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Illegitimate   Listen
adjective
Illegitimate  adj.  
1.
Not according to law; not regular or authorized; unlawful; improper.
2.
Unlawfully begotten; born out of wedlock; bastard; as, an illegitimate child.
3.
Not legitimately deduced or inferred; illogical; as, an illegitimate inference.
4.
Not authorized by good usage; not genuine; spurious; as, an illegitimate word.
Illegitimate fertilization, or Illegitimate union (Bot.), the fertilization of pistils by stamens not of their own length, in heterogonously dimorphic and trimorphic flowers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Illegitimate" Quotes from Famous Books



... quite as tuneful, is 'Lucrezia Borgia,' once a prime favourite at Covent Garden, but now rarely heard. Lucrezia Borgia, the wife of Alfonso of Ferrara, has recognised Gennaro, a young Venetian, as an illegitimate son of her own, and watches over him with tender interest, though she will not disclose the real relation in which they stand to one another. Gennaro, taunted by his friends with being a victim of Lucrezia's fascinations, publicly insults her, and is thereupon condemned to ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... exaggerated form. Anger and shame contended in the old lawyer's bosom as he heard the story; the former sentiment urging for the punishment of the delinquents, the latter pleading for forbearance; for amongst the transgressors was his illegitimate son, whose share in the offence, if brought into the light of the tribunal, would thence cast back a shadow upon the father, and point, publicly and anew, to their disreputable relationship. Others also, whose reputation was far dearer to him than his own, must ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... strong in women as in men (Vedeler, "De Impotentia Feminarum," Norsk Magazin for Laegevidenskaben, March, 1894). In Sweden, Dr. Eklund, of Stockholm, remarking that from 25 to 33 per cent. of the births are illegitimate, adds: "We hardly ever hear anyone talk of a woman having been seduced, simply because the lust is at the worst in the woman, who, as a rule, is the seducing party." (Eklund, Transactions of the American Association of Obstetricians, Philadelphia, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the uncertain inclinations of the body politic, but they are in their nature unlawful; their proper use in every nation being to prevent all invasion upon the government by unqualified persons, and to illegitimate it, if at any time done. So that, if the consent of civil society is the only essential condition of government which God has authorized, not only are all scriptural conditions and qualifications useless and unlawful, but ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... she unclasped the helmet and visor which concealed the handsome features of Sancho's illegitimate son, "child of my affections, for whom I have ever felt a mother's love, though I have not borne for thee a mother's pains; how shall I thank thee? Thou hast this day more than repaid the tenderness I lavished on thy infant years. Thou hast made clear my fair fame to all men; even ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... of being cast upon the world as waifs and strays, were allowed a place in the kitchen-garden or stable-yard, and flourished there without disgrace, while useful and obedient. Thus for generations here the legitimate son was Yordas, and took the house and manors; the illegitimate became Jordas, and took to the gate, and the minding of the dogs, and any ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... good of asking me that?" she exclaimed bitterly. "I'll take what I can get. Reminds me of a girl—a friend of mine. She's an illegitimate child. Her father's pretty well off. She was down to the bottom of the bag the other day, so she went to her father and asked him for some money. 'My dear child,' he said—'I can't spare you a cent—I've just spent seven hundred and fifty pounds on a ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... in a fine calm, so will your fate; if of a ring or the ace of diamonds, marriage; bread, an industrious life; cake, a prosperous life; flowers, joy; willow, treachery in love; spades, death; diamonds, money; clubs, a foreign land; hearts, illegitimate children; keys, that you will rise to great trust and power, and never know want; birds, that you will have many children; and geese, that you will marry more than once." [397] Such ridiculous absurdities would be rejected as apocryphal ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... of Albuquerque, an illegitimate descendant of the Kings of Portugal, established the Portuguese power on the East Coast of Africa, in Arabia, the Persian Gulf, further India, the Moluccas, etc. As Viceroy of the East Indies, his justice and chivalrous nature won the love and respect ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... also for seven years. It is needless to say that with all these changing and contradictory provisions many servants and Negroes did not even know what the law was. In 1728, however, free mulatto women having illegitimate children by Negroes and other slaves, and free Negro women having illegitimate children by white men, and their issue, were subjected to the same penalties as in the former act were provided against white women. Thus vainly did the colony of Maryland ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... was the guilt of Aegeus," said they, "which caused the wrath of Minos, yet Aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful children were sacrificed to the Cretan barbarity, but the doubtful and illegitimate stranger, whom Aegeus had adopted, went safe and free." Theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted on being himself included ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... regarded as illegitimate to wander from that position so tersely enunciated by Professor Huxley in his essay on "Sensation and the Sensiferous Organs:" "In ultimate analysis it appears that a sensation is the equivalent in terms of consciousness for a mode of motion of the matter ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... been appointed to that high office; and some time later had been made General of the Kingdom of Scotland, posts of greatest importance. Relying on the monarch's love and the people's admiration for this illegitimate scion of royalty, Lord Shaftesbury hoped to place him on the throne. As the first step necessary in this direction was to gain his majesty's avowal of a union with Lucy Walters, he ventured on broaching the subject to the king; at which Charles was so enraged ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... party to do. Yes, now that I think of it, there are two roles to be played. The usual conception of the part is to turn marplot—to spoil and ruin the others' dialogue—to put an end to it, if possible, by legitimate or illegitimate means; a very successful way, I have observed, of prolonging, as a rule, such a duet indefinitely. The more enlightened actor in any such little human comedy, if he be gifted with insight, will collapse into the wings, and let the two young idiots have ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... influence, holding the four chief offices in the Honor of Pickering, and at the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII. he was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London. He had no legal offspring, and his illegitimate son, a Sir Roger, who must not be confused with his uncle, was successively Chief Baron and Lord Chief Justice, died without issue. Sir Hugh Cholmley[1] tells us many facts concerning his great-grandfather ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... hurrying figure of her mother; her father as a young man coming in after a long drive to warm his hands by the kitchen fire; a strong, hard-faced woman from town who had once worked for Tom as cook and who was reported to have been the mother of two illegitimate children; and the figures of her childhood fancy walking over the bridge toward her, ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... who shall convey or take away any woman child, unmarried, whether legitimate or illegitimate, under the age of sixteen years, out or from the possession, custody or governance, and against the will of the father, mother, or guardian of such woman child, though with her own consent, with an intent to contract matrimony with her, or with ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... up late that night figuring their share of the burglary. There was twenty-five of these ground squirrels. I was to get my fifty a head, at least ten of which was illegitimate. Then for the thirty-five, which was the real robbery, I was to take half, and eight of the boys the other half. I begun to wonder that night just what could be done to us under the criminal law. It looked like three years in some good jail wouldn't ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... from the war this same Martin Kallikak married a respectable girl of good family. From this union 496 individuals have been traced in direct descent, and in this branch of the family there were no illegitimate children, no immoral women, and only one man who was sexually loose. There were no criminals, no keepers of houses of ill-fame, and only two confirmed alcoholics. Again the explanation is clear when it is stated that this branch of the family did not contain a single feeble-minded ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... It has since been deposited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault. We learned that there is a surviving daughter of Burns's eldest son, and daughters likewise of the two younger sons,—and, besides these, an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been of disreputable life in his younger days. He inherited his father's failings, with some faint shadow, I have also understood, of the great qualities ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... had a child, or perhaps a grandchild—the mother one whom you loved in your first youth—a child affectionate, beautiful, and especially needing your care and protection, would you not suffer that child, though illegitimate, to supply to you the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "Billy Button" carries with it an association oddly corroborated by a story narrated of himself by the man of whom I am speaking. Of all the reminiscences connected with the illegitimate drama that have dwelt with me from my early childhood until now, not one is more vividly impressed upon my memory than that standard old comedy on horseback performed by circus-riders long since gone to rest, and entitled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... trustworthy guardians to her and her estates, one of whom is her husband's father. No sooner, however, was the Marquis dead, than his brother claimed his property, alleging that the church had never sanctioned the Marquis's marriage, and that the daughter consequently, as an illegitimate child, could have no claim on his estates. He therefore commenced a lawsuit against her and her guardians, and the suit is still pending. Meantime the court receives the rents; the garden, the chief ornament of the town, is running wild, and the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... Marni was the wicked baron's illegitimate child. As he had been saying extremely pretty things to her—for she was so bee-yoo-ti-ful!