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Vendetta   Listen
noun
Vendetta  n.  
1.
A blood feud; private revenge for the murder of a kinsman.
2.
Any feud or contention that is bitter and prolonged; however, the deep enmity may be held by only one party to the dispute; as, the former Mayor nurtured a lifelong vendetta against the candidate who defeated him.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vendetta" Quotes from Famous Books



... Revenge. — N. revenge, revengement[obs3]; vengeance; avengement[obs3], avengeance|, sweet revenge, vendetta, death feud, blood for blood retaliation &c. 718; day of reckoning. rancor, vindictiveness, implacability; malevolence &c. 907; ruthlessness &c. 914a. avenger, vindicator, Nemesis, Eumenides. V. revenge, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... position that any denial of Sarah Althea's pretense to have been the wife of Sharon was an insult to her, which could only be atoned by the blood of the person who made it. This was the proclamation of a vendetta against all who should attempt to defend the heirs of Mr. Sharon in the possession of that half of their inheritance which he and Sarah Althea had marked for their own. His subsequent course showed that he relied upon the power of intimidation to secure success. He was a man of powerful ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... Salvatore and revenge the death of his padrone. But the padrone had laid a solemn injunction upon him. Solemn, indeed, it seemed to the boy now that the lips which had spoken were sealed forever. The padrona was never to know. If he obeyed his impulse, if he declared the vendetta against Salvatore, the padrona would know. The knife that spilled the murderer's blood would give the secret to the ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... to the family war because no more longer a little child and this Luigi he swear he look after me here in America, and already I see the poniard lifted to strike at my breast, but I shall dodge and then maybe use my own, though hating the vendetta—feuds. Why shall all this be? How have I made anger and strife with these assassins? But to reason with them is to invite a more insult than death. You ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... of his quaint ward, the dance in the eyes of the merry child as some colored candies placed in my nonny-bag by my wife fell somehow from the sky right on to the table before her. The telling of his story, never before mentioned to any one but his wife and foster child, but kept like some vendetta wrong waiting for revenge in his rebellious heart these many years, seemed to have renewed his youth. A merrier, happier party it has never been my lot to share in; and now that I know the pathos of the last ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... that one gets credit for much he does not deserve. There was your immortal General Lincoln, a wit so famous in your country that every good story is fathered upon him, I understand. So with your humble servant. Let a man accomplish his vendetta upon the body of an enemy, and behold! the world cries: 'A victim ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... and then stopped, drew a long breath and continued: "Say, you and I have sort of formed up a sort of vendetta and all that sort ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... employments; the Gheg is stern, morose and haughty, the Tosk lively, talkative and affable. The natural antipathy between the two sections of the race, though less evident than in former times, is far from extinct. In all parts of Albania the vendetta (gyak, jak) or blood-feud, the primitive lex talionis, is an established usage; the duty of revenge is a sacred tradition handed down to successive generations in the family, the village and the tribe. A single case of homicide ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe, but come right out on the other side—in front, that is to say, for no true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the back—and, protruding thus, will display some pleasing legend, such as "Vendetta," or "I serve my master," or "Viva Corsica," roughly engraved on the long blade. There is a macaroni warehouse. There are two of those mysterious Mediterranean provision warehouses, with some ancient dried sausages hanging in the window, and either doorpost flanked ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... eyes grew almost idolatrous. Then, he brought the landscape over to its creator, and, though no word was spoken, there flashed between the eyes of the artist, whose signature gave to a canvas the value of a precious stone and the jeans-clad boy whose destiny was that of the vendetta, a subtle, wordless message. It was the countersign of brothers-in-blood who recognize in each other the bond ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... belongs to the state and not to the individual. When the private man assumes to punish evil with force he sanctions lynch-law, which is a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Then we have the blood-feud and the vendetta, mob-rule ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke

