermined, or be bribed to try to delude us by elaborate sophisms. In such contests the state gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for herself. The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... and yet escape the consequences: by some miraculous reversal of probability to retain his position and yet effect Truscomb's removal. The idea was so fantastic that he felt it merely as a quickening of all his activities, a tremendous pressure of will along undetermined lines. He had no wish to take the manager's place; but his dream was to see Truscomb superseded by a man of the new school, in sympathy with the awakening social movement—a man sufficiently practical to "run" the mills successfully, yet imaginative enough to regard ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... that night he pondered the question of how to take up the matter with her. It would be absurd, under the circumstances, to take any virtuous attitude. He was still undetermined when he reached ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... are also mentioned in the formulas. W[^a]tige['][)i], "brown," is the term used to include brown, bay, dun, and similar colors, especially as applied to animals. It seldom occurs in the formulas and its mythologic significance is as yet undetermined. Yellow is of more frequent occurrence and is typical of trouble and all manner of vexation, the yellow spirits being generally invoked when the shaman wishes to bring down calamities upon the head of his victim, without actually destroying him. So far ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... latest news of that proposed World City he is working towards with so much sanguine ardour, the City which is to be the internationally social Embodiment of the World Conscience, though its site—Tervueren, Berne, the Hague, Paris, Frejus, San Stefano, Rome, Lakewood—still remains undetermined. So far the City is a fairy tale, but in that shape it has secured influential support and been worked out in detail by some forty architects, engineers, sculptors, and painters, under the direction of Hebrard. It covers some ten square miles of ground. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... the belief in three Gods. It has tended to a confusion of belief between three Gods of equal power and majesty, united only in counsel; one supreme and two inferior Deities; one Deity with a threefold manner of manifestation; and a vague, undetermined use of words, with no meaning attached to them—unhappy confusion, which none have been more ready to recognize and to point out than ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... Objective: The effective use of all manpower made available to the military establishment in the event of a major mobilization at some unknown date against an undetermined aggressor. The manpower to be utilized, in the event of another major war, in the Army without ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... the Saxon scop had sung to his harp or glee-beam, dwelling on the {15} emphatic syllables, passing swiftly over the others which were of undetermined number and position in the line. It was now displaced by the smooth metrical verse with rhymed endings, which the French introduced and which our modern poets use, a verse fitted to be recited rather than sung. The old English alliterative verse continued, indeed, in occasional use ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider a question which cost him so much mental labour, that it remained undetermined on the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath his little property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how could it be so 'tied up' as that only she should have the benefit of it? His experience on the lock gave him such an acute perception of the enormous difficulty ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Legislature to take such measures as it shall think best for settling the said boundary with that State, and at the same time, if it thinks proper, for extending the settlement to the State of Kentucky, between which and the same territory the boundary is as yet undetermined. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... always interdependent, and hence have no special characteristics by themselves, and as they cannot be determined in themselves they cannot be determined in terms of others, for, their own nature being undetermined, a reference to an "other" is also undetermined, and hence they are all indefinable (laksanas'unyata); (2) that they have no positive essence (bhavasvabhavas'unyata), since they spring up from a natural non-existence (svabhavabhavotpatti); (3) ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... most delicious confection that the mind of man can conceive. Hitherto, these recondite histories had been far beyond my ken. Of the wonderful heretic, Amenhotep the Fourth, I had barely heard—at the most he had been a mere name; the Hittites a mythical race of undetermined habitat; while cuneiform tablets had presented themselves to my mind merely as an uncouth kind of fossil biscuit suited to the digestion of ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... earliest record; the road Dala leading to Ossory, and so on into Munster; the road Assail, extending western through Mullingar towards the Shannon; the road Cullin, extending towards Dublin and Bray; the exact route of the northern road, Midhluachra, is undetermined; Slighe Mor, the great western road, followed the course of the esker, or hill-range, from Tara to Galway. Many cross-roads are also known as in common use from the sixth century downwards. Of these, the Four Masters mention, at various dates, not less than forty, under their different local ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... unstrapped the black bag, and started off. The black bag, however, bothered me; so after some thought I broke the lock with a stone and investigated the contents, mainly by feel. There were a lot of clothes and toilet articles and such junk, and a number of undetermined hard things like round wooden boxes. Finally I withdrew to the shelter of a barranca where I could light matches. Then I had no difficulty in identifying a nice compact little hypodermic outfit, which I slipped into a pocket. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... nothing compared with the main point—the certainty that Clare would refuse him, if he offered himself to her, and when he left his mother he was in a very undetermined state of mind. If he should ask Clare to marry him now, she would refuse him. But if his mother interfered, it would be ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... and the when, and the where, undefined and unsettled, and from this want of definiteness in their language they do a great deal of harm to themselves and to others. Now a legislator ought not to leave the matter undetermined; he ought to prescribe some limit, either greater or less. Let this be the rule prescribed: No one shall call the Gods to witness, when he says or does anything false or deceitful or dishonest, unless ...
