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Plot   Listen
noun
Plot  n.  
1.
Any scheme, stratagem, secret design, or plan, of a complicated nature, adapted to the accomplishment of some purpose, usually a treacherous and mischievous one; a conspiracy; an intrigue; as, the Rye-house Plot. "I have overheard a plot of death." "O, think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots and their last fatal periods!"
2.
A share in such a plot or scheme; a participation in any stratagem or conspiracy. (Obs.) "And when Christ saith, Who marries the divorced commits adultery, it is to be understood, if he had any plot in the divorce."
3.
Contrivance; deep reach of thought; ability to plot or intrigue. (Obs.) "A man of much plot."
4.
A plan; a purpose. "No other plot in their religion but serve God and save their souls."
5.
In fiction, the story of a play, novel, romance, or poem, comprising a complication of incidents which are gradually unfolded, sometimes by unexpected means. "If the plot or intrigue must be natural, and such as springs from the subject, then the winding up of the plot must be a probable consequence of all that went before."
Synonyms: Intrigue; stratagem; conspiracy; cabal; combination; contrivance.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books



... the first two distinctive acts of which are outlined above, had during this long period a running accompaniment of constant under-plot and shifting and exciting episodes. The Shenandoah River, rising northwest of Richmond, but flowing in a general northeast course to join the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, gives its name to a valley twenty to thirty miles wide, highly fertile and cultivated, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... silence reigned, like that in the depths of the forest. To those who knew the borderman, and few did not know him, the invitation was nothing less than an insult. But it did not appear to them, as to him, like a pre-arranged plot to provoke a fight. ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... mining companies have combined, not without causing some anxiety to consumers, who have seen in this combination a plot to raise the price of fuel. Will power, which has received numerous complaints upon this subject, intervene to restore competition and prevent monopoly? It cannot do it; the right of combination is identical in law with ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... dwellings, they were bent on destroying the whole city, but a missionary who served as guide begged them to spare the place. So grateful were the inhabitants for his kindly intervention that they bestowed on the mission a large plot of ground—showing that, however easily wrought up, they were not altogether destitute of the better feelings ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... a matter of individuality, and the short story comprises so broad a range of subjects, that it is not easy to lay down general rules concerning the proper style. No two masters would or could treat the same plot in precisely the same way, and yet the method of each would be correct. However, certain generalizations concerning the style of the short story may be made without being arbitrary. As always in literature, the style should be appropriate ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... of a mere super in a well rehearsed scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his role of dumb ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... paragraph where I had been irreverent enough to quote a Text (and spell it badly); and that what I had written, and naught else, should go to the King. He took it to London himself, and his Majesty being much elated by some successes in Germany, and the Discovery of a Jacobite Plot, and moved moreover by the intercession of a Foreign Lady, that was his favourite, and who vowed that the little Deer-Stealer's Petition was Monstrous Droll, and almost as good as a Play,—His Majesty was graciously pleased to remit my Sentence, on condition of my transporting ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... I am sorry to say she does not; but I don't think she is in this plot. I think she honestly believes that I stole ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger

... to Deane, who had promised him a reward of great price when his work should be done. Nothing transpired which would inculpate Choiseul the French minister, but as he was still in office, and as his animus was well-known, he was thought to have been concerned in this plot likewise. But it failed; and the circumstance had the effect of still further exciting the enmity of the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... shingly beach, where the boys used to bathe. Three sides only had left their ruins behind; and these were accordingly rebuilt, as closely after the original style as was possible. There was the shadowy row of cool cloisters, edging the square smooth-shaven plot of grass, which no boy was allowed to cross. Then all round the building above the cloisters were various class-rooms; and at the end of one wing stood the chapel, and at the other, the ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly

... schismatis Anglicani libri tres (Cologne, 1585) was still, in the French translation of Maucroix, the commonly accepted account of the English reformation. Burnet's contradictions of Sanders must not, however, be accepted without independent investigation. At the time of the Popish Plot in 1678 he displayed some moderation, refusing to believe the charges made against the duke of York, though he chose this time to publish some anti-Roman pamphlets. He tried, at some risk to himself, to save the life of one of the victims, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Pretoria it was discovered that a plot was set on foot to kidnap the Commander-in-Chief. It was, however, nipped in the bud. One of the leaders was an officer of the Transvaal State Permanent Artillery. The plot, of course, failed and the officer was ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... description. It was her impression of muteness, pallor, sadness, which had decided the judge to drop his affairs and have a look at the farm. What did Edna mean? What did Thinkright mean? Was it a plot to work on his sympathies? This smiling maid with mischief in her eyes frolicking recklessly in the clumsy old rowboat was the opposite type from the cold, pale specimen he had braced himself to meet in the Basin path. She would have been suitably environed ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... regarding the Queen's captivity and Babington's plot have been found to be omitted, as well as many interesting personages in the suite of the captive Queen, it must be remembered that the art of the story-teller makes it needful to curtail some of the incidents which ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... passages of splendid diction, well calculated for bold declamation. The plot of the piece runs thus: Barbarossa having killed, and then usurped the throne of his friend and master, tries to obtain the hand of Zaphira, the late monarch's widow—having previously destroyed, (as is supposed) ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... of one of the characters from a gay, debonnair bachelor past middle age into a penurious miser of the Blueberry-Jones type is bold, and in less skilful hands would be a blemish, but Mr. Synge has amply justified it, and admirably uses it to cement the structure of his plot. There is no weakness in any chapter, and as we read so secure do we feel in the author's strength that, had he chosen to end the story in sorrow and not in joy, we should submit as though to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... that we were completely bowled over for the moment. Who was the man addressed as "Doc"? There was no time to find out, no time to do anything, apparently, so quickly had the plot ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... had gone away, Mrs. Claudine laid aside her work—for she was not in a state of mind to do any thing but think—-and sat for at least an hour, musing upon the strange incident which had occurred. All at once, it flashed upon her mind that there must be some plot in progress to discredit or rival her new bonnet, which Kitty had learned at Mrs. Ballman's. The more she thought of this, the more fully did she become satisfied that it must be so. She was aware that ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... will clear himself of every stain," returned Mrs. Sutton earnestly. "This is either a vile plot concocted by some secret foe, or the Frederic Chilton mentioned here," pushing the letter away from her on the table, with a gesture of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear friend Hermia were all in a plot together to make a jest ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Near by, an interesting road intersects leading to a river. Soon we descry a granite monument at the famous bridge, and across the bridge "The Minute Man." The inscription on the monument informs us that here the first British soldier fell. An iron chain incloses a little plot by the side of a stone wall where rest those who met the first armed resistance. Crossing the bridge which spans a dark and sluggish stream one reaches French's fine statue with ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... been here about a month before, and as the animals were shod we judged it was some prospector. The next day was so wet and Prof. was feeling so sick that we kept our camp, having made tents out of paulins and pack-covers, which gave me a chance to plot up the trail from Kanab to this point, one hundred and three miles. Instead of crossing the torrent the following day, June 5th, we went over the chief stream before the union and travelled down the right-hand side till we arrived within half a mile ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... fixed his imagination and inspired him to martyrdom might have made a plot for some old-fashioned melodrama, but Max began to realize that there was nothing in fiction so incredible as the things which happen in life: things one reads about any day in newspapers, yet which in a novel would ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... Thomason was implicated in Christopher Love's plot against the Commonwealth. There are several entries in the Calendar of State Papers which refer to his imprisonment. Mr. A.W. Pollard, the editor of Bibliographica, has given a list of them in a note (vol. ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... eyes.—Here are also some inestimable ancient bustos (sic).