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Descriptive   Listen
adjective
Descriptive  adj.  Tending to describe; having the quality of representing; containing description; as, a descriptive figure; a descriptive phrase; a descriptive narration; a story descriptive of the age.
Descriptive anatomy, that part of anatomy which treats of the forms and relations of parts, but not of their textures.
Descriptive geometry, that branch of geometry. which treats of the graphic solution of problems involving three dimensions, by means of projections upon auxiliary planes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Descriptive" Quotes from Famous Books



... not enter much more into particulars; she led away the conversation to the sights she had seen in their summer tour; and as she had a good deal of descriptive power, she made her narratives so interesting that time slipped quickly past, and the young company was as much surprised as Mr. Audley was when he came home and found them all there, not yet gone to bed. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... meaning others open, one out of another, each of wider circuit and purer abstraction, like Dante's own heavens, giving and receiving light.[76] Indeed, Dante himself is partly to blame for this. "The form or mode of treatment," he says, "is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive, and withal definitive, divisive, probative, improbative, and positive of examples." Here are conundrums enough, to be sure! To Italians at home, for whom the great arenas of political and religious speculation ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... beginnings of art in the race are due to the mother's instinctive attempts to please the eyes and busy the hands of her tender offspring. The children of primitive peoples have their dolls and playthings as do those of higher races. In an article descriptive of the games and amusements of the Ute Indians, we read: "The boy remains under maternal care until he is old enough to learn to shoot and engage in manly sports and enjoyments. Indian children play, laugh, cry, and act like white children, and make their own ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... was relieved of this tax on her descriptive powers by the announcement of dinner, and Gwendolen's question was soon indirectly answered by her uncle, who dwelt much on the advantages he had secured for them in getting a place like Offendene. Except the rent, it ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... will be well for them to miss various other things besides: will they, for example, care for the impassioned address of Constance to her judges, for the landlord's tale of grammarye, for Sir David Lyndsay's narrative, or even for the many descriptive passages that interrupt the free progress of the tale? Their reading would appear to be done on the plan of those who get through novels, or other works of imagination, by carefully omitting the dialogue and all those passages ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... The descriptive stage direction, effectively used by Ibsen, is further expanded by Hauptmann. But it remains impersonal and never becomes direct comment or even argument as in Shaw. It is used not only to suggest the scene but, above ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... only of the satirical poems already noticed, and of another more genial satire, Death and Dr. Hornbook, but also of those characteristic epistles in which he reveals so much of his own character, and of those other descriptive poems in which he so wonderfully delineates the habits of the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... have pianos to advertise, do not limit your advertisement to a beautiful picture of the mahogany case and general words telling the reader that it is "the best." Pianos are musical instruments, and the descriptive words should first of all call up delightful auditory images in ...
— Power of Mental Imagery • Warren Hilton

... be likened to the physical condition of Victor Hugo's Claude Frollo after Quasimodo had hurled him from the tower of Notre Dame. You remember the sickening sensation produced by that wonderful piece of descriptive work, depicting the false priest hanging to the eaves, vainly striving to ascend, feeling the leaden gutter to which he was holding slowly giving away. His hands send momentary messages to the brain, warning it that endurance is almost exhausted. Below he sees the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... deserving of much praise for this, his first novel.... In his descriptive passages Mr. Duncan is sincere to the smallest detail. His characters are painted in with bold, wide strokes.... Unlike most first novels, 'Doctor Luke' waxes stronger as it progresses."—N. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... and wagging its appendix of "Critical Notices" kindly at the advent of humbler merit, treated "Merry-Mount" with the distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and slighting notice of "Morton's Hope." The reviewer thinks the author's descriptive power wholly exceeds his conception of character ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... on a seventeenth canto in the spring of 1823. Both poems were issued in parts, and with long intervals of unequal duration between the parts; but the same result was brought about by different causes and produced a dissimilar effect. Childe Harold consists of three distinct poems descriptive of three successive travels or journeys in foreign lands. The adventures of the hero are but the pretext for the shifting of the diorama; whereas in Don Juan the story is continuous, and the scenery is exhibited as a background ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... Cesnola Collection of Cyprus Antiquities. A Descriptive and Pictorial Atlas. Large folio. 500 Plates. Sold by subscription only. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks

... the creature is kept in semi-darkness, that is because he is accustomed to the thick shades of his native forests. He is very docile, excepting when attacked or irritated"—(descriptive growls from the Missing Link)—"when he displays extraordinary activity in pursuit of his foes"—(display of extraordinary activity by Madhi, swinging on the bar, racing round the cage, roaring, &c.). "He is very human in his appearance, as you will observe, and is much more upright in his carriage ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... tread of an elephant, and expound the Articles of War in stentorian tones that equaled the roar of a bull! But if, perchance, in the awesome precincts of his office, he afterwards got hold of a piece of doggerel some witty midshipman had written descriptive of such a scene, none would ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... matter emerged not a big history, but a short novel. Short as it is, it has been called an epical poem in the manner of Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare. Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the more evident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberately Homeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much to this little book by Gogol. It is astonishing that so small a work can show such colossal force. Force is its prime quality—physical, mental, religious. In this ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... Provincia Gallis acciderunt. Le Moyne was Laudonniere's artist. His narrative forms the Second Part of the Grands Voyages of De Bry (Frankfort, 1591). It is illustrated by numerous drawings made by the writer from memory, and accompanied with descriptive letter-press. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... In the recently discovered manuscript of Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung occurs this passage, evidently self-descriptive: "Als Knabe hatte er zu grossen praechtigen Worten und Spruechen eine ausserordentliche Liebe, er schmueckte seine Seele damit aus wie mit einem koestlichen Kleide, und freute sich darueber, als wenn sie zu ihm selbst gehoerten kindlisch ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... and how to grow them successfully, would be useful. These chapters were written for and published in The Bazaar, in 1885 and following years. Some alterations and additions have been made, and the whole is now offered as a thoroughly practical and descriptive work on ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... Mexican viceroys to procure it in China; but "the Chinese mercury obtained from Canton and Manilla was impure, and contained a great deal of lead; and its price [1782] amounted to 80 piastres the quintal." See Humboldt's account, descriptive and historical, of this use of mercury, in his New Spain (Black's ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... gave a descriptive narrative of the killing of each bird and squirrel as he pulled them off his belt and threw them ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... might have written much more, if his life had been prolonged, it is doubtful whether he would have produced anything finer. Any further effort at musical effects would probably have resulted in a kind of ecstatic rhapsody. The first of the poems in question is the Marshes of Glynn, descriptive of the sea marshes near the city ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... the descriptive passages, and there is a melodious rhythm to his prose style that is pleasurable in a high degree. Mr. Warman has a field of his own, and he ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... the eye of a poet as 'brimful of water and light,' and his forehead as being 'alarmingly bright,' the reviewer adds: 'We find a pleasant relief from these distressing hallucinations, in the poems of ALFRED B. STREET. He is a descriptive poet, and at the head of his class. His pictures of American scenery are full of gusto and freshness; sometimes too wild and diffuse, but always true and beautiful.' So some are praised and some are blamed—'thus runs the world away!' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... through it, was incorporated into rhetoric as ἐνέγεια, a figure of speech. There petrified in an alien substance, this characteristic quality of poetic was transmitted to another age which knew of it through no other source.[85] Thus a successful orator narrated with descriptive vividness the circumstances, for instance, of a cruel murder, and even dramatized, speaking now in the person of one actor, now of another, the situation which he was endeavoring to realize for his audience. He was thus enabled better ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... whose approach, whether abrupt or lingering, is alike awful to man.—He spoke of the vicisstudes of empires with much eloquence and learning, but his audience were not observed to be much affected.—He cited various passages from the lives of the saints, descriptive of the glories of martyrdom, and the heroism of those who had bled and blazed for Christ and his blessed mother, but they appeared still waiting for something to touch them more deeply. When he inveighed against the tyrants under whose bloody persecution ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... over. It was the long one, and ran into May 1792. I find in the collection only three letters to Mr. Lear dated in that year. The first is from Mount Vernon, July 30, '92, soon after he had left Philadelphia, and is familiarly descriptive of his journey homewards. His horses plagued him a good deal, he says, and the sick mare, owing to a dose of physic administered the night he reached Chester, was so much weakened as to be unable to carry Austin [one of the postilions] further than the Susquehannah; ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush

... nominal rolls, nominal lists and lists. By the time they have finished one list it is long out-of-date. Then they start the next. Everything happens at the same time; nobody has time to finish a sentence. Only a military mind, with a very limited descriptive vocabulary and a chronic habit of self-deception, would call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various

... wholly erroneous; more than that, it is even dangerously fallacious, in that its use blinds or tends to blind our own people to the real conditions existing in the Archipelago. It is correct to speak of the Filipino peoples, because this expression is, geographically, accurately descriptive; but it is absolutely misleading to speak of the Filipino people, because of the false political idea involved and conveyed by the use of the singular number. Similarly, there is no objection to the term "Filipino" or "Filipinos," ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... "The name's somewhat descriptive, even if it is incomplete. As I said, visibility refraction doesn't work right in their case. Somehow, they pick up visual sensation right through a screen, regardless of its adjustment. But things seen through a screen are distorted, and look ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... well as his former master and instructor, Henry Maudslay, of London, for the purpose of being inserted in Industrial Biography, or Ironworkers and Toolmakers, which was published at the end of 1863. He was of opinion that the outline of his life there presented was sufficiently descriptive of his career as a ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... term descriptive of a Roman body, and "military tribune" are more literal renderings of the Greek original than "band" and "captain" in John 18:3, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... of an inguinal canal thus naturally constituted, I need not hesitate to assert that the form, the extent, and the boundaries of the inguinal canal, as given by the descriptive anatomist, are purely conventional, and do not exist until after dissection; for which reason, and also because the form and condition of these parts so described and dissected do not appear absolutely to correspond in any two individuals, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... sailors sent home for hospital treatment. Their experiences, such as may be published at this time, now appear in book form. This book brings out many thrilling adventures that have occurred in the war zone of the high seas—and has official sanction. Miss Sterne's descriptive powers are equaled by few. She has the dramatic touch which compels interest. Her book, which contains many photographic scenes, will be warmly welcomed in navy circles, and particularly ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... would say, 'this paragraph is taken verbatim from "Le Figaro"; this other appeared in "Le Temps," this other in "Le Siecle,"' and so forth. And he was not alluding to extracts from editorials, but to descriptive matter—accounts of demonstrations and ceremonies, fashionable weddings and other social functions, interviews, and so forth. The practice upset all his ideas of a foreign correspondent's duties, which should be to obtain ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... be owned that this attitude is sometimes made a little difficult by the vigour of your special devotees. They have ceased, indeed, thank Heaven! to imitate you; and even in "descriptive articles" the touch of Mr. Gigadibs, of him whom "we almost took for the true Dickens," has disappeared. The young lions of the Press no longer mimic your less admirable mannerisms—do not strain so much after fantastic comparisons, do not (in your manner and Mr. Carlyle's) give people ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... conceptions, the skill of his groupings, and the graphicness gave rise to such an idea, it would seem to have its foundation as well in Nature as in superstition. Matthew has more detail, more thought; Luke is more picturesque, more descriptive. John has more deep feeling; Luke more action, more life. The Annunciation, the Widow of Nain, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the incident to which we shall presently advert, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... etc. He lectured fully an hour and a quarter, and his humorous sayings were interspersed with geographical, agricultural, and statistical remarks, sometimes branching off and reaching beyond, soaring, in the very choicest language, up to the very pinnacle of descriptive power." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... subject-matter which is partly objective. Ethics deals with conduct as much as with emotion, and therefore considers the causes of events and their consequences as well as our judgments of their value. Esthetics also is apt to include the history and philosophy of art, and to add much descriptive and critical matter to the theory of our susceptibility to beauty. A certain confusion is thereby introduced into these inquiries, but at the same time the discussion is enlivened by excursions into ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... short, somewhat longer than 'Thou hast diamonds and pearls,' or 'Thy soft lily fingers,'" and he gently touched her hand. "But long or short, what descriptive power, what objectivity! He is my favorite poet and I know him by heart, little as I care in general for this poetry business, in spite of the jingles I occasionally perpetrate myself. But with Heine's poetry it ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... was bronzed by sun and sand-storm to a hue almost Mexican. He shaved clean all but the heavy moustache that drooped over his firm lips, and the sprinkling of gray about the brows, temples, and moustache was most becoming to his peculiar style. One prominent mark had he which the descriptive book of his company referred to simply as "sabre-scar on right jaw," but it deserved mention more extended, for the whitish streak ran like a groove from just below the ear-tip to the angle of the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... great pains to give my philosophical, political, and social matter the best literary and critical backing we could get in London. I hunted sedulously for good descriptive writing and good criticism; I was indefatigable in my readiness to hear and consider, if not to accept advice; I watched every corner of the paper, and had a dozen men alert to get me special matter of the sort that draws in the unattached reader. The chief danger on the literary side of a ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... interest in life, to the Girls' High School in which she had been an increasingly valuable assistant for the last three years. Her new interest in life was Fanny as a correspondent, and to give her a lead she wrote her a lengthy descriptive letter within a fortnight of her return. Fanny answered, very disappointingly. Fanny indeed had no literary gift, but it was new to Miss Winchelsea to find herself deploring the want of gifts in a friend. That letter was even criticised aloud in the safe solitude of Miss Winchelsea's study, and her ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... the style of reading. Haydn I was thinking of,—the bright, brilliant, cheerful Haydn,—who, when complained of for making church music into dancing tunes, replied, "When I think of God my soul is always so full of joy that I want to dance!" This Creation is a descriptive poem—the garden parts unite Thomson and Milton's style—the whole effect pastoral, yet brilliant. I was never more animated. I had had a new experience; it is worth while to know nothing to ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... those that remained, and to have lost herself in work for and with them. Whatever may have been written at this time, appears to have been destroyed, nothing remaining but the poem "Contemplations," which is more truly poetry than any of its more labored predecessors, its descriptive passages holding much of the charm of the lovely landscape through which she moved to the river, flowing still through ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... mean McClain," exclaimed Colonel Snow. "I've read his work, and it is the most lucid, modest, and understandable descriptive work on the Alaskan ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question (which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... She was a direct person, as we know, but true descendants of the Puritans believe in the decency of preliminaries, and here was certainly an affair not to be plunged into. Euphrasia was a spinster in the strictest sense of that formidable and highly descriptive term, and she intended ultimately to discuss with Tom a subject of which she was supposed by tradition to be wholly ignorant, the mere mention of which still brought warmth to her cheeks. Such a delicate matter should surely be led up to delicately. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... France. While teaching and lecturing in this beautiful part of his country (the Auvergne region), Bergson found time for private study and original work. He was engaged on his Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience. This essay, which, in its English translation, bears the more definite and descriptive title, Time and Free Will, was submitted, along with a short Latin Thesis on Aristotle, for the degree of Docteur-es-Lettres, to which he was admitted by the University of Paris in 1889. The work was published in the same year by Felix Alcan, the Paris publisher, in his series ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... DESCRIPTIVE: Opposite Harper's Ferry,—which is situated on a pleasant elevation at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers—a few rods north of "Pinnacle Bluff," a flighty eminence on the Blue Ridge Mountains, ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... illustrated is too "descriptive" and not sufficiently "monumental" to be assigned to the Timourid age, and so I give it to the late fifteenth century, to those delicious years when the old tradition, though weakened, had not been smothered under the scenic delicacies brought into fashion by Behzad. If the Timourid ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... history of Quaker Hill, which it is my purpose in this book to write, comprises three periods; and the descriptive sociology records two differing yet related forms of social life, connected by a period of transition. This study will then be made up of three parts: First, the Quaker Community; second, the Transition; ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... interests were not entirely lacking. In a magazine which Miss Russell