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Inapplicable   Listen
adjective
Inapplicable  adj.  Not applicable; incapable of being applied; not adapted; not suitable; as, the argument is inapplicable to the case.
Synonyms: Unsuitable; unsuited; unadapted; inappropriate; inapposite; irrelevant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inapplicable" Quotes from Famous Books



... employments. When, in the first General Assembly which succeeded the Revolution, an overture was made for the revival of the League and Covenant, it was with horror that Douce David heard the proposal eluded by the men of carnal wit and policy, as he called them, as being inapplicable to the present times, and not falling under the modern model of the church. The reign of Queen Anne had increased his conviction, that the Revolution government was not one of the true Presbyterian complexion. But then, more sensible than the bigots of his sect, he did not confound the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of "the survival of the fittest," meaning only the survival of the survivors; or wherever a man says that the rich "have a stake in the country," as if the poor could not suffer from misgovernment ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... (sang) rather than by "priests." Even in Christianity, beyond the priestly privilege which belongs to all believers, I object to the ministers of any denomination or church calling themselves or being called "priests;" and much more is the name inapplicable to the sramanas or bhikshus of Buddhism which acknowledges no God in the universe, no soul in man, and has no services of sacrifice or prayer in its worship. The only difficulty in the use of "monks" is caused ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... all power, and all riches, as a strong contrast with their present condition, upon which they, in their blindness, rested the hope of their security, and hence imagined that they stood in no need of the assistance of the Lord, iii. 1 ff. Now this description is so inapplicable to the commencement of Hezekiah's reign, that the very opposite of it should rather be expected. The invasion by the allied Syrians and Israelites, the oppression by the Assyrians, and the tribute which they had to pay to them, the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... replied the old man, softly. The word "lad" seemed so inapplicable to that gray-headed, care-lined face, which he had known so young and comely, that the misuse of it touched the speaker. "You know ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... a process of faith beginning with the crude transference of the elements of the present into the future, continuing with refined modifications of that transference, ending with an entire cessation of it as inapplicable and incompetent. Having examined all the historic, experimental, and scientific data within our reach, we pause on the edge of the PART which we know, and wait, with serene trust, though with bowed head and silent ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... very decidedly of their utility. Has then this ingenious contrivance been considered with reference to the protection of the Great Exhibition and its valuable, or rather invaluable, contents? or why is it deemed inapplicable to the purpose? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various

... different senses, in one and the same passage. Bloch(41) understands it of copying or writing out, a sense that suits the procedure of the men of the great synagogue in regard to Ezekiel, the twelve prophets, &c., but is inapplicable to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, &c. It is probable enough that the synagogue scribes put into their present form and made the first authorized copies of the works specified. The Boraitha, however, is not clear, and ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... They float on the stream of society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do not direct their own Education as though they had any object in life. They seem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthings of the day. These remarks are not very inapplicable to young men also. There is a great body of young men who float on the stream of life with no self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tell you, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and his idea ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... has parker for park-keeper, so that parkership is an admissable word; but I reject it on this occasion, as inapplicable to a forest or chace. I incline to believe that pokership is the true lection. Poke ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various

... well-being as may be found in the star Rephan? But let us not call evil good, or think pain in itself a gain. God may see that evil is null, and that pain is gain; for us the human view, the human feeling must suffice. This justification of pain as a needful part of an education is, however, inapplicable to never-ending retributive punishment. Such a theological horror Browning rejects with a hearty indignation, qualified only by a humorous contempt, in his apologue of A Camel-driver; her driver, if the camel bites, will with good cause thwack, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... WEIGHT, M. Liebig infers that they are INDIVISIBLE (p. 58). What logic! Weight is only force, that is, a thing hidden from the senses, whose phenomena alone are perceptible,—a thing, consequently, to which the idea of division and indivision is inapplicable; and from the presence of this force, from the hypothesis of an indeterminate and immaterial entity, is inferred ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... biblical citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrow of the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty would be out of proportion to the crime, and considered the extract from Exodus inapplicable since few of the negroes imported had been stolen in Africa. But Mr. Olin of Vermont announced that the man-stealing argument had persuaded him in favor of the extreme penalty. Early now became furious, and in his fury, frank. In a preceding speech he had ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... neighbours to array himself becomingly, according to the fashion of the hour, but we are inclined to doubt the wisdom of this latest move. It is often said, that the grey mare is the better horse, but when the horse itself has a grey coat, the proverb seems inapplicable. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various

