Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Valetudinarian   Listen
noun
Valetudinarian  n.  A person of a weak or sickly constitution; one who is seeking to recover health. "Valetudinarians must live where they can command and scold."






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 |





"Valetudinarian" Quotes from Famous Books



... finding her influence to be omnipotent with his master, determines on marrying her secretly, that they may join in plundering the valetudinarian, whose infirmities furnish a perpetual subject for the coarse pleasantries of both ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... modern times, viz., the injuriousness to enfeebled stomachs of all fluid. Fifty years ago—and still lingering inveterately amongst nurses, and other ignorant persons—there prevailed a notion that 'slops' must be the proper resource of the valetudinarian; and the same erroneous notion appears in the common expression of ignorant wonder at the sort of breakfasts usual amongst women of rank in the times of Queen Elizabeth. 'What robust stomachs they must have had, to support such solid meals!' As to the question ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... travelled in the interieur, and from Lyon had no one for companion but a fussy little lady, of a certain age, who had a large basket, a parrot in a cage, a little lapdog, a bandbox, a huge blue umbrella, which she could never succeed in stowing any where, and a moth-eaten muff. In my valetudinarian state I was not pleased with this inroad—especially as the little lady had a thin, pinched-up face, and obstinately looked out of the window, while she popped about the interieur as if she had just taken lodgings and was putting them in order, throwing me every now and then some ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... wonderful inventions—secured by a patent—and of old-established business firms, which offer a safe investment for his spare hundreds and thousands by way of partnership, with the certainty of immediate and enormous returns! To the invalid and the valetudinarian, how cheering must be those modest and disinterested encomiums upon the virtues of certain nostrums and specifics, which cannot but carry conviction to his mind that there is a certain cure for 'all the ills that flesh is heir to!' And lastly, not to enlarge ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... condition as determined by the barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, anemometer, and other meteorological instruments, nor to lay too much stress on a difference of a few hundred or thousand feet of elevation above the sea; but choose a home where the environments will afford the invalid or valetudinarian the greatest opportunity of living out-of-doors, and of spending the hours of sunshine in riding, driving, walking, and in other ways, whereby the entrance of pure air into the lungs is facilitated. In Pasadena the days in winter are warm enough to make outdoor ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... lives, of making their own health and their own ailments the constant subject of their thoughts soon becomes a disease very fatal to happiness and positively injurious to health. It is well known how in an epidemic the panic-stricken are most liable to the contagion, and the life of the habitual valetudinarian tends promptly to depress the nerve energy which provides the true stamina of health. In the words of an eminent physician, 'It is not by being anxious in an inordinate or unduly fussy fashion that men can hope to live long and well. The best way to live well ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Norman group consecrated to cream and Victor Hugo. The author's good descriptive powers are assisted by a number of drawings, many of which are finely done and well discriminate the local character of the different places, latitudes and circumstances of life. He does not appear to be much of a valetudinarian himself, or he would hardly have been able to venture on and report for our benefit so wide a range of travel and experience; but his preference obviously is for the island most thoroughly tempered to the needs of an enfeebled constitution, and which welcomes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... against what he had done and from Maldon Barracks, in Essex, on April 5th, 1805, Tom answers his godfather's objections. Perhaps to add solemnity to his argument the old man had assumed the tone of a valetudinarian and Tom replies: "I would fain hope you had no reason for saying you would soon follow my dear Father. I hope God will spare you to us since he has thought proper to take my Father to Himself. Your loss would be irreparable, I having no other person to protect my mother and ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... day on a gentleman who had been severely afflicted with the gout, found, to his surprise, the disease gone, and the patient rejoicing in his recovery over a bottle of wine. "Come along, doctor," exclaimed the valetudinarian, "you are just in time to taste this bottle of Madeira; it is the first of a pipe that has just been broached." "Ah!" replied the doctor, "these pipes of Madeira will never do; they are the cause of all your suffering." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... Epicurean, and M. MARIUS, the valetudinarian and wit, were among friends valued for their personal and agreeable qualities rather than for any public or political importance attaching to them. The same may be said of L. LUCCEIUS, of whose Roman history Cicero thought so well, that he wrote a remarkable letter begging for an honourable place ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... ladies and gentlemen who laughed at them. But a mind acclimatised to the atmosphere which they breathed inevitably lost its nervous tone. There was true masculine vigour underlying Cowper's jeremiads; but it was natural that many people should only see in him an amiable valetudinarian, not qualified for a censorship of statesmen and men of the world. The man who fights his way through London streets can't stop to lament over every splash and puddle which might ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... in my opinion, by far the most wholesome and agreeable situation in Bath, especially the upper side of it; but the avenues to it are mean, dirty, dangerous, and indirect. Its communication with the Baths, is through the yard of an inn, where the poor trembling valetudinarian is carried in a chair, betwixt the heels of a double row of horses, wincing under the curry-combs of grooms and postilions, over and above the hazard of being obstructed, or overturned by the carriages which are continually making their exit or their entrance — I suppose ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... privilege of attracting her notice. Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored; and all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful character and marked intellectual ability (if he had only "chosen") had been met with a derisive chuckle. But his eminence as a valetudinarian now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his temperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise that one could not be ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... the same tone of silver-grey as his flannel suit, his finely-chiselled features the hue of old ivory—a perfect model of patrician 'form'. Only there was plenty of vigour still manifest in the bushman's bony frame, while the man of the world wore a valetudinarian air, leaning on the arm of his regal, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... find the same man, on the same or similar grounds, abstain from nearly everything that his neighbours innocently and pleasurably use, and from the rubs and trials of human society itself into the bargain, we recognise that valetudinarian healthfulness which is more delicate than sickness itself. We need have no respect for a state of artificial training. True health is to be able to do without it. Shakespeare, we can imagine, might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... then, in being innocent of gross sin? But to those other sins—sins of defective moral courage in speech and action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness—had he not yielded freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered, in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so, as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer, adoration, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... As we shot through the Iberian narrows on our frantic voyage hither, my entire store was blown out of my hands and away to sea. The rarest sorts were flung about on rocks where nothing more valetudinarian than a baboon could possibly taste them. My earliest care on arriving here was to search these woods for fresh specimens, and my success has been beyond all hope. See, this comes from the wet lands on the hither side ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... increases irritability, and renders the mind less disposed to bear with inconveniencies; we avoid company at first, through a sense of our infirmities, till this timidity becomes habitual, and settles almost into aversion.—The valetudinarian, who is obliged to fly the world, in time fancies herself above it, and ends by supposing there is some superiority in differing from other people. Mr. D is one of the best men existing—well bred and well informed; yet, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... 5 pints of blood which they said they used for transfusions on ward patients, much to my gratification. I now have in, or had put in me, a dose, of radio-active phosphorus P32 which, they assure me will be getting in its good work for the next three months. Nothing like being up to date, even if valetudinarian. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... of novel expedients. The courage of the heart will let no expedient of the ingenuity be left untried. But both ingenuity and courage will find their real source in a health which has not yet exhausted the resources of the body. Firmness which is not obstinacy, health which is not the fad of the valetudinarian, adaptability which is not weakness, enterprise which is not rashness—these are the qualities which will preserve men in those evil days when the "blast of the terrible one ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... great promise, destined to become distinguished. But the years slipped by, and his literary performance, consisting of desultory essays and several slight volumes of verse, was not enough to justify the prophecy. His life more and more became that of a bachelor recluse and valetudinarian. When he died, in 1881, at sixty years of age, after much suffering heroically borne, as pathetic entries in the last leaves of his Diary remain to show, there was a feeling that here was "one more faithful failure." But the quiet, brooding ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... him in his present state of indisposition—but in vain: there appeared to be an oppression on his mind, and a solemnity in his manner, which ill corresponded with his eagerness to proceed on what I regarded as a mere party of pleasure, little suited to a valetudinarian; but I opposed him no longer—and in a few days we set off together, accompanied only by a serrugee and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... in the French saying, that there is no ill without something of good. What state more pitiable to the eye of a man of robust health than that of the Confirmed Valetudinarian? Indeed, there is no one who has a more profound pity for himself than your Valetudinarian; and yet he enjoys two of the most essential requisites for a happy life; he is never without an object of interest, and he is perpetually ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... hanging lappets which covered the ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky face. "My health is somewhat fragile," he remarked, as he led the way down the passage. "I am compelled to be a valetudinarian." ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... good reason that his "little, tender, crazy carcass," as Wycherley calls it, was utterly unfit for such excesses as his companions could practice with comparative impunity. He was bound under heavy penalties to be through life a valetudinarian, and such doses of wine as the respectable Addison used regularly to absorb, would have brought speedy punishment. Pope's loose talk probably meant little enough in the way of actual vice, though, as I have already said, Trumbull saw reasons for friendly warning. But some of his writings ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]—as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy—who are always, more universally than any other ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... sensible man, but was ready to have a round with him on occasion. He snorted contempt when Taylor talked of breaking some small vessels if he took an emetic. "Bah," said the doctor, who regarded a valetudinarian as a "scoundrel," "if you have so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, and there's an end on't." Nay, if he did not condemn Taylor's cows, he criticized his bulldog with cruel acuteness. "No, sir, he is not well shaped; ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... day. The food is abundant and of good quality, but mushrooms, onions, and fat play a rather too important part in the repast, and the whole is prepared with very little attention to the recognised principles of culinary hygiene. Many of the dishes, indeed, would make a British valetudinarian stand aghast, but they seem to produce no bad effect on those Russian organisms which have never been weakened by town life, nervous excitement, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... fever, yellow jack. fatal disease &c. (hopeless) 859; dangerous illness, galloping consumption, churchyard cough; general breaking up, break up of the system. [Disease of mind] idiocy &c. 499; insanity &c. 503. martyr to disease; cripple; " the halt the lame and the blind"; valetudinary[obs3], valetudinarian; invalid, patient, case; sickroom, sick- chamber. [Science of disease] pathology, etiology, nosology[obs3]. [Veterinary] anthrax, bighead; blackleg, blackquarter[obs3]; cattle plague, glanders[obs3], mange, scrapie, milk sickness; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... necessary. His wonderful activity, those long walks in all weathers, in all seasons, by night as well as by day, drenched by rain and chilled by frost, suggest a reckless kind of health. A doctor might wisely have cautioned him against such exposures. Nor was Thoreau a valetudinarian in his physical, moral, or ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... dear Lucia," the valetudinarian explained in a dryly humourous tone, "is the sobriquet fastened by some imaginative French reporter upon a celebrated criminal who seems to have made himself something of a pest over here, these last few years. Nobody knows anything definite about him, apparently, but he operates in a most ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... suspicion, too, in his small black eyes, as well as a sort of lurking fierceness which not even his most urbane and elaborate smile could altogether eliminate. In person he was very thin and somewhat under the middle height, and had all the air of a confirmed valetudinarian. He was dressed as no English gentleman would care to be seen dressed in public. A long brown velvet coat trimmed with fur; lavender-coloured trousers tightly strapped over patent leather boots; two or three vests of different colours under one made of the skin of some animal and fastened ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... his invaluable character. It appears to me highly worthy of observation, that Howard, before he entered on his grand projects of Public Benevolence, was subject to those little, but depressive variations of health which have betrayed many a valetudinarian into habits of inaction and inutility. Happily for himself, and for mankind, this excellent person surmounted a constitutional bias to indolence and retirement. The consequence sequence was, he became a singular example of activity and vigour. His powers, and enjoyments ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... of them are provided with a certain convenience which an English traveller can very ill dispense with. Those you find are generally on the tops of houses, exceedingly nasty; and so much exposed to the weather, that a valetudinarian cannot use them without hazard of his life. At Nismes in Languedoc, where we found the Temple of Cloacina in a most shocking condition, the servant-maid told me her mistress had caused it to be made on purpose for the English travellers; but ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... not return to Holland. 'I know that I shall not be able to stand the air and the food there; all eyes will be directed to me. I shall return to the country, an old and grey man, who left it as a youth; I shall return a valetudinarian; I shall be exposed to the contempt even of the lowest, I, who am accustomed to be honoured even by the greatest.' 