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Deteriorate   Listen
verb
Deteriorate  v. t.  (past & past part. deteriorated; pres. part. deteriorating)  To make worse; to make inferior in quality or value; to impair; as, to deteriorate the mind. "The art of war... was greatly deteriorated."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deteriorate" Quotes from Famous Books



... Zinc has been found to be too brittle for the strain to which it is subjected, in such cases, by the expansion and contraction induced by changes of temperature. A slight oxidation will adhere to the surface, but an acid deposit from the atmosphere will penetrate the coating in points and deteriorate the metal. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... need of underclothing; and, of course, his only suit, from constant wear, was likely to deteriorate rapidly. He saved all the money he could from his weekly wages toward purchasing a new one, but his savings were inconsiderable. Besides, he needed a trunk, or would need one, when he had anything ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... excitements, liquid or solid, have been subjected by them to the same effects which follow the use of spirits—first, invigoration, and subsequently decline, and ultimately a loss of strength? Why is it that the more wealthy, all over Europe, who get flesh more or less, deteriorate in their families so rapidly? Why is it that every thing is, in this respect, so stationary among the middle classes ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her beauty of form and softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of work, over woman, American society must be taught that women will inevitably fade and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty is the normal condition, while the theory of work, applied to women, is disastrous alike to beauty and morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... we've already allowed things to deteriorate much too far. We should have done something long ago. I'm not sure I know the answer. All I know is that in order to maintain the status quo, we're not utilizing the efforts of more than a fraction of our people. Nine out of ten of us spend our lives sitting before the ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... twenty pounds. Santo is the great coffee port and here can be seen ships from every civilized land taking on cargoes of coffee. If it is well kept coffee gets better with age, so it can be piled in great warehouses for months or even years and not deteriorate. Nearly a dozen million bags of coffee are shipped from Santo annually and as we are the greatest coffee drinkers in the world about half of the ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... very inferior man, until her love for him exalts him into something better than he originally was, and her into little short of an angel; but a man almost invariably drops to the level of the woman he is in love with. He cannot raise her; but she can almost unlimitedly deteriorate him." This was true of Adam. Eve, sinning, brought him to her level. Why this should be, Heaven knows; but so it constantly is. We have but to look around us, with ordinary observation, in order to see that a man's destiny, more than even a woman's, depends far less ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... be no doubt, from the facts given in the first chapter, that European dogs deteriorate in India, not only in their instincts but in structure; but the changes which they undergo are of such a nature, that they may be partly due to reversion to a primitive form, as in the case of feral animals. In parts of India the turkey becomes reduced in size, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... the others while I am away; and both for the sake of the regiment, and as a reward for the merit and conduct of Captain de Thiou himself, I should be very glad were he promoted and should feel that the regiment would in no way deteriorate during ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... laxa), formerly accounted a mere variety of palustris, but now defined as a distinct species, is a native, and therefore may serve to show how its European relative here will deteriorate in the dryer atmosphere of the New World. Its tiny turquoise flowers, borne on long stems from a very loose raceme, gleam above wet, muddy places from Newfoundland and Eastern Canada ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... And then, if you ask me, I will tell you. It is nothing to me, you understand. I am no dreamer, but a very material person, who lives in France because he loves the sunshine, and the cuisine, and the good, kind hearts, which no government or want of government can deteriorate." ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... "managed it" the more there seemed to be to manage. From the time when she frankly gave herself into the clutches of artificiality the natural physical merit of her seemed to her to deteriorate at a speed ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... times of extreme leisure, as enjoyed by the ancient Greeks, are long past and a more exacting age makes its more strenuous demands upon the human tissues, and in innumerable cases causes them to deteriorate more rapidly than they can be regenerated and restored to their original vigor by even ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... quantity formed from starch during the fermenting process. It is evident, therefore, that bread cannot be fermented without some loss in natural sweetness and nutritive value, and bread made after this method should be managed so as to deteriorate the material as ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... extent and deteriorate in quality, and as, with the increase of our population, the demands upon forest products of all kinds become greater, the necessity of a rational system of forestry, and the need of educated foresters becomes ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston

