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Break up   /breɪk əp/   Listen
Break up

verb
1.
To cause to separate and go in different directions.  Synonyms: dispel, disperse, dissipate, scatter.
2.
Discontinue an association or relation; go different ways.  Synonyms: break, part, separate, split, split up.  "The couple separated after 25 years of marriage" , "My friend and I split up"
3.
Come apart.
4.
Break violently or noisily; smash.  Synonyms: break apart, crash.
5.
Make a break in.  Synonyms: cut off, disrupt, interrupt.
6.
Cause to go into a solution.  Synonyms: dissolve, resolve.
7.
Suffer a nervous breakdown.  Synonyms: collapse, crack, crack up, crock up.
8.
Take apart into its constituent pieces.  Synonyms: break apart, disassemble, dismantle, take apart.
9.
Destroy the completeness of a set of related items.  Synonym: break.
10.
Set or keep apart.  Synonym: sever.
11.
Attack with or as if with a pickaxe of ice or rocky ground, for example.  Synonym: pick.
12.
Release ice.  Synonym: calve.
13.
Close at the end of a session.  Synonyms: adjourn, recess.
14.
Bring the association of to an end or cause to break up.  Synonym: dissolve.  "The judge dissolved the tobacco company"
15.
Come to an end.  Synonym: dissolve.  "The tobacco monopoly broke up"
16.
Break or cause to break into pieces.  Synonyms: fragment, fragmentise, fragmentize.
17.
Cause to separate.  Synonyms: disperse, scatter.  "Disperse particles"
18.
Separate (substances) into constituent elements or parts.  Synonyms: break down, decompose.
19.
Laugh unrestrainedly.  Synonym: crack up.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Break up" Quotes from Famous Books



... saw the phalanx break up, and realized that they would not operate, she went mad. She stood against the door, and accused them ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to guard. But what is that? It is a woman that cry out loud by herself! I understand now why she sit down so hopeless when we first land. I have not know much about women, but I understand how she feel. It is not her lady, or the dark, or the ice break up, or the cold. It is not Ignace Pelott. It is the name of being prison on Round Island with a man till the ice is out of the straits. She is so shame she want to die. I think I will kill myself. If Mamselle Rosalin cry out loud once more, I plunge in the ...
— The Skeleton On Round Island - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... hope for the best. If we can but get enough for them to take us across to the Obi, we ought to be able to coast round in a canoe to Archangel. But I don't think we could do it from this river in one season. The ice does not break up till June, and begins to form again in October. We can only rely upon three open months. I doubt whether we could get in that time from the Yenesei. However, it is of no use our bothering ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... of another kind," said Mr. Linden; "it is this:—'Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he return and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... fled within that holy place! How brightly beamed the light of heaven from every happy face! Again I longed for that sweet time when friend shall meet with friend— "When congregations ne'er break up, and ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... territories insulated by strong natural boundaries, or capital cities composing separate jurisdictions for the world of manners, by means of local differences continually ripening into habits. But this tendency in Europe to break up and subdivide her spirit of manners, was withered and annihilated by the unity of a French taste. The ambition of a French refinement had so thoroughly seized upon Germany, and even upon the Vandalism of arctic Sweden, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... she knows how to salute, all right. Her way would break up an army, though. All the same, I guess I've earned it, for by Monday night I'll be up in a Syracuse shovel works, wearin' a one-piece business suit of the Never-rip brand, and I'll likely have enough grease on ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... everything but my soul's salvation was a matter of secondary consideration to me. I had a small fortune, a nice home, kind neighbors, and numerous friends, but nothing could shake the determination I then formed to break up, sell out, and leave Illinois and go to the ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... report says, being somewhat skeptical about the quality of this blood, concealed themselves in the church, and when the pious farce began, took so active a part in the sport upon the naked backs of the fathers, as to inflict bodily injury, and break up the bloody entertainment. Still Protestantism has been felt in Mexico, if not embraced, and the common people look back to the happy time when the soldiers of their Protestant conquerors made money plenty among them, and when even-handed ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... foretells that pleasant hours will break up gloomy forebodings. To see them withered, indicates that much and varied illness in your family connections will cause ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... a lot more before I break up my happy home." Mack's voice was dry. "In the meantime you fellows make yourselves comfortable. Come on, Curly. Let's ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... to print only the information distributed by the Wolff Telegraph Bureau. But public sympathy for Liebknecht was so great that mounted police were kept in every part of the city day and night to break up crowds which might assemble. Behind closed doors, without an opportunity to consult his friends, with only an attorney appointed by the Government to defend him, Liebknecht was sentenced to two years' hard labour. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... for the spread. The old gentlemen break up their Lloyds' meeting—the old ladies break up their scandal club—the young ladies and their beaux are busy in arrangements, and though the cork-screws are nowhere to be found, Pistol has his in one of the many pockets of his ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Irish, being descended from the Lombards, but the Sicilians and Calabrians are a mixture of the old pirates, the Moors, and the degenerated Latin races that were left when the Roman Empire fell to pieces. The endeavor to break up the Mafia sent all the leaders of that nefarious Sicilian society here, and now the attack upon the Neapolitan Camorra lands another criminal group. Italy has sent us a larger proportion of criminals ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... Russell, the guardian, you know! As soon as he came on, he and his wife began to make trouble, and tried to break up the engagement; they also tried to keep me away from the house. Then there was another difficulty: they allowed some Spanish blackguards to get acquainted with them. Mrs. Westlotorn, the widow, you know, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... in force and probably would have taken all scraps of this kind. The floes were becoming soft and "rotten," and walking was increasingly difficult. Deep pools of slush and water covered with thin snow made traps for the men. Stenhouse thought that a stiff blizzard would break up the pack. His anxiety was increasing with the advance of the season, and his log is a record of deep yearning to be free and active again. But the grip of the pack was inexorable. The hands had plenty of work on the 'Aurora', which was being made ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... to have known enough to apply this remedy, because it's one I've tried myself. If you could know, since the night you heard me make a certain vow, what a time I've had with myself to keep it, you'd understand that I know what it means to try to break up a habit. Mine's the habit of years. With my temper and some of my associations, intemperate profanity's been the easiest thing in the world to fall into. When things went wrong, out would come the oaths like water out of a spring—though that's a false comparison: like the filth out of a ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... we'll not fail!" Cataline interrupted him, in his deep penetrating tones. "We cannot, and we will not! and now, for I wax somewhat weary, we will break up this conclave. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... and if the Government goes on Stanley will be leader, but unless he puts it all on a different footing it must break up, and unless the Government people can be brought under better discipline it will fall to pieces, for nobody will support it on that motion of Wrottesley's for a call of the House. Both Stanley and Althorp deprecated ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... iniquities many, therefore is this promised perfection a stranger to the most part of Christians. Always what we want here, we must expect to have made up shortly. Heaven is a land of peace, and all things are there in full age, here all are in minority, it is but yet night, but when the day shall break up, and the shadows fly away, and the Prince of peace shall appear and be revealed, he shall bring peace and grace both with him, and both perfect. To ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... feet feel as if they were wood. Laura has lost her tippet; I lend her mine, and she kind o' blushes. The old pond seems glad to have us go, and the fire-hangbird's nest in the willer tree waves us good-bye. Laura promises to come over to our house in the evenin', and so we break up. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... Andrew," said Ambrose in a careless manner, "I wish you'd just lend me your pickaxe, please; just to break up some hard ground." ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... favoured by the darkness of the night and the patter of the rain which was now returning, though without wind, I approached until I could almost have touched her. It seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie by speech. I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... into the calm mirror of its bosom as it flows past them.... By this work of his maturity he has placed himself on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach of envy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than this ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... was that we might reach our anchorage with speed— that would break up the game. I helped the ship along all I could with my prayers. At last we went booming through the Golden Gate, and my pulses leaped for joy. I hurried back to that door and glanced in. Alas, there was small room for hope—Backus's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... last drop, irrespective of whether we happen to have swallowed a final mouthful of food or not. When the conversation has died, as everything must die, from sheer inability to draw further breaths of life, then is the time to break up that old encircling dome of thought; to construct a fresh one, if need be, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... after distant game. It was not Mahomet who gave them that impulse. But next, what was it that had hindered the Arab tribes from obeying the impulse? Simply this, that they were always in feud with each other; so that their expeditions, beginning in harmony, were sure to break up in