... think there is a peculiar seat proper to many different styles of riding. The extremes of these are the manege and the Eastern styles, both admirable in their way, and perfectly practical, but each wholly inapplicable to ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... "intelligence"—the intelligence of the animal itself—determining its own variation, is so evidently a very partial theory, inapplicable to the whole vegetable kingdom, and almost so to all the lower forms of animals, amongst which, nevertheless, there is the very same adaptation and co-ordination of parts and functions as among the highest, that it is strange ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... swords for women, though invisible to other eyes; men can venture without the lines, if they only return at roll-call. Let a woman receive or visit one of the demi-monde, (the technical use of the word is happily inapplicable here,) and she might as well earn her living by her own labor, or do any other disreputable thing; but her brother may pay court to the most doubtful, and mothers will only shake their heads and say, "He must sow his wild oats; he'll ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the communion, when he turned for the wine and water, his face, as so often with rude folk in a great emotion, browned as it was with wind and sun, seemed lighted from within; he seemed etherealized, yet with his virility all alive in him. A phrase, wholly inapplicable in its first sense, came irresistibly to the younger priest's mind as he waited on him. "When the strong man, armed, keepeth his house, his ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... constricting bandage is inapplicable, for example, in cold abscesses, tuberculous glands or tendon sheaths, Klapp's suction bell is employed. The cup is applied for five minutes at a time and then taken off for three minutes, and this is repeated over a period ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... Perhaps if you listen to the Word, it may come back after many days." Margarita, Sr., often got her Biblical metaphors mixed, but that troubled her little. There was, she thought, virtue in scriptural quotations, even though entirely inapplicable to ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... formulae of the Socialism which embodies this belief so far as our common activities go, give a general framework and direction how a man or woman should live. (I do throughout all this book mean man or woman equally when I write of "man," unless it is manifestly inapplicable.) ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... ignoring the arguments of 'apologetic' writers, or he may have been ignorant of them. For reasons which will appear presently, the latter alternative ought probably to be adopted as explaining some omissions. But however this may be, the language of the reviewer is quite inapplicable to the work lying before me. It may be candid in the sense of being honestly meant, but it is not candid in any other sense; and it is the very reverse of full and impartial. The arguments of 'apologetic' ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... body at large has contracted the immoral taint; the whole head is sick; any remaining soundness is not with the acquiescent mass, but with the out-spoken individuals. In such a state of things, ordinary rules are inapplicable. There is a sort of paralysis of authority, an uncertainty whether to punish or to wink at flagrant heresy. To say in such a case that the relaxation of the creed is not a thing to be proposed, is to confess, like Livy on the condition of Rome, that we can endure neither ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... pace region in a canoe may be in its centre; so I got along on my knees into the centre to experiment. Bitter failure; the canoe took to sidling down river broadside on, like Mr. Winkle's horse. Shouts of laughter from the bank. Both bow and stern education utterly inapplicable to centre; and so, seeing I was utterly thrown away there, I crept into the bows, and in a few more minutes I steered my canoe, perfectly, in among its fellows by the bank and secured it there. Mme. Forget ran down to meet me and assured me she had not ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... understood my Note, as I trust he now will, he will see at once that the expression "untrue" is totally inapplicable to their statements, at least upon any showing upon his part; for he does not appear to me to have consulted either the Black Book or the charters, on which alone their assertions are based, to which alone we must in common ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... sensible remark. "In order to judge," said he, "of the truth or falsehood of such predictions, one ought to collect fifty of them. It would be found that they are almost always made up of the same phrases, which are sometimes inapplicable, and sometimes hit the mark. But the first are rarely mentioned, while the others are always ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... sufficient data for rendering such a theory of things a rational theory; for so long as the quality of self-existence was supposed to reside in phenomena themselves, the very simplicity of the theory, as expressed in words, must have seemed to render it inapplicable as a reasonable theory of things. The astounding variety, complexity, and harmony which are everywhere so conspicuous in the world of phenomena must have seemed to necessitate as an explanation some one integrating cause; and it is impossible that in the eighteenth century any such ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... controversy. The mal-apropos of 'Freedom' had not been applied to voluntary action. Accordingly, he treats the whole question from the inductive side, distinguishing the cases where people are praised or blamed for their conduct, from those where praise and blame are inapplicable as being powerless. It would have been well if the method had never been departed from; a sound Psychology would have improved the induction, but would never have introduced any question except as to the relative strength ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... wished