... bulk of the population may deteriorate, there are many signs that the better housed and fed portion of it improves. In the earlier years of this century the so-called manly sports of boxing and other feats of strength ranked high among the national amusements. A man who was [1] successful in these became the hero of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... unknown theory of monotheism, established by him, but gradually permitted to fall into desuetude, and become confounded with the polytheistic hierarchy of the confusing religion. Just as the grand oneness and simplicity of the Christian religion has been permitted to deteriorate into many petty sects, each with its absurd limitations, and its particular little method of ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... tether. I cannot say of any man that he has gone on improving for years; his mark is fixed, and he knows it—though he is exceptionally sagacious if he knows where it is drawn as respects others—and there he stays till he begins to deteriorate. The first warning of decadence is the loss of memory, after which it is a question of time (and good sense) when he shall withdraw from the ranks of the fighting men and become a mere spectator of the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... in tannin, have imparted to the wine a powerful astringency and the exceedingly dark colour which so disagreeably distinguish this common quality. The growers imagine that the extra amount of tannin is preservative, without which, their wine might deteriorate during the rough treatment to which it is subjected by transport and exposure; and to their specially-educated palates this astringency is agreeable, combined with the strong flavour of tar, which completely ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... Bill is the fine point of that wedge which, driven home, will shiver to pieces their 'wicked political system.' Whatever improves Irish intellect will play the mischief with its 'faith,' though not at all likely to deteriorate its 'morals.' Let the people of Ireland be well employed as a preliminary to being well educated, and speedily they may deserve to be singled out as 'the most moral people on the ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... and societies accommodate themselves but too readily to lower moral levels, and a constant vigilance is needed to detect the forms or directions in which individual and national character insensibly deteriorate. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... privations, the soldiers are allowed, with very little remonstrance or restraint, to indulge freely in all such habits of dissipation and vice as will not at once interfere with military discipline, or deteriorate from the efficiency of the whole body as a military corps. The soldiers soon learn to love the idle and dissolute lives which they are allowed to lead. The officers, especially those in the higher grades of rank, ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... permanent." There is a growing conviction that tobacco does quite as much harm to the nervous system as alcohol. [Footnote: There can be no room to question the presumption that an excessive use of tobacco does occasionally deteriorate the moral character, as the inordinate use of chloral or bromide of potassium may deprave the mind, by lowering the tone of certain of the nervous centres, in narcotising them and impairing their nutrition. Whether the nicotine of the tobacco can act on ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... was by nature lazy and self-indulgent, and required the steel prod of necessity to do his best work. As she looked about her among the struggling households, it seemed such was the rule,—that if it weren't for the fact of wife and children and bills, the men would deteriorate.... Naturally there were differences,—"squabbles," as she called them; but she would have been horrified if any one had suggested that these petty squabbles, the state of mind they produced or indicated, were infinitely ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... of all, the question needs to be more specifically stated. There are varieties and varieties. They may, some of them, disappear or deteriorate, but yet not wear out—not come to an end from any inherent cause. One might even say, the younger they are the less the chance of survival unless well cared for. They may be smothered out by the adverse force of superior numbers; they are even more likely to be bred out ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... only be determined by capacity and moral obligation. She had once thought politics necessarily too degrading for woman, but she had changed her views. The science of government, it is said, is of divine origin; a participation in its administration can not then necessarily involve anything to deteriorate from the true dignity of woman. The world's interests have never yet been fully represented. The propriety of woman voting had been to her a stumbling-block; the idea was repelling. She was not yet allowed to vote, but she had ceased to consent to the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... peculiarity is to be accounted for by the desire of the artist to signify the superiority of the Pagan divinities over mortals, by this absence of any trace of earthly feelings, or whether it was thought that any decided expression might deteriorate from the character of repose and beauty that marks the works of the great sculptors of antiquity, I know not, but the effect produced on my mind by the contemplation of these calm and beautiful faces, has something so soothing in it, that I can ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... The law does not protect these immigrants, and it is charged that the city permits every kind of inducement for the extension of immorality, drunkenness, and crime. Thus the immigrant is likely to deteriorate and degenerate in the process of Americanization, instead of becoming better in this new world. He has indeed little chance. If he does not become a pauper or criminal or drunkard, it will be because he is superior to ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... in the long run would seem to require that some deteriorate, which is extremely unlikely, in view of the fact that the normal law of God's ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... two or more produce effects in painting so much more clear and brilliant than uniform tints obtained by compounding the same colours: and why hatchings, or a touch of their contrasts, thrown as it were by accident upon local tints, have the same effect. We see, too, why colours mixed deteriorate each other, which they do more—in many cases—by imperfectly neutralizing or subduing each other chromatically, than by any chemical action. Finally, we are impressed with the necessity, not only of using colours pure, but of using pure colours; although pure colouring ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... see," he answered, "you would suffer in two ways? If the habit of inaccuracy became confirmed, your own character would deteriorate; and by