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Blacken   Listen
verb
Blacken  v. t.  (past & past part. blackened; pres. part. blackening)  
1.
To make or render black. "While the long funerals blacken all the way."
2.
To make dark; to darken; to cloud. "Blackened the whole heavens."
3.
To defame; to sully, as reputation; to make infamous; as, vice blackens the character.
Synonyms: To denigrate; defame; vilify; slander; calumniate; traduce; malign; asperse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blacken" Quotes from Famous Books



... the British Embassy the inside story of the Abdication of Constantine for five dollars. They say they know it, and knew it before it happened. I have offered, for little more than a nominal sum, to blacken the character of every reigning family in Germany. I am told that it is ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... the business of the spies to blacken the character of Charles; and there can be little doubt that, in spite of his poverty and loose morals, he was well liked by the citizens of Bruges, who, notwithstanding a great deal of outward decorum, have at no time been very strait-laced. ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... original bundles longer than one or two days, for it will turn black. The material is usually separated into two parts, one to be dyed, the other to be bleached. That to be dyed is spread in the sun and thoroughly dried for one or two days, care being taken that rain does not fall upon it and blacken it. The other part is boiled in a solution of acetic acid for twenty minutes, after which it is thoroughly dried in ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... deal more like sunlight, than a shadow ten times its depth, shaded off at the edge, and confounded with the color of the objects on which it falls. Now the old masters of the Italian school, in almost all of their works, directly reverse this principle: they blacken their shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, and everything in it invisible; but they make a point of losing their edges, and carrying them off by gradation; in consequence utterly destroying every appearance ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... grown, but not too hard; pour boiling salt and water on them; let them be covered with it nine days, changing it every third day; then take them out on dishes, and put them in the sun to blacken, turning them over; then put them in a jar and strew over them pepper, cloves, garlic, mustard seed and scraped horse-radish; cover them with cold strong ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... being ne'er had birth Since God first kneaded man from earth; O, I have come to know him well, As Ferroe's blacken'd rocks can tell. Who was it did, at Suderoe, The deed no other dared to do? Who was it, when the Boff had burst, And whelm'd me in its womb accurst, Who was it dashed amid the wave, With frantic zeal, my life to save? Who was it flung the rope to me? ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... and there were the trees beginning to blacken in the heat, and the grass looking like a sea of fire along the plains; for the ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang

... memorable revolutions in England. When the late king agreed to that cessation of arms with the Popish rebels,[*] which was become so requisite, as well for the security of the Irish Protestants as for promoting his interests in England, the parliament, in order to blacken his conduct, reproached him with favoring that odious rebellion, and exclaimed loudly against the terms of the cessation. They even went so far as to declare it entirely null and invalid, because finished without their consent; and in this declaration the Scots in Ulster, and the earl of Inchiquin, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... the rank infected air That taints those dungeons of despair, By those who there imprison'd die Where the black herd promiscuous lie, By the scourges blacken'd o'er And stiff and hard with human gore, By every groan of deep distress By every curse of wretchedness, By all the train of Crimes that flow From the hopelessness of Woe, By every drop of blood bespilt, By Afric's wrongs and Europe's ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... opinions, have frequently been extremely lavish in their accusations of atheism, against all those whom they felt a desire to injure; whose characters it was their pleasure to paint in unfavourable colours; whose doctrines they wished to blacken; whose systems they sought to render odious: they were certain of alarming the illiterate, of rousing the antipathies of the silly, by a loose imputation, or by a word, to which ignorance attaches the idea of horror, merely because it is unacquainted with its ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... unimportant. A skirmish or two, leaving a few more women's lives maimed and hearts desolate. A lie or two of continental manufacture, tending to blacken the fair fame of the most humane and good-tempered army which, in all probability, ever took the field. A shriek or two from soft-handed sentimentalists at home, who—for reasons best known to themselves—are ardent patriots of every country save their own. Such items formed too permanent a part ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... To the humble student, the loss of Hay's game affected only Hay; for himself, the game — not the stakes — was the chief interest; and though want of habit made him object to read his newspapers blackened — since he liked to blacken them himself — he was in any case condemned to pass but a short space of time either in Siberia or in Paris, and could balance his endless columns of calculation equally in either place. The figures, not the facts, concerned his chart, and he mused deeply over his next ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... his congregation he had accepted a call to Malmoe, a city on the eastern shore of the Sound. But in this new field his earnest Evangelical preaching, provoked the resentment of a number of his most influential parishioners, who, motivated by a wish to blacken his name and secure his removal, instigated a suit against him for having mismanaged an inheritance left to his children by his first wife. The children themselves appeared in his defence, however, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... it from me to blacken the reputation of any bird, but there