took in for the school library there was an announcement of a competition which offered a prize to children under thirteen for the largest number of poetical quotations descriptive of wild flowers. Both Lindsay and Cicely were anxious to try, and ransacked all the volumes of poetry they could get hold of for ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... no family names, properly so called; the English generally took one descriptive of trade or profession, hence the multitude of Smiths; the Normans generally then name of their estate or birthplace, with the affix De. Knight's Pictorial History, volume ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... born 1700, died 1748. He was educated for the Scotch ministry, but came to London, and commenced his career as a poet by the series of poems called the 'Seasons,' descriptive of ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... odd, but after all, the world seldom sees a real original letter. Letters of business, old letters, love-letters, and letters written for print, the world sees enough. But the real life-descriptive gossiping letter is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... words will, I hope, appear as we advance. For the present it will be enough to say that there are really in our text three co-ordinate clauses, all descriptive of the subjects of the monarch, regarded as a band of warriors—and that the main ideas are these:—the subjects are willing soldiers; the soldiers are priests; the priest-soldiers are as dew upon the earth. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... presumptuous, but it is fitting that something be said of those women in our own country in whom we feel a proper pride. In literature, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child are unsurpassed by any writers of our day. The former is remarkable for her descriptive powers, intuition of character, and rare common sense; the latter for patient research, sound reason, and high moral tone. No country has produced a woman of such oratorical powers as our peerless ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... life of every creature a steady stream of energy. Scientists have not been able to decide on a descriptive term for this all-important life-force. It has been variously called "libido," "vital impulse" or "elan vital," "the spirit of life," "horme," and "creative energy." The chief business of this life-force ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... Mr. Lowell, a growing disposition to deny him genius in any respect. He is now commonly spoken of as "a man of high poetical talent, very 'correct,' with a warm appreciation of the beauty of nature and great descriptive powers, but rather too much of the old-school manner of Cowper, Goldsmith and Young." This is the truth, but not the whole truth. Mr. Bryant has genius, and that of a marked character, but it has been overlooked by modern schools, because deficient ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... flow from my relationship to the author. Its style had an unaffected and picturesque simplicity. The great variety and circumstantial display of the incidents, together with their intrinsic importance as descriptive of human manners and passions, made it the most useful book in my collection. It was late: but, being sensible of no inclination to sleep, I resolved to betake myself to the perusal ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... discovered the Lunar Rills), but a poor draughtsman: his maps are therefore of little value. Lohrman of Dresden published in 1838 an excellent map of the Moon, 15 inches in diameter, accompanied by descriptive text and several charts of particular portions ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... achieve standardization in nautical charts and electronic chart displays; to provide advice on nautical cartography and hydrography; to develop the sciences in the field of hydrography and techniques used for descriptive oceanograrphy ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Society; his subject was the Progress of the World during the last half century. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, of Cambridge, delivered the poem, which was one of his most admirable productions—a blending of the most exquisite descriptive and sentimental poetry with the finest humor, the keenest wit, and the most effective sarcasm. PIERPONT, the well-known poet, also read an admirable satirical and humorous poem at the dinner: The number of graduates at Yale this year was seventy-eight.—The commencement of the University ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... with grave anguish to talk of going to the police in the morning, of printing descriptive bills, of setting people to drag the ponds for miles around. It was extremely gruesome. I murmured something about communicating with the young lady's relatives. It seemed to me a very natural suggestion; but Fyne and his wife exchanged such a significant glance that I felt ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... given her the name when in a facetious frame of mind, as being descriptive of the very opposite of her character, for she was gentle as a lamb, tender in the mouth, playful in her moods, and sensitive to a degree both in body and spirit. No curb was ever needed to restrain Vixen, nor spur to urge her on. A chirp ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... is as just as Tennyson's descriptive epithet almost invariably proves to be. For at Allington the Medway, which from Aylesford Bridge to Allington Lock has dwindled to a narrow stream, swells out into a broad expanse, where many boats