... in the public square of Ferrara, with the palace of the Borgias on the right. The Duke Alphonso, Lucrezia's husband, who has been observant of Lucrezia's attachment to Genarro, vows vengeance in a passionate aria ("Vieni la mia vendetta"). In the next scene Genarro, who has been taunted by his friends with being a victim of Lucrezia's fascinations, recklessly rushes up to the palace door and strikes off the first letter of her name with ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... do not know America as well as he, but I know this: the police never succeed—the ransom is paid without their knowledge, and they very often take the credit. I say, pay first, then I will swear a righteous vendetta—I will bring the dogs to justice with the money yet on them. Only show me how, show ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... inadvertently, and therefore without any guilt or crime of his own, had been the cause of death to his brother, had provided for him, half on one side Jordan and half on the other, and dotted over the land, so that it should not be too far to run to one of them, Cities of Refuge. And when the wild vendetta of those days stirred up the next of kin to pursue at his heels, if he could get inside the nearest of these he was secure. They that were within could stand at the city gates and look out upon the plain, and see the pursuer with his hate glaring from his eyes, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... civil wars.[426] To justify this conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was the first blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings;[427] for it might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural outgrowth of Italian soil, yet masses of men are seldom, like individuals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more; it is far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... this. He turned it over and over in his mind, canvassing all the various benefits any line of action might promise, and starting every doubt or objection he could imagine. Nor was the thought extraneous to his calculations that in forwarding Atlee's suit to Maude he was exacting the heaviest 'vendetta' for ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... invocation for a light which, when they believed they had found it, to unregenerate eyes scarcely seemed to illumine the rugged path in which their feet were continually stumbling. One might have smiled at the idea of the vendetta-following Ferguses praying for "justification by Faith," but the actual spectacle of old Simon Fergus, whose shot-gun was still in his wagon, offering up that appeal with streaming eyes and agonized features was painful ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... of a row. But with the development of a central authority, whether in the shape of the rule of many or of one, the public control of the blood-feud begins to assert itself; for the good reason that endless vendetta is a dissolving force, which the larger and more stable type of society cannot afford to tolerate if it is to survive. The following are a few instances illustrative of the transition from private to public jurisdiction. In North America, Africa, and elsewhere, we find the chief or chiefs ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: Lex talionis. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Bellieure, e il gran Cancelliere che sopravvenne, furono di contrario parere allegando esesr tanta la commozione del popolo, che in caso tale, sprezzando la Maesta regia, e rompendo tutti i vincoli delle leggi, sarebbe corso a precipitosa vendetta, e che non essendo le cose ancora apparecchiate per la difesa propria, e per frenare il furore della citta le forze de' Parigini erano troppo poderose parole per ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... (known as Gigonnet) Gobseck The Vendetta Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen A Daughter ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... all must have lain in the princess's complete ignorance of the facts. She stood there among the company she had invited to meet each other as if blindfolded, not knowing which ones, or how many, were affected by the vendetta. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... were very popular during our first winters at Hull-House. Many educated Italians helped us, and the house became known as a place where Italians were welcome and where national holidays were observed. They come to us with their petty lawsuits, sad relics of the vendetta, with their incorrigible boys, with their hospital cases, with their aspirations for American clothes, and with their needs ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... into the sterling values of a farm. He—he, Roger Purdee—was a rich man for the "mountings," joining his little to this competence. All the cruelties, all the insults, all the traditions of the old vendetta came thronging into his mind, as distinctly presented as if they were a series of hideous pictures; for he was not used to think in detail, but in the full portrayal ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... themes as few in number as those which succeeded nearer Tidewater: how a stranger man comes into the mountains, loves the flower of all the native maidens, and clashes with the suspicions or jealousies of her neighborhood; how two clans have been worn away by a long vendetta until only one representative of each clan remains and the two forgive and forget among the ruins; how a band of highlanders defend themselves against the invading minions of a law made for the nation at large but hardly applicable to highland circumstances; ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... sound of Trinity chimes. "People versus Sterling Greene." Yes, he was a colored man—I recalled the evidence—drink and a "yellow gal." "People versus Mock Duck"-a Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong—a vendetta, first one Chink shot and then another, turn and turn about, running back through Mott Street, New York, Boston, San Francisco, until the origin of the quarrel was lost in the dim Celestial mists across the sea. Out of the first four cases the following motives: Jealousy—1. Drink—1. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... a sequel to the famous "Prisoner of Zenda," already published in the Nelson Library. It tells of the end of the long vendetta between young Rupert of Hentzau and the Englishman, Rudolph Rassendyll. It is needless to praise a book which, with its predecessor, has been recognized as one of ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the Urtathurta and going Kurdaitcha luma appears to have been the medium for a form of vendetta." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... Pallas and Pallas Green formed the scene of the never-to-be-forgotten feud of the "Three and Four Year Olds," the tradition whereof hath a rich and racy savour. Readers of the Daily News will hardly need to be reminded that this historic vendetta commenced with a dispute concerning the age of a bull, one disputant maintaining that the animal was four, while the other insisted he was but three years old. The matter was settled, or was rather put on the footing of a "mighty pretty quarrel," by a desperate fight, wherein one of ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... my eyes," continued Bonaparte. "The tradition of the Vendetta will long prevent the reign of law in Corsica," he added, as if speaking to himself. "But it must be destroyed, at ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... of Antonelli, a mere child at the time of the murder, had been trained in savage Sicilian loyalty, and lived only to avenge his father, not with the gibbet (for he lacked Stephen's legal proof), but with the old weapons of vendetta. The boy had practised arms with a deadly perfection, and about the time that he was old enough to use them Prince Saradine began, as the society papers said, to travel. The fact is that he began to flee for his ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... know, and I will gladly search the continent over for material to make her bitterly repent for striking such a blow to my Sadie's, and indeed to all our hopes. Answer immediately and whatever instructions you may give me, I will follow most faithfully. I am ready to join you heart and hand in any vendetta against the disturber of ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite "The Gipsy's Curse." The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... in conversation and with his help made a list of what we should require on our vendetta journey, all of which served to occupy his mind. Then I sent him to bed, saying that I would call him before dawn, having first put a little more bromide into his third cup of coffee. After this I turned in and ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... I said. "Money is often more cruel than men; and a business vendetta is frequently mere murder without the incident of blood. I don't suppose the life of your Arizona town would show these trade wars. It would take Eastern—that is, older—conditions, to provoke ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... light. One thinks of nocturnal rites in an African forest temple and of terrible jewels blazing in the head of an evil goddess—jewels to be stolen, we realise, by a foolish white man, thereafter to be the object of a vendetta in a sensational novel. One feels that one's hair would be justified in standing on end, only that hair does not do such things. The sight of a moth's eye is, I fancy, a rare one for most people. It is a sight one can no more forget than a house on fire. Our feelings ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... the inhabitants—your subjects, Prosper— hospitable, too. Whatever the island may have been in Seneca's time, to deserve the abuse he heaped on it in exile, to-day the Corsicans keep more of the old classical virtues than any nation known to me. In vendetta they will slay one another, using the worst treachery; but a stranger may walk the length of the island unarmed—save against the Genoese—and find a meal at the poorest cottage, and a bed, however rough, whereon he may sleep untroubled ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... with resolution made years before. Final reception by the Emperor. Farewell celebration with the American Colony and departure. Stay at Alassio; visits to Elba and Corsica; relics of Napoleon: curious monument of the vendetta between the Pozzo di ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... wrong committed was a natural impulse, and the recognition of this fact in custom established it not merely as a right but as a duty. War, the modern form of trial by battle, the vendetta, and the duel are examples that have survived down to modern times of this natural and primitive method of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... race. In 1876 he cast it into a poem, "Sigurd the Volsung," in four books in riming lines of six iambic or anapaestic feet. "The Lovers of Gudrun" drew its material from one of that class of sagas which rest upon historical facts. The family vendetta which it narrates, in the Iceland of the eleventh century, is hardly more fabulous—hardly less realistic—than any modern blood feud in the Tennessee mountains. The passions and dramatic situations are much the same ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... has earned his little outing, This excruciating cove, And his instrument is flouting Bath, or Scarborough, or Hove. For the moment I can get a Peaceful interim, and free— But he cherishes vendetta, This Italian count, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various

