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Acute   /əkjˈut/   Listen
Acute

noun
1.
A mark (') placed above a vowel to indicate pronunciation.  Synonyms: acute accent, ague.



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"Acute" Quotes from Famous Books



... really a devil of a fellow, John Armitage! So much knowledge! So acute an intellect! You are too wise to throw ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... proceeding along the arroyo about 200 m.—630 ft.—to the south ere it turns across. The main military line of travel intersects there-about the one to the Pecos River, and thence, striking almost due south, forms a very acute angle with the creek. In this angle ledges of rock protrude, sheltered by a fine group of cedar-shrubs; and here, in what may be termed a snug little corner, the rocks bear ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... listened greedily. Though his sight had long since faded, his hearing was still acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the glimmering intelligence which yet abode behind the withered forehead, but which no longer gazed forth upon the things of the world. Ah! that was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizing the dogs as she cuffed ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... fields raise the level of human attainments and achievements. They swiftly seize upon and appreciate the specific achievements of the race behind them; they are profoundly sensitive to the aspirations of their time and to the deep-lying currents of their age; they are suggestible in an acute degree, through heightened interest, to certain ideas or truths or principles which they synthesise by such leaps of insight that slow-footed logic seems to be transcended. Then these unifying and intensifying experiences to which ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... formed by two gable ends, notched, and having their windows adorned with heavy architectural ornaments. They joined each other at right angles; and a half circular tower, which contained the entrance and the staircase, occupied the point of junction, and rounded the acute angle. One of other two sides of the little court, in which there was just sufficient room to turn a carriage, was occupied by some low buildings answering the purpose of offices; the other, by a parapet surrounded by ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... were up and on duty the torment of the flying pests was acute. There was little danger of a sentry going to sleep without a head net and some ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... transcendent faults, reaching the heart by their pathos, insulting the reason by their exaggerations, captivating the imagination while shocking the moral sense; painting manners and dissecting passions with powerful, acute, and vivid touch. Such were Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, and Alexandre Dumas, whose creations interested all classes alike, not merely in France, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... he was in the midst of these litigations, that he published, in 1840, the Pathfinder. People had begun to think of him as a controversialist, acute, keen, and persevering, occupied with his personal wrongs and schemes of attack and defence. They were startled from this estimate of his character by the moral duty of that glorious work—I must so call it; by the vividness ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... sake of the people generally; that they may be rightly instructed in the doctrine of salvation and of Christian morals. In the meantime we must do our best to satisfy all; that the simple be not left without needful teaching; the more acute find no want of force and argument; nor the learned charge the preacher with a pride of knowledge foreign to the occasion ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... was a man of considerable original power, excellent education, and of a social and right manly nature. This new acquaintance coloured the whole of Hume's future life. They became fast friends, and were inseparable. The imagination of Hume was restrained by the acute judgment and critical ability of Mr Raine. When Hume published his first volume of "Songs," it would perhaps be difficult to determine whether their great success and general popularity resulted from the poet whose name they bore, or from the friend who weighed and suggested corrections ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Catherine, was becoming rarer and rarer with her. As the spring expanded, as the sun and the leaves came back, poor Catherine's temper had only grown more wintry and more rigid. Her life was full of moments of acute suffering. Never, for instance, did she forget the evening of Robert's lecture to the club. All the time he was away she had sat brooding by herself in the drawing-room, divining with a bitter clairvoyance all that scene in which he was taking part, her being shaken with a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of fatigue. A wind blew the scent of sage in his face. The first early blackness of night passed with the brightening of the stars. Somewhere back on his trail a coyote yelped, splitting the dead silence. Venters's faculties seemed singularly acute. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... previously consulted him, I should have had even that. Disappointed in his higher views, his spirit is broken, and he is heartless and hopeless, scarce condescending to accept relief, from the bitter remembrance that he expected preferment. Time, however, will blunt this acute sensibility, and reflection will make him blush at this unreasonable delicacy. But we must patiently soothe him till he is more himself, or while we mean to serve, we shall only torment him. Sickness, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... The acute observation and telling description of Natural Beauty is at least as necessary for the enjoyment of life as the pursuit of Natural Science to which so much attention is paid. For the concern of the former is the character, and of the latter only the cause ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... TIMES.