'It is not possible', he concludes, 'to speak out frankly in a letter. I am now going to Basle and thence to Rome, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... ceremonious race, a benevolent ruler forced to levy heavy loans and contributions on a sensitive populace whose goodwill he earnestly strove to gain, an easy-going epicure spurred on to impetuous action by orders from Paris which he dared not disregard and could not execute, a peace-loving valetudinarian upon whom was thrust the task of controlling testy French Marshals, and of holding a nation in check ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... exclusive heritage of those rare natures in whom subtlety is the disguise of superiority, and taste its revelation. "What balance of faculties and cultivation it requires! What personal distinction it shows! Perhaps only a valetudinarian would have been capable of this morbidezza of touch, this marriage of virile thought and feminine caprice. If there is excess anywhere, it lies perhaps in a certain effeminacy of sentiment. Doudan can put up with nothing but what is perfect—nothing but what is absolutely ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "malade imaginaire" junior. What he had won in medicine was to be more of an invalid than a doctor. At three and twenty he thought himself a valetudinarian, and passed his life in inspecting his tongue in the mirror. He affirmed that man becomes magnetic like a needle, and in his chamber he placed his bed with its head to the south, and the foot to the north, so that, at night, the circulation of his blood might not be interfered ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... revise The hasty opinions we formed of our neighbours In view of their lives and deaths and labours. It has cured many freaks of their futile hobbies, It has made us acquainted with female bobbies. It has very largely emptied the ranks Of the valetudinarian cranks, By turning their minds to larger questions Than their own insides or their poor digestions. It has changed a First Lord into a Colonel, Then into a scribe on a Sunday-journal, With the possible hope, when scribbling palls, Of doing his hit at the Music Halls. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various

... books and music the occupation of his life, and in 1796, on his twenty-seventh birthday, he began to record in a diary his impressions of what he read. He went on very quietly and luxuriantly, living among his books in his house at Ipswich, and occasionally rolling in his post-chaise to valetudinarian baths and "Spaws." ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... intended for pleasure, and Nature had dowered them with great attractions. I appreciated their charms, but I could not welcome them in the manner to which they were accustomed. They began to think me some poor valetudinarian; but though I was in torments, a feeling of vanity made me endeavour to behave sensibly. I gave them some cold kisses and begged Edgar to tell his fellow-countrywoman that if I were not three parts dead I would prove how lovely and charming I thought her. They pitied me. A man ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Tint and expression were both dulled; its marble-like sharpness and finish had coarsened a little, and the figure, which had never possessed the erectness of youth, had now the pinched look and the confirmed stoop of the valetudinarian. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Never worry people with; your contritions, nor with dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness; even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a valetudinarian, who will give you enough ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... undertook, and was the last person to perceive that Mr. Bevan, though objecting to nothing, let all the rough and tough work lapse upon his curates, and took nothing but the graceful representative part. Even then, Mr. Underwood had something to say in his defence; Mr. Bevan was valetudinarian in his habits, and besides—he was in the midst of a courtship—after his marriage he would give his mind ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... delight, and promote cheerfulness, rather than to astonish or impress the spectator with feelings of awe by their stupendous grandeur; circumstances which, combined with its salubrity of climate, render it a most desirable retreat to the valetudinarian and nervous invalid: indeed all the alterations which have latterly been made, or are now in progress, tend to soften, embellish, and in point of convenience to improve the face of the country. On this subject however it will be a question with many persons ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon

... opportunity of their assemblage at the dinner-table, to announce the expected arrival of Mrs. Bloss. The gentlemen received the communication with stoical indifference, and Mrs. Tibbs devoted all her energies to prepare for the reception of the valetudinarian. The second-floor front was scrubbed, and washed, and flannelled, till the wet went through to the drawing-room ceiling. Clean white counterpanes, and curtains, and napkins, water-bottles as clear as crystal, blue jugs, and mahogany furniture, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... thought deficient in manly energy. He was an infirm valetudinarian, and was considered as sluggish in character, as deficient in martial enterprise, as timid of temperament as he was fragile and sickly of frame. It is true, that on account of the disappointment which he occasioned by his contrast to his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the