anger on the road. What they needed was, some one grand compressing and unifying principle, such as the Roman found in the destinies of his city. True; but this, you say, they found in the sublime principle that God was one, and had appointed them to be the scourges ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... volunteers. Besides those on whom the lot fell, a certain number came forward and offered to go of their own free will and choice to live in the capital. They would break up their country homes, and for love of their country and love of Jerusalem would move into the Holy City. The post of danger was the post which most needed them, and they were not afraid to go to ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... their ships, and on what terms they have been received by the Spaniards. If they are made welcome at Pensacola, and permitted by the Spaniards to make that a convenient base of operations against us, the government may see fit to authorize me to break up the hornet's nest before the swarm gets too big to be handled safely. However, that is another matter. What I want is positive information of the exact facts, whatever they are. The difficulties in the way are great. We are at peace with Spain, and must do no hostile ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... To break up the monotony and add variety to the dull routine of their life, Champlain contrived what he called L'ORDRE DE BON TEMPS, or The Rule of Mirth, which was introduced and carried out with spirit and success. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... concentrated power could overcome the obstacles to such beneficent reforms as they meditated. Men who sought only the general good must wound every distinct and separate interest of class, and would be mad to break up the only force that they could count upon, and thus to throw away the means of preventing the evils that must follow if things were left to the working of opinion and the feeling of masses. They had no love for absolute power in itself, but they computed that, if they had ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... according to Laycock, being three and one-half days. I think it would, however, be more correct to say that the menstrual cycle, perhaps originally formed with reference to the influence of the moon on the sexual and social habits of men and other animals, tends to break up by a process of segmentation into fortnightly and weekly cycles. If we are justified in assuming that there is a male menstrual cycle, we must conclude that in such a case as that just analyzed, the weekly rhythm has become ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... was not at all like that of many other devoted servants of God. She was not compelled to break up the fallow ground, or be the first to drop the Seed into the soil. Others had preceded her—they had prepared the way—they had erected the kindly shelter—they had opened the heathen mind to receive light and truth. Hence, on her arrival, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... thermometer would register some two or three degrees below freezing. A thin shell of ice would form on the ditch which we called a trench. This would crackle round our legs and the cold would eat into the very bone. At dawn the ice would begin to break up and a steady sleet begin to fall. Later the sleet would turn to rain, and so the day would pass till we were soaked through to the skin. At night the frost would come again and stiffen our clothes to our tortured ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... here in Warwick; and I became very much interested, for municipal reform is one of my hobbies. Wherever I 've lived, I 've always been against the machine, at least to the extent of my vote. Miss Wycliffe told me that you were trying to break up the clique that has ruled Warwick since the war; and when she saw how much she had enlisted my sympathy, she proposed that we become acquainted. That's how I happened to send a message to you by the captain. I did n't know when you were likely ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... to this evening with keen delight; it was stolen, chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she was supposed to be at Soames'. She had expected reward for her subterfuge, planned for her lover's sake; she had expected it to break up the thick, chilly cloud, and make the relations between them which of late had been so puzzling, so tormenting—sunny and simple again as they had been before the winter. She had come with the intention of saying something definite; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Grantly, very gently. She would willingly have repressed the sound altogether, but it had been too much for her. If she found reason to think that Lady Lufton was playing her false, she would immediately take her daughter away, break up the treaty, and prepare for the Hartletop alliance. Such were the thoughts that ran through her mind. But she knew all the while that Lady Lufton was not false. The fault was not with Lady Lufton; nor, perhaps, altogether with Lord Lufton. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... property, cut up into very fine building lots, by the same gentleman, one of the conditions of sale announced was, that no bid should be received from colored persons. De Baptiste attended and bid in a lot. When his bid was refused, he endeavored to break up the auction in a row, by the aid of other negroes, and failing in this, brought an action at law against Mr. Macdonnel. This Mr. M. prepared to defend, but it was never pressed to a trial. These incidents, together with ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... the value of a habit lies in its tenacity. No harder task ever confronts a life than to break up one habit and substitute another after the brain cells grow hard. The process requires not only that activity be directed away from the pathway that irresistibly draws it, but at the same time a new groove be traced ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... trivial, but practical experience has proved their importance. The vowel o is suggested because it has been found easier to secure the use of the head-register with this vowel than with ah, when it is sought to break up the habit of singing loudly ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... death; my wish is to do what is right by you, in return for your consenting to my pleasure in the matter, while I am alive. It will cost you more to live in Boston than where you do now, and I have no business to expect you to break up and come to a new home unless I can make it an object to you in some way. You can do some things for your children here that you could not do in Homesworth. I will give you two thousand dollars a year to live on, and secure the same to you ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... his low response, "it was but lately. You were engaged then to Philemon. Why break up this ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... behind him trying to look as if they were not present. At the end of a row, about half-way up the chapel, Mr. Lavender composed himself to listen, thinking, "However eager I may be to fulfil my duty and break up this meeting, it behoves me as a fair-minded man to ascertain first what manner of meeting it is that I am breaking up." But as the speaker progressed, in periods punctuated by applause from what, by his experience at the door, Mr. Lavender knew to be a packed audience, he grew more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... State Central Committee to preside at the Convention of 1871. It was quite likely that the Convention might break up in disorder and the result would be two factions, each claiming to be the regular Republican organization. I told the gentlemen of the State Central Committee, who communicated to me their desire, that I would do it ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... clothed with moss and lichens, and altogether uninviting. At least so he found them till he penetrated to the white blank spaces on the map, and came upon undreamed-of rich spruce forests and unrecorded Eskimo tribes. It had been his intention, (and his bid for fame), to break up these white blank spaces and diversify them with the black markings of mountain-chains, sinks and basins, and sinuous river courses; and it was with added delight that he came to speculate upon the possibilities of ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less fragmentary in character than now. The attempts—successful and otherwise—at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and break up the original heath into small detached heaths, had not been carried far; Enclosure Acts had not taken effect, and the banks and fences which now exclude the cattle of those villagers who formerly enjoyed rights of commonage thereon, and the carts ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... bringing them into closer contact with the problems which are daily forced upon us in the business of daily life. A divorce between the men of thought and the men of action is really bad for both. Whatever tends to break up the intellectual stupor of large classes, to rouse their minds, to increase their knowledge of the genuine work that is being done, to provide them even with more of such recreations as refine and ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... together, making it dreary and uncomfortable both in doors and out. Years will sometimes pass before there is any excessive amount of these, and then sometimes for years together they will prevail to a most disagreeable extent. They break up the mountain roads and swell the mountain streams to such a degree as to render travelling almost impossible, and in a country where your friends are few, you do not like to be kept back from seeing them by the imminent risk of finding no road at all on the side of a hill where at best ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... whole staff, including the chronicler, who was to record the deeds of Governor Don Sancho Panza; and before the night was over he had given fresh proof of his wisdom, for he settled a quarrel between two gamblers and decided to break up gambling on his island. He kept a youth out of jail. And he restored a young girl, who wanted to see the world as a boy, to ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... quiet a while longer," he said. "They won't break up till closin' hour, an' m'appen there'll be a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... the moment—God forgive us for it—whatsoever our passion prompts us. The Lord's anger does not conquer Him. It does not conquer His patience, His love, His steadfast will for the good of all. Even when it shows itself in the flood and the earthquake; even though it break up the fountains of the great deep, and destroy from off the earth both man and beast, yet it is, and was, and ever will be, the anger of The Lamb—a patient, a merciful, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... to respect his wishes, and felt a natural desire to gratify him to the extent of his ability. He had never found him unreasonable, whatever might be his singularities, and besides, no plan of his own was crossed. He was obliged to admit the possibility of a failure of his suit. To break up the pleasant relations existing betwixt the Bernard family and himself; not to be allowed to approach Anne