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Unwarranted   /ənwˈɔrəntɪd/   Listen
Unwarranted

adjective
1.
Incapable of being justified or explained.  Synonyms: indefensible, insupportable, unjustifiable, unwarrantable.
2.
Without a basis in reason or fact.  Synonyms: baseless, groundless, idle, unfounded, wild.  "The allegations proved groundless" , "Idle fears" , "Unfounded suspicions" , "Unwarranted jealousy"
3.
Lacking justification or authorization.  Synonyms: undue, unjustified.  "Unwarranted limitations of personal freedom"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unwarranted" Quotes from Famous Books



... their heads off. Joseph, as we have already seen, had been completely subjugated by his younger brother, and it is not to be wondered at, perhaps, that, with his younger brother at a safe distance, he should manifest some jealousy, and affect to treat his sentiments with an unwarranted levity. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... It was an aged and decrepit Renault, held together with string and wire, and suffering so badly from asthma and rheumatism that more than once I feared it would die on my hands before I reached my destination. It had as nurses two Annamites, who took unwarranted liberties with the truth by describing themselves as mechaniciens. Accompanying them were two sullen-faced Chinese. All four of them, I found, proposed to accompany me to Pnom-Penh. At this I protested vigorously, on the ground that, as the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... reader feels that my suspicions were not wholly unwarranted, were indeed inevitable, he will not laugh at me on learning that once more these suspicions were set aside, and the fact—the damnatory fact, as I regarded it—discovered by me so accidentally, and, I ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... interfered because she took for granted that it was unnecessary. Even when Lyons, after reading the article in the Sentinel, had dropped the remark that the measure was really harmless and the outcry against it unwarranted, she had supposed that he was merely seeking to be magnanimous. She had forgotten this speech until it was recalled by Lyons's obvious state of worry during the last few days. She had noticed this at first without special concern, believing it due to the malicious insinuations of Stringer. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... silently handed the man my cigar-case. He selected a weed with a discriminating care that I felt cast an unwarranted reflection on the quality of the cigars I smoked. I watched him in silence while he cut off the end with a neat, precise stroke of his penknife, lit the cigar and blew a cloud of blue smoke out of his mouth. All the time I was staring at him I could feel Moira's eyes on ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... having taken their child to a hospital for tratment, they learned that it had beenused for experimentation, though no lasting harm could come to it from the experiment, someone would pay the penalty for the unwarranted deed, if money or influence or, these failing, muscle, could reach far ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it, and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food-supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great democracy, and we shall ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... perhaps to an unwarranted degree. In the Victorian period, for instance, there may seem something grotesque in placing Tupper's judgments on verse beside Browning's. Yet, since it is true that so slight a poet as William Lisles Bowles ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... to appreciate the problems and responsibilities outlined in War Department Circular 124; the assumption that black troops would not be used in certain types of duty in the future because they had not been so used in the past was unwarranted, General Paul added. Limited or token employment of Negroes, he declared, was ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... considering the great prejudice which Gods Kirk in this land, hath sustained these years by-past, by the unwarranted printing of lybels, pamphlets, and polemicks; to the disgrace of Religion, slander of the Gospel, infecting and disquyeting the mindes of Gods people, and disturbance of the peace of the Kirk, and remembring ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... What is actually given and needs to be accounted for is the fact clearly focussed, with its less clearly defined fringe: Bergson's sweeping assumption of the existence of a further vast field of virtual knowledge in order to account for it, does, at first sight, seem arbitrary and unwarranted and in. need of considerable justification before it can be accepted. For him the problem then becomes, not to account for our knowing as much as we do, but to see why it is that we do not know a great deal more: why our actual knowledge ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... leaped quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear Arizona night. The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted as an immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing through me. Pausing upon the brink of the ledge I upbraided myself for what now seemed to me wholly unwarranted apprehension. I reasoned with myself that I had lain helpless for many hours within the cave, yet nothing had molested me, and my better judgment, when permitted the direction of clear and logical reasoning, convinced me that ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... legitimate direct inferences, he rejects the ultimate conclusions, brings some weighty arguments to bear against them, and is evidently convinced that he can draw a clear line between the sound inferences, which he favors, and the unsound or unwarranted theoretical deductions, which he rejects. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... His age, the rough usage of the day before, and this unwarranted second arrest had combined to take away from him a large part of his natural courage. He insisted that Helen should wire her Eastern friends, stating the case and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... abhorrence of every friend to humanity, and every one who has respect for the laws of civilized and mitigated warfare, we will, nevertheless, refrain, so far as the circumstances of outraged humanity will permit, from the violence of invective, and wholly from unwarranted crimination. Those, into whose hands these documents may fall, will, however, preserve them as a monument erected to the memory of their slaughtered countrymen, and a memento of the unfeeling cruelty of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... Congress by President Johnson. At the same time, he issued Executive Order 11296 on the subject, directing all Federal executive agencies with influence in such matters to do everything possible to discourage uneconomic and unwarranted use of the nation's flood plains. This, of course, includes the present Potomac ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... of admissions like these by men who have a right to be heard in the matter, and considering that the tree can never change the nature of the root from which it sprang, the conclusion is not unwarranted that "anti-Semitic" is ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... the thought of mimicking Gilby Zilda was roused to an unwarranted glow of excitement showed, had any one been wise enough to see it, that she felt some inward cause of pleasurable excitement at the mention of his name. A narrow nature cannot see absurdity in what it loves, but Zilda's nature was not narrow. She had learnt to love little Gilby in a fond, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... is at present used, asks men to embark on the overloaded phrases of the General Confession. I know that this may be justified by arguing that the Prayer Book assumes that the other parts of the Christian religion are in the minds of 'the faithful' members of the Church. But this assumption is unwarranted as regards the mass of soldiers whom we keep on inviting to use the more or less mutilated forms of Morning and ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot

... Congress recommending action. Under this messenger-boy concept of the Office, the President cannot even act to preserve legislative programs from destruction so that Congress will have something left to act upon. There is no judicial finding that the executive action was unwarranted because there was in fact no basis for the President's finding of the existence of an emergency for, under this view, the gravity of the emergency and the immediacy of the threatened disaster are considered irrelevant as ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Is what disturbs Fastidio. Does he think That a man's wooing never is offensive To woman's dignity? In either sex The disaffection is not prompted by The wooing but the wooer; love can never Be an unwelcome tribute to the lover; Though freedom premature, or forwardness Unwarranted, may rightly fail to win. And so I'll run my risk; for I confess— (Keep the unuttered secret, sacred leaf!)— That there is one whom I could love—could die for, Would he but—Tears? Well, tears may come from strength As well as ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... punishes seditious acts is acquiesced in, and that the part which goes to restrain what are called seditious writings is alone the object of the petitions. This part of the law is complained of as being unwarranted by the Constitution, and destructive of the first principles of republican government. It is always justifiable, in examining the principle of a law, to inquire what other laws can be passed with equal reason, and to impute to it all the mischiefs for which it ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... that such implicit and unwarranted confidence implied a great responsibility, and he drove with corresponding care. A mishap now might nip this very delightful ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... that they were not aware that Kovudoo had a white prisoner. They exchanged gifts with the old chief, haggling with his plenipotentiaries over the value of what they were to receive for what they gave, as is customary and proper when one has no ulterior motives. Unwarranted ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... himself was simply speechless from rage, but Mr. Baron sprang up and said sternly, "You shall hear the whole truth, sir. It can be quickly told, and then you can judge whether I, as guardian, am capable of countenancing anything unwarranted by the highest sense of honor. This girl, my niece, has been virtually betrothed to her cousin since childhood. I and her aunts deemed it wisest and safest, in view of dangers threatening the direst evils, that she ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... elaboration of machinery. The time must come, however, if indeed the moment has not already arrived, when applied science will have done all that it can do for the development of machinery. It may be that machines cannot be speeded up any further without putting unwarranted strain upon the nervous system of the worker; it may be that further elaboration will so sacrifice the workman who feeds the machine that industrial advance will lie not in the direction of improvement in machinery, but in the recovery and education of ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... according to the former of these two premises, there can be no more legitimate conclusion than that the difference in question is due to intelligent and special design; but, according to the other premise, it is equally clear that no conclusion can be more unwarranted; for, under the latter view, the greater rotundity of the crystalline lens in a fish's eye no more exhibits the presence of any special design than does the adaptation of a river to the bed which it has itself been the means of excavating. When, therefore, Paley goes on to ask:—"How ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... fullest accounts of the tenets of Basilides (and his followers), say nothing about his Gospel: neither does Irenaeus or Clement of Alexandria; the first mention of it is in Origen's Homily on St. Luke. This shows how unwarranted is the assumption made in 'Supernatural Religion' [Endnote 190:2] that because Hippolytus says that Basilides appealed to a secret tradition he professed to have received from Matthias, and Eusebius ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... for an opportunity to show her some small courtesy whereby to relieve the torture I felt at having helped the coroner in the inquiries which had brought about what looked to me now like a cruel and unwarranted result. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... in dealing with a contagious disease is to apply to it the recognized principles of notification. Every new application of the principle, it is true, meets with opposition. It is without practical result, it is an unwarranted inquisition into the affairs of the individual, it is a new tax on the busy medical practitioner, etc. Certainly notification by itself will not arrest the progress of any infectious disease. But it ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... shook his finger threateningly at her, and cried: "It's fortunate that I find only the Riese, and not the listener, otherwise I should be compelled to deliver her to the jailer, or even the torturer, for unwarranted intrusion into the secrets of the honourable Council. I can hardly institute proceedings against a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... at first inclined to reprove Dennett for this apparently unwarranted act; he considered that he had no right to chastise Halse. "I will attend to that part of the business, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... aggressions. The Republicans came into power in the United States, and by diplomacy averted an actual conflict. But the American shipping interests suffered sadly meanwhile. The money finally paid by France as indemnity for her unwarranted spoliations lay long undivided in the United States Treasury, and the easy-going labor of urging and adjudicating French spoliation claims furnished employment to some generations of politicians after the despoiled seamen and shipowners had ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... and as he watched he was thinking rapidly. He was used to making decisions quickly—he was accustomed to accepting risks at which others shied, but the risk he was now contemplating meant the taking of an unwarranted liberty that might be resented and might result in the loss of a friendship that he valued. But he was going to take the risk—as he had taken many another—he had known that from the first. He screwed his eyeglass firmer into his eye, a characteristic gesture ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... of strength'; En-lil, 'the Marduk of sovereignty'; and so on, in a long enumeration, the gods are regarded as so many forms of Marduk. Pinches' conclusion that the list points to monotheistic beliefs is, however, unwarranted. The list only illustrates a tendency towards a centralization of divine powers in Marduk, that accompanies the political ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... to himself that it was a pity he had answered her testily. But he couldn't go back. Moran might call. Catherine might send Moran after him, saying his reverence had gone down to bathe, or any parishioner, however unwarranted his errand, might try to see him out. 'And all errands will be unwarranted to-day,' he said as he hurried along the shore, thinking of the different paths round the ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... say, to the acrid spiritual brine in which he was cured. In its second half, the originality of Jewish history consists indeed, in the circumstance that it is the only history stripped of every active political element. There are no diplomatic artifices, no wars, no campaigns, no unwarranted encroachments backed by armed force upon the rights of other nations, nothing of all that constitutes the chief content—the monotonous and for the most part idea-less content—of many other chapters in the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... papa, to resent an unwarranted encroachment of our rights by such an old ruffian as that. One's blood is up to think of the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... said. Mr. Wilsey offered Mrs. Baxter his arm. "An admirable answer that of yours," he murmured as he led her from the room, "admirable snub to her perfectly unwarranted attack on you ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... mouth. Even as he clumsily but most assiduously mops with his one available hand and looks vaguely around for feminine assistance, Major Abbot is conscious of a feeling of proprietorship and confidence that is as unwarranted, probably, as it is new. 'Tis only a faint, he is certain. She will come to in a moment, so why be worried? But then, of course, 'twill be embarrassing and painful to her not to find some sympathetic ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... slave States and interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say it, if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I never ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... to his hostess: "My dear Anais, figure to yourself, in six months from now you and I will be sleeping together." The damsel's acknowledged cavalier, de Beauvallon, a stickler for propriety, took this amiss and declared the assertion to be unwarranted. Words followed. Warm words. Mlle Lievenne, however, being good-tempered, merely laughed, and peace ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... see. He saw next day. Wallie woke him out of a sound sleep so that he might see. It was ten-thirty A.M. so that his peevishness was unwarranted. They had seen the play the night before and Hahn had decided that, translated and with interpolations (it was a comic opera), it would captivate New York. Then and there he completed the negotiations ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... It was, however, the hostility of a section of the Catholic hierarchy which was most effective in keeping these agitators long in a powerless minority. In the early days of the party this hostility was not unwarranted. Many of the young crusaders had definitely left the fold of the Church to criticize it from without, to demand the abolition of the Pope's temporal power in Europe and of the Church's tithing privileges in Canada, and to express heterodox ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... wholly obscure the American people generally have been kept in such ignorance of the facts of this commerce that few even dream that it exists. And I am fully conscious of the need for proof in support of what to many must appear to be unwarranted assertions. Indeed, it is rare to find anyone who suspects the character of the private detective. The general impression seems to be that he performs a very useful and necessary service, that the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... were allowed to remain in manuscript, it might at some future time suffer from well-meant attempts at revision; and, secondly, because of the chance that it might be put forward, after the death of those who knew its history, in a way which would seem to make unwarranted pretensions for it, or would give rise to doubts as to its authenticity. In a word, it was felt that its immediate publication would obviate any possible misconception at some future time as to its true relation ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... wild ride; the ban put upon Sarah's Spanish books and the much-loved drawn-work; and, lately, the almost concerted effort of all of them to convert everything Sarah said and did into something unwarranted and absurd. By the time Blue Bonnet had reached her own action of that very morning in tearing the apron forcibly from Sarah's shoulders, she was dumb with shame. This was the way she had rewarded ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... de Vergara to arrange matters, in the event