—you will readily perceive that fastidious people might find this "situation" what some critics love to call "unpleasant." Wicked barons, viewed in the process of admiring their own ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... not degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species of slang, into Carlylisms, into vague generalities about infinitudes and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary—written in that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is, disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness—forms perhaps the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... instance the people of Massachusetts deviated from "the Canon Law as allowed and adopted in England," to follow the Canon Law as allowed and adopted by the Popes of Rome; they enacted that, upon the marriage of the parents of any illegitimate child, such ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... —— (and many others) speaks as if there were a natural repugnance in all whites to any alliance with the black race; and yet it is notorious, that almost every Southern planter has a family more or less numerous of illegitimate coloured children. Most certainly, few people would like to assert that such connections are formed because it is the interest of these planters to increase the number of their human property, and that they add to their revenue by the closest ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... and you will take much that makes their lives not only enjoyable but endurable. As a writer on Japan has somewhat irreverently observed, the Japanese "is very chummy with heaven. He just as readily invokes the aid of his household gods in the pursuit of his amours as in less illegitimate aspirations. He regards them as kind friends who will help, rather than as severe censors who have to be propitiated." The spiritual aspect of the Deity has not, I think, entered at all into the conceptions of the ordinary Japanese. His ideas in regard to God or the gods—his pantheon ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved that he and his sister had neglected ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... she said, with quiet firmness—"And I will not be considered your illegitimate child any longer. It's cruel of you to have made me live on a lie!—yes, cruel!—though you've been so kind in other things. You don't know who my parents were—you've no right to think they were ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... Heloise. She was only eighteen years of age, yet already she possessed not only beauty, but many accomplishments which were then quite rare in women, since she both wrote and spoke a number of languages, and, like Abelard, was a lover of music and poetry. Heloise was the illegitimate daughter of a canon of patrician blood; so that she is said to have been a worthy representative of the noble house of the Montmorencys—famous throughout French history ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... endeavoured to persuade the people that the man with the iron mask, who had so long excited curiosity and eluded conjecture, was the real son of Louis XIII.—and Louis XIV. in consequence, supposititious, and only the illegitimate offspring of Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria—that the spirit of ambition and intrigue which characterized this Minister had suggested this substitution to the lawful heir, and that the fears of the Queen and confusion of the times ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... this new complication they found themselves in the ambiguous attitude of treating with this government while shielding with their flag the outlawed representatives of a defeated rival party who had fought it as illegitimate. Not only did this exasperate the Liberals and arouse the bitterest antagonism in the country, but it gave rise to serious difficulties between the French and the English. Among the returned exiles was General Miramon, who, disregarding the inviolability of the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... the consequences already in the British West Indies, where negro women generally prefer to live outside of legal marriage because as wives they find themselves subjected to practical serfdom. In Jamaica 75 per cent. of the births are illegitimate for this reason. When I visited Haiti, I was told to my great surprise that the homes and small farms were usually owned by the women. Expressing my admiration of this chivalrous recognition of women's right to the homestead, I was informed that there was no such sentiment. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... Motte, who passed for the Demoiselle de Surcourt's uncle, and with whom she lived. The Sieur Lebrun had but to whisper marriage, and all would have been arranged. Under other circumstances the word would have been easy—but there was a bar between them: the Demoiselle de Surcourt was of illegitimate birth. Love, however, laughed at the obstruction. The Sieur Lebrun hurried to the house of De la Motte; demanded the hand of the lady he loved; and the Demoiselle de Surcourt became his wife. The marriage contract will prove his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... idolatry did not imply the entire abandonment of the worship of Jehovah, but the worship of Baalim and Ashtaroth along with it. Such illegitimate mixing up of deities was accordant with the very essence of polytheism, and repugnant to that of the true worship of God. The one may be tolerant, the other cannot be. To unite Baal with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... every college, as well as a mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young, adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions, but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes. Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would so train and harmonize and limber the physical powers, that the superior quality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... while he was living in enforced retirement in his villa outside the city. It was translated for the edification of the young men of England and France and served as a standard for several generations. Another, an Englishman, spent the later years of his life writing letters to his illegitimate son, telling him exactly how to conduct himself in the courtly (and more or less corrupt) circles to which his noble rank entitled him. The letters were bound into a fat, dreary volume which still sits on the dust-covered shelves of many a library, and the name of the author has become a synonym ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... The "Grey Goose" embraces subjects not dealt with probably by any other code in Europe at that period. The provision for the poor, the equality of weights and measures, police of markets and of sea havens, provision for illegitimate children of the poor, inns for travellers, wages of servants and support of them in sickness, protection of pregnant women and even of domestic animals from injury, roads, bridges, vagrants, beggars, are subjects ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... of the prosperity of the Imperial family, when the eldest of the Emperor's brothers had ascended the throne of Naples, when Holland was on the eve of being offered to Louis, and Jerome had exchanged his legitimate wife for the illegitimate throne of Westphalia, the Imperial pillow was still far from being free from anxiety. Hostilities did not actually exist with the Continental powers; but this momentary state of repose lacked the tranquillity of peace. France ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... bolts of the law against them, in all parts of the United States, and so put an end to their iniquity. Lotteries have been justly prohibited by wise governments, because they attract men from legitimate pursuits, into the speculative, uncertain, and, morally, illegitimate pursuit of fortune. The case is similar in its results to that of Art-Unions. They attract many from a calling for which their talents have fitted them, into a sphere so much above their natural powers, that they must in time fall back, victims to vanity and love of gain, into ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... and Labat notices two cases of marriage between whites and blacks,— describing the offspring of one union as "very handsome little mulattoes." These legitimate unions were certainly exceptional, —one of them was dissolved by the ridicule cast upon the father; —but illegitimate unions would seem to have become common within a very brief time after the passage of the law. At a later day they were to become customary. The Article 9 was evidently at fault; and in March, 1724, the Black Code was reinforced ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... of living forms was created for a special purpose, and was intended to remain pure and distinctive until the termination of its mission. Whenever the family boundaries are overstepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon the generative functions, and the illegitimate product dies out, or subsides into hopeless degeneration. The mule is a monster, and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... parents was the result of "nagging". At the end of a year, another log cabin was added to the quarters and the couple began housekeeping. The moral code was exceedingly high; the penalty for offenders—married or single, white or colored—was to be banished from the group entirely. Thus illegitimate children were rare enough to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... formation, would suggest design quite irrespective of and antecedent to the considerable knowledge or experience which would enable the beholder to decide whether this was the work of men or of beavers. Why, then, should the judgment that any particular structure is a designed work be thought illegitimate when attributed to a higher instead of a lower intelligence than that of man? It might, indeed, be so if the supposed observer had no conception of a power and intelligence superior to his own. But it would then be more than "irrelevant;" it would be impossible, except on the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... priests, monks or nuns, and 272 out of the 365 days of the year are observed as fast or feast days. The priests control the government and rule the country as absolutely as if the Pope were its king. As a result, 75 per cent. of the children born are illegitimate, and the social and political condition presents a picture of the dark ages." It is said that, in one town, every fourth person you meet is a priest or a nun, or an ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... men and young women. Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they could not answer for the chastity of any young men before marriage or of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives. Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his daughter to her lover. The figures for ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... Tess's career, a curse at least as deep as that of Pelops should have been laid on the D'Urberville family. Tess's curse does not lie by nature on all women; nor on all Dorset women; nor on all Dorset women who have illegitimate children; for a very few even of these are hanged. We feel that we are not concerned with a type, but with an individual case deliberately chosen by the author; and no amount of talk about the "President of the Immortals" and his "Sport" can persuade us to the contrary. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... publishing it anonymously, although we know he was not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels, the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving birth to an illegitimate child. ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... kindness than of respect. He took his arm, and leaning on it with a light touch, led him to the group at the window. It was composed of the most distinguished public men in the country, and among them (the Earl himself was connected through an illegitimate branch with the reigning monarch,) was a prince of the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... variety of texture with great serenity of unforced effect, and exhibiting every possible artifice and achievement in the distribution of even and rugged, or of close and open line; artifices for which,—while I must yet once more and emphatically repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be practiced in a revived school of classic art,—I would fain secure the reader's reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted by the school to which they belong. Let him endeavor, with the finest ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... about his story of the clock-weight, volunteered to tell what happened to a friend of his who went to take possession of some family property which he became possessed of as heir-at-law to an uncle who had died without a will, having an illegitimate family unprovided ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... refuse a public minister. It is not denied that there may be cases in which a respect to the general principles of liberty, the essential rights of the people, or the overruling sentiments of humanity, might require a government, whether new or old, to be treated as an illegitimate despotism. Such are in fact discussed and admitted by the most approved authorities. But they are great and extraordinary cases, by no means submitted to so limited an organ of the national will as the executive of the United States; and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... musket. No gentle genuflexion satisfied the tzar. A prince Gallatin was imprisoned for "kneeling and kissing the emperor's hand too negligently." This contempt for humanity soon rendered Paul very unpopular. He well knew that his legitimacy was doubted, and that if an illegitimate child he had no right whatever to the throne. He seemed to wish to prove that he was the son of Peter III. by imitating all the silly and cruel caprices of that ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... Minister his golden key. For a year his domination over the beauteous Madame Ceres had been known to the whole universe. The provinces, whither news and fashions only arrive after a complete revolution of the earth round the sun, were at last informed of the illegitimate loves of the Cabinet. The provinces preserve an austere morality; women are more virtuous there than they are ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... that ungodly and sensual alliance was born the illegitimate child, that woful ecclesiastical offspring, we call the Roman ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... as these sometimes leads men to raise the question: Should psychology affiliate with philosophy or with the physical sciences? The issue is an illegitimate one. Psychology is one of the philosophical sciences, and cannot dispense with reflection; but that is no reason why it should not acknowledge a close relation to certain physical sciences as well. Parts of the field can be isolated, and one ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... strain of cupidity in Maggie. I have never been able to understand it. With her own money she is as free as air. But let her see a chance for illegitimate gain, of finding a penny on the street, of not paying her fare on the cars, of passing a bad quarter, and she is filled with an unholy joy. And so today. The jelly was forgotten. Terror was gone. All that existed for Maggie was a twenty-five ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... not get, as may happen. Only a fraction of them know anything whatever about the art of war. They were political adventurers, friends or relatives of some one in power, or simply speculators who bought their commissions as a sort of illegitimate Government Annuities. The continual rebellions or pronunciamientos have increased the number of officers still further. Comonfort's notion of degrading all the officers of the rebel army was a new ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... infant, babe, baby, tot, bairn, brat; bastard (illegitimate); orphan; foundling, waif; cockney (spoilt child); minor. Associated Words: pediatrics, prolicide, infanticide, puberty, philoprogenitive, philoprogenitiveness, misopedia, filicide, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... between them, and he was a slow exasperation to her.—What can we do with that which is ours and not ours? either we own a thing or we do not, and, whichever way it goes, there is some end to it; but certain enigmas are illegitimate and are ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... by the author in a note, "Like a tub that loses one of its bottom hoops." In the west of Scotland the phrase is now restricted to a young woman who has had an illegitimate child, or what is more commonly termed "a misfortune," and it is probable never had another meaning. Legen or leggen is not understood to have any affinity in its etymology to the word leg, but is laggen, that part of the staves which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various