— Laws • Plato

... direction for seven or eight miles, and to the eastward the breakers extended beyond the masthead horizon; its limit, therefore, in the latter direction, remained undetermined. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... cool air, that appeared to be a gentle respiration of the sea, induced a few idlers still to linger on the heights, where there was a considerable extent of land that might serve for a promenade. Along this walk the mariner proceeded, undetermined, for the moment, what to do next. He had scarcely got into the open space, however, before a female, with her form closely enveloped in a mantle, brushed near him, anxiously gazing into his face. Her motions were too quick and sudden for him to obtain a look in return; but, perceiving that ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... ancients, whether they are teachers of eloquence or of rhetoric, and still more if they are sophists. For they aim to be not merely teachers of words but of morals as well, and claim instruction in political science as belonging to their field. Whether this be true, I will leave undetermined. But praising them as those who thus strive for fine professions, I would praise them still more if they neither lied nor contradicted themselves, thinking one thing and teaching their pupils another. Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Isocrates, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... private interest but supply the impelling and actuating force for accomplishing deeds shared in by the community at large. Passion is, in the first instance, the subjective and therefore the formal side of energy, will, and activity—leaving the object or aim still undetermined. And there is a similar relation of formality to reality in merely individual conviction, individual views, individual conscience. It is always a question of essential importance—what is the purport of my conviction, what the object of my passion—in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... his mother. It is evidently a copy from a lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... not seem undetermined. He answered promptly: "What is going to happen is this: The teacher has gone over to Mapleson's for help. He might as well have stayed in the schoolhouse. They can't drive a wagon in here, and the ice is so thin, and is cracked ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... Arimathaean theory of its consecration became so generally accepted that at the Council of Constance (1419) precedence was actually accorded to our Bishops as representing the senior Church of Christendom. But the oldest variant of the legend says nothing about Arimathaea, but speaks only of an undetermined "Joseph" as the leader [decurio][398] of twelve missionary comrades who with him settled down at Glastonbury. And this may well be true. Such bands (as we see in the Life of Columba) were the regular system in Celtic mission work, and survived in ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... bitter irony that he who had covered so many big events of world importance in the past twenty years should be abruptly torn away in the midst of the greatest event of them all, while the story is still unfinished and its outcome undetermined. If there is a compensating thought, it ties in the reflection that he had a life of almost unparalleled fulness, crowded to the brim, up to the last moment, with those experiences and achievements which he particularly aspired to have. He left while the tide was at its flood, and ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... so humble as to take from the answer every trace of boastfulness. His face, when he raised it, and looked out over the audience, was beautiful. The spectacle offered him in return was thousands of people on their knees, gazing at him undetermined whether to resent an intrusion or welcome a messenger ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... stages, while the validity of its working laws in application to essential cases is still undetermined, must, of course, expect 'bickerings.' But philological mythologists are actually trying to base one science, Mythology, on the still shifting and sandy foundations of another science, Phonetics. The philologists are quarrelling about ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... sound, and as universally the attention of the artist was directed less to the sound than to the idea, the didactic painting of the Mexicans, whatever it might have been to them, is a sealed book to us, and must remain so in great part. Moreover, it is entirely undetermined whether it should be read from the first to the last page, or vice versa, whether from right to left or from left to right, from bottom to top or from top to bottom, around the edges of the page toward the centre, or ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... disused, and a return made to unity of time and place, as observed in the ancient Greek drama. In the foregoing tragedy, The Doctor's Dilemma, there are five acts; the place is altered five times; and the time is spread over an undetermined period of more than a year. No doubt the strain on the attention of the audience and on the ingenuity of the playwright is much less; but I find in practice that the Greek form is inevitable when drama reaches a certain point in poetic and intellectual evolution. Its adoption ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... our summer excursion some time, but were unable to get away from Paris before the 18th of July. Our destination was undetermined, health and pleasure being the objects, though, a portion of our party having never seen Belgium, it was settled to visit that country in the commencement of the journey, let it end where it might The old caleche was repaired for the purpose, fitted with a new rumble to contain ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... same great family as the Norman tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on earth destined to be the hewers of wood. Even the dim traditions of the learned that bring the sons of Hellas from the vast and undetermined territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of the pastoral Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods, might serve you to trace back their primeval settlements to the same region whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on the ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... neighbouring heights. [Under the arrangements which have been made since the war, the Malakand position and the works at Chakdara and Dargai will be held by two battalions and some details. These will be supported by a flying column, the exact location and composition of which are as yet undetermined.] ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... still undetermined. Thorburn declines office. We must have an Inspector-General, and from the Upper Canada Liberals. Where are we to find one fit ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... the election—he wandered about the town and its vicinity, undetermined how to act, thinking on the whole that he had better do nothing till after the morrow. Twice, morning and afternoon, did he view Mrs. Wade's cottage from a distance. Just after sunset he was once more in that neighbourhood, and this ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... designated by colors only to indicate their topographical positions. 3, 7, 11, 15. 'Çaltsoï aça litsòï, "yellow wing," a large bird of prey; kini, hen hawk; bitselitsòï, "yellow tail," a bird of undetermined species; a'a'i, magpie; tse, a tail; bitse, its tail. 4, 8, 12, 16. Cija, my treasure; cigèl, my desideratum, my ultimatum, the only thing I will accept. When supposed to be said by a god, as in this song, it means the particular sacrifice which is appropriate to him. In this case probably the ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... Chili. Its breadth cannot so easily be determined; for, though bounded everywhere by the great ocean on the west, towards the east it spread out, in many parts, considerably beyond the mountains, to the confines of barbarous states, whose exact position is undetermined, or whose names are effaced from the map of history. It is certain, however, that its breadth was altogether ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... staring after them. She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some undetermined way Mary's silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid, silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow, that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah would like now to forget her, and could not. What did ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... have been able to reach. Thuanus has prefixed to his history these lines of Lucian; but whether he, or any other historian, hath answered in every point to the description here given, is, I believe, yet undetermined. ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... undetermined whether to resume the dispute or not, stood waiting apart to see what Repolido would do, and the latter perceiving himself to be in the hands of Monipodio and Cariharta, exclaimed, "Friends should never annoy friends, nor make game of friends, more especially when they see that ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... The works of Papias are lost—a misfortune the more to be regretted because Eusebius speaks of him as a man of very limited understanding, [Greek: panu smikros ton noun]. Understanding and folly are words of undetermined meaning; and when language like that of Irenaeus could seem profound it is quite possible that Papias might have possessed commonplace faculties which would have been supremely useful to us. A surviving fragment of him says that St. Matthew put together the discourses of our Lord in Hebrew, and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... A.D. The Puranas carry on the literature to mediaeval times. Several of the systems of philosophy were probably constructed anterior to the Christian era; but the date at which they were put into their present form is undetermined. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... of alchemy began is undetermined. It was certainly of very ancient origin, perhaps Egyptian, but its most flourishing time was from about the eighth century A.D. to the eighteenth century. The stories of the Old Testament formed a basis for some of the strange beliefs regarding the properties of the magic "elixir," ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... undetermined! I may send them home in a few months. But, if I have any little influence left, 'at Headquarters,' that shall always be exerted for you. I am always glad to meet you, your father's son, for Colonel Hardwicke was a true soldier of the olden ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... as occupying some space and time, or as a moment in some ego; no motion but of something moved; no thought but of an object; no time without a previous time,—and the like. But they are limited in number, and they obtain only between excessively broad genera of concepts, and leave quite undetermined what the specifications of those genera shall be. What feeling shall fill this time, what substance execute this motion, what qualities combine in this being, are as much unanswered questions as if the metaphysical ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... discussions willingly, but he could not bring himself to accept the army or the bar. It was indeed only necessary to look at him to see that neither soldier's tunic nor lawyer's wig was intended for him; and it was nearly as clear that those earnest eyes, so intelligent and yet so undetermined in their gaze, were not those ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... to Miss Jessup's; her still sealed letter in my pocket; my mind confused, perplexed, sorrowful; wholly undetermined as to the manner of addressing her, or the use to be made of this important paper. I designedly prolonged my walk, in hopes of forming some distinct conception of the purpose for which I was going, but only found myself each moment sinking into new perplexities. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... were made up on either side, who were inclined to make any sacrifice or run any risk for either religion, were very few. Each side had a few enterprising champions, and a few stout-hearted martyrs; but the nation, undetermined in its opinions and feelings, resigned itself implicitly to the guidance of the government, and lent to the sovereign for the time being an equally ready aid against either of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Bedelle at the age of fifteen years and three months, in the warmth of early Spring, rambled across the green stretches to his appointed rendezvous with Compulsory Bath, he went as a puppy sidles to an undetermined purpose, with a skipping, broken motion, occasionally halting for an extra hitch at the long undisciplined trousers. A cap rode on the straw-colored shock of hair which hung like weeds over the freckled, sharp nose and the wide and famished mouth. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... but few of the New Testament writings had been fixed with any approach to certainty; the age and character of the fourth gospel, the genuineness of the Pauline epistles, even the mutual relations of the three synoptics, were still undetermined; and, as a natural result of this uncertainty, the progress of dogma during the first century was ill understood. At the present day it is impossible to read the early work of Strauss without being impressed with the necessity of obtaining positive data as ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... Christopher Columbus, His Life, His Work, His Remains, by John Boyd Thacher (I., 1903). Few scholars seem to have been convinced by the arguments of Vignaud, but the whole question must be considered as still undetermined. The last word is E. G. Bourne, Spain in America (The American ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... licit producer of opium for the pharmaceutical trade, but an undetermined quantity of opium is diverted to illicit international drug markets; major transit country for illicit narcotics produced in neighboring countries; illicit producer of hashish and methaqualone; cultivated 2,050 hectares of opium in 1997, a 34% decrease from 1996, with a potential ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... it, here is another to make good the Promise, who invariably acts according to the moral Fitness of Things: Or, if you take it the other way, here is, 1st, A Promise made as a mere Sovereign, undetermined by, and unregardful of, all moral Obligations; and, 2dly, The Performance of this Promise is expected, from a Principle of Justice and Goodness; ever conformable to the moral Reason and Fitness of Things: And certainly, in either Case, it leaves Things very precarious; nor can ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... locomotive power. All attempts to use air as a motive power, except the balloon, the sail vessel, the air gun, and the windmill, have thus far failed; but what inventive genius may yet accomplish in this respect, remains yet undetermined. There is, it is true, a mile or more of pneumatic railway used between Dublin and Kingstown. An air pump, driven by steam, exhausts the air from a cylinder in which a piston moves; this cylinder is laid the whole length of the road, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... longing, gasping in despair, breaking in anguish, dying of hopeless, yet indignant love. In some we hear the distant flourish of trumpets, like fading memories of glories past, in some of them, the rhythm is as floating, as undetermined, as shadowy, as the feeling with which two young lovers gaze upon the first star of evening, as yet ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... most aged of the patriarchs would be too short to answer your purposes; since the researches and disputes in which you are engaged have been already for a much longer time the objects of learned inquiries, and remain still as imperfect and undetermined as they were at first. But let me ask you again, and deceive neither yourself nor me, have you, in the course of these forty years, once examined the first principles and the fundamental facts on which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... established, to act independently of the Civil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal of ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Another great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should the new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with or without a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... infinite. We have therefore quite enough intelligence to recognize clearly and distinctly that this knowledge and this power are in God; but we have not enough so to comprehend their scope that we can know how they leave the actions of men entirely free and undetermined. Yet the Power and the Knowledge of God must not prevent us from believing that we have a free will; for we should be wrong to doubt of that whereof we are inwardly conscious, and which we know by experience to be within us, simply because we do not comprehend some other ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... we fetter our weakness. Socrates has no personal ambitions, and thus he is rid of all envy and uncharitableness; he sees the world as it is, a very bright and brave place, teeming with interesting ideas and undetermined problems. Where Christianity has advanced upon this—for it has advanced splendidly and securely—is in interpreting life less intellectually. The intellectual side of life is what Socrates adores; ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... interference. Jackson's action when Loring's regiments were ordered back by the Secretary of War is sufficient proof that he would have brooked no meddling with his designs when once they had received the sanction of the Cabinet. At the same time, it must remain undetermined whether Jackson was equal to the vast responsibilities which Lee bore with such steadfast courage; whether he could have administered a great army, under the most untoward circumstances, with the same success; whether he could have assuaged the jealousies of the different States, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... of the question on the table for the present. As a matter of fact, it is plain that our human nature is adapted to conditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from our view. We are not fitted to live in a world where a b always equals c, and there is nothing more to follow. The interest of life's equation arrives with the appearance of x, the unknown quantity. A settled, unchangeable, clearly foreseeable order ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... the emperor, and presumptive heir to the crown, could not hear it without indignation. The emperor was of a very different opinion, and thought he might sacrifice the princess of Persia to the Hindoo, to satisfy his curiosity. He remained however undetermined, considering what he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable creature of undetermined pedigree. But any account of him would be quite imperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by which his change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolf was commonly called a "skin-changer" or ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... year 1602. When certain circumstances led his yet undetermined thoughts to the study of astrology as his principal pursuit, he put himself in the year 1632 under the tuition of one Evans, whom he describes as poor, ignorant, drunken, presumptuous and knavish, but who had a character, as the phrase ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... shows a state 198 of mind in which we neither deny nor affirm positively anything regarding things that are investigated in a dogmatic way, that is the things that are unknown. When then the Sceptic says "Every thing is undetermined," he uses "is undetermined," in the sense of "it appears undetermined to him." The words "every thing" do not mean all existences, but those that he has examined of the unknown things that are investigated by the ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... inferred for the Galaxy were of course purely relative; a knowledge of its form and structure might (admitting the truth of the fundamental hypothesis) be obtained, but its real or absolute size remained altogether undetermined. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... anatomy of the elephant is even yet but imperfectly understood[2], and, although some peculiarities of his stomach were observed at an early period, and even their configuration described, the function of the abnormal portion remained undetermined, and has been only recently conjectured. An elephant which belonged to Louis XIV. died at Versailles in 1681 at the age of seventeen, and an account of its dissection was published in the Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... known, it yet remains unknown which of these leads, which is inert, and of those which are not inert in what order they arrange their action. The principium movendi, the central force which organizes and assigns its place in the system to all the other forces, these are quite undetermined by any mere arithmetical recitation of the agencies concerned. Often these primary principles can be deduced only tentatively, or by a regress to the steps, historically speaking, through which they have arisen. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... try, anyhow," answered the little woman as cheerfully as she could, though she was by no means confident that she could do anything of the sort. She was already faint and almost sick, and whether she could live till morning or not was an undetermined question in her mind. To tell the truth, Sam himself felt but little confidence in his device. The spoiled meat, he knew, would attract only the larger animals, and such dead-falls as Tom could set were by no means certain to kill ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... of "Race" in Ship-building.—In Hawkin's Voyages ("Hakluyt Society, 1847"), p. 199., he says, "Here is offerred to speak of a point much canvassed amongst carpenters and sea-captains, diversely maintained but yet undetermined, that is, whether the race, or loftie built shippe, bee best for the merchant;" and again, p. 219.: "A third and last cause of the losse of sundry of our men, most worthy of note for all captains, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... competition, except as between groups; but it insured good work, and secured easy conditions for the workman. It was the best system possible in those ages of isolation when there was no such thing as want, and when the population, for yet undetermined causes, appears to have remained always below the numerical level at which serious pressure begins.... Another interesting survival is represented by existing conditions of apprenticeship [406] and service,—conditions which also originated ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... urens, were noticed, either in cultivation or on the edge of the clearings. Poor as the flora is, I see no chance of its promising much variety, for I observe few other plants showing themselves: several ferns were met with in moist places, and under rocks, two Asplenia, one undetermined; Aspidioides very common in some ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... Lincoln & Berry. Doubt rests on the great historic question whether Lincoln sold liquor in his store, and on that question still more agonizing to a sensitive morality—whether he sold it by the dram. The points remain, we are told, and will forever remain undetermined. The only fact in which history can repose with certainty is that some liquor must have been given away, since nobody in the neighbourhood of Clary's Grove could keep store without offering the customary dram to the patrons ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... showed great tact and intelligence in his first meetings with his future wife. He sought every means of pleasing her, paid her assiduous court, as if their marriage was still undetermined. He was able to overcome the Princess's prejudices, for she had given her consent only at the last moment, as a victim sacrificed for reasons of state. Her father, the King, dreading the excitement