of any complaint arising as to the unwarranted ambiguity or succinctness of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... apology, even though unconscious of offence, if the challenge was withdrawn. The crowd was ardent for the fight, and Tiltock, who was punctilious about honor, particularly where he could cut a safe figure, repelled the compromise, as "unwarranted by the code." He knew as much about the code as about honor, and more about both ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... connection with the Edison type of kiln, that when the older cement manufacturers first learned of it, they ridiculed the idea universally, and were not slow to predict our early 'finish' as cement manufacturers. The ultimate success of the kiln, however, proved their criticisms to be unwarranted. Once aware of its possibility, some of the cement manufacturers proceeded to avail themselves of the innovation (at first without Mr. Edison's consent), and to-day more than one-half of the Portland ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... convention, retain that authority in the most absolute and unqualified sense; and that an attempt on the part of the national government to abridge them in the exercise of it, would be a violent assumption of power, unwarranted by any article or clause of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... brought us a full and official report of the Premier's speech which he recently made when he received the Khilafat deputation. Mr. Lloyd George's speech is more definite and therefore more disappointing than H.E. the Viceroy's reply to the deputation here. He draws quite unwarranted deductions from the same high principles on which he had based his own pledge only two years ago. He declares that Turkey must pay the penalty of defeat. This determination to punish Turkey does not become one whose immediate predecessor ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... of conquest, which was strangely unwarranted, Tabs swung himself to his feet. "Well, Sir Tobias, we've talked for more than our half hour. After all, it doesn't matter a continental what you, or I, or Lady Beddow feels. It's Terry's feelings that count. I shall know what she feels before the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... effect. That which one shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Quintilian; ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... Rizal to be permitted to return to the Philippines unmolested a passport was finally granted to him and he set out for Manila. For this move on his part, in addition to the natural desire to be among his own people, two special reasons appear: he wished to investigate and stop if possible the unwarranted use of his name in taking up collections that always remained mysteriously unaccounted for, and he was drawn by a ruse deliberately planned and executed in that his mother was several times officiously arrested and hustled about as a common criminal in order to work upon the son's filial feelings ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... long list of inaccuracies, more or less grave or trivial, in the beautifully written work of Mr. Irving, but it would be tedious to go through the whole of them. The few remarks to which I have given place above, will suffice to prove that the assertion made in the preface was not unwarranted. It is far from my intention to enter the lists with a man of the literary merit and reputation of Mr. Irving, but as a narrator of events of which I was an EYEWITNESS, I felt bound to tell the truth, although that truth might impugn the historical accuracy of a work which ranks as a classic in ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... us that the augmentation of crime in summer does not arise from an increase of vagrants and others arrested and convicted under the Vagrancy Acts while in search of work or pretending to be in search of it. The assumption that such is the case is quite unwarranted by the facts so far as they are obtainable, and another explanation must be sought of the greater prevalence of crime in ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... Kai business, people of all ranks and all nationalities—diplomats, old residents, journalists, business men—and not one of them has made any attempt to justify or defend the action. Without exception, they say it is an outrage, and totally unwarranted,—at the very least, a most shocking political blunder. None of them, however, has come forward to the aid of the Chinese. A curious conspiracy of silence seems to reign,—not silence in one sense, for every one is talking freely with most undiplomatic ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... loved thee. And I said: Nay, not in words, but in a language deeper far than any words. What woman ever gave a man what thou hast given me, without telling him very plainly, he was the object of her love? And she said quietly: It was but thy own inference, and utterly unwarranted. And I said: Why didst thou then allow me to make love to thee at all? And she said, very gently: I did not ask, nor even wish thee, to make love to me at all. But I was touched by thy emotion, and thy passion, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... distinguish between the facts and his impressions of them, and how impossible it often is to make a witness detail the former without interpolating the latter. But the greatest risk of all is that the jury themselves may misconstrue the circumstances, and draw unwarranted conclusions therefrom. It is an awful assumption of responsibility to leap to conclusions in such cases, and the leap too often proves to have been made in the dark. God help the wretch who is arraigned on suspicious appearances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... competent and experienced a champion. However, we cannot wholly endorse the sentiments of these excellent writers. The statement that "all amateur journalists are flirts, more or less", is a base and unwarranted libel which we ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... way, and escaped unperceived to her father's quarters, a small adjoining cottage, where she had lodged since his arrival in camp, and where she now secluded herself, to endeavour to fathom the plot which the unexpected and unwarranted announcement just indirectly made, together with some other circumstances of recent occurrence, plainly told was in ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... going of the Noa-Noa, the through passengers departing in angry mood because their anticipated hula dance had been a disappointment—wickedness shining feebly through cotton gowns when they had expected nudity in a pas seul of abandonment. There was a violent condemnation by the duped men of "unwarranted interference by the French Government ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... is to be avoided no less than undue temerity. Where a change appears, after proper consideration, to be indicated, no hesitancy is justified in abandoning the original plan. Blind adherence to plan is to be condemned no less than unwarranted departures from predetermined procedure. Obstinate insistence on the use of a certain method, to the exclusion of others calculated to attain the same effect, may jeopardize the success of the effort. Undue emphasis on the particular means to be used, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... used sacred altar-cloths for blankets on their horses, and rode across the country decorated in priestly and monkish garments. There seems to be some ground for the statement that Henry was ignorant, or at least not fully informed, of their unwarranted violence and gross sacrilege. The abbey of Glastonbury was one of the oldest and finest cloisters in England. It was a majestic pile of buildings in the midst of gardens and groves covering sixty acres; its aisles were vocal with the chanting of monks, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... that they kept on their feet. We were told to indent for everything that we needed to make our batteries complete as prescribed in the organization charts, but we followed instructions without any very blind faith in results—nor did our lack of trust prove unwarranted, for we got practically nothing for ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... Louisiana furnished ground to his enemies for disputing his own election. Having been placed in the Presidency by a title as strong as could be confirmed under the Constitution and the laws of the country, it was, in the judgment of the majority of the Republican party, an unwise and unwarranted act on the part of the President to purchase peace in the South by surrendering Louisiana to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... genius, he had as little patience as Beethoven, who, when told that all the authorities forbade the consecutive fifths in his C Minor Quartet, thundered out: "Well, I allow them." Somebody once questioned him about an apparently unwarranted passage in the introduction to Mozart's Quartet in C Major. "If Mozart has written it, be sure he had good reasons for doing so," was the conclusive reply. That fine old smoke-dried pedant, Albrechtsberger, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... world are fools." In another place, he curiously contrasts the too timid practice of some regular physicians, with the hazardous treatment, which is the leading feature of quacks: "The timid, low, insipid practice with some, is almost as dangerous as the bold, unwarranted empiricism of others; time and opportunity, never to be regained, are often lost by the former; while with the latter, by a bold push, you are sent off the stage in ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... feet quickly. "Miss Killigrew, I apologize for my unwarranted rudeness. I did not mean it as you thought I did"—which would have made any other ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, "Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand go entirely unwarranted by precedent?" ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... the application of this term in either of these senses to the duration of human life is in the highest degree unphilosophical and totally unwarranted by any appearances in the laws of nature. Variations from different causes are essentially distinct from a regular and unretrograde increase. The average duration of human life will to a certain degree vary from healthy or unhealthy climates, from wholesome or unwholesome food, ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... house jealously, trembling at every movement which took place at the Tertasse Gate; lest it herald the approach of the officers to arrest the women. But nothing happened, and as the day wore on he grew more hopeful. He might, indeed, have begun to think Anne over-timid and his fears unwarranted, if he had not seen, a little before sunset, a thing which opened ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... William at the British Embassy although Sir Cecil Spring Rice was not well enough to be present. I had a long talk with Sir William after lunch and found that our suspicions were unwarranted and that we could get together without any ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... the sea under these circumstances, a matter strange enough at first, now seemed wholly unwarranted; and added to all was the thought that our fate was absolutely in the hand of the reckless Jermin. Were anything to happen to him, we would be left without a navigator, for, according to Jermin himself, he had, from the commencement of the voyage, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... relentlessly, "that you have never attempted any defence. That has been to your credit with me. It inclined me to overlook your unwarranted course in writing to my daughter, when you told her you would never see her again. What did you expect me to think, after that, of your coming back to see her? Or didn't you expect me to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... a Common stock, wherein none of the Innocent Members have propriety,) by pecuniary Mulct. For from corporall penalties Nature hath exempted all Bodies Politique. But they that gave not their Vote, are therefore Innocent, because the Assembly cannot Represent any man in things unwarranted by their Letters, and consequently are not ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... Bell's mean face got thoughtful. On the whole, Janet did not exaggerate much, although she now and then made a rather unwarranted implication. She threw a fresh light on matters the gossips already talked about; among others were Grace's visit to Mireside the morning Railton's sheep were counted and her meeting with Kit before he went to look for the Herdwicks. When she ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... so full of feeling, and so many tears suffused her dark blue eyes, that they inspired false hopes in his breast and unwarranted fears in that of Blauvelt. The heroic action and tragic experience of the young and boyish Strahan had touched the tenderest chords in her heart. Indeed, as she stood, holding his left hand in both her own, they might easily have been taken for brother and sister. His eyes were almost ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... a good deal closer to agreeing with them than she'd admit. For, as the effect of her encounter lost its vividness, with the recession of the encounter itself, she began to suspect that she had gone unwarranted lengths