leading people to suppose that you are as wise as themselves, you lose opportunities of obtaining useful information. They won't tell you things they think you ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... fourthly, a policeman, being subjected for many years to a rigorous discipline, would likely make a nice and obedient husband. Personally Mrs. Makebelieve did not admire policemen—they thought too much of themselves, and their continual pursuit of and intercourse with criminals tended to deteriorate their moral tone; also, being much admired by a certain type of woman, their morals were subjected to so continuous an assault that the wife of such a one would be worn to a shadow in striving to preserve her husband ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... tending even towards the destruction of the actor, could hardly be accounted for on Darwinian principles alone; for self-immolators must but rarely leave direct descendants, while the community they benefit must by their destruction tend, so far, to {193} morally deteriorate. But devotion to others of the same community is by no means all that has to be accounted for. Devotion to the whole human race, and devotion to God—in the form of asceticism—have been and are very generally recognized as "good;" and the Author contends that it is simply ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... become a larger proportion of the bin, conditions deteriorate for the worms. Eventually the worms suffer and their number and activity begins to drop off. Differences in bedding, temperature, moisture, and the composition of your kitchen's garbage will control how long it takes but eventually you must separate the worms from their castings and put ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... adjacent to the river. Military operations along its banks then become quite impossible, although in many places this impossibility exists throughout the entire year, because the land on both sides of the river for miles and miles has been permitted to deteriorate into bottomless swamps, through which even the ingenuity of highly trained engineering troops finds it impossible to construct a roadway within the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... the protection is permanent, while others assert that with time and the humidity of the atmosphere the beneficial effects gradually disappear. It might be worth while to experiment upon some of the porous sandstones, which, under the extreme influence of our climate, rapidly deteriorate; such, for instance, as the Connecticut sandstone, so popular at one time as a building material, but which is now generally discarded, owing to its tendency to crumble to pieces when exposed to the weather even for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... to the revenue go out, at certain times of the year, to examine the bonga plantations, and the trees being counted, they estimate the fruit, that is, oblige the proprietor to undertake to deliver in two hundred nuts for each bearing tree, whether or not, hurricanes deteriorate or destroy the produce, or thieves plunder the plantations, as very frequently happens. In case deficiencies are proved against him, he is compelled to pay for them in money, at the rate of twenty-five reals per thousand, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... stations. This, however, must happen at the expense of their boys associating entirely with convict servants. I am not aware that the tone of society has assumed any peculiar character; but with such habits, and without intellectual pursuits, it can hardly fail to deteriorate. My opinion is such, that nothing but rather sharp necessity should compel me ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... political rights, it is not surprising to find that the reasons on which the continuance of the inferiority of women is urged are drawn almost entirely from a tender consideration of their own good. The anxiety felt lest they should thereby deteriorate would be an honor to human nature were it not an historical fact that the same sweet solicitude has been put up as a barrier against all the progress which women have made ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... reelection. This state of things was not peculiar to that district, and it survives with more or less vigor throughout the country to this day, to the serious detriment of Congress. This consideration, coupled with what is called the claim of locality, must in time still further deteriorate the representatives of the States at Washington. To ask in a nominating convention who is best qualified for service in Congress is always regarded as an impertinence; but the question "what county in the district has had the Congressman oftenest" is always ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... Disston." She hesitated, then added in explanation: "When we came West I told myself that I must not allow myself to deteriorate in rough surroundings, and I have made it a rule never to mingle with any but the best, Mr. Disston. My father," impressively, "was a prominent undertaker in Philadelphia, and as organist in a large Methodist church in that city I came in contact with the best ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... as to English inns. I do not think that we Englishmen have any great right to be proud of them. The worst about them is that they deteriorate from year to year, instead of becoming better. We used to hear much of the comfort of the old English wayside inn, but the old English wayside inn has gone. The railway hotel has taken its place; and the railway hotel is too frequently ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... view, the question as to the hurtfulness of alcoholic drinks assumes a new and graver aspect. Do they disturb the brain when they come in contact with its substance; and deteriorate it if the contact be long continued? Fact, observation, experience and scientific investigation all emphatically say yes; and we know that if the brain be disordered the mind, will be disordered, likewise; and a disordered ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... 110-volt current. It is believed that the battery-operated type has the greater utility, since house current may not be available at the crime scene. When not in use the batteries should be removed as they will eventually deteriorate and corrode the brass ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... I left a lot of their saw logs hung up in the woods, where they'll deteriorate from rot and worms. This is their last season ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... to special preparation in order to facilitate transport.