is at least circumstantial evidence that the long-crested jay, like his eastern cousin, is a nest robber; for such birds as robins, tanagers, flycatchers, and vireos make war upon him whenever he ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... dinner was delayed for the great man; the prelude of the ladder giving us some notion of his weighty body and sensible, ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it was with something like excitement that we saw the beach and terrace suddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark, the boat (a man-of-war gig) come flying towards us dead before the wind, and the royal coxswain lay us cleverly aboard, mount the ladder with a jealous diffidence, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thou, a Stranger to this Peace of Mind, Search where thou may'st conspicuous Merit find: There strive to blacken with thy utmost Art, And rail the more, the ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... wet weather—one of innumerable wet summers that blight the potatoes and blacken the hay and mildew the few oats and rot the poor cabin roofs. The air smoked all day with rain mixed with the fine salt spray from the ocean. Out of doors everything shivered and was disconsolate. Only the bog prospered, basking its length in water, and mirroring Croghan and Slievemore with ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... nothing more in this world, after that took to drinking, used to get constantly drunk, and rolled from public-house to public-house, and bar to bar, and as the worst glass of vitrol still cost a penny, he became reduced to undertaking the part which you have seen, to dabble in the water, to blacken himself, and to allow himself ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... late; And in their very ports besiege them, But that he would not disoblige them; And make the rascals pay him dearly For those affronts they give him yearly. 'Tis not denied, that, when we write, Our ink is black, our paper white: And, when we scrawl our paper o'er, We blacken what was white before: I think this practice only fit For dealers in satiric wit. But you some white-lead ink must get And write on paper black as jet; Your interest lies to learn the knack Of whitening what ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... the left-hand lower corner. The third pa-tol stick has the same design on one side, and on the other side the design is repeated and an additional diagonal line incised from the right-hand upper corner to the left-hand lower corner. It would be well to blacken all these incised lines in order that the designs can be readily seen during the ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... pray'd, their pray'r the Goddess heard; Then, their devotions ended, on they far'd Through the deep dead of night, like lions twain, 'Mid slaughter, corpses, arms, and blacken'd gore. ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... the face of Dundee was beginning again to blacken. "I've no a word to say against her ladyship. I gather she has been doing what she can for the cause wi' them slippery rascals o' dragoons and their Laodicean commander, of whom I have my ain thoughts. I fear me, indeed, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... the panes as the outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light, into ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... thing Jerome did, when he reached home, was to brush and blacken his shoes, though there was no chance of Lucina's seeing them. He felt as if he ought not to think of her when ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Ireland, that folly, disorder, and disgrace has not been foreboded. Never has any great deed been done here that the alien Government did not, as soon as the facts became historical, endeavour to blacken the honour of the statesmen, the wisdom of the legislators, or the valour of the soldiers who ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... manner of thinking, and how little you credit me with foresight and attachment to our country, if I could avail myself of such impossible and such injurious measures! My decrees and actions up to now might convince you. Men may blacken me and our Rising, but God sees that we are not beginning a French revolution. My desire is to destro the enemy. I am making some temporary dispositions, and I leave the framing of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... self-denial must more than ever be exercised, and that the discipline and perfection of our own characters is as ever our grand life-work. Then let the angry waves of tumult dash up and froth at our feet, let the skies blacken and the tempest roar, God is over all. This one thing we are to remember, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... Cetinje vastly. Every English tourist who wanted to go to Scutari was warned by the Montenegrins that it was death to walk outside the town; that murders took place every day in the bazar; any absurd tale, in fact, to blacken the Albanians. The Montenegrins were not best pleased at my exploit, and ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... falsehood meanly fly? Not even Candour can forgive a lie. Bad as men are, why should thy frantic rhymes Traffic in slander, and invent new crimes?— Crimes which, existing only in thy mind, Weak spleen brings forth to blacken all mankind. By pleasing hopes we lure the human heart To practise virtue and improve in art; 240 To thwart these ends (which, proud of honest fame, A noble Muse would cherish and inflame) Thy drudge contrives, and in our full career Sicklies ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... sticks. Their women are counted equal with their men. It is reckoned as disgraceful for a Baharanee to show fear when lights are extinguished in the hospital on account of bomb-dropping air-ships, as for an Ul to avoid battle. They do not blacken each other's faces by loud abuse, but by jests spoken in a ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling

... us. The arrow would be among them, nor could mortal long endure the heat of yon glowing furnace. Thou seest that the timbers already smoke and blacken, under ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... into the pot through a fine strainer, being careful to keep back the sediment, which scrape into the soap-grease. In this way you can fry in the same fat a dozen times, while if you are not careful to strain it each time, the crumbs left will burn and blacken all the fat. Occasionally, when you have finished frying, cut up two or three uncooked potatoes and put into the boiling fat. Set on the back of the stove for ten or fifteen minutes; then set in a cool place for fifteen minutes longer, and strain. The potatoes clarify ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... "Squire Kate—I will be satisfied that this Thorndyke's name is not to blacken yours in the mouths of the people of Market-Sinfield. I shall remain concealed in this house till I can speak to you alone. Remember—my love makes me desperate—one more harsh word from you may bring mischief to another. ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... other friends, whom he had neglected, pursuing him for gratifying his ambition-accomplishing his ruin, and prostituting themselves even more than he had done! all of them blowing up a rebellion, by every art that could blacken the King in the eyes of the nation, and some of them promoting the trials and sitting in judgment on the wretches whom they had misled and deserted! How black a picture! what odious portraits, when time shall write ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... termination en is added, especially to adjectives; as, haste, to hasten; length, to lengthen; strength, to strengthen; short, to shorten; fast, to fasten; white, to whiten; black, to blacken; hard, to harden; soft, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... custom in Japan for girls when married, or even betrothed, is to blacken their teeth. This custom, however, is ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... But that doesn't matter to me! it is we who talk of justice, of respect, and sympathy from man to man, and then we go and blacken the men who don't agree with us—whole classes, that is to say, of our fellow-countrymen, not in the old honest slashing style, Tartuffes that we are!—but with all the delicate methods of a new art of slander, pursued almost for its own sake. We know so much better—always—than our opponents, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... proofs from you. But now, having nothing particular to do, I will fly a note, though I have nothing particular to say or ask. Indeed, how can a man have anything to say, who spends every day in correcting accursed proofs; and such proofs! I have fairly to blacken them, and fasten slips of paper on, so miserable have I found the style. You say that you dreamt that my book was ENTERTAINING; that dream is pretty well over with me, and I begin to fear that the public will find it intolerably ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... Ferguson, and Smith of Newburn &c. who, in order to palliate and extenuate the evil of the present backsliding courses, seem to have left no stone unturned to expose or blacken the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... range clean the rifle carefully, removing every trace of oil from the bore. This can best be done with a rag saturated with gasoline. Put a light coat of oil on the bolt and cams. Blacken the front and rear sights with smoke from a burning candle or camphor or with ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... the neighbors are invited to a feast of all the provisions that can be procured, which must be all consumed. The relations of the deceased do not join in the banquet; they cut off their hair, cover their heads, blacken their faces, and for a long ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... second wife. He kept this lady for several years as his mistress; and his own wife is said to have died of shame and horror at his conduct, and at his cruel treatment of her father. English writers have naturally tried to blacken his character as deeply as possible, and have represented him as a drunkard and a profligate; but there appears no foundation for the former accusation. The foundation for the latter is simply what we have mentioned, which, however evil in itself, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... worse for the effect they were intended to produce, (though no doubt they could not injure the Duke of Marlborough nearly so much in the public eyes as the malignant attacks of Swift did, which were carefully directed so as to blacken and degrade him,) because they were writ openly and fairly by Mr. Esmond, who made no disguise of them, who was now out of the army, and who never attacked the prodigious courage and talents, only the selfishness and rapacity, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... not have told whether he loved or hated Dorothy; he was only conscious of a fire-fed passion that consumed him. He must possess her; or, if not that, then he must grind her into the earth. He would torture her as he was tortured; he would blacken her by blackening Mr. Harley; with her pride in the dirt, with disgrace upon her, where then was that man who would wed her? The daughter of a forger—she would stain the name of wife! Richard might have her then; Storri would give her to him for a revenge! ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... the consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, which is baked at the fire upon a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide the cake into as many portions, and as similar as possible, as there are persons in the company. They blacken one of these portions with charcoal until it is perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one blindfolded draws a portion—he who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last. Who draws the black bit is the devoted person to be sacrificed to Baal, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... it. The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. Thunder-clouds empurple the turf and blacken the hangers, but they cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line; rain throws over the range a gauze veil of added softness; a mist makes them more wonderful, unreal, romantic; snow brings them to one's ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... we saw a signal run up to the royal-mast-head of the "Victory," Lord Hood's flag-ship. The seventy-four immediately replied, and at once ceased firing altogether, the fire from the "Juno" also slackening somewhat. Then we saw the rigging of the two ships blacken, as the hands went aloft to loose the canvas. Rapidly, yet as steadily as though the crews were merely being put through their sail drill, the heavy