—The church of St Lawrence is built of black and white marble, where is kept that famous plate of a single emerald, which is not now permitted to be handled, since a plot, which, they say, was discovered, to throw it on the pavement and break it; a childish piece of malice, which they ascribe to the king of Sicily, to be revenged for their refusing to sell it to him. The church of the annunciation is ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... design, in the outset especially, with great art and prudence. He conducted it as a politician would conduct a plot. His first application was to his own family. This gained him his wife's uncle, a considerable person in Mecca, together with his cousin Ali, afterwards the celebrated Caliph, then a youth of great expectation, and even already distinguished by his attachment, impetuosity, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... Greeks, there was an attempt to buy off the Spartan resistance, and the messenger to the Spartan general found him playing with his little daughter, a child of six or seven. The conference was carried on in whispers, and the child could not hear what was being said; but she broke up the whole plot by a single word. I shall quote a few lines from the close of the poem, which contain its moral lessons. The emissary has tried to tempt him with ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... At last, the plot thickened; the tragedy was hastened to a close. France now formally asserted her right to all countries drained by streams emptying into the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. This vast empire would have extended from the comb of the Rockies on the west—discovered ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... of a life-time. "The rest is silence." Throughout the play there is no parade of false sentimentality, no tawdry virtue, no copy-book morality, no vicious silliness; and, so well constructed is the plot, that there is no need of a wearisome extra Act, by way of postscript, to tell us how all the characters met again at the North Pole or Land's End; how everybody explained everything to everybody else; how the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various

... (being remarkabble for my style of riting) should cretasize the languidge, whilst he should take up with the plot of the play; and the candied reader will parding me for having holtered the original address of my letter, and directed it to Sir Edward himself; and for having incopperated Smith's remarks in the midst of ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... but you know how fickle and easily led the negroes are, and in the excitement of finding them selves free and able to go where they please, you may be sure that the greater number will wander away. My proposal is, that we should at once mark out a plot of land for each family and tell them that as long as they stay here it is theirs rent-free; they will be paid for their work upon the estate, three, four, or five days a week, as they can spare time from ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... and humorous,—with the plot subordinate to the character delineation of its quaint people and to the exquisite descriptions of picturesque spots and ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... Giuliano de' Medici was killed and his brother Lorenzo wounded in S. Maria del Fiore by the family of the Pazzi and their adherents and fellow-conspirators, it was ordained by the Signoria that all those who had shared in the plot should be painted as traitors on the wall of the Palace of the Podesta. This work was offered to Andrea, and he, as a servant and debtor of the house of Medici, accepted it very willingly, and, taking ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... drove to Headquarters to see him. He was not there. Nobody would tell me where he is. I drove down again from the Mount of Olives and luckily caught sight of his car in the distance. I contrived to intercept him. I told him there is a plot on foot to massacre every individual of my race in the Near East—a veritable pogrom. He was polite. He seems to think politeness is the Christian quality that covers the multitude of sins. He offered ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... is not enough you plot treason, you must also turn against your Gods? You know the Croen powers, you know what she would do to us all, you included. But so that you can overcome the Schrees, nothing else to you is sacred, nothing too vile for you to do. Away with ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... motionless, her face like cold marble, as I carefully gathered the threads of the plot and gently twitched that one which galvanized the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... was the instigator of the entire foul plot. HE must pay the penalty; and who better than Vas Kor could lead the Prince of Helium to Astok ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... war and ambition! Under the ashes of this outward humility were glowing the coals of faction. In his seemingly philosophical retirement, Samael was concerting with his friends new treason against Abderahman. His plot was discovered; his house was suddenly surrounded by troops; and he was conveyed to a tower at Toledo, where, in the course of a few ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning. Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor mamma, and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the moonlight shining across the level summer fields. But the little path was shadowy and narrow. Trees crowded over it, and trees are never quite as friendly to human beings after nightfall as they are in daylight. They wrap themselves away from us. They whisper and plot furtively. If they reach out a hand to us it has a hostile, tentative touch. People walking amid trees after night always draw closer together instinctively and involuntarily, making an alliance, physical and mental, against certain alien powers around them. Rosemary's dress brushed ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... astonished! I'm thunderstruck! here's treachery with a vengeance! You, Antonio's creature, and chief manager of this plot for my daughter's eloping!