of an interview, had ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... heart and feelings. Your last letter has been received. It is without date, and came by the mail of yesterday. You see that I am resolved not to furnish a new occasion for apologies by further negligence. Whether, after the adjournment, I shall go North or South, is yet undetermined. If northward, I propose to take the route which you had the goodness to describe, and to pass at least some hours with you. I shall insist on a dish of lillipee, in order to give a more dramatic effect to the review which we ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... where my horse was standing; my friend, who was a connoisseur in horseflesh, surveyed the animal with attention, and after inquiring where and how I had obtained him, asked what I intended to do with him; on my telling him that I was undetermined, and that I was afraid the horse was likely to prove a burden to me, he said, "It is a noble animal, and if you mind what you are about, you may make a small fortune by him. I do not want such an animal myself, nor do I know any one ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... into collision with free labor at the close of the last century, and fell before it in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it effectually, and excluded it for a period yet undetermined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act a choice of the one and the exclusion of the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... put on the appearance of these sentiments. Twice she signed a warrant for his execution, and twice revoked the fatal sentence;[***] and though her ministers and counsellors pushed her to rigor, she still appeared irresolute and undetermined. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... managed with such eagerness, clamour, and warmth, that the two parties of books, in arms below, stood silent a while, waiting in suspense what would be the issue; which was not long undetermined: for the bee, grown impatient at so much loss of time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking for a reply, and left the spider, like an orator, collected in himself, and just ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... Cracow, was descended from an illustrious Polish family. The piety of his parents was equal to their opulence, and the latter they rendered subservient to all the purposes of charity and benevolence. Stanislaus remained for some time undetermined, whether he should embrace a monastic life, or engage among the secular clergy. He was at length persuaded to the latter by Lambert Zula, bishop of Cracow, who gave him holy orders, and made him a canon of his cathedral. Lambert died on November 25, 1071, when ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... and lexicons carefully must. But above all, those judicious collectors of bright parts, and flowers, and observandas are to be nicely dwelt on by some called the sieves and boulters of learning, though it is left undetermined whether they dealt in pearls or meal, and consequently whether we are more to value that which passed through ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... have already said, showed a disinclination to the business. I did not remain long in the dark respecting the new situation in which I stood. I was evidently still under quarantine; but the period of my quitting the port was undetermined. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... repudiated in the outlying countries than we might have supposed antecedently; but, substantially, through the rest of Europe feudal subordinations furnished a substitute for a public law; and when those were undetermined or ambiguous, there lay behind, in theory at least, a supreme regulating force in the authority of the head of the Church. It is certain, however, that both feudal and ecclesiastical influences were rapidly decaying during the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... entered a feeble protest, but reason and common sense and a certain undetermined feeling of what was due to himself socially—poor country ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... still much undetermined about the time of bringing forward the decisive measures. The general leaning of people's minds appears to be for delay, and there is not anything that can perhaps absolutely be said to require that immediate steps should be taken. There are, however, several ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... is apparently a significative coincidence between the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... first came into existence is undetermined. They appear to have been known in the Middle Ages. The many races, as the Dutch, French, Metz, Nonsuch, Broad-leaved, indicate an ancient origin. We cannot be too certain what apple-trees were meant in the early ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... without reason that he affected to make use of obscure expressions, which left undetermined the foundation upon which he built his pretended right. If he seemed to derive his title from Henry III. rather than from Edward III., his grandfather, it was because there was a rumour that Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, surnamed Crouch-back, was eldest son of Henry ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various