folds of canvas were let fall from the yards, sheeted home, and hoisted, the head-yards ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time, City children soak and blacken soul and ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... found, too, that their working proves how necessary they are, from this simple fact: You would suppose that, as the ventilator opens freely into the chimney, the smoke would be blown down through it in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is just what does not happen. If the ventilator be at all properly poised, so as to shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other moments keep itself permanently open; proving thereby that there is an up-draught of heated air continually escaping ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... added, as they are thrown into the list to blacken him, his intended match with his own niece Elizabeth, the penance of Jane Shore, and ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... Mortlake," snapped out the lieutenant, and his words came sharp as the crack of a whip; "this is the real Roy Prescott, and he has been the victim of as foul a plot to blacken an honest lad's name as ever came to my knowledge. The young ruffian who ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... will you see this nameless crime Brand the clean earth, blacken the crystal heaven? Why, no man stirs! God! with what thick strange fumes Hast thou, o' the sudden, brutalized their sense? Or am I mad? Is this already hell? Worshipful fiends, I have good store of gold, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... light sentence—but enough to blacken an honest name for life, enough to break a sensitive heart like ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... design of assassinating in order to reign. Premeditation haunts criminals, and it is in this manner that treason begins. The crime is a long time present in them, but shapeless and shadowy, they are scarcely conscious of it; souls only blacken gradually. Such abominable deeds are not invented in a moment; they do not attain perfection at once and at a single bound; they increase and ripen, shapeless and indecisive, and the centre of the ideas in which ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... raging for seven years in the neighboring island of Cuba. The same disregard of the laws of civilized warfare and of the just demands of humanity which has heretofore called forth expressions of condemnation from the nations of Christendom has continued to blacken the sad scene. Desolation, ruin, and pillage are pervading the rich fields of one of the most fertile and productive regions of the earth, and the incendiary's torch, firing plantations and valuable factories and buildings, is the agent marking the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... time for action calls; War, horrid war, approaches to your walls! Assembled armies oft have I beheld; But ne'er till now such numbers charged a field: Thick as autumnal leaves or driving sand, The moving squadrons blacken all the strand. Thou, godlike Hector! all thy force employ, Assemble all the united bands of Troy; In just array let every leader call The foreign troops: this day demands ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... defiant look in Ethelyn's face as she applied the match to this letter, and then watched it blacken and crisp upon the hearth. How well she remembered the day when she received it—the dark, dismal April day, when the rain which dropped so fast from the leaden clouds, seemed weeping for her, who could not weep then, so complete was ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... You have children—his; And mine is the King's child; so, if you love him— Nay, if you love him, there is great wrong done Somehow; but if you do not—there are those Who say you do not love him—let me go With my young boy, and I will hide my face, Blacken and gipsyfy it; none shall know me; The King shall never hear of me again, But I will beg my bread along the world With my young boy, and God will be our guide. I never meant you harm in any way. See, I can ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... wood of the northern poplar (large-toothed aspen) is a favorite for cooking fires, because it gives an intense heat, with little or no smoke, lasts well, and does not blacken the utensils. Red cedar has similar qualities, but is rather hard to ignite and must be fed fine ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... says, "may be found in the black relations of the Jesuits, and some French and Spanish Pasquilers." These slanderers were chiefly, I believe, Parsons or Persons, and Sanders, who scrupled at nothing that would tend to blacken the character and reputation of Elizabeth. Thus besides the above, and other stories of Elizabeth {12} herself, it was stated by Sanders that her mother, Anne Boleyn, was Henry VIII.'s own daughter; and that he intrigued, not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... though he were a plain American. But, fudge! He never minds; he's not a gentleman! True, it is now and then our legal lot To teach a stupid witness what is what, Or show that he (or she) Is rather worse than he (or she) should be; We find it necessary, Very, To blacken what we have no doubt is white, And whiten what ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... of business, varied by horse-play considered "kind o' rough" by even the more boisterous among us. Sometimes it was given, minstrel-wise, in the time-honored panoply of burnt cork; again, poor weary souls! they lacked even the spirit to blacken themselves, and clinging to the same dialogue, played boldly in Caucasian fairness, with the pathetically futile disguise of a Teuton accent. And last of all, Mr. Wilde would appear before the curtain, and "in behalf of Mrs. Wilde, self and ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... pensions and honours. At the same time the people were only partially in the favour of the ex-minister. The progress of addresses, resolutions, and condolences was languid, and in some instances the people were disposed to cast odium upon, and to blacken the character of, the retired secretary. The popularity of Pitt was, in truth, obscured with mists and clouds for a time, and it was not till after he had raised a few thunder-storms of opposition, that his political ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... know whether I have done for you or not," came Robard's voice after a pause, "and I don't care. In fact, I hope I have. Now, just to blacken your reputation a bit, if I have killed you, I shall go through ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... leaves on which a little lime is spread. The flavour is astringent and produces excessive expectoration, and, by its irritation, gives to the tongue and lips a curious bright pink colour. Still, it is considered an excellent stomach tonic, and so far as one can judge has no worse effect than to blacken ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly

... of baser Earth didst make And who with Eden didst devise the Snake; For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd, Man's ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that there should be no one to see her bright handiwork. Yet, sad to tell, there lay the broad sheet of crimson and gold day after day unnoticed and unheeded, till, in despair, it at length began to wither and blacken and die. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... slaveholding spirit too well to be surprised at any thing that has yet happened at the South or the North; they know that the greater the sin is, which is exposed, the more violent will be the efforts to blacken the character and impugn the motives of those who are engaged in bringing to light the hidden things of darkness. They understand the work of Reform too well to be driven back by the furious waves of opposition, which are only foaming out their own ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the Queen's Proctor is so insurmountable." But the woman said to herself: "Though England has decided that I must be a slave, nevertheless I will be free." Meantime Lieutenant Lynch-Blosse, after endeavoring to blacken his wife's character in his regiment, and getting soundly thrashed for his pains, eloped with a light-headed Scotch peeress whose husband, Lord Torphichen, promptly obtained a divorce, with the custody of his children, and the elopers fled the kingdom, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... aboot it; a' heard him wi' ma ain ears say twice, 'My father was an Amorite, and my mother a Hittite.' I'll take my aith on it. Noo, a' dinna ken Donald's forbears masel, for he's frae Tayside, but supposin' they were as bad as bad cud be, it's no for him to blacken his ain blood, and him ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... a few minutes four hundred citizens were murdered. The fate of the women, abandoned now to the outrage of a brutal soldiery, was worse than death. The capture of Rotterdam is infamous for the same crimes which blacken the record of every ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... made of cloth or satin, never of leather. The soles are made of rags or paper. We blacken the uppers of our boots. Chinamen whiten ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous

... left you to drown; and now for my sake you would save him, run the risk of being discovered assisting him to escape from justice—and the risk is great, dear. Think what it would mean if that became known, how it would blacken poor Frank's case. People would say they had all been in league to rob the mine; you would be despised, your mother's heart would break. Harry, that must not be. The shame is mine now; you and yours have borne enough. I cannot drag you into it again. I cannot have your precious love for me ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... counting-house!" cried Savinien, bitterly; "there's the sore point. Now look here; my friend, do you think that an organization like mine is made to bend to the trivialities of a copying clerk's work? To follow the humdrum of every-day routine? To blacken paper? To become a servant?—me! with what I have in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... he's treated Emma, and last night they up an' spoke—you should just a' 'eard them. Then someone set it goin' as the fault wasn't Dick's at all. See what I mean? I don't know who started that. I can't think as he'd try to blacken a girl's name just to excuse himself; that's goin' ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... hours. My love is great, but it is not slavish or silly. Do you think, sir, that I doubted for one moment Walter Clifford would own me when he came home and heard what I had suffered? Did I think him so unworthy of my love as to leave me under that stigma? Hardly. Then why should I blacken Mrs. Walter Clifford for an afternoon, just to be ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... Democrat, elected to the highest place in the Government, and fellow Democrats in another high place, where they have the right to speak and legislate generally, to join with the commune in traducing the Senate of the United States, to blacken the character of Senators who are as honorable as they are, who are as patriotic as they ever can be, who have done as much to serve their party as men who are now the beneficiaries of your labor and mine, to taunt and jeer us before ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... relatives or friends," she went on quietly. "No assets except musical tastes and a knowledge of languages, picked up in cheap Continental schools. I am twenty, and rather embittered by life, but I try not to be, because there's nothing can blacken the face of the sun like bitterness of heart, is there? It can spoil ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... away; whether he is really a shirk, or absents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the risk of being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to raise that question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in a word, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. To that end I return to the ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... disunion,—beyond that general incompatibility which is the canker of all such marriages,—the public, which seldom allows itself to be at a fault on these occasions, was, as usual, ready with an ample supply of reasons for the breach,—all tending to blacken the already darkly painted character of the poet, and representing him, in short, as a finished monster of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of his choice for every possible virtue, (a reputation which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... campaign of 1912, his enemies resorted to all sorts of slanders, calumnies, lies, ignoble always, and often