can easily move abreast. If the Cloisterham Weir of Edwin Drood were really ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... more entertaining book for juveniles who 'want to know' than Mr. Robert Ford's Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories, we have not yet made its acquaintance. The title is descriptive, as few titles are, of the unusual range of the book, which, be it said, will probably be read with as much zest by 'big folk' as ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... the real interests of the Prince; and does solidly advise him of what is feasible, what not, in head-quarters; very exemplary "attachment;" credible to what length, the Prince well enough knows. And so the Correspondence is unbeautiful; not very descriptive even,—for poor Friedrich is considerably under mask, while he writes to that address; and of Grumkow himself we want no more "description;" and is, in fact, on its own score, an avoidable article rather than otherwise; though perhaps the reader, for a poor involved Crown-Prince's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of eloquence, rhetorical language is constantly admired; the bold expression of strong feeling, and the simple description of the beauties of nature, are found to interest both cultivated and uncultivated minds. To understand descriptive poetry, no previous knowledge is required, beyond what common observation and sympathy supply; the analogies and transitions of thought, are slight and obvious; no labour of attention is demanded, no active effort of the mind is requisite to follow them. The pleasures of simple sensation are, by ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... composition, algebra through quadratic equations, plane geometry, descriptive geography, physical geography, United States history and the outlines ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... next day, Dec. 5, the winds were light and variable, so that we made little progress. At noon, the furthest land seen to the westward appeared like a small flat-topped island, but being found to be connected with the main land, received the descriptive name of Circular Head; a nearer projection, of a jagged appearance, was called Rocky Cape, and a steep cliffy head still nearer, Table Cape, from its flat top. Our situation ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... to the Benedictine monks, corrected numerous errors, and supplemented the chapters, some of which, in the original, are exceedingly short, the whole history terminating abruptly with the nineteenth chapter, that is, with the beginning of the eighteenth century. The remaining 21 chapters are merely descriptive of ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... are justly proud of their work; often they do not hesitate to add their signatures, and in this way later ages can name the "craftsmen" who have transmitted to them these objects of abiding beauty. The designers also are accommodating enough to add descriptive legends of the scenes which they depict,—Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, and all the other heroes are carefully named, usually with the words written above ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... risk of life from the wild left to the only less stormed-against centre. Here a strong blue current, French and Richardson, strove against a staunch grey ledge—a part of D. H. Hill's line, with Anderson to support. Here was a sunken road, that, later, was given a descriptive name. Here was the Bloody Lane. Lee was found standing upon a knoll, calm and grand. "I yet look for A. P. Hill," he said. "He has a talent for appearing ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... difference as to the things they did and the places they went to. We didn't expect to see them at dances, or at the theater, or any such places. If we did, everybody reckoned that they had backslidden. Those things were called 'worldly.' We have almost lost the word now, but it must be descriptive of something, I should say. If Winifred instinctively takes a stand against such things, without being talked to about it, I shall think it is the old sort of religion that she has somehow discovered, and shall ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... implored you to permit them to send you something for nothing. They are common objects of the periodical press. Every paper is stuffed with them. "Write for free samples." "Catalogues." "Trial packet sent post free on application." "Write for our beautifully illustrated art brochure." "Descriptive booklet by return." "Write for full particulars." "Free sample bottle sufficient for seven days' trial." "Approval gladly. Postpaid." "Plans and particulars of the sole agents." "Superbly printed art volume ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... roar of his battle is not yet quite passed away, nor his ghastly wounds forgotten. The citizens of Camden have lately enclosed his grave, and placed on it handsome marble, with an epitaph gratefully descriptive of his VIRTUES and SERVICES, that the people of future days may, like Washington, heave the sigh when they read of "the generous stranger who came from a distant land to fight their battles, and to water, with his blood, the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... are impudent forgeries of the fourth century, giving a totally false version of the events. The Martian finds that the terms used for these fabrications are "redaction" or "recension," but, in his understanding, he finds the word most descriptive of the process to be forgery. "The main point is that practically all the experts assure you that in scores of