... comparatively late period. No commercial blockade was instituted by the enemy before February, 1813. Up to that time neutrals, not carrying contraband, had free admission to all American ports; and the British for their own purposes encouraged a licensed trade, wholly illegitimate as far as United States ships were concerned, but in which American citizens and American vessels were largely engaged, though frequently under flags of other nations. A significant indication of the nature of this traffic is found in the export returns of the year ending September ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... for the propriety of the thing; because, as you know very well, priests don't marry, and the children were illegitimate." ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Fancy's child; oft branded as an illegitimate, yet esteemed above and beyond all the royal progeny of the proudest intellect, enshrined in the sanctum sanctorum, the veritable holy-of-holies of the human heart. Hope is not a virtue; it is but a rainbow with which ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... became acquainted. Very tall and slim, with blue eyes and an abundance of yellowish hair, Home, at this time about thirty-seven years of age, came of the old stock of the Earls of Home, whose name figures so often in Scottish history. His father was an illegitimate son of the tenth earl, and his mother belonged to a family which claimed to possess the gift of "second sight." Home himself—according to his own account—began to see visions and receive mysterious warnings at the period of his mother's death, and as ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... 'Somebody's illegitimate son, I believe,' replied the source of trustworthy information, with a laugh. 'Denham says he met him in New York a year or two ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... tutor of Mr. Eliot and of young Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's illegitimate son. 'My morning hopes,' wrote Chesterfield to his son at Rome, 'are justly placed in Mr. Harte, and the masters he will give you; my evening ones in the Roman ladies: pray be attentive to both.' Chesterfield's Letters, ii.263. See ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... on one of the narrow beds, and dying in all the agonies of despair. No sooner had she looked upon the poor creature than her dreadful history was supernaturally revealed to her. She had some time before had an illegitimate child, and, under the pressure of shame and terror, had destroyed it. The consciousness of this crime was driving her to despair, and she had not courage to confess it. But now words were whispered in her ear, which went ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... preposterous kind, which, as a motive in fiction, usually consists in the hero inviting all and sundry to trample upon his prospects and reputation. This is what the chief character in Proud Peter (HUTCHINSON) did. He began by allowing it to be supposed that he was the father of his brother's illegitimate child, the bright peculiar fatuousness of which pretence was that thereby the said brother was enabled to marry, and break the heart of, the heroine, whom, of course, Peter himself adored. Also, many years after, when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... prison for bigamy. George is illegitimate." She spoke with her characteristic extreme clearness of enunciation, in a voice ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... hide the expression. Boyd was looking puzzled, then distantly angered. Nobody had ever called him illegitimate ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett

... from the omission, on the part of Government and the Resident, of all mention of his right as co-sharer in the inheritance. Neither brother nor sister had really any legal right whatever to succeed to this pension, for Mokuddera Ouleea was an illegitimate child, and had no legal heirs according to either English or Mahommedan law. This fact seems to have been concealed from the Resident, for he never mentioned it to Government. It was the dread that this fact would cause the whole pension ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... weakly, "I've loved Alymer almost ever since I first saw him. I swore I would not harm his career, and I have not. I will not in future. But the child is his, and I thank God for it. I do not believe an illegitimate child with a devoted mother is any worse off than the legitimate child with a selfish, unloving one. That there is love enough matters the most. What can any child have better ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... awaiting his personages. At his best, his lyrics written in the minor key have a noble, solemn adagio movement. At his worst—for like all poets, he is sometimes at his worst—the truth of life seems rather obstinately warped. Why should legitimate love necessarily bring misery, and illegitimate passion produce permanent happiness? And in the piece, "Ah, are you digging on my grave?" pessimism approaches a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... came out a dog—a small brown and black animal, very sturdy on his legs, and earnest and independent in air and manner. He was the illegitimate offspring of a fox-terrier. He trotted briskly across from the direction of the orchard, diagonally past Jenny. As he crossed the trail of the cat he paused, smelt, and followed it up for a yard or two, till he identified ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... wages, on promises that it would be mine some time, and that he had neither taken me in partnership, nor left it to me in the will. She got her cousin to help her in the transfer of the papers; it was a lease and stumpage contract. He affixed a notary seal to it. The thing was