indecent, to blacken him. On October 12th, the Iron Ore, a trade paper edited by George A. Newett at Ishpeming, Michigan, pubished this accusation: "Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting way; he gets drunk too, and that not infrequently, and all of his intimates ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... do possess. I ask with Dr. William Elliott Griffis: "In talking of our brother men, what shall be our general principle, detraction or fair play? Because lackadaisical writers picture the Christless nations as in the innocence of Eden, shall we, at the antipodes of fact and truth, proceed to blacken their characters? Shall we compare the worst in Canton, Benares or Zululand, with the best in London, Berlin or Philadelphia? Surely God cannot look with complacency or hear with delight much of the practical slander spoken among white folks and Anglo-Saxons of ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... guard. She is made to own that all which had passed between herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at the bidding of her brethren and the Carmelite, was nothing more than a dream. Not content with whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends, must crush them, and put ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... sought in him, and which he was persuaded that he found in him. "Since then, however," wrote Madame d'Houdetot, "he pities you more for your weakness than he reproaches you, and we are both of us far from joining the people who wish to blacken your character; we have and always shall have the courage to speak of you with esteem."[285] They saw one another a few times, and on one occasion the Count and Countess d'Houdetot, Saint Lambert, and Rousseau all sat at table together, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... estimating them we must remember that, though Dion Cassius wrote less than a century after the event narrated, he has come down to us merely in fragments and in the epitome of a Byzantine of the twelfth century, when everything that could possibly be done to discredit the worship of Antinous, and to blacken the memory of Hadrian, had been attempted by the Christian Fathers. On the other hand, Spartianus and Aurelius Victor compiled their histories at too distant a date to be of first-rate value. Taking the three reports together, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... will take no rest, nor eat any but the commonest food, until he shall have carried out the wishes of his one Jade Star, she whose teeth he is not worthy to blacken. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... of the lives of great criminals and was full of stories of secret thefts and murders. For the old Jew, having tortured his mind by loneliness and gloom, had left the volume in his way, hoping it would instil into his soul the poison that would blacken it ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... see. My own lips are sealed, but yours are free. You shall tarnish the memory of our father and blacken the honor of our mother. You shall humble me, and rob me of my wife's ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... eye to see, Though sights and sounds like these circled my bed, Wakeless and heavy would my slumbers be: Though the mild soften'd sun-light beam'd on me (If a dull heap of bones retained my name, That bleach'd or blacken'd 'mid the wasteful sea), Its radiance all unseen, its golden beam In vain through coral groves or emerald roofs ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... attacked during winter by scurvy; nine died, among them Zivolka himself. During spring, excursions for the purpose of surveying the neighbouring coasts had to be broken off because they had not brought snow-glasses with them—a thing that Pachtussov did not neglect, being accustomed besides to blacken the under eyelid as a protection against the blinding brightness of the snow. By the expedition, however, considerable stretches of the west coast of Novaya Zemlya were surveyed, and valuable contributions to a knowledge of the climatic conditions of this region obtained. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... therefore, for the following revolution in the romance of his own abominable life. He had in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty; means, therefore, for a full disguise. This very night, if he will shave off his yellow hair, and blacken his eyebrows, buying, when morning light returns, a dark-colored wig, and clothes such as may co-operate in personating the character of a grave professional man, he may elude all suspicions of impertinent ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... water," he said, "saw this coming years ago. They worked day and night to gather the workers of Europe together against this war that will blacken the world. For that they were called anti-patriots, fiends, men without a country. And some were imprisoned and others were shot. And over here—where in times of peace the number of killed and wounded ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... spot inviolate. The thoughts, the prayers, expended here without sense of conscious virtue, perhaps served her unexpectedly in the end, when before her, hopeless one, a golden gate swung slowly open, and she entered that land where the wretched deeds of her later life could blacken her thoughts no more.—At the time, certainly, she might have been impatient at the formality of her companion's manner, his unfailing deference to her faintest wish. And yet she was conscious that the days spent in this gay resort ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... warm, and by afternoon soaring pinions of cloud pushed up from the western horizon. I watched their white edges curl and blacken, and when they began to be laced with red lightning I said to the woman that we ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... murmured uncertainly, "are weak. The best among us sins in a day enough to blacken eternity. And unless we believe, and have faith in the Divine Mercy of the Father, and confess—confession—" His voice grew stronger and into it crept the rapt note of one whose auditor is within. "Confession! A sin confessed is no longer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... trial a full confession of the murder, signed with my name—and that confession he would not use; he would not inculpate his son; for ten years he has chosen rather to labor under the