... by opposition from the bureaucracy, public sector unions, and other vested interest groups. The newly-elected BNP government, led by Prime Minister Khaleda ZIA, has the parliamentary strength to push through needed reforms, but the party's level of political will to do so remains undetermined. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. But that operation belongs to an entirely different category from that which we are now considering. None of the factors on which the traditional system of British defence is based were present. It was an operation over an open sea against a distant and undetermined objective that had no naval defence of its own, whereas in our own case the determining factors are permanent naval defence, an approximately determined objective, and a narrow sea where evasion by any force of invasion strength is impossible. Napoleon's ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... southwestern region composed of the arid plateaus which is approximately bounded on the east by the Rio Pecos and the west by the Colorado River, on the north by Central Utah, and which extends southward to yet undetermined limits in Mexico. The present paper is more directly confined to the ancient provinces of Tusayan and Cibola which are situated within the drainage of the Little Colorado River, and the intention is to follow ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... vessel, holds Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn; Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off th' empyreal Heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat; And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent World, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. Thither, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... written for the satisfaction of more than one of the author's friends, who had been influenced by the objections of Hume and others to the reality of the Gospel miracles.[94] This leaves the point somewhat undetermined. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... running parallel, uniting and branching again, divided by the theme, but unending in the flow of the harmony. So ran their chirping arguments and diversions. The carrying on of a prolonged and determined you-and-I in company intimates to those undetermined floating atoms about us that a certain sacred something is in process of formation, or has formed; and people looked; and looked hard at the pair, and at one another afterward: none approached them. The Signor conjuror who has a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... an undetermined question in my mind whether beauty, such as this, is not a curse. In this instance assuredly it proved so, for it wrecked the happiness of both husband and wife. My dear child, do you ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... where the Eye has Room to range abroad, to expatiate at large on the Immensity of its Views, and to lose it self amidst the Variety of Objects that offer themselves to its Observation. Such wide and undetermined Prospects are as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding. But if there be a Beauty or Uncommonness joined with this Grandeur, as in a troubled Ocean, a Heaven adorned with Stars and Meteors, or a spacious Landskip cut out ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... thousand miles in his front, and knew not in the slightest degree where to lay hold on him. Was he at Hazarubaug? was he at Bogly Gunge? nobody knew, and for a considerable period the movements of Lake's cavalry were quite ambiguous, uncertain, promiscuous, and undetermined. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hotel in the Rue de Rivoli she had the disappointment of finding that Mrs. Dallow had not called, and also that no telegrams had come. She went in with the girls for half an hour and then straggled out with them again. She was undetermined and dissatisfied and the afternoon was rather a problem; of the kind, moreover, that she disliked most and was least accustomed to: not a choice between different things to do—her life had been full of that—but a want of anything to do at all. Nick had said to her before they separated: "You ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... been so from its origin; and as there is no judge between free nations, no one can decide if the time past is sufficient to establish prescription, or if the presumption of the desertion [of rights] is sufficiently proved. But even leaving this point undetermined, the prescription which the republic of Poland could allege in the present case has not any of the qualities which the advocates of prescription require, to render it valid between ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... which I would have the reader inquire respecting every work of art of undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, is not whether it be a work of especial grandeur, importance, or power; but whether it have any virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth, whether it have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown, whether it have added one single stone ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... to do; and when we have done it, we have done our duty, and all that is in our power; and indeed all that needs. For, since the will supposes knowledge to guide its choice, all that we can do is to hold our wills undetermined, till we have examined the good and evil of what we desire. What follows after that, follows in a chain of consequences, linked one to another, all depending on the last determination of the judgment, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... like one who dissented, but, having with all the other youths grasped his musket, he stood as undetermined as the rest concerning the course it was proper to pursue. It is uncertain how long this indecision might have continued, had no further summons been given; but he without appeared too impatient of delay to suffer much time to be ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... function, the carrying and storing of water; a contour full to give capacity, narrow above for safety, and pointed below that it may be set in sand; curves kept within certain bounds by the limitations of construction; and a goodly share of variety, symmetry, and grace, the result to a certain undetermined extent of the esthetic tendencies of the artist's mind. In regard to the last point there is generally in forms so simple an element of uncertainty; but many examples may be found in which there is positive evidence of the existence of a strong desire on the part of the primitive basketmaker to enhance ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes



Words linked to "Undetermined" :   inconclusive, undecided, indeterminate, determinate, open-ended, unsettled, cost-plus, indeterminable, open, determined



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