illegitimate, of course. Shortly after that, young Houston came out here again, and I got her to come too. I wanted to see what he was up to. He fired me, and while he was in Denver, and Renaud away from the mill, I got Miss ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... death of the latter was a severe blow to him. During the funeral ceremonies, as he placed a garland on the body of this his favourite son, he was completely overpowered by his feelings and wept aloud. His ancient house was now left without an heir. By Aspasia, however, he had an illegitimate son who bore his own name, and whom the Athenians now legitimised and thus alleviated, as far as lay in their power, the misfortunes of their ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... of Clodion was disputed by his two sons, and that the younger was Meroveus, the father of Childeric. * Note: The relationship of Meroveus to Clodion is extremely doubtful.—By some he is called an illegitimate son; by others merely of his race. Tur ii. c. 9, in Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... brain which we are supposing as having been acquired by each individual through his own mental exertion. We know, of course, that there were frequent lapses from the unnatural restraint imposed on these men so that some of them may have propagated their kind, but such illegitimate offspring was not likely to remain within the circle of learning and therefore could not perpetuate the line. We of to-day know full well that the son of the common labourer whose forefathers had no education can, with equality of opportunity, achieve as much and travel as far in any ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... anniversary discourse delivered before the New York Academy of Medicine, November 7, 1855, Dr. John Watson remarked that the numbers and pretensions of the illegitimate sons of Esculapius were as great in ancient as in modern times. And they were quite as wont to receive the patronage of the upper classes. The Emperor Nero thus favored the shrewd Lydian practitioner, Thessalus, who maintained that all ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... I can discover, the "Monthly Review" was the only journal in which the book was noticed, and such criticism as the following can hardly be termed laudatory:—"Here is a very strange performance indeed. It seems to be the illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction, like 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Robinson Crusoe;' but much inferior to the manner of these two performances as to entertainment or utility. It has all that is impossible in the one or ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... more than was necessary of his interview with the Vicar. The child was supposed to be illegitimate as well as unbaptised, and could not, therefore, be allowed to sleep his last sleep in the company of the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... doctrines to which you refer, therefore, are simply extensions of generalisations as well based as any in physical science. Very likely they are illegitimate extensions of these generalisations, but that does not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... whom she had chosen for a husband, throwing herself immediately afterwards into the arms of the smuggler Macquart, whom she loved with a wolfish love, and whom she did not even marry. She had lived thus for fifteen years, with her three children, one the child of her marriage, the other two illegitimate, a capricious and tumultuous existence, disappearing for weeks at a time, and returning all bruised, her arms black and blue. Then Macquart had been killed, shot down like a dog by a gendarme; and the first shock had paralyzed her, so that even then she retained nothing living but ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... its leader at the end of the eleventh. It was the misdemeanor of St. Louis, and a great error in his judgment, that he prolonged, by his blindly prejudiced obstinacy, a movement which was more and more inopportune and illegitimate, for it was becoming day by day ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... more voracious and bolder than usual, followed a safely-hooked perch from the dim coral garden, worrying it like a bull-dog. As the struggling fish splashed on the surface the groper, abandoning its illegitimate prey, swerved swiftly downwards. The retreat was a second too late, for Tom had seized the, harpoon lying athwart the boat, and though the fish appeared through a fathom and a half of water, a vague, fleeting, contorted shadow, he reached it. The barbed point passed through it, carrying ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... wrecked, and children neglected, stunted and slain. The proud edifice of modern industry itself, on whose account homes are turned into workshops, children into slaves, and mothers into slave-drivers, is undermined and degraded by this illegitimate competition, the most powerful of all factors in lowering wages, and preventing organization among regular factory hands. The matter lies in a nutshell. Industry which originated in the home could be safely carried on there only as long as it remained simple and the operations ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... (q.v.). Two years later he found means to return to Paris, where he graduated at the Scots Coll. in 1528, and taught grammar in the Coll. of St. Barbe. Returning to Scotland in 1536 with a great reputation for learning he was made by James V. tutor to one of his illegitimate sons, and incited by him to satirise the vices of the clergy, which he did in two Latin poems, Somnium and Franciscanus. This stirred the wrath of the ecclesiastical powers to such a heat that, the King