—"Sir Mark Sykes' book is full of first-hand facts and acute observation.... It is a book of intense interest and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... course of the afternoon Beatrice came downstairs again. She told her mother that her headache was quite gone, but the old lady was acute enough to observe a great change in the girl. She did not look ill, but the brightness had gone out of ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... boats and fishing gear there cannot be over 400. Therefore it is absurd to say that the men would not be able to supply themselves with boats. Again, it has been stated and maintained that the Shetland men as a race are intelligent, and in one sense they are. Indeed their intelligence is so acute that the employers are ashamed, as I have no doubt you have found in the evidence, to give them accounts. They are rather afraid that their acuteness would discover too much in them, but in addition to that ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... his cloak, which the storm only forced him to wrap more closely around him. The principal failing of Dorax is the excess of pride, which renders each supposed wound to his honour more venomously acute; yet he is not devoid of gentler affections, though even in indulging these the hardness of his character is conspicuous. He loves Violante, but that is a far subordinate feeling to his affection for Sebastian. Indeed, his love appears so ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... like a finger of a glove, which they use before their nature. They have the same tenents as the nation of the beefe, and their apparell from topp to toe. The women are tender and delicat, and takes as much paines as slaves. They are of more acute wits then the men, ffor the men are fools, but diligent about their worke. They kill not the yong castors, but leave them in the watter, being that they are sure that they will take him againe, which no other nation doth. ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... an acute attack of admiration for very young men of a military cut. I use the word cut advisedly, for these incipient soldiers look for all the world as if carved out of wood. They gradually get over their stiffness, however, and as officers usually have a fine bearing, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... appeared, there was much speculation as to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends, that they knew it was mine from the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... definite sign of pregnancy. Indeed, it is mentioned, not because of its importance, but to point out that it is in no way connected with the kidneys, as patients are sometimes led to believe. It is a direct and natural result of pregnancy. Since the womb enlarges and tilts forward at a more acute angle than formerly, it presses against the bladder, giving the same sensation as when the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... very painful to him to hear Lady Lufton called an old woman, and hardly less so to discuss the propriety of Lord Lufton's parting with his property. This was irksome to him, till habit made it easy. But by degrees his feelings became less acute, and he accustomed himself to his friend Sowerby's mode ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... it at first are of no use for testing purposes, for a guinea pig will starve to death rather than eat food he doesn't like. Having secured pigs that will eat they should on a suitable basal diet die of acute scurvy in about twenty-eight days. Their basal diet is ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... Dale straightened up, tense and alert. He had no desire, very far from any desire to be caught here, or to figure publicly in any way in the case. The street door had opened and closed again. Footsteps, those of three men, his acute, trained hearing told him, sounded on the stairs. Again there came that queer, hesitant indecision as he stood there, while his eyes travelled in swift succession from the bank's securities in his hand to the note on ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Ligne (Regulars). Blanchard was a good solid man, and I put him to hold Givenchy in conjunction with the Devons, who were now occupying the Bedford trenches there. The French on the right of the 70th gave us acute reason for anxiety by retiring calmly from their trenches when they were shelled; but it was only their way, for half an hour afterwards they trotted back into them quite happily, much to the relief of the Devons ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen

... De Forrest "very nice." She liked him better than any one else she had met and flirted with since her school-days, during which period of sincerity and immaturity she had had several acute attacks of what she imagined to be the "grand passion." But as the objects were as absurd as her emotions, and the malady soon ran, its course, she began to regard the whole subject as a jest, and think, with ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... representative. A feeling as pure feeling is not known; it is only known when it is distinguished, as to quality or degree, and so classed or brought under some representation of a kind or description of feeling, as acute, painful, and so on. The accurate recognition of an impression of colour depends, as we have seen, on this process of classing being correctly performed. Similarly, the recognition of internal feelings implies ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... persuaded that monarch that he was disposed to favour him. But it is impossible to believe, with Herodotus, that he had at that time any real desire to conciliate the Persian, foreseeing that he might hereafter need a refuge at the Eastern court. Then in the zenith of his popularity, so acute a foresight is not in man. He was one of those to whom the spirit of intrigue is delight in itself, and in the present instance it was exerted for the common cause of the Athenians, which, with all his faults, he never neglected for, but ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... acute, discerning, penetrating, sharp, clear-sighted, discriminating, penetrative, shrewd, crafty, keen, perspicacious, subtile, cunning, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... the