—Not content with collecting materials as they are found in nature, certain animals submit them to preparation with various aims, either to render transport easier or that they may not deteriorate when stored. Among those of whom I have just spoken, some collect with the view of utilising their stores in a more remote future than others. The Ateucus sacer intends to consume the provisions he prepares almost immediately. Yet he acts in so careful a ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... The socialist's answer perhaps would be that under their system government factories would make only perfect goods. But won't the factory superintendent also be anxious to make a "record"? And even government stock will deteriorate on the shelves. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... cocoa, spices, and prepared cereals are bought in cans or moisture-proof containers, they should be emptied from the original packages and placed in jars that can be tightly closed, so that they will not deteriorate by being exposed to the air or moisture. For convenience and economy, these jars or cans should be labeled. Sugar and salt absorb moisture and form lumps when exposed to the air, and they, too, should be properly kept. A tin receptacle is the best kind for sugar, but for salt an earthenware ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... shore—they would seem dreary and less to shore people. But the shore people would change their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On such a voyage, with its eternal monotonies, people's intellects deteriorate; the owners of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem to prefer childish things to things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their weight and prepared the way far the more moral sentimental comedies of Richard Steele and succeeding playwrights. The sacrifice of plot to moral purpose and the deliberate introduction of scenes designed to force an appeal to sentiment caused the later drama to deteriorate in a different way. We shall see that the natural hearty humor of Goldsmith's comedy, She Stoops to Conquer(1773), afforded a welcome ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... we, the opposition, did our best to expedite the decision. There are no complications requiring time on such an occasion. It is a matter of aye or no. But when time is allowed the chapter of accidents allows an opponent to hope that a situation known to be unusually happy will deteriorate. Of this contingency Disraeli took his chance. Time as it happened was in his favour. It was no question of the substance of the plan, but a moderate change in the political barometer, which reduced to two or three millions a subscription ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... not to any considerable extent directly recruit the town unemployed who are, in the main, the sediment deposited at the bottom of the scale, as the physique and power of application of the town population tends to deteriorate.[86] ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb

... their love for it with them wherever they go, and they reject as mistaken and unworthy the doctrine that we lose our own liberties by securing the enduring foundations of liberty to others. Our institutions will not deteriorate by extension, and our sense of justice will not abate under tropic suns in distant seas. As heretofore, so hereafter will the nation demonstrate its fitness to administer any new estate which events devolve upon it, and in the fear of God will "take occasion ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... general biological law of "atrophy through disuse" applied to the special case of learned reactions. As exercise improves the linkage between stimulus and response, so disuse allows the linkage to deteriorate. This law is pictured more completely and quantitatively ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... heart, a poetic heart, in the living world, which beat, bled, spoke with irresistible power. Elderly [53] people, Virgil in hand, might assert professionally that the contemporary age, an age, of course, of little people and things, deteriorate since the days of their own youth, must necessarily be unfit for poetic uses. But then youth, too, had its perpetual part to play, protesting that, after all said, the sun in the air, and in its own veins, was still found to be hot, still begetting, upon both alike, flowers and fruit; nay! visibly ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... Simiacine was daily increasing in bulk. Again, Victor Durnovo seemed to have regained his better self. He was like a full-blooded horse—tractable enough if kept hard at work. He was a different man up on the Plateau to what he was down at Loango. There are some men who deteriorate in the wilds, while others are better, stronger, finer creatures away from the luxury of civilisation and the softening influence of female society. Of these ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... the moral, intellectual, and physical constitution of the man consuming it, than it could enervate his naked forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; the fact that an individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a worm, can no more deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than were it made of sheep's wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, faring delicately, and clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest products of literature and plastic art, so those palaces, viands, garments, and products of ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... in Poland—and against the Soviet regime behind that military dictatorship—clearly demonstrated to the world that America will not conduct "business as usual" with the forces of oppression. If the events in Poland continue to deteriorate, further ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... him and of his work; nor was she the less the practical wisdom of the house that she looked upon her husband as a great man. He was not a great man—only a growing man; yet was she nothing the worse for thinking so highly of him; the object of it was not such that her admiration caused her to deteriorate. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... country has undergone as much change as everything else, and it has now settled down into anything but a pure democracy. Nor could it be otherwise; a republic may be formed and may continue in healthy existence when regulated by a small body of men, but as men increase and multiply so do they deteriorate; the closer they are packed the more vicious they become, and, consequently, the more vicious become their institutions. Washington and his coadjutors had no power to control the nature ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... people, the Germans were worked up to a state of frenzy for an enterprise for which their rulers had been preparing during more than a decade. The colossal stores of war material, amassed especially in 1913-14 (some of them certain soon to deteriorate), the exquisitely careful preparations at all points of the national life, including the colonies, refute the fiction that war was forced upon Germany. The course of the negotiations preceding the war, the assiduous efforts of Germany to foment Labour troubles in Russia before the crisis, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... spring returned she had accomplished her wish, and entered into many families as dress maker where she used to be admitted as an equal, if not superior. She maintained her dignity of deportment, for now she well knew poverty did not deteriorate from worth, a lesson perhaps she too might have been slow to learn under some circumstances, but which now had been taught her by stern necessity, and her rigid lessons are ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... indigenous dog of that country. The hounds are the most rapid in their decline, and, except in the form of their ears, they are very much like many of the village curs. Greyhounds and pointers also rapidly decline, although with occasional exceptions. Spaniels and terriers deteriorate less, and spaniels of eight or nine generations, and without a cross from Europe, are not only as good as, but far more beautiful than, their ancestors. The climate is too severe for mastiffs, and they do not possess sufficient stamina; but, crossed by ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... be accomplished under economical administration. Every one is aware of the multiplicity of men in municipal service. Some of these are entirely incompetent, others partly so; the recent appointees may be more efficient, but the majority of them gradually deteriorate under the subtle influence of the prevailing atmosphere, and each new incoming administration places more and more men on the work, without reason or necessity. All these tendencies have made the cost and maintenance ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy

... military control, had brought China inner stability and in consequence external power and prestige. The reputation which she then obtained as the most powerful state of the Far East endured when her inner stability had begun to deteriorate. Thus in 638 the Sassanid ruler Jedzgerd sent a mission to China asking for her help against the Arabs. Three further missions came at intervals of a good many years. The Chinese declined, however, to ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... Generally speaking, clay and silt soils have a greater natural fertility than sandy soils; limestone soils than those that are deficient in lime. Thus soils that naturally grow chestnut trees, indicating a low lime content, have a tendency to deteriorate under exhaustive cropping much more rapidly than limestone soils. More fertilizers and other methods of soil improvement are necessary in the case of chestnut soils than in the case of limestone valley soils. ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... last, folding her hands in her lap, "don't let me deteriorate too much. Please keep me from wanting to box people's ears. Lieber Gott, it's so barbarous of me. I never used to want to. Please stop me wanting ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... subject—"unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God." In physics "nothing is needed but open eyes and a sound understanding."[3] Moral character has nothing to do with it, except as vice may affect vision and deteriorate the judgment. But in a soul's relation to the Christian religion, the ethical element is that which is fundamental. "The pure in heart shall see God." The foul soul has no vision for the eternal purities. In the days of idolatry "there was no open vision." So in the heart of sin there is no ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell

... of magnitude, whether artistic or otherwise, competition is undoubtedly healthy, there being always a small body of patrons who are willing to check the tendency to deteriorate, common to all productions, by encouraging the worker with extra remuneration, in order that a high degree of excellence may be maintained; but in matters confined to a small circle, as in the case of Violin-making, the number of those willing to encourage artistic workmanship ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... sulphur with grapes; neither would any one, and I can prove to them that this need never be done; and, moreover, that the use of sulphur, when timely and judiciously applied, does not in any way deteriorate the fruit. I much question if the most practised eye could detect sulphur on the grapes exhibited, although they have been twice covered with it; and as to the mildew itself among vines, I fear it no more than I do green-fly among cucumbers, which is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... sure of being able to purchase with it whatever was offered for sale. The thing which people would select to keep by them for making purchases must be one which, besides being divisible and generally desired, does not deteriorate by keeping. This reduces the choice to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... work in the hands of the Cabinet, while it tends to economy of time and effort, is making the House of Commons yearly a less interesting place; and members have of late often expressed to me a real anxiety lest the personnel of the House should seriously deteriorate. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... and the troops, although in quarters, suffered more from that circumstance than in the preceding winter when in huts. But the Highlanders met with a misfortune that greatly grieved them, and which tended to deteriorate, for several years, the heretofore irreproachable character of the Royal Highland Regiment. In the autumn of this year a draft of one hundred and fifty men, recruits raised principally from the refuse of the streets of London and Dublin, was embarked for the regiment by orders ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... cautious. Droom sarcastically reminded him that he had a reputation to protect, in his new field and, besides, as his son was "going in society" through the influence of a coterie of Yale men, it would be worse than criminal to deteriorate. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... for the full development of boys. They must get that personal contact and feel that they have to get the best of the other fellow through their own efforts. If this is done fairly, the roughness will not deteriorate into anything dangerous." ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... have a sound and vigorous organization. If girls will persist in ruining their vital organs as they grow up to womanhood, and if women will continue this destructive habit, the race must inevitably deteriorate. It may be asserted, therefore, without exaggeration, that not only the welfare of the future generations, but the salvation of the race depends on the correction of this evil habit. The pathological consequences of continued ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... dree work." But the evil effects of too long hours are not confined to the fact that unrest or disputes arise from the state of feeling produced nor to the diminution of production due to fatigue. Recurrent strains continued over a long period indeed deteriorate even things which are inanimate. The "fatigue of metals" has been the subject of careful investigations. It is time that fatigue of human beings, even looked at as machines, were ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... male observer. Men saw his cruel young jowl and low forehead, and noticed that his eyes were small. He had a good, swaggering military figure to which uniform was becoming, and a kind of animal good looks which would deteriorate early. His colour would fix and deepen with the aid of steady daily drinking, and his features would coarsen and blur, until by the time he was forty the young jowl would have grown heavy and would end by being ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... If this is objected to as too expensive, let it be remembered that such a bed, with a little annual top-dressing, will be good for twenty years, which is the age at which asparagus-plants begin to deteriorate; then a new bed should be ready ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... things reach the highest point of development, they begin to decay or deteriorate; but this is not true in the spiritual world. Never in this life and possibly never in that life which is to come shall we reach the fulness of the type, or, in other words, the highest point of development. As the acorn ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... interest the Venetian school arouses; for although painting does not deteriorate in a day any more than it grows to maturity in the same brief moment, the story of the decay has none of the fascination of the growth. But several artists remain to be considered who were not of the Venetian school in the strict sense of the term, but who have always been ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... sterilizing influences, then the improvement of the race would go on swimmingly, and in an ever-accelerating ratio. But since the conditions are exactly reversed, how should not an exactly opposite direction be pursued? How should the race not deteriorate, when those who morally and physically are fitted to perpetuate it are (relatively), by a law of physiology, those least likely to do so?"[27] The answer to Mr. Greg's inquiry is obvious. If the culture of the race moves on into the future in the same rut and by the ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... marked with the most perfect good faith and mutual confidence." Mr. Consul Medhurst bears similar strong testimony to the upright dealings of Chinese merchants. His remark that, as a rule, he has found that the Chinese deteriorate by intimacy with foreigners is worthy of notice;[3] it is a remark capable of application wherever the East and West come into habitual contact. Favourable opinions among the nations on their frontiers of Chinese dealing, as expressed to Wood and Burnes in Turkestan, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... run, a gradual but irresistible disintegration, not of public opinion, but of something subtler and more fundamental: public sentiment. It was possible that civilian France, while collectively seeming to remain at the same height, might individually deteriorate and diminish in its attitude ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... influence over him, and that, rightly used, may be his safeguard. Many a man has owed everything to a sister's influence." Then, as Marian's eye glistened with somewhat of tender joy and yet of fear, he went on, "But take care; if you deteriorate, he will be in great danger; and, on the other hand, beware of obstinacy and rigidity in trifles—you know what I mean—which might make ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... more remunerative his personal independence becomes. It by no means necessarily follows that he will increase his following by increasing the excellence of his work, or that he will not frequently find it difficult to keep his following without allowing his work to deteriorate. No formula, reconciling the individual and the popular interest, can be devised which will work automatically. The reconciliation must always remain a matter of victorious individual or national contrivance. But it is none the less true that the chance of fruitful reconciliation ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... 