imputation of murder, than blacken the name of a castaway son, whose character was wretched already, and whom he ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake: For all the sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd—Man's forgiveness ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... the most personal of his notes, 'and I see that it might be for many; but not for me, for what delights me in my old age is independent of the place which I inhabit. When I do not sleep I dream, and when I am tired of dreaming I blacken paper, then I read, and most often reject all that my pen has vomited.' Here we see him blackening paper, on every occasion, and for every purpose. In one bundle I found an unfinished story about Roland, and some adventure with women in a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... it said, but it was enough to blacken the sun that streamed through the windows upon the old carpet. Griggs sat down and rested his head in his hand. With the cloud that came between him and happiness, his powers of reason returned, and he saw quickly, in the pre-vision of logic, a scene of violence and anger between husband and wife, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... wrath. Thy mighty engines and gigantic towers With frowning aspect awe the trembling World. Destruction, bursting from thy sudden blaze Hath taught the Birds to tremble at the sound; And Man himself, thy terror's boasted lord, Within the blacken'd hollow of thy tube, Affrighted sees the darksome shades of Death. Not only mourning groves, but human tears, The weeping Widow's tears, the Orphan's cries, Sadly deplore that e'er thy powers were known. Yet let thy Advent be ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... her bosom, her spirit is perhaps more alive than it has ever been since her altars were demolished and the images of her saints torn from their high places. No longer do the smoke of innumerable candles and the fumes of incense blacken and obscure her arches, but the spiritual breath of supplication and of thanksgiving still as of yore ascends to heaven from this ancient church, consecrated by the prayers of so many {9} past generations. The old order ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... head, through which a number of gold and silver or ivory arrows are placed, much in the manner of the peasant girls in some parts of Germany. The unmarried women have good eyebrows and beautiful teeth; but when they marry they blacken their teeth and shave off their eyebrows, to show their affection for their husbands, and that they no longer wish to win the admiration of others. The men have a curious way of saluting each other, passing their hands down the knee and ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... preserved. Mr. Hazlitt prints a letter to a Miss Frances Brown, wherein Lamb offers the verses, adding "I hope your sweetheart's name is WHITE. Else it would spoil all. May be 'tis BLACK. Then we must alter it. And may your fortunes BLACKEN with your name."] ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... my uncle is a gentleman. He would never stoop so low as that. I know he tried to blacken my dear father's character, but he idolized his son, and hardly realized the mischief he was doing. Watson is a thorough scoundrel! I have always known it, and my uncle has already dismissed him for tampering with some of ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... would plead absolute ignorance of the entire affair; that he had been away for weeks and only got in yesterday with Royce Pederstone, and was at the dance when it happened. Everybody would believe him and sympathise with him too because of an apparent endeavour to blacken the character of a public man, a prominent citizen and a local benefactor—one who himself had lost so much by the thefts—for, mark you, Brenchfield has made much of it in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... A charitable explanation of this self-debasing account of Josephus is that he was driven to invent some story to extenuate his resistance to the Romans, and had to blacken his reputation as a patriot to save his skin. The fact that he was kept prisoner some time by Vespasian suggests that he was not so big ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... be made of Manilla or such other pliable rope as may be directed from time to time by the Bureau of Ordnance. It is prohibited to blacken them or to diminish their pliability. Three-inch rope will be found large enough for the heaviest, and from 2-1/2 to 2-1/4 inch ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... was a form of retaliation, as the slaying of men and eating them. It has survived as a sport. Lest horror should spend itself upon these natives of the islands, I mention that in every state in our union similar records blacken our history. War's pages from the first glimmerings to the last foul moment reek with this deviltry. British and French at Badajoz and Tarragona, in Spain, left fearful memories. Occident and Orient alike are guilty. This crime smutches the chronicle of every invasion. It is part of the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... were not at all to criticise a philosophy, but to sully the reputation of the philosopher, deprive him of public confidence, ridicule and misrepresent his labors, hold him up by name to public obloquy and contempt, destroy or lessen the circulation of his books, and, in general, to blacken and break down his literary reputation by any and every means, even to the extent of aspersing his personal reputation, although there had never been the slightest personal collision. Its bitter ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... imitate flowers, work woolen things, break in horses, dress harness, carve in copper, paint carriages, blow glass, corrode the diamond, polish metals, turn marble into leaves, labor on pebbles, deck out thought, tinge, bleach, or blacken everything—well, this middleman has come to that world of sweat and good-will, of study and patience, with promises of lavish wages, either in the name of the town's caprices or with the voice of the monster dubbed speculation. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... Miss Browning sent for me this evening to tell me how people were talking about you. She implied that it was a complete loss of your good name. You do not know, Molly, how slight a thing may blacken a girl's reputation for life. I had hard work to stand all she said, even though I did not believe a word of it at the time. And now you have told me that much ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... first faction fight in ould Ireland, they say, Was all on account of Saint Pathrick's birthday, Some fought for the eighth—for the ninth more would die. And who wouldn't see right, sure they blacken'd his eye! At last, both the factions so positive grew, That each kept a birthday, so Pat then had two, Till Father Mulcahy, who showed them their sins, Said, "No one could have two ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... oxygen with a metal or base destitute of an acid. In oxidation the oxygen that enters into combination is not sufficient to form an acid. The protoxid of tin (SnO) is black, and can be obtained from chlorid of tin, or by long exposure of tin to the atmosphere. The oxygen in the saliva helps to blacken the tin, and the metallic oxid penetrates the dentin more or less, acting as a protection, because it is insoluble. Oxygen is the only element which forms compounds with all others, and is the type of electro-negative ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler

... only recoiled on his own head, for the Ballarat folk argued, and rightly, that whatever she did it was not his place to cast the first stone at her, seeing that the unsatisfactory position she was now in was mainly his own work. Villiers, therefore, gained nothing by his attempt to blacken his wife's character except the contempt of everyone, and even the few friends he had gained turned their backs on him until no one would associate with him but Slivers, who did so in order to gain his own ends. The company had ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... the sand, and cast His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he came. As some rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, When the frost flowers the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed The unknown adventurous youth, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... work. The next Banner spoke of a foul conspiracy whose nefarious end it was to blacken the sterling character of a good man, of that Nestor of the Slocum County Bar, Colonel J. Rodney Potts. As testimony that the best citizens of the town were not involved with this infamous ring, it had extorted from Colonel Potts ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... said, "I and my people were in a very different state to what we are now: we had no teaching, no churches, no missionaries, our medicine men taught us to believe in good and bad spirits and to depend on dreams. I, when a boy, was obliged by my father to blacken my face and fast for many days together, and while doing this it was believed that whatever I dreamed would come true. But now we Indians at Garden River are no longer heathen, we have all now accepted ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... Beale was confused by the two desires which make it difficult to confess anything truthfully—the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to do full justice to oneself at the same time. It is so very hard not to blacken the blackness, or whiten the whiteness, when one comes to trying to tell the truth about oneself. "But I been a beast all the same," ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... impossible. She could not say No to him. She had struggled often in reference to Mr. Gilmore, and had found it impossible to say Yes. There was now the same sort of impossibility in regard to the No. She couldn't blacken herself with such a lie. And yet, though she was sure of this, she was so astounded by his declaration, so carried off her legs by the alteration in her position, so hard at work within herself with her new endeavour to change the aspect in which she must look ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... again. In the foreground, a black group of trees may be dimly discerned; beyond are indistinct hills and the last glow of a bloody sunset. Smoke and dust blacken the scene. Even before the cloud breaks to reveal the valley for a moment, the low roar is suddenly broken by the rattle of musketry, followed by the booming of artillery and the drumming sound of the machine guns. A trumpet sounds the charge. ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn

... people you must exercise the same acuteness that is so absolutely necessary in England. There are few great crimes in proportion to the population, nor do we ever hear of such atrocities as those classes of murders which so frequently blacken the page of our modern history. Homicide is more common than actual murder, and is often the result of a sudden quarrel where knives are drawn, and a fatal stab in passion constitutes the offence. Sheep-stealing ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... mistake between midnight and morn! Now, the furst faction fight in Oireland, they say, Was all on account of St. Patrick's birthday. Some fought for the eighth, for the ninth more would die— Who didn't say right, they would blacken his eye. At length both the parties so positive grew, They each kept a birthday, so Patrick got two. Till Father Mulcahy (who showed them their sins) Said, No man can have two birthdays (barrin' he was twins). An' boys, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... my hand. It sticks to her throat, as though 'twere glued by blood. Tear me away. I have not force enough to liberate myself. Why do you grin at me? The corpse grins likewise. It is jugglery. I am innocent. You would take away my life. Tear me away, I say: the veins rise; they blacken; they are filling with new blood. I feel them swell; they coil like living things around my fingers. She ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... blue, and over the hills, far, far away, the faint suggestion of a "young May moon" is growing. A last faint twittering of birds is in the air, and now it ceases, and darkness falls and grows, and shadows fill the land and hide the edges of the moors, and blacken the sides of the walls as ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... as of winter cold. With my back to both doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut



Words linked to "Blacken" :   cookery, preparation, melanize, nigrify, melanise, black, singe, sear, burn, colour, color, scorch, discolor, blacken out, whiten, discolour



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