the Police had arrested her. He added a very sensible remark. "In order to judge," said he, "of the truth or falsehood of such predictions, one ought to collect fifty of them. It would be found that they are almost always made up of the same phrases, which are sometimes inapplicable, and some times hit the mark. But the first are rarely-mentioned, while the others are always ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... embarrassments of M. Necker increased with the agitation amongst the thoughtful. Naturally a stranger to politics properly so called, constantly engaged as he was in finance or administration, the minister's constitutional ideas were borrowed from England; he himself saw how inapplicable they were to the situation of France. "I was never called upon," he says in his Memoirs, "to examine closely into what I could make, at the time of my return to office, of my profound and particular esteem for the government of England, for, if at a very early period my reflections and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... unconscious action, or that any of its remote stores or powers ever spring into activity without being aroused by sensation or conscious thought. Thus the doctrine of unconscious cerebration has been carried much further than the facts warrant. It need hardly be said that it is utterly inapplicable as a theory to many of the facts adduced by the Society for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... to be expected at the time when JESUS CHRIST was manifested upon the Earth, by reason of the exhaustion of all natural or unassisted human efforts for the amelioration of mankind;" (pp. 155-6;) whereas "our recently enlarged Ethnographical information shews such an argument to be altogether inapplicable to the case." "It would be more like the realities of things, as we can now behold them, to say that the Christian Revelation was given to the Western World, because it deserved it better and was more prepared for it than the East." (p. 156.)—The ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... is the best basis of society. But if the hereditary peerage can not maintain itself, I certainly shall not endow it. I was once a Republican; but I am convinced that a Republic is inapplicable to ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... clergyman of Westbury, Sir Eardley Wilmot recommended the leasing portions of land to well conducted ticket-holders. This was however strongly opposed on the spot, as tending to depreciate property, and inconsistent with the social circumstances of the country. The English allotment system was inapplicable: at home, it is a subsidiary to the general resources of the laborer, who can commonly find employment with the farmers, and easily dispose of the produce of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... that the defensive measures which are practised in the waters of the earth are inapplicable to the atmosphere. Movement by, or in, water is governed by the depth of channels, and these may be rendered impassable or dangerous to negotiate by the planting of mines. A passing ship or submarine may circumvent these explosive obstructions, but such a successful ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... deceivers are not entirely deceived, they profess acquiescence, and perpetual acquiescence induces half-deception. It is, perhaps, more correct to say that the word deception has no particular meaning for them, and implies a standard which is altogether inapplicable. There is a tacit agreement through all society to say things which nobody believes, and that being the constitution under which we live, it is absurd to talk of truth or falsity in the strict sense ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... act of 1907. No great change in policy was effected by this law which, for the most part, only revised the wording of the old laws and modified the methods of regulation. The head tax of two dollars, hitherto levied on each alien, was doubled but was made inapplicable to immigrants from our insular possessions or to aliens who had resided for a year either in the British possessions in North America, or in Cuba or Mexico. All aliens suffering from tuberculosis or loathsome diseases ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... that he desires "problem plays," second that he is "paradoxical," and third that in his dramas as elsewhere he is specially "a Socialist." And the interesting thing is that when we come to his philosophy, all these three phrases are quite peculiarly inapplicable. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... difficulty with most systems for distributing the books in a library appears to lie in the attempt to apply scientific minuteness in a region where it is largely inapplicable. One can divide and sub-divide the literature of any science indefinitely, in a list of subjects, but such exhaustive sub-divisions can never be made among the books on the shelves. Here, for example, is a "Treatise on diseases of the heart and lungs." This falls ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... phenomena belong exclusively to the phenomenal world. Their application and their validity are restricted to the world of phenomena. When we leave this region we are in a sphere to which they are quite inapplicable. What, then, can be meant by speaking of God as a "First Cause"? Cause is a phenomenal term, it expresses the relations between phenomena, and it has no meaning when applied to this assumed and unknown reality. We ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... my worthy distallator," he proceeded, "that the proverb which says 'latet anguis in herba,' is not inapplicable in your case. I think I can occasionally detect in these ferret-like orbs that constitute such an attractive portion of your beauty, a passing scintillation of intelligence which you wish to keep a secretis, as ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... lovely or amiable, and also by Camomescro, a lover, an amorous person, sometimes used for 'friend.' Camlo is connected with the Sanscrit Cama, which signifies love, and is the appellation of the Hindoo god of love. A name of the same root as the one borne by that divinity was not altogether inapplicable to the Gypsy tribe who adopted it: Cama, if all tales be true, was black, black though comely, a Beltenebros, and