'tis I that 'ud scorn to deteriorate upon the superiminence of my own execution at inditin' wid a pen in my hand; but would you feel a delectability in my supersoriptionizin' the epistolary correspondency, ma'am, that I'm ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... a subject of common conversation. There is, perhaps, nothing which has a stronger tendency to deteriorate the social intercourse of young people than the disposition to give the subject of matrimonial alliances so prominent a place in their conversation, and to make it a matter of jesting and mirth. There are other subjects enough, in the wide fields ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... we found Dr. Randall waiting for us, was one of those excellent little French places which cannot be beaten until they have become too successful and popular, when they almost invariably deteriorate. Randall said he was delighted the professor had brought me, and dinner was served at once at a cozy table ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... Drygoods deteriorate in quality when kept on the shelves for several months. Worse than that, they cease to attract the buyers. People go where there is life, activity, and are moved by that which is youthful, new and fresh. Old stocks become dead stocks, and dead stocks mean dead business and dead men, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... subsequent records of which I am about to relate. What is so unearthly, so beautiful, as the first birth of a woman's love? The air of heaven is not purer in its wanderings—its sunshine not more holy in its warmth. Oh! why should it deteriorate in its nature, even while it increases in its degree? Why should the step which prints, sully also the snow? How often, when Falkland met that guiltless yet thrilling eye, which revealed to him those internal secrets ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... success in my pictures without it. I made it a practice on my last visit to the country to send him the exposed films for development whenever I reached a postal station, and I should recommend others to do the same, as films deteriorate rapidly on the voyage home; indeed I had nearly four hundred spoiled in this way, taken when I was in the ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... to recognize the imminent danger of a renewal of the war, because it necessarily would postpone his projected innovations. Assuming the continuance of peace with all the violence of a prejudice, he permitted the strength and resources of the Navy to deteriorate rapidly, both by direct action and by omission to act. "Lord St. Vincent," wrote Minto in November, 1802, "is more violent than anybody against the war, and has declared that he will resign if ministers dare go to war. His principal reason is, I believe, that the ships are so much out of repair ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... of those moods at once gay and serene which are possible only to successful middle-aged men who have consistently worked hard without permitting the faculty for pleasure to deteriorate through disuse. He was devoted to his colliery, and his commercial acuteness was scarcely surpassed in the Five Towns, but he had always found time to amuse himself; and at fifty-two, with a clear eye ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... tobacco, pipe-clay your flour, sand your sugar, sloe-leaf your tea, coal-ash your pepper, deteriorate your drugs, water your liquors, alloy your gold and silver, plunder your lodgers, and, while none know it, who is the worse! Then to church, and thank God you are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... mushrooms which grow under the shelf in the greenhouse or in a corner of the cellar lack something of divinity; while there is not a restaurant chef in the world who has not a long record of ruined mushrooms to his name. No sooner does a public cook get at a mushroom than it begins to deteriorate. When the chef comes in at the door the savour flies out of the window. It is a point of honour with him. When therefore I said that one can never have enough mushrooms I meant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various

... upon bicycles. And then we have the gigantic coal-fields of America, the vast basin of the Mississippi to fall back upon, with ever-increasing facilities in the mode of transport. But civilisation must come to a deadlock when we have no more guano. Our grass, our turnips, our mangel, must deteriorate, We shall have no more prize cattle. It is too awful ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... prolonged periods of eye-strain. But whatever be the explanation of this interesting exception, it yet remains true that the regular work of the school, week in, week out, year after year, causes the eyes of our children to deteriorate, or at least the two go hand in hand with grounds for a very strong suspicion in the minds of those who have expert knowledge of the general situation that the one is ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... that all words describing moral excellence tend to deteriorate and to contract their meaning, just as bright metal rusts by exposure, or coins become light and illegible by use. So it comes to pass that any decently respectable man, especially if he has an easy temper and a dash of frankness and good humour, is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... has already been indicated, the wind will, for the greater part of the year, be sufficient to lift the whole of the sewage and storm-water, but, if it is allowed to do so, the standby engine will deteriorate for want of use to such an extent that when urgently needed it will not be effective. It is, therefore, desirable that the attendant should run the engine at least once in every three days to keep ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... practice of this secret sin his character could not but rapidly deteriorate. Jesus dropped a word of warning now and then; but it had the reverse of the desired effect. Judas knew that Jesus knew; and he grew to hate Him. This was by far the worst aspect of the case. The other disciples were becoming more and more attached to their Master, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... frame I should imagine that you were once a man of some physique. Your shoulders are good. Even now a rigorous course of physical training might save you. I have known more helpless cases saved by firm treatment. You have allowed yourself to deteriorate much as did a man named Pennicut who used to be employed here by Mr. Winfield. I saved him. I dare say I could make something of you. I can see at a glance that you eat, drink, and smoke too much. You could not hold out your hand now, at this minute, without ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... increase, but remained below the 1985 level. Government efforts to reduce Nigeria's dependence on oil exports and to sustain noninflationary growth have fallen short due to inadequate new investment funds. Living standards continue to deteriorate from the higher level of the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of explosives for the Isthmian Canal Commission, special tests are made to determine the liability of the explosive to exude nitro-glycerine, and to deteriorate in unfavorable weather conditions. These tests are necessary, because of the warm and moist climate of the Isthmus ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... Chilwell was that there were not enough sheds to cover all the stores, and that to build additional accommodation would cost more than it would save. There was a pleasant Hibernian flavour about his admission that the goods, "if they remained in their present condition, would, of course, deteriorate." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various