acute observations of Alexander Hamilton that under our American Constitutions judges are less to be relied on by one who is attacked by the government, because those who direct the government are the choice of the people, and whatever they do is presumably popular. The ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... incurable—among them a strange one which I noticed in this case. Ordinary society has a soothing, alleviating effect; the patient forgets to be mad; but if he sees a doctor, or even hears one mentioned, he at once displays acute irritation—an infallible sign that he is far gone, incurable in fact. I was distressed to notice this symptom; my step-mother was a worthy person who deserved a better fate, and I was ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... dinner the sun had set, and night had dropped down softly over the Bay. Capri had disappeared. The long serpent of lights had uncoiled itself along the sea. Down below, very far down, there was the twang and the thin, acute whine of guitars and mandolines, the throbbing cry of Southern voices. The stars were out in a deep sky of bloomy purple. There was no chill in the air, but a voluptuous, brooding warmth, that shed over the city and the waters a luxurious benediction, giving absolution, surely, to all the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... seems to me, in those times, fits of musing far deeper and more intense, excitability of feeling—perhaps of imagination too—more acute than at any other time. Perhaps, also, a determination, an energy of will is added, necessary to carry us through, with power and firmness, the struggle, or the change, or ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... a passenger from some lately arrived steamboat; but even to the trained eye of so acute an observer as Mr. Sonneschein he presented difficulties in the way of classification. Only temporarily, however. The long-tailed coat and the wide-brimmed, soft felt hat were the insignia of the down-river, back-country planter, and the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... without which no medical man can rise to the eminence of Dr. Donaldson, he saw that she would exact the full truth; that she would know if one iota was withheld; and that the withholding would be torture more acute than the knowledge of it. He spoke two short sentences in a low voice, watching her all the time; for the pupils of her eyes dilated into a black horror and the whiteness of her complexion became livid. He ceased speaking. He waited for that look to go off,—for her gasping ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... were sent me by Dr. Hooker. This species differs from the last in the stems and leaves being thicker or coarser; their divisions form a more acute angle with one another; the notches on the leaves bear three or four short bristles instead of one; and the bladders are twice as large, or about 1/5 of an inch (5.08 mm.) in diameter. In all essential respects the bladders resemble those of Utricularia neglecta, but the sides of the peristome ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... little awkward for the Snob: things often are; but he would soon get over it. His sense of locality, you perceive, is extremely acute. He may not always know at a glance exactly what men are in themselves, but he can always tell where they are. If you put one of Madame Tussaud's waxworks into a front seat, or on a Woolsack, or on a Board of Directors, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... it and shivered as she lay back in the great chair which, with its walls and roof, was like a hiding-place; and for the first time in her life she longed to hide herself. She had never before known acute fear—fear that was based on ascertained facts. But she knew ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... tender in their handling, and Tom bit his lips to refrain from groaning over his acute pain; but for all that the job was a tedious and trying one, and when he was lashed into the sack ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... previous car was embedded plain on the soft earth. And here and there were footmarks recently made which the three avoided confusing, on Green's order, by keeping to the side of the roadway. The wheelmarks ended abruptly round a slight bend, where they came upon the car itself. It was tilted at an acute angle, with its leading front wheel embedded in the low ditch. All the lights had been extinguished, and the rear of the car, with the number, was picked out in high relief against the dark background by the acetylene ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... autumn day. The Palisades shone red and yellow with turning foliage. There was a fresh breeze down the river and a thousand whitecaps gleamed in the sunlight. Overhead great white clouds moved majestically athwart the blue. But I took no pleasure in it all. I was suffering from an acute mental and physical depression. Like Hamlet I had lost all my mirth—whatever I ever had—and the clouds seemed but a "pestilent congregation of vapors." I sat in a sort of trance as I was whirled farther and farther away ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... shouldn't have them at the same cost. I've just remembered another nice dish. We'll have it to-morrow night." She paused, and a wistful look came into her eyes, for the next day was Saturday, and it was on holiday afternoons that the feeling of loneliness grew most acute. School life was monotonous, but it was never lonely; from morning to night one lived in a crowd, and already each class had furnished youthful adorers eager to sit at the feet of the pretty new mistress, and bring her offerings of chocolates and flowers; for five long days there ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... three ministers were striking in a still higher point of view. Their qualities seem to have been expressly constructed to meet the peculiar exigency of their times. Perceval—acute, strict, and with strong religious conceptions—to meet a period, when religious laxity in the cabinet had already enfeebled the defence of the national religion. Castlereagh—stately, bold, and high-toned—to meet a period, when