as before; a cold constraint to be substituted for a confiding friendship! No, the hazard was ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... that if he elbowed in and tried to break up the Clinch, it would mean a Rope Ladder, a piece in the Papers, and a final Reconciliation, with Parent playing ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... up to wandering memories. He knew the North, where he had risked and endured much. He had seen the tangled pines snap under their load of snow and go down in rows before the Arctic gales; he had watched the ice break up and the liberated floods hurl the floes into the forest. He had crossed the barren tundra where only moss can live and the shallow bog that steams in summer rests ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... break up camp and move on, He would send on from its place over the Ark the cloud in which beamed the two sacred letters Yod and He in the direction in which Israel was to march, and the four strips of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... know what was the quality of sugar that you sent to Fair Isle in August 1871?-No; we never break up the casks, but the quality ordered would be the same as the common brown ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... Bond, rubbing his soft old palms; "straight for us she comes—in a considerable hurry by this time, I can tell you! and if she happens to break up in the air, then, pray, sir, that a splinter of her may fall into your back yard—not too big a one! but a nice little comfortable piece"—he rubbed his palms— "for you know, no doubt, of what her substance is composed? Diamond, sir, in extraordinary evidence! ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... that the bark and binders of the roof were burning fiercely. "Tear it off!" he shouted, and dropping his rifle he seized a length of sawed scantling which his father had brought from the mill, and began to break up the burning roof and cast it off. But as it fell to the ground against the house, soon the logs outside were afire. The dwelling was ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... mechanical part of our lives, and to bring, as far as we can, every action under the conscious dominion of principle. The less we live by impulse, and the more we live by intelligent reflection, the better it will be for us. The more we can get habit on the side of goodness, the better; but the more we break up our habits, and make each individual action the result of a special volition of the spirit guided by reason and conscience, the better ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... young men started in a gentle voice an utterly indescribable ditty. One by one they took it up, till the rising tide of voices drowned my fervent periods. Perforce I stopped. They were all on their feet now. Did they mean to break up? In despair at the idea I lifted up my voice, loud and distinct (the only distinct voice left in the room), in the most shameful verse of that shameful composition, and seizing my neighbor's hand began to move slowly round the table. ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... could not have hobbled another step, for he was at the end of his strength and his feet were just two great blisters. He told a shocking tale of the troops, who entirely pillaged the villa. While he went to complain of them at the Kommandantur of the place, others came and what they did not break up, they took off. Pictures, engravings and mirrors were broken, the leather chairs slit up with a sabre—artistically done in the shape of a cross—and porcelain smashed in the middle of the courtyard. You can see by this that pillaging and atrocities began when ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... States had purposely willed it so. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to break up the Triple Entente, the only barrier to the Germanization, i.e., Prussianization, of Europe, and in the tragedy of Serajewo the Central Powers (or, at least, the dominating factor of the two) believed they had found a lever with which to break ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... "Come, let us break up this mutual admiration society," said Burt. "I'm ready for lunch already, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... spring. I ascended to the mast-head, and perceived that for miles, as far as the eye could scan the horizon, there was nothing but one continued succession of icebergs and floes inseparably united. Despairing, therefore, of any release, until the cold weather should break up, I made all arrangements for remaining during the winter. Our provisions were very short, and we were obliged to make use of the whale oil, but it soon produced such dysenteries, that it ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... grow out of poverty, into happiness and content. See his sorrow as he meets with undeserved opposition from rival traders, from slanderous agents, from bitter articles in the press, from Government officials and even police officers who strive to break up his immigrant parties. Recall the troubles of the Nelson Encampment as they reach him in letters and reports. Think of the misery of knowing thousands of miles away that his Colonists were starving, were being imprisoned, banished, seduced ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... thought. She was even to witness the magic of a great surgeon; though that was in her old age, when her attitude toward medicine had become one of humble thankfulness that, in all her daring, she had done no harm. To-day, she thought she could set a bone or break up a fever; and there was no doubt in her mind that, if other deeds were demanded of her, she should be