the Lovel tribe is decidedly the most comely and at the same time the darkest of all the Anglo-Egyptian families. The faces of many ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... no indecent manifestations of joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent expression as 'breaking up,' would have been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The young gentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they never broke up. They ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... travelled, as it is more sheltered from the prevailing southerly winds. The term "Mud Lake" is, however, not applicable to this lake, as only a comparatively small part of it is shallow or muddy; and it is nearly as inapplicable to Marsh Lake, as the latter is not markedly muddy along the west side, and from the appearance of the east shore one would not judge it to be so, as the banks appear ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... amusing to the naughty players on its stage to begin with, and long afterwards to the guiltless spectators of the commonty. In Delphine there is not a glimmer of amusement from first to last, and the whole story is compact (if that word were not totally inapplicable) of windbags of sentiment, copy-book headings, and the strangest husks of neo-classic type-worship, stock character, and hollow generalisation. An Italian is necessarily a person of volcanic passions; an Englishman or an American ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Great Britain, and, indeed, to all other countries, has been essentially altered by Canada's quite voluntary engagement in the war. Were feudal terms not largely inapplicable, one might aver that the vassal has become the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... signify absolutely nothing. They do not stand for ability, for public service, for social importance, for large possessions; but, on the contrary, are oftenest found in connection with personalities to which they are supremely inapplicable. We can hardly afford to quarrel with a national habit which, if lightly handled, may involve us in serious domestic difficulties. The "Right Worshipful" functionary whose equipage stops at my back gate, and whose services ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the clutches, fangs, or claws of a pursuing enemy, he was obliged to fly and leap over thorny briars and bramble-bushes or hornets' nests, or plunge through swamps alive with blood-sucking insects and leeches—Ricord's definition would certainly have been inapplicable. In those days, but for the protecting double fold of the preputial envelope that protected it from the thorns and cutting grasses, the coarse bark of trees, or the stings and bites of insects, the glans penis of primitive man would have often looked like the head of the proverbially ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... and the center. A direction upon one of these three will always be suitable for the attainment of the desired end. A direction upon one of the two remaining will be less advantageous; while the third direction will be wholly inapplicable. In considering the object proposed in connection with the positions of the enemy and the geography of the country, it will appear that in every strategic movement or tactical maneuver the question for decision will always be, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... 20 miles across, and it has a strangely sinuous margin; Bow atoll is 30 miles long, and on an average only 6 in width; Menchicoff atoll consists of three atolls united or tied together. This theory, moreover, is totally inapplicable to the northern Maldiva atolls in the Indian Ocean (one of which is 88 miles in length, and between 10 and 20 in breadth), for they are not bounded like ordinary atolls by narrow reefs, but by a ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... also to fluor-spar. The finer kinds of alabaster are largely employed as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration, and for the srails of staircases and halls Its softness enables it to be readily carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it inapplicable to outdoor work. The purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine tiniforni grain, but it is often associated with oxide of iron, which produces brown clouding and veining in the stone. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... his remarks, when the musical party ceased their instrumental exertions, and, diversifying the entertainment, one of the performers struck up a song, which we here present to the reader as a subject not inapplicable to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... of really general interest, since the hypothesis of fraud is entirely inapplicable to it, and in the opinion of the most sceptical critics who have made an adequate study of the case, no explanation more commonplace than that of telepathy will bear examination. Other critics—and these are they who have gone into the matter most thoroughly—find the ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage

... an old story—none the worse for being true—regarding a fine young Irish gentleman, who being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied he had no doubt he could, but he couldn't exactly say, for certain, because he had never tried. This is not inapplicable to my uncle and his fencing. He had never had a sword in his hand before, except once when he played Richard the Third at a private theatre, upon which occasion it was arranged with Richmond that he was to be run ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... addition. Berosus expressly states that Nebuchadnezzar's building "adjoined upon" the former palace, a description which is fairly applicable to the Amran mound by means of a certain latitude of interpretation, but which is wholly inapplicable to any of the other ruins. This argument would be conclusive, even if it stood alone. It has, however, received an important corroboration in the course of recent researches. From the Amran mound, and from this part ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... than the government. So long, therefore, as the oppressions of a government are kept within such limits as simply not to exasperate against it a power greater than its own, the right of revolution cannot be appealed to, and is therefore inapplicable to the case. This affords a wide field for tyranny; and, if a jury cannot here intervene, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... second, that the system of privilege had fostered such a spirit in one class, and the reaction against the inconsiderate manifestation of that spirit was so violent in the other class, that good political ideas were vain and inapplicable. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... representatives of experience and common sense. Of these, the chief was Aristotle, whose criticism has been preserved to us, and who, while admitting that Plato's scheme has a plausible appearance of philanthropy, maintains that it is inapplicable to the facts of human nature. To this conclusion, indeed, even Plato himself was driven in the end; for in his later work, the "Laws," although he still asserts that community of goods would be the ideal institution, he reluctantly abandons it as a basis for a possible state. On the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... material nature be "delivered" from the law of gravitation, chaos would come again. No portion of this fair and beautiful natural world needs to become "dead" to the laws of nature. Such phraseology as this is inapplicable to the relation that exists between the world of matter, and the system of material laws, because, in this material sphere, there has been no revolution, no rebellion, no great catastrophe analogous to the fall of ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... eight epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, three dedications and five epitaphs, in a simple and severe style. The reference in the /Garland/ of Meleager, l. 25, to "the maenad grape- cluster of Hegesippus" is so wholly inapplicable to these that we must suppose it to refer to a body of epigrams now lost, unless this be the same Hegesippus with the poet of the New Comedy who flourished at Athens about 300 B.C., and the reference be to him as a comedian rather than ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... woman would have gone at it differently, gone at it hammer and tongs. Cassy's methods were merely finer. That was the common sense view. But was it psychology? The common sense view that is applicable to the average individual is inapplicable to a problematic nature and, consequently, not to Cassy, who must therefore have had another incentive for her visit, an incentive stronger than the primitive instinct ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... the march Grover was enabled to offer his front instead of his flank to the enemy. But the information proved inexact; when Madame Porter's road was tried it was found impassable, and with this and the unforeseen delays it happened that the orders became inapplicable. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... San Giuliano, the following telegram: 'Austria has communicated to us and to Germany her intention to act against Serbia, and defines such action as defensive, hoping to apply the casus foederis of the Triple Alliance, which I consider inapplicable. I intend to join forces with Germany to prevent any such action by Austria, but it will be necessary to say clearly that we do not consider such eventual action as defensive, and therefore do ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... the notice of the intelligent, and the speculation of the learned. Things are presented to our view, in a variety of forms, which must have been the result of great labour and cost, and which appear utterly useless and inapplicable to any ostensibly known purpose. Respecting many of these mysterious records of a past age, page after page has been written to prove, and even disprove, the supposed intent of their constructors; and it cannot but be admitted that after perusing many an erudite disquisition, we are sometimes as ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... most radical disbelief. The attack scarcely deserved Tillotson's somewhat lengthy defence. He had but re-stated what many before him had observed as to the exceptional character of demonstrative evidence, and the folly of expecting it where it is plainly inapplicable. A religious mind, itself thoroughly convinced, may chafe against possibility of doubt, but may as well complain against the conditions of human nature. Yet the controversy on this point between Tillotson and his opponents is instructive in forming ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... quite unmanageable in these respects. If they get [matters] into their hands neither the Deity nor the Devil, nor both together, can make them agree. Lord Melbourne writes this in ignorance of the actual facts of the case, and therefore it may be inapplicable. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... Goethe had made Jerusalem's acquaintance in Leipzig. Jerusalem called Goethe a Geck, a coxcomb, a description which, as we have seen, was not inapplicable to him in his Leipzig days. Jerusalem was a friend of Lessing, who highly esteemed him, and after his death ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... personal to the menial characteristics of Mr. Johnson's speeches, we find that his brain is to be classed with notable cases of arrested development. He has strong forces in his nature, but in their outlet through his mind they are dissipated into a confusing clutter of unrelated thoughts and inapplicable phrases. He seems to possess neither the power nor the perception of coherent thinking and logical arrangement. He does not appear to be aware that prepossessions are not proofs, that assertions are not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... sluices.