... ballades with Philip, whom he apostrophises as his companion, his cousin, and his brother. He assures him that, soul and body, he is altogether Burgundian; and protests that he has given his heart in pledge to him. Regarded as the history of a vendetta, it must be owned that Charles's life has points of some originality. And yet there is an engaging frankness about these ballades which disarms criticism. (2) You see Charles throwing himself headforemost into the trap; you hear Burgundy, in his answers begin to inspire him with his own prejudices, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat; They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one. Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They have never seen a rosebush nor a dewdrop in the sun. They will dream of the vendetta, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... calabash had been emptied and the company had taken a long breath, an elder in the party asked the councillor if he had obeyed his master's command and buried the skeleton where it would be safe from the vendetta that pursues an enemy to the grave. The councillor made an embracing gesture above the multitude. "Here," he cried, "are the graves of Kaulii. His bones can never ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... De Blacquaire. 'You can hardly have a vendetta with a man who has saved your life, even though the beggar did it for no other reason than to show how much he despised you. I was wrong about the lad, General; he's ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... "Could there not be an entente between Greece and Bulgaria, a burying of the hatchet," replied: "No, there is a mortal vendetta between us. There is something in the Bulgarian which makes our ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... self-sacrifice in particular comes very badly in war-time. All the same, if you cut out this top-hamper the story of The Veiled Woman on its personal side is distinctly a good one. I wished the heroine had not spoiled her fine enthusiasms by mixing them so freely with a personal vendetta; but after all it is not the characterisation that intrigues one here. The plot—which I will not spoil by giving it away—goes excellently, and works up to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... pays solidi three. LXXIIII If the fifth toe he severs, he pays solidi two. LXXV Upon all these damages or injuries, above described, which among men exempt occurred, therefore, a heavier punishment, have we placed than our ancestors, that the Faida (feud, vendetta), that is, the hatred, after the receiving the above described (ssta—suprascripta) punishment, may cease, and, moreover, not be required, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... had heard the hero swear to that legalizing instrument, and had also registered an oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew Time! he is unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of the world comes of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once done him a wrong. They cannot escape him. They will never outlive it. The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... unpopularity of being Paley? Was it that no human being could support being Paley for one night and live till morning? Or was it that the gates were crowded with eager throngs of the British public thirsting to be Paley, who could only be let in one at a time? Or is there some ancient vendetta against Paley? Does some secret society of Deists still assassinate any one who adopts ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... "Really, Billy, the thing was necessary. I didn't dare refuse. You've no idea how these people are antagonized by an Italian villa. It seems sort of shameful to them. They foam at the mouth. Why, unless I had been tactful you'd have had vendetta and Mafia and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... SCOTSMAN.—"Mr. Fred M. White has written a story full of dramatic surprises. Mr. White is a master of sensations, and his introduction of the incident of the Italian Vendetta gives point to a ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... colonel went to the sheriff. The sheriff said he had yielded to force, but he never would have dreamed of shooting to defend a worthless Negro who had maimed a good white man, had nearly killed another, and had declared a vendetta ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... celebrated during the war. This gentleman's home was on the main shore in its neighborhood. I had some talk with him about the war times; but presently the discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer between warring families, than in this particular region. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... cold bedfellow, and women are designed to cherish finer sentiments. As for Lucrezia, she will doubtless swear a vendetta, like ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... case, I imagine that both Mr. Deane and this Tomkinson may be mistaken. I am told that a horse trained locally has a splendid chance—let me see—yes, here it is: the Honorable Charles Fenton's Vendetta." ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... road of literary fame, and some of his writings at this time had a momentous influence on his life. In April, 1830, Madame Hanska, his future wife, read with delight, in her far-off chateau in Ukraine, the "Scenes de la Vie Privee," containing the "Vendetta," "Les Dangers de l'Inconduite," "Le Bal de Sceaux, ou Le Pair de France," "Gloire et Malheur," "La Femme Vertueuse" and "La Paix de Menage"—two volumes which Balzac had published as quickly as he could, to counteract the alienation of his women-readers by the "Physiologie ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... whom reveal my wrongs, O thou who murdered me? * Sad, who of broken troth the pangs must undergo! Increase wild love for thee and phrenzy hour by hour * And days of exile minute by so long, so slow; O Moslems, claim vendetta[FN184] for this slave of Love * Whose sleep Love ever wastes, whose patience Love lays low: Doth law of Love allow thee, O my wish! to lie * Lapt in another's arms and unto me cry Go!? Yet in thy presence, say, what joys shall I enjoy * When he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... special notice of the children of John Naesmyth, so often recommended by our late dear father and us." Two of Sir Michael's other sons were killed at Edinburgh in 1588, in a deadly feud between the Scotts and the Naesmyths. In those days a sort of Corsican vendetta was carried on between families ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... the Bandits; or "Why cause a lot of talk by pushing your rich uncle over the cliff, when you can have him stabbed quietly for one franc fifty?" (If ever I were in any vendetta business ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... organization than the family itself; but the clans live together in the villages, and as such they form a whole with regard to the outside world. Quarrels between two clans are not so rare as those inside a clan, and the vendetta does not act inside the clan, whereas a murder outside the clan must be avenged. Uncles and aunts within the clan are called father and mother, and the cousins are called ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... means Rome, and Londra, London. This ignorance, however, is part of the author's ingenuity. It leads to the establishment of a sort of object-speech, by aid of which the Earl learns that his guest has come to England to prosecute a vendetta against the man who ruined his happy Sicilian home. I need scarcely say that this villain is none other than D'Orelli; and when at last he and the Countess elope to Paris, the object-speech enables Giuseppe to convey to the Earl, by aid of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... and the rescued ones reached the Halsted Camp, Gladys wasn't left long in doubt as to the fate of the vendetta she had declared against the Camp Fire Girls. For, even while she was being put to bed, she could hear the cheers that were being given by her own chums for the girls she had tried to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... N. revenge, revengement^; vengeance; avengement^, avengeance^, sweet revenge, vendetta, death feud, blood for blood retaliation &c 718; day of reckoning. rancor, vindictiveness, implacability; malevolence &c 907; ruthlessness &c 914.1. avenger, vindicator, Nemesis, Eumenides. V. revenge, avenge; vindicate; take one's revenge, have one's revenge; breathe ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... who were ruder helpmeets of their rude husbands and brothers, who had shared their privations and sufferings with surly, masculine endurance, rather than feminine patience; women who had sent their loved ones to hopeless adventure or terrible vendetta as a matter of course, or with partisan fury; who had devotedly nursed the wounded to keep alive the feud, or had received back their dead dry-eyed and revengeful. Small wonder that Cressy McKinstry had developed strangely under this sexless relationship. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... law simply exiles the criminal for ever, confiscating his goods to the community. It is true, the family of a murdered person are expected to pursue the homicide with all the tenacity of a Corsican vendetta, but the tribal laws are kept singularly clean from the ferocity of individual habits. A strange thing, indicating probably a derivation from times at least as early as Augustine, is that the Kabyle code (a mixture, like all primitive codes, of law and religion) ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... country parishes in this, that, while revelling in internal dissensions, when attacked from without its inhabitants promptly scrapped every vendetta and, for the time being, stood back ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... the full price; and purchases the greater vendetta: unless of your benevolence you choose to content yourself with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... a really shameful secret in the life of this man Douglas. This leads to his murder by someone who is, we will suppose, an avenger, someone from outside. This avenger, for some reason which I confess I am still at a loss to explain, took the dead man's wedding ring. The vendetta might conceivably date back to the man's first marriage, and the ring be taken for ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Carleton's refusal, chose a British prisoner by lot instead. The lot fell on a young Lieutenant Asgill of the Guards, whose mother appealed to the king and queen of France and to their powerful minister, Vergennes. The American Congress wanted blood for blood, which would have led to an endless vendetta. But Vergennes pointed out that Asgill, a youth of nineteen, was as much a prisoner of the king of France as of the Continental Congress. At this the Congress gnashed its