led in the one true way. So she sat down by her patient, and was watching there, hopeful of moisture on his palm, when Mattie broke into the front room, impetuous as ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... afterwards met with the following explanation, which appears to me much more reasonable. "The Indian summer is so called because, at the particular period of the year in which it obtains, the Indians break up their village communities, and go to the interior to prepare for their winter hunting. This season seems to mark a dividing line, between the heat of summer, and the cold of winter, and is, from its mildness, suited to these migrations. The ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... the administration. It was, moreover, an important advantage to England that the United States should not ally themselves with her enemy, for next to herself, the Americans were the great seafaring people of the world, and were in a position to ravage her commerce, and, aided by France, to break up her West Indian possessions. If the United States had followed the natural prejudices of the time and had espoused the cause of France, it would have been wise and right for England to attack them and ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... conscience hath hitherto grown all KNOWLEDGE! Break up, break up, ye discerning ones, the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... favour. Neither party was willing to give way. "No compromise for us," said Luther Martin. "You must give each state an equal suffrage, or our business is at an end." "Then we are come to a full stop," said Roger Sherman. "I suppose it was never meant that we should break up without doing something." When the question as to allowing equality of suffrage to the states in the Federal Senate was put to vote, the result was a tie. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland—five states—voted in the affirmative; Massachusetts, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... my mother continued, "I am afraid we will have to break up the home altogether. It's no use; your father has no idea of making a living. I regret the day I ever saw him. Since he has taken to drink he has no more idea of how to make a living than a cat. I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... detachment of the State artillery with field-pieces and a plentiful supply of ammunition to reinforce the Boers, who were then in position to intercept Dr. Jameson, and it has further been suggested that the obvious course for the Reform Committee to have taken was to break up the line and to stop trains passing out towards Krugersdorp, also to seize the telegraph and railway offices. Such action would have been perfectly futile. As a matter of fact the artillery and ammunition were sent direct from Pretoria ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... the doctor will serve him best, where it is the mad blood that should be bled away. To break up eggs, the white of them, in a tin can, will put new blood in him, and whiskey, and to taste no food through ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... forward, if it is to unsettle you, Phoebe,' said Miss Fennimore, not unkindly; 'I regret your being twice disappointed; but, if your mother should refer it to me, as I make no doubt she will, I should say that it would be a great pity to break up our course of studies.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for it? Why, I will tell you, by the break up of a Roman family, brother—the father of a small family dies, and perhaps the mother, and the poor children are left behind, sometimes they are gathered up by their relations, and sometimes, if they have none, by charitable Romans, who bring them ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... in June, 1877, but we remained in town until the end of July. It wasn't very warm and many people remained until the end of the session. The big schools too only break up on the 15th of July, and many parents remain in Paris. The Republican campaign had already begun, and there were numerous little dinners and meetings when plans and possibilities were discussed. W. got back usually very late from Versailles. When he knew ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... it, and brought up from childhood, as it were, in its ranks. And it should be his honest pride to see that it is one of the best drilled, most orderly, most efficient, and bravest in the whole army. But that is no reason why he should go about with a drum to recruit from, weaken, or break up other regiments; or why he should deny that there are other regiments which equally belong to the grand army, and may be even more efficient than his own, though they do not wear the exact pattern of uniform, or may charge on horseback while his marches on foot, or possess cannon while his own ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... ye." But already, before half this address was delivered, the crowd had dispersed in all directions,—the women still keeping together, and the men sneaking off towards the ale-house. Such was the beneficent effect of the fatal stocks on the first day of their resuscitation. However, in the break up of every crowd there must always be one who gets off the last; and it so happened that our friend Lenny Fairfield, who had mechanically approached close to the stocks, the better to hear the oracular opinions of Gaffer Solomons, had no less mechanically, on the abrupt appearance ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... movement, which was much aided by the unexpected conversion of the "old squire" Zebulon Estey to Baptist principles. Father Crandall writes of that day: "Nearly thirty candidates were