—In this part of the country, we passed several flocks of sheep, the true moutons du pays, a large breed, with red legs and red spotted faces. Their coarse wool serves to make the ordinary cloth of the country, but is inapplicable to any of a finer texture. To remedy this deficiency, and, if possible, improve the local manufactures, some large flocks of Merino sheep were imported at the time when the French occupied Spain; and they are said to thrive. But it is only ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... advocate remarked, with a thrust at the public prosecutor, that "the brilliant observations of that gentleman on heredity, while explaining scientific facts concerning heredity, were inapplicable in this case, as Botchkova was of unknown parentage." The public prosecutor put something down on paper with an angry look, and shrugged ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... wonderful works indeed. Such creatures, like moles, are safe only underground, and their engineerings there become very daedalean. In fact, such unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we call Pedants; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions; not coveting, rather avoiding the general daylight of common-sense, as very extraneous to them and their procedure; by long persistence in which course they become Completed Pedants, hidebound, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... restraints imposed at different times on governments originally unlimited and despotic. Our American questions, therefore, must be discussed, reasoned on, decided, and settled, on the appropriate principles of our own constitutions, and not by inapplicable precedents and loose analogies ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Petition of Manufacturers of Artificial Light Stulta and Puera Inapplicable Terms ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... signing the will in favor of Edward, and in 1554 he wrote to the council, whom he pressed to obtain a pardon from the queen, by a letter delivered to Dr. Weston, but which the latter opened, and on seeing its contents, basely returned. Treason was a charge quite inapplicable to Cranmer, who supported the queen's right; while others, who had favoured Lady Jane, upon paying a small fine were dismissed. A calumny was now spread against Cranmer, that he complied with some of the popish ceremonies to ingratiate himself with the queen, which he dared publicly to disavow, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... ties out of view, and thinks only of the one common form) and then again unwinding them, and dividing them into parts (he becomes intent now upon the particularities of the particular, till the one common term seems inapplicable) puzzling first, and most of all, himself; and then any one who comes nigh him, older or younger, or of whatever age he may be; sparing neither father nor mother, nor any one else who will listen; scarcely even the dumb creatures, to say nothing of men; for he would hardly spare a barbarian, could ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... and compactness of the new boiler invented by Ericsson led to the employment of steam in many instances in which it had been previously inapplicable. Among these may be mentioned the steam fire-engine constructed by him in conjunction with Mr. Braithwaite, about the same time with the Novelty, and which excited so much interest in London at the time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to be executed upon them. [Footnote 1: Some regard the locusts as an allegorical designation for an invading army. But without reason: in ii. 7 they are compared to warriors, and the effect of their devastations is described in terms inapplicable to an army.] [Footnote 2: The sequel, in which the nations are the objects of divine wrath, shows that the "all flesh," ii. 28, must be confined ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... 346). "The first cause of things is Deity" (Dr. Mayer, in "Correlation and Conservation of Force," p. 341). "Although the word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another" (p. 15). "Causation is the will," "creation is the act, of God" Grove on "Correlation of Physical Forces," (p. 199). "Between gravity and motion it is impossible ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... system is inapplicable in the case of domestic servants (Gesinde) who are a part of the household, and who afford to their masters, besides their services, the advantage of having a person at their disposal always about them, and whose wages are therefore in great part their board and lodging. Still less can it apply ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... certain respects, in point of style, the unlikeness of Othello to Hamlet is much greater than the likeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with its successors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of passion, a description inapplicable to Julius Caesar or Hamlet. And with this change goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There is in most of the later heroes something colossal, something which reminds us of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men, they are huge men; as ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... to have been softened by this, and entered into a colloquy with the donor, either not heard or not understood by Dave, whose narrative seemed to point to his having been sent to a distance, with a doubt about inapplicable epithets bestowed on him by the Man, calling for asterisks in a close report. Some of these were probably only half-understood, even by Micky; being, so to speak, the chirps of a gaol-bird. But Dave's report seemed to point to "Now, is that * * young * * to be trusted not to split?" although ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... of practical statesmanship; and the Government must deal with it upon the principles of common sense, without embarrassing itself by any mere theories which would be troublesome and inapplicable in any emergency. How long after subjugation the Government will wait for the return of any State to its allegiance, and what indications of sincere loyalty will be accepted, as well as what fair and honorable inducements will be held ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... rivers St. John and Restigouche as possessing both a specific and a generic character; that considered alone they were specific', and the designation in the treaty of "rivers falling into the Atlantic" was inapplicable to them; that considered In connection with other rivers they were generic and were embraced in the terms of the treaty, but that as their connection with other rivers would bring them within a principle which, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... him, and he murmured them to himself. It was to Dolores that he applied them, and naturally too; for how ridiculously inapplicable to Katie would they be! All else was now forgotten except Dolores. He felt a longing after her that was like homesickness. The past all came back. He recalled her as she had been when he