teeth, but had ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... the struggle for hegemony in the Peninsula. Unlike most southern races, the Bulgarians are reserved, taciturn, phlegmatic, unresponsive, and extremely suspicious of foreigners. The peasants are industrious, peaceable and orderly; the vendetta, as it exists in Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia, and the use of the knife in quarrels, so common in southern Europe, are alike unknown. The tranquillity of rural life has, unfortunately, been invaded by the intrigues of political agitators, and bloodshed is not ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... working-parties and swept crossroads on which supplies came up, and the Canadian sniper, in one shell-hole or another, lay for hours in sulky patience, and at last got his man... They had to pay for all this, at Maple Copse, in June of '15, as I shall tell. But it was a vendetta which did not end until the war ended, and the Canadians fought the Germans with a long, enduring, terrible, skilful patience which at last brought them to Mons ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... endeavoured to monopolise all dealings with the Europeans and prevent the inland tribes from doing business direct with the factories. Often the up-river men would make their way down stealthily, but if caught they were slain or mutilated, and a bitter vendetta would ensue. She recognised that it would only be by the tribes coming to know and respect each other, and by the adoption of unrestricted trade with the stores that the full reward of industry could be secured. She ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... of retaliation. Between groups blood revenge was only a detail of the normal relations of hostility and violence. Out-groups, however, sometimes made agreements with each other to limit blood revenge and vendetta. White men have had trouble with red men and black men because their customs as to relationship were not on the same level. The whites in New York and Pennsylvania colonies could not understand why the Indians were indifferent to their demands for the surrender of an Indian who, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... "Oh, surely not that! I was told by those who ought best to know, you English had got far beyond the stage of private war and murderous vendetta." ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... unique in France as John Smith is in England ... When Albert Dupont tries to take my life, as a simple and natural act of vendetta—" ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... community—that republic of aristocrats—say, between the dates 900 and 1100 of our era, a quarrel would arise between two great families. As in the case of the Njal Saga, its cause, probably, was the ill doings of some noble woman. This quarrel would lead to manslaughter. Then blood called for blood, and a vendetta was set on foot that ended only with the death by violence of a majority of the actors in the drama and of large numbers of their adherents. In the course of the feud, men of heroic strength and mould would ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... under glass and heated, where the gaffers of Chicago are collected together to discuss interminably the exciting politics of a city anxious about its soul. And while listening to them with one ear, with the other you may catch the laconic tale of a park official's perilous and successful vendetta against the ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... leading citizens of Little Italy vanished and went their way, probably to start a vendetta. There followed comparative calm. But Bruce Carmyle's emotions, like sweet bells jangled, were out of tune, and he could not recapture the first fine careless rapture. He found nothing within him ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... have thought it? It looks like a sweet little vendetta, doesn't it? A blind beggar, too, with his Gerado to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Punch's service. Lemon had declared him a "graceless young whelp," and nothing that Mr. Sala ever cared to do had tended to change that opinion. Shirley Brooks and Tom Taylor carried on the sentiment as a sort of dynastic vendetta, and Mr. Sala's name was kept on Punch's Index Expurgatorius until the accession of Mr. Burnand. Punch was then no longer the close borough, and the new Editor sought talent where he could find it. He invited Mr. Sala to contribute, and the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Petrobei, formerly feudal ruler of Maina, were arrested. Some personal insult, imaginary or real, was moreover offered by Capodistrias to this fallen foe, after the aged mother of Petrobei, who had lost sixty-four kinsmen in the war against the Turks, had begged for his release. The vendetta of the Maina was aroused. A son and a nephew of Petrobei laid wait for the President, and as he entered the Church of St. Spiridion at Nauplia on the 9th of October, 1831, a pistol-shot and a blow from a yataghan ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... in the Cumberland Mountains between the Folwell and the Harkness families. The first victim of the homespun vendetta was a 'possum dog belonging to Bill Harkness. The Harkness family evened up this dire loss by laying out the chief of the Folwell clan. The Folwells were prompt at repartee. They oiled up their squirrel rifles and made it feasible for Bill Harkness to follow his dog to a land where the 'possums ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... and, when it