the fate of Europe was to be removed from cabinets to the field, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... Abigail Merritt, acute and tender mother as she was, settled into the belief that her daughter was merely given to those sweetly melancholy and wondering reveries natural to a maiden soul upon the threshold of discovery of life. "I used to do just so, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... on the Desk, and no key to it; neither must it, in time coming, seem to have been opened, even if we could now open it. A desperate pinch, and it must be solved. Female wit and Wilhelmina did solve it, by some pre-eminently acute device of their despair; [Wilhelmina, i. 253-257.] and contrived to get the Letters out: hundreds of Letters, enough to be our death if read, says Wilhelmina. These Letters they burnt; and set to writing fast as the pen would go, other letters ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... in the nature of a make weight, in a very short time, to everyone's profound relief, the group had been taken. . . . Vane, who had been sitting on the ground, with his legs tucked under him to keep them in focus, silently suffering an acute attack of cramp, rose and stretched himself. On the lawn, tennis had started again; and she could see various officers dotted about the ground in basket chairs. He was turning away, with the idea of a stroll—possibly even of seeking out old John in the village, when from just behind his ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... devoured by a malady which not only caused her extreme bodily suffering, but, from its loathsome character, affected her sensitive nature with the most acute mental pangs. She retired to the convent of Val de Grace, where, with ever-increasing devotion as death drew near, she consecrated herself to works of piety ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... character, a bold and candid critic of human imperfections, a stimulating companion full of original ideas and deep feelings, he will find in Hazlitt an inexhaustible source of instruction and delight. Hazlitt has long appealed to men of vigorous character and acute intellect, men like Landor, Froude, Walter Bagehot, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ernest Henley, who have either proclaimed his praise or flattered him with imitation. By the friend who knew him longest ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... universal service in the ranks, it is not strange that in 1916 he was recalled to serve the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For a time he rendered great service in Switzerland, where from the beginning of the war an acute but ever-lessening controversy has raged between the ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... for a substitute for gutta percha is even more acute than for artificial India rubber. A compound used in its stead for many purposes is known as French gutta percha. This possesses nearly all the properties of gutta percha. It may be frequently used for the same purposes and has the advantage of not cracking ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... oeuvres, empreintes generalement d'une profonde melancolie." If the writer of the article in question had gone a little farther back, he might have found a sounder basis for his theory in the extremely delicate physical organisation of the man, whose sensitiveness was so acute that in early infancy he could not hear music without crying, and resisted almost all attempts ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... lighted them downstairs, he ascended once more to his cabin, tortured by an acute self-consciousness. The evening had been far from satisfactory; never had the difference between anticipation and realisation been more impressively illustrated. In his afternoon dreams he had not considered Miss Wycliffe's companions, except as shadows, and it was they who had disturbed what ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Dorner one of the most acute speculative theologians produced by the later Protestant church. His style is as complex as Ullmann's is simple. It is amusing that, in one place, he even enters into a justification of his technical and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... a pleasant unaffected way of relating her experiences which at once establishes her on the most friendly relation with the reader. To powers of acute observation and graphic description, she adds a sympathetic appreciation of Nature, which enables her to convey a vivid idea of the scenery and the people, the local colour, that is to say, of ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... sought for or accepted by men at the bar, already making their L.3000, L.5000, L.8000, or L.10,000 a-year, and aspiring to the very highest honours of their profession? The gentlemen who have accepted these appointments, are many of them personally known to us as very acute and able practical men, who will be found to give the utmost satisfaction in the discharge of their duties to both the profession and the public. The two Vice-Chancellors, Sir James L. Knight Bruce, and Sir James Wigram, are admirable appointments. Each must have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... personally attended the high priest as far as the street, listening with acute attention to his recommendations. When she returned she had put on a carefully bright face. Evidently she had decided, or had been told, that cheerfulness was essential to ward ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... had felt the foot Of a foe o'er him, snatched at it, and bit The very tendon which is most acute— (That which some ancient Muse or modern wit Named after thee, Achilles!) and quite through 't He made the teeth meet, nor relinquished it Even with his life—for (but they lie) 't is said To the live leg still clung the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... to distribute these poor refugees. The town of Amiens had troubles of its own but it forgot them now, and set itself doggedly to work the relief of the far more acute distress of those from the countryside to the north and east. Always the stories of those who had fled before the German ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston

... this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself the happiest of mankind—the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except themselves; and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Croesus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To the same vein ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... there is no acute necessity for the place to be kept going, as you express it. I entertain a hope that if you have ever taken part in that orgie, at which every one with the exception of the croupiers looks greedy and hungry, that you will in the future abstain from it. Gambling is the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... continues, "being considered by his father and others to give proof of an acute judgment and a clear understanding, was sent to Santa Maria Novella to study letters under a relation who was then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. But Cimabue, instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed the whole ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... for Owen, but would the sting have been so acute had Robert Fulmort been more than ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had to turn back on account of acute illness. From New York my father and Uncle were accompanied by my cousin Edward Snyder. He was a grand man. He had tried several times to enter the service, but was rejected. For years he had been in the employ of the American ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... opened only when the sufferings of the famine-stricken become acute, and their supervision is entrusted to a fat-salaried Englishman who swallows up half the collections, which amount could have fed hundreds of the poor people. Thus also with the forthcoming inquiries concerning malarial fever, which is spreading all over the country. Every ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... Rose was a person of good height, originally slender, but gathering an appreciable plumpness as the years went on, and with good taste in dress when she chose to exert it, which on the present occasion she did. She possessed acute perceptions and a decided method of action. But whether or not the relation of her perceptions to her actions was always influenced by good judgment was a question with her neighbors. It never was, however, a question ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... I have been indebted for materials, I must, also, include the name of M. Ternaux-Compans, so well known by his faithful and elegant French versions of the Munoz manuscripts; and that of my friend Don Pascual de Gayangos, who, under the modest dress of translation, has furnished a most acute and learned commentary on Spanish Arabian history,—securing for himself the foremost rank in that difficult department of letters, which has been illumined by the labors of a Masdeu, a Casiri, and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... thought his master appeared a little excited when he came home, but he confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight, hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal mania was ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... has disappeared; and, so goes their acute reasoning, as I was the last person in Uncle's house, before her absence was discovered, the logical conclusion is that I ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... speech, and of clauses in propositions. Of these tensions the intent in a man's mind at any moment is a living specimen. Experience at that moment may have a significance, a transitive force, that asks to be enshrined in some permanent expression; the more acute and irrevocable the crisis is, the more urgent the need of transmitting to other moments some cognisance of what was once so great. But were this experience to exhale its spirit in a vacuum, using no conventional and transmissible medium of expression, it would be foiled in its intent. It would ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... was surprised at his own skill. Acute of ear as he had become he could scarcely hear the brushing of the grass as he passed. As he approached the garden he saw two more men, rifles in hand, walking about, but paying little heed to them he kept on until he lay against ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute, disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received some definite embodiment. Autumn was getting hold of the old oak-tree, its leaves were browning. Sunshine had been plentiful and hot ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... showed only a faint tinge of blue. Here neither odour nor the memory of former visits could have come into play, and the tinge of blue was so faint that it could hardly have served as a guide. (11/8. A fact mentioned by Hermann Muller 'Die Befruchtung' etc. page 347, shows that bees possess acute powers of vision and discrimination; for those engaged in collecting pollen from Primula elatior invariably passed by the flowers of the long-styled form, in which the anthers are seated low down in the tubular corolla. Yet the difference in aspect between the long-styled ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... attack of (sub-acute?) rheumatic fever gave him a painful holiday, during which he crawled about the crowded cottage at home on his hands and knees. The one advantage of his irregularly long hours was that, if work were slack, he could linger over his meals. It was the assistants who kept a sharp eye on his movements. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... writer of prose romances grows brighter every year. His supreme achievement was to show that a book might be crammed with the most wildly exciting incidents, and yet reveal profound and acute analysis of character, and be written with consummate art. His tales have all the fertility of invention and breathless suspense of Scott and Cooper, while in literary style they immeasurably surpass the finest work of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another black boat like ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... wife. His approaches had no charm, no finesse. Presuming on his relationship, he caught at her hand as she passed, or took a seat beside her if he found her alone on a sofa. At such moments she was furious with him, and once she struck his hand away with such violence that she suffered acute pain for ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... ghastly rite. The whole left side of your jaw has suddenly developed an acute sensitiveness and the disaffection has spread to the four teeth on either side of the original one. You doubt if it will be possible for him to touch it at all. Perhaps all he intends to do this time is to ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... girl's curiosity for the man who rode beside her grew acute. She was aware—she had been aware all along—that he was far different from the other men of Manti—there was about him an atmosphere of refinement and quiet confidence that mingled admirably with his magnificent physical ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... which the leaves of G. striata have always more than 10 striae, which are hardly twice the breadth of the pubescent interstices, and the cicatrices of whose leaves are longer than broad, and more or less acute, both above and below. This is a source of character which in the supplement to the Prodr. Florae Novae Hollandiae, I have employed in a few cases both in Grevillea and Hakea, but which I believe to be important, as it not only expresses ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... acute interest. Why did not Wixton mention Innocent? Did he know she was not a Jocelyn? He waited, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... the corner of the wall, into which he had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to him,—no movement; I approached,—the animal was dead: his eyes protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire. I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favorite,—acute self-reproach; I accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken. Had this been done in the dark? Must it not have been by a hand human as mine; ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... would soon restore him his voice, and some select gendarmes seized him and laid him on the rack; there he uttered no complaint, not even a sigh, though instruments the most diabolical were employed, and pains the most acute must have been endured. When threatened that he should ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... are in opposition to the truth. There is great beauty in the thought, and gratification in the knowledge, that by obedience to the truth we can obtain a sound moral condition, whose conscientious principles are so acute that there is a timely warning at ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... for the first time risen with the last words, and she sank back in her chair. The memory of that acute disappointment seemed for the moment to efface what had come since. Deronda did not look at ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... it had something to do with the phases of the moon. During about ten days of the month when the moon was "dark," she was perfectly normal, but when a new moon appeared she was conscious of a vague uneasiness that increased and finally became acute when the moon was full, this being her ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... day my sense of joy Grows more acute, my soul (intensified By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen; While every day my hairs fall more and more, My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase— The horror quickening still from year to year, The consummation coming past ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... Surely, he thought, there must be some mistake. He was glad there was not a crowd of students about to witness the humiliation of Link—a humiliation none the less acute if the ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... head sank down upon his hands; he gave reins to the fiery scorn, the acute suffering which turn by turn seized him with every moment that seared the words of the letter deeper and deeper down into his brain. Until this he had never known what it was to suffer; until this his languid creeds had held ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... a treatise on S. Mark's Gospel.(438) To Origen's works, Eusebius, (his apologist and admirer,) is known to have habitually resorted; and, like many others, to have derived not a few of his notions from that fervid and acute, but most erratic intellect. Origen's writings in short, seem to have been the source of much, if not most of the mistaken Criticism of Antiquity. (The reader is reminded of what has been offered above ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... eager to meet a defect. It seems to hurry eagerly forward to overcome defects and difficulties. The blind man has more acute hearing and a more delicate sense of feel. The deaf man's eyes grow quicker to watch faces and movements and so learn what his ears fail to tell him. The lame man leans more on other muscles, and they answer with greater strength to meet the defect ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... plan of Roman Canterbury appears to carry the wall just as far as this point, and then turns at an acute angle towards the south side of the Cathedral. Following the direction Queen Bertha would have taken brings one to the great gateway of St. Augustine's Abbey, the Benedictine monastery founded by Augustine on the land given for that purpose by Ethelbert. ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home