in her interpretations from it. But under fire, she stuck to her guns. Her husband, who delighted in her public attitude, was amazed when she rounded upon him in their domestic sanctuary, and emphatically took ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... seems to have been proved is that of sniping, but even if other cruelties were committed it must be remembered that the moral status of the Belgians was entirely different from that of the Germans. The Belgians were aroused to blind fury by the disregard of their neutrality rights and the unwarranted invasion of their peaceful country. Even from Germans I have heard no excuses for the violation of Belgium which might not have been equally well put forward by a needy burglar who breaks into an unprotected house and plunders it after ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... be readers who would here and there have desiderated a more confident tone, but I have deliberately refrained from going further than the facts seemed to warrant. The cause of truth is not served by unwarranted assertions; and the facts are often so difficult to concatenate that dogmatism becomes an impertinence. Those who know the ground best walk the most warily. But if the old confidence has been lost, a new confidence ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... Free from unwarranted superstition though I am, these things produced in me an odd sensation, which was intensified by a pair of widely separated newspaper cuttings relating to deaths in the shunned house—one from the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal of April 12, 1815, and the other from ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... wrote to his private Secretary. "I never, never was so bitterly persecuted; ask the President to protect me from this unwarranted, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... was opposed with greater vehemence and better arguments than those which had preceded it. Colonel Barre, who had given a partial support to the Boston Port Bill, denounced it as unprecedented, unwarranted, and as fraught with misery and oppression to America, and with danger to this country. It stigmatised a whole people, he remarked, as persecutors of innocence, and as men incapable of doing justice, whereas the very reverse was the fact. As a proof of the impartiality of Bostonian ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Reformation had to run the same course of separation from the humanists and radicals, and of schism, as did the German movement. Though Erasmus was a little closer to the Swiss than he had been to the Saxon Reformers, he was alienated by the outrageous taunts of some of them and by the equally unwarranted attempts of others to show that he agreed {154} with them. "They falsely call themselves evangelical," he opined, "for they seek only two things: a ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... my criticism of the economists: for them I confess that, in general, I have no liking. The arrogance and the emptiness of their writings, their impertinent pride and their unwarranted blunders, have disgusted me. Whoever, knowing them, pardons ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... facts appear distorted out of their true perspective, and in others the author makes unwarranted charges. It is not within our province to edit the historical side of Dumas, any more than it would be to correct the obvious errors in Dickens's Child's History of England. The careful, mature ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... known as the "Texas Famine." Thousands of miles of wild land, forming the Pan Handle, had been suddenly opened by the building of a Southern Railroad. In the speculative anxiety of the Road to people its newly acquired territory, unwarranted inducements of climatic advantages had been unscrupulously held out to the poor farmers of Mississippi, Alabama, ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton

... beings are begotten by a deposit of germs through the generative process. To affirm that these germs are transmitted down the generations from the original progenitor of each race, in whom they all existed at first, is an unwarranted assertion and involves absurdities. It is refuted both by Geoffrey St. Hilaire's famous experiments on eggs, and by the crossing of species.12 In opposition to this theological figment, observation and science require the belief that each being is endowed independently ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... air does not develope bacteria;' the inference is—'Therefore if a turnip infusion similarly exposed develope bacteria, they must be spontaneously generated.' The inference, on the face of it, is an unwarranted one. But while as matter of logic it is inconclusive, as matter of fact it is chimerical. London air is as surely charged with the germs of bacteria as London chimneys are with smoke. The inference just referred ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... reference to this unwarranted attack, the noted writer, William Winter, said in the New ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... stood. But Glaucus, leader of the Lycian band, Son of Hippolochus, in bitter terms 170 Indignant, reprimanded Hector thus, Ah, Hector, Chieftain of excelling form, But all unfurnish'd with a warrior's heart! Unwarranted I deem thy great renown Who art to flight addicted. Think, henceforth, 175 How ye shall save city and citadel Thou and thy people born in Troy, alone. No Lycian shall, at least, in your defence Fight with the Grecians, for our ceaseless toil In arms, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... answered Hardy, whose anger was rising under this unwarranted commercial badgering. "Same as ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... is James K. Polk?" raised by the Whigs when he was nominated, was unwarranted, for he was not an unknown man. He had been a member of the House from 1825 to 1839, Speaker from 1835 to 1837, and chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means during a portion of his membership. He had been a Jackson leader in the House, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... sects, and of many others that have succeeded, have probably long ago learned to smile at the temporary humours. But Macaulay, himself a sincere admirer of Bentham, was irritated by what he considered the unwarranted tone assumed by several of the class of Utilitarians. "We apprehend," he said, "that many of them are persons who, having read little or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of their own inferiority by some teacher ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... different places of origin to these different kinds. There now suddenly appears an endeavour to bring all the white blood corpuscles into one class, and to regard the different forms as different stages merely of the same kind of cells. The following sections will show that this tendency is unwarranted and unpractical. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... on the ketch, sitting against the immaculate rim of deck and the sea. He resented that familiarity as an unwarranted intrusion of the world he had left. Other people, women among them, had unavoidably crossed his deck, but they had been patently alien, momentary; but Millie, with her still delight at the yacht's compact comfort, her intuitive comprehension of its various details—the lamps set in gimbals, the ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... foremost in his mind to speak to him of his unjust treatment of his wife. Yet he hung back out of the Oriental conception which he held, due to his Scriptural reading, of that relationship between woman and man. A man's wife was his property in a certain, broad sense. It would seem unwarranted by any measure of excess short of murder for another to interfere between them. Joe held his peace, therefore, but with internal ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... Slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say it—if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with Slavery where it exists, I know that it is unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and as I believe, by anything I have ever said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so construe (as, however, I believe I never have) I now correct it. So much, then, for the inference that Judge ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... which set the torch to his anger. Once, shortly after his marriage, when he had come home in wrath after a protracted quarrel with Mr. Tredway over the orthodoxy of the new minister, in the middle of his indignant recital of Mr. Tredway's unwarranted attitude, Sarah Austen had smiled. The smile had had in it, to be sure, nothing of conscious superiority, but it had been utterly inexplicable to Hilary Vane. He had known for the first time what it was to feel murder in the heart, and if he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... distinguished among his Calvinistic brethren: as a mere author, he would have excited attention rather by his quaintness and affectation of an obsolete style and mode of thinking, than by any thing else. But he has contrived to jumble these several characters together in an unheard-of and unwarranted manner, and the fascination is altogether irresistible. Our Caledonian divine is equally an anomaly in religion, in literature, in personal appearance, and in public speaking. To hear a person spout Shakspeare on the stage is nothing—the charm is nearly worn out—but to hear any one spout Shakspeare ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... dear to every member of this University; and therefore I hope you will permit me to say one word, in defence of his character, against Dugald Stewart's charge of having been "provoked," by Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics, "to a harshness equally unwonted and unwarranted." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... chapter which illustrates this than the chapter of Curtius, "The years of peace." One is perhaps better adapted for the keen enjoyment of it if he does not know the original material, for his suspicion that some of the inferences are strained and unwarranted might become a certainty. But accepting it as a mature and honest elaboration by one of the greatest historians of Greece of our day, it is a sample of the vivifying of dry bones and of a dovetailing of facts and ideas that makes a narrative to charm and instruct. You feel that the spirit ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... as it begins in No or Nothingness, so it must needs end in nothingness; circulates and must circulate in endless vortices; creating, swallowing—itself.'[9] Again, on the other side, he sets his face just as firmly against the excessive pretensions and unwarranted certitudes of the physicist. 'The course of Nature's phases on this our little fraction of a Planet is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... and leaned against a post for support. His knees were wobbly; he, too, ached in every bone and muscle; he, too, had been goaded into an insane temper, but that which maddened him beyond expression was this unwarranted charge of incompetency. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... is more apt to make faulty suit bids than unwarranted No-trumpers. It seems as difficult for the old Whist and Bridge player as it is for the novice to realize that even excessive length does not justify an original suit call, unless the suit contain either ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... failures for at least the first three years in school are likely to arouse some surprise among that portion of the people in the profession, with whom the converse of this situation has been quite generally accepted as true. Such an impression has indeed not seemed unwarranted according to some reports, but the responsibility for it must be due in part to the manner of presenting the data, so that at times it actually serves to misstate or to conceal certain important features of the situation. Since the dropping out is heaviest in the early semesters, and since ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... suspicion that Mr. Hall Caine, who deals by preference with the elemental emotions, would rejoice in the epithet "AEschylean" applied to his work. The epithet would not be unwarranted: but it is precisely when most consciously AEschylean that Mr. Hall Caine, in my poor judgment, comes to grief. This is but to say that he possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I ever taken directly or indirectly." Phillida's already overstrained sensitiveness on this subject now broke forth into something like anger. "I would not accept money for such a service for the world," she said. "In making such an unwarranted presumption you have done me great wrong. I am a Sunday-school teacher and mission worker. Such services are not usually paid for, and such an assumption on your part is unjustifiable. If you had only informed ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... very insulting and entirely unwarranted," said the Widow Gilbert, with a flush on her ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... the said Hastings himself remarked) "equivalent to an engagement with the Company's seal affixed to it," and more particularly binding the said Hastings personally to exact a due observance of the guarantied treaty, especially to protect the Nabob Fyzoola Khan against any arbitrary construction or unwarranted requisition ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... "As prison psychologist, I protest. I consider those procedures an unwarranted invasion of physical privacy and a forcing of a man ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire

... distinguished between mere modes of power or of intelligence, and modes of illimitable evil. The results of the Oracles were beneficent: that was all which the fathers had any right to know: and their unwarranted introduction of wicked or rebel angels was as much a surreptitious fraud upon their audiences, as their neglect to distinguish between the conditions of an extinct superstition and a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Guy Oscard. He could have saved her yet—by a simple lie. Had he been an impossibly magnanimous man, such as one meets in books only, he could have explained that the mistake was all his, that she was quite right, that his own vanity had blinded him into a great and unwarranted presumption. But, unfortunately, he was only a human being—a man who was ready to give as full a measure as he exacted. The unfortunate mistake to which he clung was that the same sense of justice, the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... but not surprised. He had a wholly unwarranted confidence in my powers; so that if I had suddenly declared that I saw my way to tilting Queen Victoria from her throne and seating myself upon it, he would have come without a ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... band of mourning is sensible for many reasons, the first being that of economy. Men's clothes do not come successfully from the encounter with dye vats, nor lend themselves to "alterations," and an entire new wardrobe is an unwarranted burden to most. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... reached this country, many of its statements were thought to be unwarranted by facts; but his veracity has been fully proved by the researches of subsequent travellers. The accuracy of his account of the spot where the melancholy catastrophe took place is acknowledged by Captain Clapperton, who, in 1826, visited Boussa. With some ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... was that of people who find the tables turned on themselves in a way they consider unwarranted. Of the general surprise Steptoe was quick ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... tell me anything which Miss Phipps wouldn't wish told. I wouldn't for the world have you think that I am unduly curious concerning her personal affairs. If there is any trait which I—ah—detest above others it is that of unwarranted curiosity concerning the—ah—private affairs of one's acquaintances. I... Why do you look at me like that? Were you ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... shop. In reality, that nursery-maid, of whom some mention has been made above, and in terms expressing the suspicion with which even then I regarded her, had persuaded her into going thither by some representations which Agnes had already ascertained to be altogether unwarranted. Other presumptions against this girl's fidelity crowded dimly upon my wife's mind at the very moment of finding her eyes thus suddenly opened. And it was not five minutes after her first examination, and in ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the storm and sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. "To indulge hopes is bad," thought I, "but not to indulge a hope, when one has only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan on the not unwarranted assumption that my coal hope was a present reality. Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertainties was to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as collateral the Coal stocks I had bought outright, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... Bennett may seek to support these assertions, they are unwarranted and untruthful libels. There was no wholesale slaughter of wounded dervishes, nor was there anything done in the least justifying or providing a decent pretext for that ferocious accusation. Very many ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... recently published 'Letter to the Rev. Mr. Neale on the Architectural, Artistical, and Archaeological Movements of the Puseyites,' enters his 'protest' against the most unwarranted and unjustifiable assumption of the name of Catholic by people and things belonging to the actual Church of England. 'It is easy,' he observes, 'to take up a name, but it is not so easy to get it recognised by the world and by ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... the indicative mood, expresses the present of the hypothetical; as, 'I wish that I was well.' The use of this hypothetical form of the subjunctive mood, has given rise to a form of expression wholly unwarranted by the rules of grammar. When the verb was is to be used in the present tense singular, in this form of the subjunctive mood, the ear is often pained with a plural were, as, 'Were I your master'—'Were he ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... continually beset him. Even though he had no thought of reprieving the Duc, and deliberately allowed him to be shot, the act of self-preservation, extreme though it may appear, can hardly be termed, under the circumstances, unwarranted. It was a period of wild, uncontrollable passion, and the survivors of the old aristocracy hated the man of genius who had risen to power from the ranks of the people to take the place of the Bourbons. This was the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... would not solve things, sir. Assuming the construction of a vessel—an assumption so far unwarranted, if I may say so, sir—it would accommodate but a fraction of the affected populations. As for floating islands, they would be no more immune to airborne seeds ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Nevertheless it is quite possible to go too far in the omission of commas in ordinary writing. It is quite possible to construct sentences in such a way as to avoid their use. The result is a harsh and awkward style, unwarranted by any necessity. Ordinary writing needs some use of commas to indicate the ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton

... the matter just a little because of a vicious and, I think, wholly unwarranted attack in the papers, in which Mr. George Edwardes, of London, is made to say quite improbable things as coming from de Graaf, and perhaps made our work just a little more difficult. Whether this be the case or not, I am sure ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton



Words linked to "Unwarranted" :   unreasonable, wild, inexcusable, unsupported



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