baptized, and the meeting did not break up until the going down of the sun. It was truly solemn and delightful to hear the praises of the Lord sung by great numbers of happy converts in boats returning home from the delightful scene. The work of that ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... so. And if I were, I am not a youngster, and my life is a tolerably full one. I could hold myself in and trample it down if it were best to do so. I can hardly imagine myself absorbed in a great passion. My bachelor life is a good many years old—my habits won't break up easily. And, supposing I felt the beginnings of it, I could stop it if ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "stay where you are, and do you stay, too, Estelle. This Captain Twinely must drink a glass of wine with us. He passes for a gentleman. Then if he has business with me I shall take him away. I must not break up our little party. It is not every day that we have the pleasure of listening to such charming speeches as ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... the yield will be all the better for the pasturing, and sow the blue-grass seed on the stubble in August. 5. No, but red top will in spite of your best efforts to the contrary unless you till and thoroughly break up the land. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... I went into my bedroom and made a pile of my opera-hat. It didn't look very impressive—hardly worth having a sack specially sent round for it. To keep it company I collected an assortment of clothes. It pained me to break up my wardrobe in this way, but I wanted the bidding for my opera-hat to be brisk, and a few preliminary suits would warm the public up. Altogether it was a goodly pile when it was done. The opera-hat perched on the top, half of it only ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... of the handiest of the men to break up these empty ammunition-boxes and construct a rude cross for the trench. It's the most appropriate "memorial." It signifies self-sacrifice, and did they not, "obedient unto death," give their lives for others; it indicates the cheering hope in ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... days Ursula went about bright and hard, singing to herself, making love to the children, but her soul hard and cold with regard to her parents. Nothing more was said. The hardness and brightness lasted for four days. Then it began to break up. So at evening she said ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... calm superiority asserted itself so mildly it was pardoned for its grace. Without a gayety unbecoming his mourning, he nevertheless made such lively sallies and such amusing jokes about his first mishaps at Reuilly as to break up the stiffness of the party. He conversed pleasantly with each one in turn, and, seeming to take the deepest interest in his affairs, put him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... wuz lent out ez yushal, a spekilater come erlong wid a lot er niggers, en Mars Marrabo swap' Sandy's wife off fer a noo 'oman. W'en Sandy come back, Mars Marrabo gin 'im a dollar, en 'lowed he wuz monst'us sorry fer ter break up de fambly, but de spekilater had gin 'im big boot, en times wuz hard en money skase, en so he wuz bleedst ter make de trade. Sandy tuk on some 'bout losin' his wife, but he soon seed dey want no use cryin' ober spilt merlasses; en bein' ez he lacked de looks er de noo 'ooman, he tuk up wid ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... naturally copy their elders and gossip too; but, when preparing for Purim, they are all too busy to talk or even to ask questions. The boys, too, up to the age of twelve, are allowed to help. Some break up the big pieces of loaf-sugar, and beat up the eggs, and take the cakes, when ready, to the public ovens, for here there are no proper ovens as there are in London houses, so a public oven is built not far from the Synagogue. It is ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager

... men," he continued. "We hear o' Smillie haein hale rows o' cottages bought, an' a lot ither rubbish, but I wouldna believe it. It's a' to get the men to gang back to their work; an' if they do that, it'll no' only break the strike, but it'll break up the union, an' that's what's wanted mair than anything else. I've heard Smillie an' my faither talkin' aboot a' thae things lang syne, an' Smillie says that's what the stories are set aboot for. We should ha'e sense enough no' to heed them, for ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... found himself hemmed in on every side by English territory; and since conquest over Britons was denied him he sought a new sphere of action in setting his kingdom at the head of the conquerors of the south. The break up of Wessex no doubt aided his attempt; but we know little of the causes or events which brought about his success. We know only that the supremacy of the Kentish king was owned at last by the English peoples of the east ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... dynamiting for tree planting is to break up the subsoil at a depth of from three to five feet so as to create a soil sponge or water-absorbing area twelve or twenty feet in diameter around and underneath the spot where the tree is to stand, so that the heavy rainfalls and melting snow of spring may be conserved ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various