was his turn, replied in a speech full of dignity, containing a great deal about gloria and vendetta and the weight of his chains and il cuore di Sansone, and he threatened them over and over again, and struggled and shook himself and made great efforts to get free, so that the soldiers shrank back. Suddenly he broke his chains, and the soldiers ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... fled. His vendetta he again relegated to the files of things that might have been. Beyond the boat he fled and away-away; he ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... strengthened with the blood of its northern neighbors. They are a capable, creative, conservative, reliable race. On the other hand, the hot temper of the South has been fed by an infusion of Greek and Saracen blood. In Sicily this strain shows at its worst. There the vendetta flourishes; and the Camorra and its sinister analogue, the Black Hand, but too realistically remind us that thousands of these swarthy criminals have found refuge in the dark alleys of our cities. Even in America the Sicilian carries a dirk, and the "death sign" in a court room has silenced ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... natives of the mountains here, and to the north. They are being brought into order, and indeed, a number are enlisting in the Military Police. Till recently, they were free, wild mountaineers, doing a little farming and raiding and vendetta business. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... which he has found very efficacious in curbing that vindictive spirit of the Corsicans, of which I have said a good deal in a former part of this work. There was among the Corsicans a most dreadful species of revenge, called "Vendetta trasversa, Collateral revenge," which Petrus Cyrnaeus candidly acknowledges. It was this. If a man had received an injury, and could not find a proper opportunity to be revenged on his enemy personally, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... had had one point continually before my eyes. The mere fact that the man had been stabbed in the back seemed to me sufficient proof that the assassin was of foreign origin, and that the affair was the outcome of a vendetta, and not the act of an ordinary bloodthirsty crime. The wound, so the doctors informed me, was an extremely deep and narrow one, such as might very well have been made by a stiletto. Assuming my supposition to be correct, I returned to the house, and once more overhauled the dead man's ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... -1893 Tex. Ross's Brigade, Los Despenadores, The Texas Vendetta, Demara the Comanche Queen, History of Victoria County, Life of General ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... of the wild, 'Twixt you and Progress' pale-faced child Fated vendetta rages, And Pity's self stands powerless To help you counter with success The onset of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various

... way to get rid of them, that's what you'll have to have, I suppose. Only make sure you don't leave a single one of them alive when it's over. But if you can get the Federation Government in here to clean the mess up, that would be better. Nobody starts a vendetta ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... statement as to Kuni cannibalism, that speaking generally it appears to be confined to the bodies of people killed in war or in private vendetta, and that, though other cases are recorded, they are regarded as a violation of a custom and are detested, might be equally well said of the Mafulu; though I did not actually hear of any known record there of the other cases mentioned. Again his statement that the actual killer must not share in ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... bloodshed; indeed, they were a common feature of European life. But if they are inevitable in human relationship, how comes it that Adana is no longer duplicated by St. Bartholomew; the Bulgarian bands by the vendetta of the Highlander and the Lowlander; the struggle of the Slav and Turk, Serb and Bulgar, by that of Scots and English, and English and Welsh? The fanaticism of the Moslem to-day is no intenser than that of ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... your private vendetta, Bourke. You can have him, what's left of him, if you want. We were going to swing him from a tree with a card on his chest presenting him to Hereford County, with our compliments. As it is, Bourke, I'd be relieved if you'd keep out of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... Manon's proofs of devotion. Mystery on mystery. However, this youth, under the diligent attentions of police spies, was soon seen and identified as an escaped convict, the famous hero of the Corsican vendetta, the handsome Theodore Calvi, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... suppose that Miss Eleanor Vendetta de Savelli will be more impossible than ever," ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... the Straits, is a mistral tormenting the whole Gulf of Lions. We shall be tossing about presently in a manner unpleasant to landsmen; and when you are safely housed, I will come and beguile a little time by relating a true story of a Corsican Vendetta.' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various