humor of the piece by assigning to the Malade Imaginaire a strain of frugality along with his love of medicine, which leads him to take every mode that may diminish the expense of his supposed indisposition. The expenses of a sick-bed are often talked of, but it is only the imaginary valetudinarian who thinks of carrying economy into that department; the real patient has other things to think of. Argan, therefore, is discovered taxing his apothecary's bill, at once delighting his ear with the flowery language of the pharmacopoeia, and gratifying his frugal disposition by clipping off some ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... and I puzzled over the problem as people would over the possible denouement of a French novel; and at last, by mutual consent, we came to the conclusion that Smith could, and would turn out to be no other than the good-natured valetudinarian in the yellow waistcoat himself, a humorist, as was evident enough, and a millionaire, as we unhesitatingly pronounced, who had no immediate relatives, and as I hoped, and my wife "was certain," taken a decided fancy to our little Fanny; ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the campaign of Philippi and that against the Cantabrians, and again two years afterward at Rome, when his recovery was despaired of. From that time, altho constantly liable to be affected by cold and heat, and obliged to nurse himself throughout with the care of a valetudinarian, he does not appear to have had any return of illness so serious as the preceding; and dying at the age of seventy-four, the rumor obtained popular currency that he was prematurely cut off by poison administered by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... principle that "no one is a hero to his valet," not even a valetudinarian, it may be safely asserted that the divinity that doth hedge most great writers is lost the moment their admirers become acquainted with their habits of thought and methods of composition. The popular delusion that H.G. "knows every thing" is calculated to work indefinite injury to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various

... bonnet' had been at church there would have been little chance of discovering her, but we found that we were the only 'quality,' as Chapman called it, or things might not have been so bad. Old James Winslow had been a mere fox-hunting squire till he became a valetudinarian; nor had he ever cared for the church or for the poor, so that the village was in a frightful state of neglect. There was a dissenting chapel, old enough to be overgrown with ivy and not too hideous, erected by the Nonconformists in the reign of the Great Deliverer, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of taste (who is indefatigable in his endeavours to improve the health, as well as promote the enjoyment, of his fellow-students in the school of good living, and to whom the epicure, the economist, and the valetudinarian are equally indebted for his careful revision of this work, and especially for introducing that salutary maxim into the kitchen, that "the salubrious is ever a superior consideration to the savoury," and indeed, the rational epicure only relishes the latter when entirely ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... out resignedly, "Ah, it's no use your whispering!" Besides whom there was a garrulous old lady, in herself the worthy double of Mrs. Gamp; a sort of half-brother to Sam Weller; and an alternately shrieking and apologetic valetudinarian, who was, perhaps, the most whimsical of them all. Nothing more, however, need here be said in regard to Charles Dickens's share, either in these performances for the Guild or in the other strictly private theatricals. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... heaven, as divine solicitations, the effects of grace; though they are, nevertheless, only the effects of those vicissitudes to which our constitution is liable, and which affect the robust, as well as the feeble; the man of health, as well as the valetudinarian. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... the desire of her friends required: and yet found it difficult, as she often said, to keep this account even; especially if Dr. Lewen obliged them with his company at their table; which, however he seldom did; for, being a valetudinarian, and in a regimen, he generally made ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... now that this enabled her to make light of a burden that might otherwise have been intolerable. It qualified her to treat with cheerfulness the grimness of her mother, which had certainly not grown less since I saw her last, and to turn into something like a joke her valetudinarian austerities of sentiment and opinion. She made a pleasant mock of the amenities which passed between her mother and Glendenning, whose gingerliness in the acceptance of the old lady's condescension would, I confess, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... to New York has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and founder in a blow. During the winter storms these skippers used to hug the kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could put to sea again. The rigor of circumstances, however, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... prudence is what any one has great need to learn. The plain man, who fronting circumstances boldly on the one hand, looks reverently to the stern face of duty on the other, can dispense with its maxims. For the moral valetudinarian small benefit is to be gained ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green



Words linked to "Valetudinarian" :   sufferer, sick person



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org