... hand too was over the realm and speedily made itself felt in Ireland. Kildare was once more thrown into the Tower, from which this time he was never destined to emerge. He was ill already of a wound received the previous year, and the confinement and trouble of mind—which before long became acute—brought ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... Office work was not only exacting, but was connected with acute disagreements in the Ministry itself. It has been seen how closely Sir Charles was occupied with the Egyptian question, and how constantly he found himself opposed to Lord Hartington in his views of policy. Moreover, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... this, for it touched upon her greatest fear,—which had impelled her to go to Coniston. But she had hoped and believed that Jethro, knowing her feelings, would do nothing—since for her sake he had chosen to give up his power. Now an acute attack of rheumatism had come to her rescue, and she succeeded in getting Ephraim off to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... servants beyond the public contribution, which they destroyed in private. Their more average neighbors crowded into their gardens for the awesome festivities. The next morning everyone could return to work, renewed by the knowledge that the Festival of Acute Shortages would be with ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... as he afterward told me, waited till it had grown dark, then began squeaking and rustling at intervals, to draw the attention of the fox when first he should come out into the clearing, for foxes have ears so wonderfully acute, that they are able to hear a mouse squeak twenty ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... cast; but here the likeness ceased. The countenance of Lord Marney bespoke the character of his mind; cynical, devoid of sentiment, arrogant, literal, hard. He had no imagination, had exhausted his slight native feeling, but he was acute, disputatious, and firm even to obstinacy. Though his early education had been very imperfect, he had subsequently read a good deal, especially in French literature. He had formed his mind by Helvetius, whose system he deemed irrefutable, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... The acute pangs of hunger have given way to indifference. I'm sleepy. I think death from starvation is not so bad. But let no one suppose I expect it. I am prepared—that is all. I think the boys will be able, with the Lord's help, ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... broke out, so terribly acute and bitter, from a heap of gory carcasses hard by Arvina and the old trooper, that after calling several times in vain to enquire who was there, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... against the tree he afforded a fine opportunity for the study of acute and obtuse angles. His neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, back, knees and feet all described angles, and even the toes of his shocking boots deflected from the horizontal in a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... things to which we go. What is a man to do in another world, supposing there is another world, where ledgers and mills are out of date? Or what has a scholar or scientist to do in a state of things where there is no place for dictionaries and grammars, for acute criticism, or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... halted, conscious of an acute displeasure at the sight before him, a feeling compounded of resentment towards Holliday, whom he regarded as a puppy, and a sort of hurt disappointment in the girl. Was she, too, one of the many women who fell victims to Arthur's charm? He ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... very much for it. He had always respected her. But the situation was not less acute. There were two or three unfurnished rooms on the second floor. He began to make tentative suggestions as to their furnishing. Once he got a catalogue from an installment house, and tried to hide it from her. Tillie's eyes blazed. She burned ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... physician, whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man, fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... footsteps creeping about the hut, and felt that soft and dreadful influence flowing in upon her. Then she would wake her father, whispering, "He is there, I can feel that he is there." But by the time that the old man had painfully dragged himself to his feet—for now he was becoming very feeble and acute rheumatism or some such illness had got hold of him—and crept from the hut, there was no one to be seen. Only through the darkness he would hear the sound of a retreating step, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... without the corroboration of others. The hour must surely come in which he would be assailed by doubts. She felt she had lost him, and with the knowledge of her failure, was seized with a sickening sensation and an acute pain at the heart. A misty veil rose between her and the world and she swayed unsteadily as though about to fall. She knew she must not faint. She drew her hand across her eyes, then, putting all her ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... stifled a yawn that was no part of his performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot; and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did Stingaree; and yet was there ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... never very acute in this respect, were completely blunted by my course of life. Those fond recollections which, in a calm scene, would have wrung from me some tears to their memory, were now drowned or absorbed in the waste, the profligacy, and the dissipation of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... great attention to all Teodoro said, and, before answering her a word, he seized her hands, carried them by force to his lips, kissed them with great fervour, and even bedewed them copiously with tears. Teodoro could not help sympathising with the acute feelings of the youth, and shedding tears also. Although, when she had with difficulty withdrawn her hands from the youth's lips, he replied with a deep-drawn sigh, "I will not, and cannot deny, senora, that your suspicion is true; I am a woman, and the most unfortunate of my sex; ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... work-shop on his way, he perceived Thomas and Pierre there, and at once came in. But he was obliged to lean against a bench like a man who is dazed, haunted by a nightmare. His good-natured, energetic face retained an expression of acute anguish; and his left ear was scratched and bleeding. However, he at once wished to talk, overcome his feelings, and return to his life of activity. "I am very pleased to see you, my dear Thomas," said he, "I have been thinking over what you told me about our little motor. We ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... largest part of the bodily mass, exhaustion will rapidly follow, since the food does not contain all the essential, nutritive elements. Again, when the solids of the body have been wasted, they lose their susceptibility to stimuli, and the food does no good. Thus patients become emaciated during acute attacks of disease, upon the cessation of which they are too feeble to recover, simply because they have lost the power to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... we scarcely know what storms are. All winter long my front yard has been green and beautiful—roses blooming in January, and callas in March. During three and a half years there have been but two cases of acute disease of the chest within six miles of my office. I do not know of any death having occurred in this village or vicinity from an acute disease, since I came here nearly four years ago." What are the lauded climates of Italy and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... solidly comfortable dining-room of the upper house, a party of ladies and gentlemen who chatted through the meal as merrily and innocently as though there were no such things as tyranny or suffering in the world, and whom not the most acute observer would have taken for the most dangerous and desperately earnest body of conspirators that ever plotted the destruction, not of an empire, but of a civilisation and a social order that it had taken twenty centuries ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... spectacular quasi-predatory careers of fraud run by certain "captains of industry", came to a head earlier and were appreciably on the decline by the close of the seventies. The recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also seems to have passed its most acute stage before the close of the eighties. But the learned ritual and paraphernalia here spoken of are a still remoter and more recondite expression of the barbarian animistic sense; and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration more slowly and reached their most effective ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... dependent entirely upon Diego for information as to what was going on in her little world, that is, at the mission. She was an acute little person in spite of her simplicity, and it would not have taken one as acute as she, to see that something was disturbing the neophytes, and tending to make them unruly. One day, at the hour for shutting up the Indian children for the night, a youth was discovered missing. Search was made, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... best-intentioned people—where investigations are concerned; obstructions which they themselves oft-times do not notice, and to which no thought is given by prejudiced persons. For with animals we come up against a more acute degree of sensitiveness than we do in a child, which, owing to certain rudiments of common sense, is able to adapt itself more easily to either teacher ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... when she saw the effect it had on Edith. Gradually as she read, there crept over her a look which Grace had never seen before upon the face of any human being—a look as if the pent-up grief of years was concentrated in a single moment of anguish too acute to be described. There were livid spots upon her neck—livid spots upon her face, while the dry eyes seemed fading out, so dull, and dim, and colorless they looked, as Edith read the wailing cry with which Arthur St. Claire bade ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... simple in some of the Grapsoidae, as in Aratus Pisonii, a charming, lively Crab which ascends the mangrove bushes (Rhizophora) and gnaws their leaves. By means of its short but remarkably acute claws, which prick like pins when it runs over the hand, this Crab climbs with the greatest agility upon the thinnest twigs. Once, when I had one of these animals sitting upon my hand, I noticed that it elevated the hinder part of its carapace, and that by this means ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller

... therefore, informs us, that when the Tyrants were expelled from Sicily, and private property (after a long interval of servitude) was determined by public trials, the Sicilians Corax and Tisias (for this people, in general, were very quick and acute, and had a natural turn for controversy) first attempted to write precepts on the art of Speaking. Before them, he says, there was no one who spoke by method, and rules of art, though there were many who discoursed very sensibly, and generally from written notes: but Protagoras took the pains to ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... Ambrose could have believed him some devout almost inspired hermit rather than the acute skilful artisan he appeared at other times; and in fact, Tibble Steelman, like many another craftsman of those days, led a double life, the outer one that of the ordinary workman, the inner one devoted to those lights that were shining unveiled and new to many; and especially ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... forms an immense triangle marked out upon a vast plain of white sand, its acute angle directed toward the north and piercing a corner of the desert. In the environs there was almost nothing, hardly even a few grasses, with some dwarf ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... the discharge of these offices that in the provincial chapter held in 1617 he was unanimously elected prior provincial. Most unfortunately, when so much was hoped from the eminent abilities of this very judicious and learned religious, an acute illness ended his valuable life; he died at Manila on May 17 of the same year." (Perez's Catalogo, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... been expected, the sudden tilting of the boat at an acute angle threw the occupants all into one end. There were yells and shouts, and then came splashes, as one after another fell into ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton



Words linked to "Acute" :   critical, obtuse, perceptive, chronic, acuteness, sharp, piercing, accent, medicine, medical specialty, accent mark, pointed



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