... both the ownership and operation of manufacturing industries and of trade must remain in private hands. The next question is, will the greatest advantage to the public be secured by starting a crusade to re-establish competition and break up all existing monopolies in manufacturing and trade; or by taking the opposite course, legalizing monopolies and so regulating them by law that they shall be prevented from making undue profits by laying an ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... seems so wild as one that comes at the time of full moon, when the clouds break up and fly in great masses of black and silver against the deeper sky beyond, while bright light and deepest shadow chase each other across land and sea beneath them. Kolgrim and I stood under the lee of a shed, ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... how it was with Roland, and on account of the trifling accident the party was obliged to break up before all the arrangements had been completed, and Tom had to assist Roland back ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose

... One learns as he passes from town to town, through cities and across plains, that the general reason for industry everywhere is to get the means to build and support a home. Row upon row, street upon street, they run in every village you traverse. They dot the hills and valleys, they break up the mountain side. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... as we will, the fact reveals itself more and more that the one exception alluded to is the 'head and front of this offending,' the heart and core of this gigantic difficulty, the one and sole cause of the desperate attempt now being waged to disturb and break up the process of experiment, otherwise so peacefully and harmoniously progressing, in favor of the freedom of man. There is no possibility of grappling rightly with the difficulty itself, unless we understand to the bottom the nature ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... too much reason to fear that the result of this match, and Zukertort's sensitiveness to supposed coolness towards him afterwards mainly contributed to cause his premature break up and untimely end. I always advised him before the match, in justice to himself, to stipulate for a time limit of 20 or 25 moves an hour, and not to play for more than 100 pounds a side, the previous extreme maximum for the greatest matches, happy for him if he had observed ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... neighbouring church clocks, striking eleven, roused me from my abstraction. More cabs were in the street; more people were gathered about the door, by this time. Was all this bustle, the bustle of arrival or of departure? Was the party about to break up, at an hour when parties usually begin? I determined to go nearer to the house, and ascertain whether the music had ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... and the men had to climb into the rigging. All the women were watching and waiting to see her go to pieces. There was no chance of getting a boat out, so the helpless villagers waited to see the men drown; and the women cried in their shrill, piteous manner. Dorothy said, "Will she break up in an hour? If I thowt she could hing there, I would be away for the lifeboat." But the old men said, "You can never cross the burn." Four miles south, behind the point, there was a village where a lifeboat was kept; but just half-way a stream ran into the sea, and across this stream there was ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... the equality of the two sexes is of great importance in relation to this subject. The highly developed and cultivated woman disposes of herself with a freedom unknown in Northern countries; and her unfaithfulness does not break up her life in the same terrible manner, so long as no outward consequences follow from it. The husband's claim on her fidelity has not that firm foundation which it acquires in the North through the poetry and passion of courtship and betrothal. After ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... monsoon were ranging in denser ranks along the evening sky like the tents of a beleaguering army. Hardly had we time to settle down for the wet season, see to the stacking of fire-logs, and be sure that every tile on the roof was firm in its appointed place, when the embattled host seemed to break up from its last camp, and advance upon us along the whole line ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... At the conclusion of the hymn, another of the three men by the altar began to pray, just in the same manner as his comrade had done, and seemingly using much the same words. When he had done, there was another hymn, after which, seeing that the congregation was about to break up, I bowed my head towards the interior of the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... maladministration of the affairs of the City. A Committee had been chosen to request these City officers to resign, and this Committee were directed to report at an adjourned meeting in the same place. Before the second meeting was held, it was understood that an attempt would be made to break up the meeting. The intended disturbers stationed themselves opposite the Montgomery Block, and by shouts, groans and noises of all kinds, endeavoured to interrupt the proceedings. This was borne as ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... proved [against them]. His integrity had been seen throughout his whole life, his good fortune in the war with the Helvetii. That he would therefore instantly set about what he had intended to put off till a more distant day, and would break up his camp the next night, in the fourth watch, that he might ascertain, as soon as possible, whether a sense of honour and duty, or whether fear had more influence with them. But that, if no one else should follow, yet he would go with only the tenth legion, of which he had no misgivings, ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar



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