first met her at Valencia. A thousand little incidents ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass, however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... immeasurably more difficult than at present. With reference to this point, a very eminent graduate of Harvard then volunteered to me some advice, which at first sight looked sound, but which I soon found to be inapplicable. He said: "You must secure at any cost the foremost men in the United States in every department. In this way alone can a real university be created.'' Trying the Socratic method upon him, I asked, in reply, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... American, with a delighted sense of discovering the country,—"why, you read about them in Dickens!" Who shall say but that this instinctive association was an involuntary severe, but not inapplicable, criticism? A nightingale ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... political domain all the resources of national well-being; partly, also, because it is of supreme importance that the great experiment of democracy should not be unduly hampered by excessive inpourings of ill-assimilable foreign blood, and by dangerous contacts with obsolete or inapplicable European institutions. As an economist, steeped in the principles of Cobden and his British school of liberals, my predilections (prejudices if you will) have always been in favor of the freest possible ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... arbitrary; independent, unallied; unconnected, disconnected; adrift, isolated, insular; extraneous, strange, alien, foreign, outlandish, exotic. not comparable, incommensurable, heterogeneous; unconformable &c 83. irrelevant, inapplicable; not pertinent, not to the, purpose; impertinent, inapposite, beside the mark, a propos de bottes [Fr.]; aside from the purpose, away from the purpose, foreign to the purpose, beside the purpose, beside the question, beside the transaction, beside the point; misplaced &c (intrusive) 24; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... been undertaken, an immense and fruitless expenditure has been incurred by sending out machinery, which could be of no earthly use—by despising the native processes, and substituting others that have been found wholly inapplicable—and by introducing British labourers, who when abroad reverse all the good qualities for which they are valuable at home. A reform in this system we believe to have been generally adopted, and we are sure that a reduction of expense, a management purely European, and native ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various

... Reveu Philosophique et Religieuse, between M. Proudhon and Mme. Jenny D'Hericourt. The latter defends, with great warmth, the moral, civil, and political emancipation of woman. Proudhon, in reply, declares that all the theories of Mme. D'Hericourt are inapplicable, in consequence of the inherent weakness of her sex. The periodical in which the contest is going on was founded and is conducted by the old ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... discrepancy. It will be recollected that the essence of the process consists of the comparison of the small ellipse made by the distant star with the larger ellipse made by the nearer star. If the two stars were at the same distance, the process would be wholly inapplicable. In such a case, no matter how near the stars were to the earth, no parallax could be detected. For the method to be completely successful, the comparison star should be at least eight times as far as the principal star. Bearing this in mind, it is quite possible ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... proceeds, p. 145, "If any thing needs be added, the following observation is important, viz. that there is one passage so clearly inapplicable to the Jewish nation, and so totally incongruous with the rest of the interpretation, that Mr. English passes it over without even the attempt of an explanation. It is this: in a part of the prophecy which he puts into the mouth of the Gentiles we read, "for [the Hebrew I must ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... amendment, or warning for others; but eternal punishment precludes the idea of amendment, and its infliction, after the day of judgment, when all not so punished shall be divinely secured from the possibility of falling, renders the notion of warning to others inapplicable. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... modern comedy probably is misled by the thought that the English are more sober in gesture than the Latin races: and his contempt for the work of the mime is based on a belief that certain purely conventional gestures, inapplicable save in wordless scenes, constitute the whole materials of the mime's art. The mime certainly has a kind of dumb language with a limited vocabulary, understood, unfortunately, by few English people save those ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... Dicey of the Commentaries, "is the hopeless confusion both of language and of thought introduced into the whole subject of constitutional law by Blackstone's habit—common to all the lawyers of his time—of applying old and inapplicable terms to new institutions." This is severe enough; yet Blackstone's sins are deeper than the criticism would suggest. He introduced into English political philosophy that systematic attention to forms instead of substance upon which ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... system of trade-marks is inapplicable in the existing order, because this system, contrary to the interests of the manufacturers and repugnant to their habits, could be sustained only by the energetic will of power. Suppose for a moment that the administration be charged with affixing the marks; its agents ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... evidence current in our law courts were constructed specially with a view to the protection of the accused, and upon the assumption that it is better nine guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned. Clearly such rules will be inapplicable to the historical question which of two hypotheses is most likely to be true. The author forgets that the negative hypothesis is just as much a hypothesis as the positive, and needs to be defended ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... not intended to imply that there is no other way in which the change to the male line may have been brought about among other peoples. The explanation just given applies very well to the Aryan and Semitic peoples, but it is inapplicable to the state of things which seems to have existed in Mexico at the time of the Discovery.