... physiologically right is morally right, we have an important ethical suggestion from somatic conditions. There is no doubt that conscious intelligence during a certain early stage of its development tends to deteriorate the strength and infallibility of instinctive processes, so that education is always beset with the danger of interfering with ancestral and congenital tendencies. Its prime object ought to be moralization, but it can not be ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... in early 1995. Capital flight continued to be a serious problem in 1994, with billions of additional dollars in assets being moved abroad, primarily to bank accounts in Europe. Russia's physical plant continues to deteriorate because of insufficient maintenance and new construction. Plant and equipment on average are twice the age of the West's. Many years will pass before Russia can take full advantage of its natural resources and its ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... Taking into consideration the confined state of a bed-chamber, the great increase of perspiration of the body, with the continual increase of carbonic gas from respiration, and this in an apartment where every thing ought most sedulously to be avoided which in the least tends to deteriorate the atmosphere, it must be evident the practice ought to be avoided, if we are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various

... the number of your tournaments, especially when the excitement and strain are new to you; otherwise you will do much more harm than good. I am convinced that, generally speaking, players attend too many meetings. Instead of their play improving, it may deteriorate. They run the fearful risk of staleness—one of the greatest dangers to a lawn tennis player—and they become physically worn out. As soon as you find you are losing interest in the game, when it ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... dish or an iron plate, but with caution that the fine iron particles which have settled to the bottom, do not mix with it. The white fused mass must be powdered, and kept from the air. The cyanide of potassium thus prepared, contains some of the cyanate of potassa, but the admixture does not deteriorate it for blowpipe use. It must be perfectly white, free from iron, charcoal, and sulphide of potassium. The solution of it in water must give a white precipitate with a solution of lead, and when neutralized with hydrochloric acid, and evaporated to dryness, it ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... and learn, Seeing Nature go astern. Things deteriorate in kind; Lemons run to leaves and rind; Meagre crop of figs and limes; Shorter days and harder times. Flowering April cools and dies In the insufficient skies. Imps, at high midsummer, blot Half the sun's disk with ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... with the milk from a dozen other milkmen. Some may be good and some bad, but what is the use, each one says, of my taking particular pains when my neighbor produces milk of such poor quality? The result is that it is all far from good and likely to deteriorate rather than to improve. To be sure, at the central station it is bottled and distributed to the consumer in apparently clean glass jars, but this is not the same cleanliness that one gets when the bottling is done five minutes after the milk comes ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... combustion. Getting on to the wrong road out of Mantes, I find myself at the river's edge down among the Seine watermen. I am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... mutual sympathies and mutual enjoyment, that, at last, some way became entangled amid discords and barriers, and thus come to a disastrous end,—such experiences could be escaped were life lived by the diviner standards. Friendship need never deteriorate in quality if each lives nobly. If one conceives of life more nobly and generously than the other, it may become, not a means of separation and alienation, but a means and measure of just responsibility. There are friendships whose shipwreck is on ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... the sphere of romance and wild adventure, into that of order and law, hard work and common sense, as well as—too often—into the sphere of slavery, cowardice, luxury, and ignoble greed. The lowland populations, for the same reasons, have been generally the first to deteriorate, though not on account of the vices of civilization. The vices of incivilization are far worse, and far more destructive of human life; and it is just because they are so, that rude tribes deteriorate physically less than polished nations. In the savage struggle ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... seen her, after a glance up and down the street, turn quickly into a public-house, and come forth again holding her handkerchief to her lips. A feeble, purposeless, hopeless woman; type of a whole class; living only to deteriorate...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... egoism and individualism in the demoralising atmosphere with which legalism (and its lineal successors) must needs invest human life, Man's conception of the rewards and punishments that await him will deteriorate rather than improve. The Jewish desire for national prosperity was an immeasurably nobler motive to action than is the Christian's fear of the quasi-material fires of Hell. Indeed it is nothing but our familiarity with the latter motive that has blinded us to its ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... preserved varieties fish should always be perfectly fresh when eaten. Probably no other article of food is more dangerous to health than fish when it shows even the slightest traces of decomposition. The ability to recognize the earliest signs of staleness is of the utmost importance. Fish deteriorate rapidly and should always be carefully inspected ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various



Words linked to "Deteriorate" :   decay, worsen, dilapidate, degenerate, fatigue, weary, wear off, decline, languish, wear down, waste, jade, go to the dogs, crumble, wear thin, drop, wear out, tire



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