withholding his protection, he was obliged in 1539 to save himself ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... of the Middle Ages and the following century or two certainly justifies SWEDENBORG in writing of magic as something evil. The distinction, rigid enough in theory, between white and black, legitimate and illegitimate, magic, was, as I have indicated, extremely indefinite in practice. As Mr A. E. WAITE justly remarks: "Much that passed current in the west as White (i.e. permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... Mahomedan, and the rest are Catholics. These forty-four sovereigns claim to be descended from nineteen different roots: thus, the direct male descendants of Hugh Capet occupy the thrones of France, Spain, Naples, Lucca, and Portugal; the latter being derived from an illegitimate son of a Duke of Burgundy, before the accession of the Bourbon branch. The houses of Austria, Baden, Tuscany, and Modena, are derived from a Duke of Alsace, who flourished in the seventh century. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... act dysgenically within the family under present conditions. Conventional education of girls a dysgenic influence. Prostitution and the family. Influence of ancient standards of "good" and "bad." The illegitimate child. Effect of fear, anger, etc., on posterity. The attitude of economically independent ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... [376] "An illegitimate and ungrammatical use of these words, either and neither, has lately been creeping into the language, in the application of these terms to a plurality of objects: as, 'Twenty ruffians broke into the house, but neither of them could be recognized.' 'Here are fifty pens, you will find ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... fitting that Christ should be born of an espoused virgin; first, for His own sake; secondly, for His Mother's sake; thirdly, for our sake. For the sake of Christ Himself, for four reasons. First, lest He should be rejected by unbelievers as illegitimate: wherefore Ambrose says on Luke 1:26, 27: "How could we blame Herod or the Jews if they seem to persecute one ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... notwithstanding, uncommonly well. I have heard that Louis is inclined to inebriation, and when in that situation is very brutal to his wife, and very indelicate with other women before her eyes. He intrigues with her own servants and the number of his illegitimate children is said to be as many as his years. She asked General Murat to present me and recommend me to Fouche, which he did with great politeness; and the Minister assured me that he should be glad to see me at his hotel, which I much doubt. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... for commerce and industry. To her success in attaining this end we had no objection, provided her procedure was decent and in order. But she chose a means to her end which was becoming progressively more and more inadmissible. Tirpitz describes the illegitimate means. Bethmann Hollweg describes the legitimate end. Tirpitz thinks Bethmann Hollweg was a weakling because he would not back up the means. Bethmann Hollweg, firm in his faith that the end was legitimate ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... your sister is legitimate by law. She is illegitimate in the sight of heaven, you ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the child has played a not unimportant role in the history of folk-medicine. Among certain primitive peoples the healing art descends by inheritance, and in various parts of the world unbaptized children, illegitimate children, and children born out of due time and season, or deformed in some way, have been credited with special curative powers, or looked upon ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... thither many talented men. In the papal city there were numerous teachers who conducted schools, and swarms of young scholars, ambitious academicians, sought their fortune at the courts of the cardinals in the capacity of companions or secretaries, or as preceptors to their illegitimate children. Lucretia, also, received instruction in classic literature from these masters. Among the poets who lived in Rome she found teachers to instruct her in Italian versification and in writing sonnets, an art which was everywhere cultivated by women as well as men. She doubtless ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... a slave woman, and those borne by a married woman, were regarded as illegitimate, and did not succeed to the inheritance with the other children, neither were the parents obliged to leave them anything. Even if they were the sons of chiefs, they did not succeed to the nobility ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... appreciation of it—the composers and musical performers; for on the whole, these have been men whose worldly prosperity was not such as enabled them to rear many children inheriting their special traits. Even if we count the illegitimate ones, the survivors of these added to the survivors of the legitimate ones, can hardly be held to have yielded more than average numbers of descendants; and those who inherited their special traits have not often ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... Conajee Angria died. He left two legitimate sons, Sakhajee and Sumbhajee; three illegitimate sons, Toolajee, Mannajee, and Yessajee. Sakhajee established himself at Colaba, while Sumbhajee Angria remained at Severndroog, to carry on the predatory policy of their father. In March, 1734, Sakhajee died, and Mannajee and Yessajee were sent to hold Colaba for Sumbhajee. Before long, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph



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