material points the Old Testament history has been discredited, and has only been confirmed ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... fundamental element of transformed motion in music has been well brought out in a suggestive essay by Goblot ("La Musique Descriptive," Revue Philosophique, July, 1901): "Sung or played, melody figures to the ear a successive design, a moving arabesque. We talk of ascending and descending the gamut, of high notes or low notes; the; higher voice of woman is called soprano, or above, the deeper voice of man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... he wants to draw from our eyes, I can bate him there," observed Mike, when Kakaik had ceased; and he began one of those sad ditties descriptive of the death of some Irish heroine. Though the Indian could not understand the meaning, he appeared to be much affected, and it was some time before he began another song. From the few words we could make out, we supposed him to be recounting the misfortunes of his people, and their departure from ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... the ruffian opposite him were talking, but like strangers who had met by chance, and not at all after the fashion of friends who have met at a rendezvous. They spoke in the jargon of their pretended rank in life, not that puerile slang met with in romances descriptive of low life, but that obscene, vulgar dialect which it is impossible to render, so changeable and diverse is ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... to the number of official decorations, Edward Trumbull's wall paintings in the unique Pennsylvania building are of great interest. Thoroughly dignified in their composition, they are most descriptive in their subject-matter. The "Pennsylvania Industries" are on the west side and "Penn's Treaty with the Indians" on the other. It is evident that Trumbull is a disciple of Brangwyn, though a personal note is not lacking ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... together with the aristocracy, turned their eyes to inanimate nature. As they lost sight of gods and heroes, they set themselves to describe streams and mountains. Thence originated in the last century, that kind of poetry which has been called, by way of distinction, the descriptive. Some have thought that this sort of delineation, embellished with all the physical and inanimate objects which cover the earth, was the kind of poetry peculiar to democratic ages; but I believe this to be an error, and that it only belongs ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... asked to breakfast by the late Rev. Caesar Otway, some time I think in the winter of 1829. About that time, or a little before, he had brought out his admirable work called, "Sketches in Ireland, descriptive of interesting portions of Donegal, Cork, and Kerry." Among the remarkable localities of Donegal, of course it was natural to suppose, that "Lough Derg," or the celebrated "Purgatory of St. Patrick," would not be omitted. Neither was it; and nothing can exceed the accuracy ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... Big Bethel—wrote "John Brent," and the famous but utterly dreary "Cecil Dreeme," and a few doors below is the red brick apartment where in more modern days so many of the younger scribblers have toiled in the years of their pseudo-Bohemia. Across the Square N.P. Willis, the town's crack descriptive writer, was in the habit of making his way, and on one occasion with sorry results. The actor, Edwin Forrest, appeared in his path and fell upon him with vigorous assault. Bystanders were on the point of intervening. "Stand back, gentlemen!" cried ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... Langdon grinned happily as he listened to the other's vociferations, which threatened Dishpan with every known form of torture and punishment, from instant disembowelment to the more merciful end of losing her brain through the medium of a club. He grinned because Otto's vocabulary descriptive of terrible things always impending over the heads of his sleek and utterly heedless pack-horses was one of his chief joys. He knew that if Dishpan should elect to turn somersaults while diamond-hitched under her pack, ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... say, this is mere a trifle, but it is none the less beautifully descriptive of a creature that has always seemed to me to be worthy of more attention than he has ever received from the poets of our age. I have been unable to find in the literature of Greece, Egypt or the ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... Egyptian sun could not with any show of reason be described as dead in winter. But if his daily death was the theme of the legend, why was it celebrated by an annual ceremony? This fact alone seems fatal to the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of sunset and sunrise. Again, though the sun may be said to die daily, in what sense can he be said ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... existing registration and recordation systems. If such changes are made, the AAP asserted that they should not create precedent for other registration and deposit practices. The AAP also questioned the need for procedures allowing blanket exemptions in some instances for depositing materials, accepting descriptive materials instead of a copy of the work, and allowing certain collections such as photos or TV series to be given a single identifying group name or title. The AAP is concerned that these procedures will make it difficult for reliance parties to identify restored works and comply ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... the appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined and developed. Assuming happiness to be the end of being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through which it is to be reached. Hence St. Paul's noble paradox descriptive of the Christian life,—"as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... attractively illustrated, of the "Evenings at Home"—a joint work of Mrs. Barbauld's and her brother's, (the elder Dr. Aikin.) Mrs. Barbauld was exceedingly clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson's style was the best of all that exist. Her blank verse "Washing Day," descriptive of the discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under the affliction of a family washing, is picturesquely circumstantiated. And her prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection a deep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity. Coleridge, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... elaborate argument. This form it assumed in a speech of great power and eloquence, which is still preserved, and which was delivered by Dr. Chalmers at a very memorable meeting. The meeting to which I refer was called 'the convocation,'—a name familiar enough in England, though descriptive there of a quite different assembly. The Scotch convocation was not a court, but simply a private, unofficial conference of ministers interested in the common cause of the then impending disruption. They met alone, because they desired to look their position, prospects, and responsibilities calmly ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... on the dignified High-Church rector, and the dignified High-Church clerk, and watch the movement of their lips, from which, as they read their respective portions of the venerable liturgy, would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Nance?" said Mrs. Rooney; for that was the unenviable but descriptive title the new-comer was known by: and though she knew it for her soubriquet, yet she also knew Mrs. Rooney would not call her by it if she were not in an ill temper, so she began humbly to explain the cause of her visit, when ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... Christianity. The ground for this statement is the fact that each of these religions has developed strong individualistic characteristics. They are concerned with individual salvation. The importance of this element none will deny, least of all the writer. But I question the correctness of the descriptive adjective. Because of their individualistic character they are fitted to leap territorial boundaries and can find acceptance in every community; for this they are not dependent on the territorial expansion of the communities ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... chemistry for our illustration of this. The chemistry of the last century and the early decades of this was largely a descriptive science, such as the natural history branches, zoology, and botany are still in great part. Reasonably exact mineral analyses were made, it is true, but the laws of chemical combination and the fundamental conceptions of atoms and molecules had not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... was still in that pocket in which Mr. Dwyer had shoved his notebook filled with what he had written of Gallegher's work and Hade's final capture, and with a running descriptive account of the fight. With his eyes fixed on Mr. Dwyer, Gallegher drew it out, and with a quick movement shoved it inside his waistcoat. Mr. Dwyer gave a nod of comprehension. Then glancing at his two guardsmen, and finding ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... minister plenipotentiary at the Court of France, that the Latin hexameter, "Eripuit c[oe]lo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis," first applied to him by Turgot, was affixed to his portrait by Fragonard. The line, said to be an adaptation of a line in the Astronomicon of Manilius (lib. i. 104), descriptive of the Reason, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen viresque tonandi," was turned into French by Nogaret, d'Alembert, and other wits and scholars. It appears on the reverse of a medal by F. Dupre, dated 1786. (See Works of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Jared Sparks, 1840, viii. 537-539; Life and Times, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... elaborate argument by Dr. Lightfoot regarding the "SILENCE OF EUSEBIUS." [45:1] I had called attention to the importance of considering the silence of the Fathers, under certain conditions; [45:2] and I might, omitting his curious limitation, adopt Dr. Lightfoot's opening comment upon this as singularly descriptive of the state of the case: "In one province more especially, relating to the external evidences for the Gospels, silence occupies a prominent place." Dr. Lightfoot proposes to interrogate this "mysterious oracle," and he considers that "the response ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... of Rembrandt," by Wilhelm Bode, is now issuing from the press (1899), and will consist of eight volumes containing reproductions of all the master's pictures, with historical and descriptive text. It is to be hoped that this mammoth and costly work will be put into many large reference libraries, where students may consult it to see Rembrandt's work in ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll



Words linked to "Descriptive" :   prescriptive, descriptive adjective, undescriptive, describe, descriptive grammar, descriptive geometry, descriptive anthropology, descriptive clause, descriptive linguistics



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