... of hate—to draw the pistol out of her belt, and teach him with a shot, crash through heart or brain, that girls who were "unsexed" could keep enough of the woman in them not to be neglected with impunity, and could lose enough of it to be able to avenge the negligence by a summary vendetta. But she was a haughty little condottiere, in her fashion. She would not ask for what was not offered her, nor give a rebuke that might be traced to mortification. She only set her two rosebud-lips in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Murder and robbery with violence could be expiated only by death, unless the criminal allowed his hair to grow and the injured man consented to shave it himself and take an oath of brotherhood on the Koran. Otherwise the law of vendetta was fully carried out with curious details. The wronged man, wrapped in a white woollen shroud, and carrying a coin to serve as payment to a priest for saying the prayers for the dead, started out in search of his enemy. When the offender was found he must fight to a finish. A remarkable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... don't think I'm alarmed. In fact, I am not sure I wouldn't be willing to do it. Still, this vendetta seems to be rather old for any great amount of feeling on your part. How old were you ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... look significant. But then it was objected, upon reflection, that Blaustein and Ascher had both been permitted to make their escape, and this hardly justified the theory of an implacable anti-Semitic vendetta. The objection seemed reasonable, but it was met in turn by the point that Blaustein and Ascher had been bled white, as Bismarck's phrase went, before they were released, whereas the five Christians had been liberated with relatively moderate fines. Upon the whole, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... buono...Oh, come spesso diceva, 'Dove sono questi buoni Romani? Dov'e loro somma giustizia? Poterommi trovare in tempo che questi fioriscano?' Era bell 'omo...Accadde che uno suo frate fu ucciso, e non ne fu fatta vendetta di sua morte: non lo poteo aiutare; pensa lungo mano vendicare 'l sangue di suo frate; pensa lunga mano dirizzare la cittate di Roma male guidata."—"Vita di Cola di Rienzi" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... is a token of some vendetta— if the murderer wished to signify that he had glutted ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... lower classes, but reached to the highest. The chronicles and novels of the period are full of such instances, especially of vengeance taken for the violation of women. The classic land for these feuds was Romagna, where the 'vendetta' was interwoven with intrigues and party divisions of every conceivable sort. The popular legends present an awful picture of the savagery into which this brave and energetic people had relapsed. We are told, for instance, of a nobleman at Ravenna who ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... he sprang on the apparition and slashed away in the dark. "Kiya!" The cry rang loud. Kondo[u] danced with joy, calling loudly for lights. "O'Iwa! O'Iwa! Kondo[u] has slain the O'Bake, the enemy of his child! Rejoice with Kondo[u]! The vendetta is accomplished!" In the darkness and confusion a groan was heard; then another, still fainter; then there was silence. Tomobei appeared with a light. He leaned over the long black robed body; to raise an alarmed face to his joyful master. "At what does the Danna ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... that night. Whether he suspected anything was up, or wanted to dare Higbee for bedevilment, or was only dancing attendance on Miss Sally, no one knows. But he rode slap into Highee's party, called out, 'If you're out hunting, Tom, here's a chance for your score!' meaning their old vendetta feud, and brings his shot-gun up to his shoulder. Higbee wasn't quick enough, Dumont lets fly, drops Higbee, and then gallops off chased by the Reeds to avenge Higbee, and followed by the whole crowd to see the fun, which was a little ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... head. "Sorry. I wish it could be like that, but we're not engaged in a personal vendetta. Orvil may be out of there by tonight, or he may not. He'll have ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... take summary vengeance, called vendetta, still exists in the villages; where the people having no social amusements, nothing to read, nor any other resource than cards during the winter nights, are apt to quarrel over trifles; which, fanned by their local petty jealousies, assisted often by the generous nature ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black

... there must be; and still speaking as a reviewer I begin to glimpse one or two of them. Revenge is not one. Critics have written for revenge, quoting gleefully, "O that mine enemy would write a book!" Pope is our classic example. But publishers have made that form of literary vendetta unprofitable nowadays, and I am glad they have done so. Much wit, but little criticism, has been inspired by revenge. Furthermore, I notice in my own case, and my editorial self confirms the belief, that the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... of twelve members, whose salaries he paid, a bodyguard of a few dozen and a police force of several hundred. These men, who lived to execute his wishes, were the instruments by which he set about improving Montenegro. The vendetta was to give way to the law court; there was something to be said, though, for the people who withstood this innovation, since the court's decision was the will of Peter. But no arguments protected anyone who clung to the old-fashioned ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein



Words linked to "Vendetta" :   blood feud



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