[69] The subject is a difficult one, and sometimes confronts us with questions much easier to ask than to answer. The change has been observed among ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... to express, a personal affection for the men whom he politically followed. Even of Hamilton, the most supercilious and least loveable of mankind, Burke speaks with a tenderness absolutely ridiculous amongst politicians. Of Lord Rockingham he seldom speaks but in a tone of romance, singularly inapplicable to that formal and frigid figure of aristocracy. Of Fox, in latter days, he spoke in a sentimental tone worthy only of a lover on the French stage; and, in all these instances, he was doubtless laughed at, notwithstanding all his sensibilities. With the highest admiration of his genius, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... features which distinguish it from a mere law. The expressions, to pass into, to enter into, employed in the one case, are totally inapplicable in the other. The covenant is often represented as forsaken both as a covenant and as a law; but is exhibited as gone into only as a covenant. Men are represented as joining themselves to the Lord in an everlasting ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... are mutable," he maintained. "They get out of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable, or ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... belonging to the higher grade of distinctly degenerate stock—persons who have not themselves necessarily shown any marked traits of instability or degeneracy, and to whom therefore sterilization or segregation would be inapplicable. ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... and noblest of the race. Political and social questions are forever changing; views which commend themselves to-day will in a few years seem absurd; measures which are thought to be of vital importance will grow to be inapplicable. To talk and write about such things is well,—may help to prevent stagnation and corruption in public life; but they exercise altogether a higher office, who live in the presence of what is permanently true and good and beautiful, who believe in ideal aims and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... exposure to infection. This is called "early treatment." This term is inapplicable, as a disease cannot be treated before it exists. It is also likely to be confused with "abortive treatment," which implies treatment immediately on ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed, and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed, may, during my continuance in it, be limited to ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... of causes. The consequence was very obvious. The system of the theorist, disencumbered from all regard to the real nature of things, easily assumed an air of speciousness. It required little dexterity to make his argument appear conclusive. But all men agreed that it was utterly inapplicable to human affairs. The theorist railed at the folly of the world, instead of confessing his own; and the men of practice unjustly blamed philosophy, instead of condemning the sophist. The causes which the politician has to consider ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... Thirdly, he led the temptation on to that in which no spiritual men, but only carnal men, have a part—namely, to desire worldly riches and fame, to the extent of holding God in contempt. And so in the first two temptations he said: "If Thou be the Son of God"; but not in the third, which is inapplicable to spiritual men, who are sons of God by adoption, whereas it does apply to the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... objects of sense and thought, including individual consciousness, whether directly observed in ourselves, or inferred as existing in others, are, according to Pantheism, only facets of an infinite Unity, which is "altogether one" in a sense inapplicable to anything else. Because that Unity is not merely the aggregate of all the finite objects which we observe or infer, but is a living whole, expressing itself in infinite variety. Of that infinite variety our gleams ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... doubt, but totally inapplicable to the present situation; yet it continued to haunt me till the sight of the door to which I had been directed put every other thought to flight save that I was about to meet the stricken nieces of a brutally ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... to state that the struggle for life is the sole sovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend that this law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is that even in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law which grows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in its ideals. But operating concurrently with this ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... art or method of receiving telegraph messages by ear. It is now universally used by all expert Morse operators. It can only be applied to telegraph systems producing audible sounds; in some cases, as in needle telegraphy, it may be quite inapplicable. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... explanation which suggested itself to my own mind when first I heard of the phenomena, but was dismissed as wholly inapplicable after the first day's inquiry; nor do I think that any one could maintain that different people, individually and collectively, for some weeks, thought they heard and saw a series of sounds and motions which ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett

... Federal Government. Only once since the turn of the century has the national taxing power been further narrowed in the name of Dual Federalism. In 1931 the Court held that a federal excise tax was inapplicable to the manufacture and sale to a municipal corporation of equipment for its police force.[229] Justices Stone and Brandeis dissented from this decision and it is doubtful whether it would be ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin



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