—you, that I placed here as ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... man, or capable of being in love with any man. In a certain degree she was jealous, and felt that she owed Mary Lovelace a turn for having so speedily won her own rejected lover. But her jealousy was not strong enough for absolute malice. She had formed no plot against the happiness of the husband and wife when she came into the house; but the plot made itself, and she liked the excitement. He was heavy,—certainly heavy; but he was very handsome, and a lord; and then, too, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... measures had to be taken, and sixteen of the number were arrested and sent to Sydney for punishment. Four men were then selected by the malcontents themselves, and were about to depart in search of the supposed colony when a treacherous plot was discovered. A scheme was on foot for a stronger party of convicts to abscond, and these meeting the explorers at a pre-arranged spot, should there murder the guides, and having possessed themselves of their weapons, the prisoners ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... worn to crazy years thegither; We'll toyte about wi' ane anither; [totter] Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether [attentive, change] To some hain'd rig, [reserved plot] Where ye may nobly rax your leather, [stretch, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... tilth and pasture of the Downs, stood the house occupied by Mr. Lee Hannaford. It was just too large to be called a cottage; not quite old enough to be picturesque; a pleasant enough dwelling, amid its green garden plot, sheltered on the north side by a dark hedge of yew, and shut from the quiet road by privet topped with lilac and laburnum. This day of early summer, fresh after rains, with a clear sky and the sun wide-gleaming over young leaf and bright blossom, with Nature's perfume wafted along every ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... himself, by his own merit, between MOLIERE and DESTOUCHES. COLIN D'HARLEVILLE and LEGOUVE produce agreeable pieces which succeed. They paint, with an easy and graceful pencil, the absurdities and humours of society; but their pieces are deficient in plot and action. FABRE D'EGLANTINE pourtrayed, in striking colours, those frightful vices which are beyond the reach of the law. His pieces are strongly woven and easily unravelled. PICARD seems to have taken GOLDONI, the celebrated Venetian comic writer, for his model. Like ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... the crew had become slightly mutinous, and some of the emigrants—of whom there were upwards of three hundred on board—sided with the crew. It was even whispered that the chief mate was at the bottom of a plot to murder the captain and seize the ship. For what purpose, of course, no one could tell, and, indeed, there was no apparent ground for the rumour, beyond the fact that the mate—Malines by name—was a surly, taciturn man, with a scowling, though handsome, ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... this conversation, in an agony, which it would be impossible to describe, could no longer distinguish what was said, for the ruffians now spoke in lowered voices; but the hope, that she might save her friends from the plot, if she could find her way quickly to them, suddenly re-animated her spirits, and lent her strength enough to turn her steps in search of the gallery. Terror, however, and darkness conspired against her, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... the hall without further conversation, and I paid little attention to my surroundings, so that while my eyes saw and my mind displayed, my subconscious was not present in the effort, and thereby no memory was retained. This may seem to be the plot of an unimaginative writer to escape the use of that faculty, but as these are nothing but my written memories, and I make no claims of producing good fiction, I will leave that hall primarily to the minds ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... where she discovered that illegal Christmas-tree cutters had topped a number of trees, which she believed destroyed their ability to bear. Her response was of sorrow rather than anger. She sat under her trees for a long time apologizing to her father, from whom she had inherited the plot, and to the ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs

... Sommers, he had been put in heavy irons on account of his violence and ferocity; but after many weeks of childlike submission on his part, the irons were removed. Despite the vigilance of the guards, a plot had been hatched by the gang to which Brown belonged, and it was almost, though not quite, ripe for execution when the events we are describing occurred. Poor Hester's action next day precipitated matters and caused the failure of the plot—at ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... in these details of the worthy nobleman's little plot, I looked at his carriage, and privately admired the two splendid horses that drew it. The footman opened the door for his master, and I became aware, for the first time, that a gentleman had accompanied Lord Loring to the hotel, and had waited for him ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... directly after dark, well equipped and well-armed, they made their start into the South. But in going they did not neglect to pass the camp of the Invincibles who were now in the apex of the army farthest south. They had found an unusually comfortable place on a grassy plot beside a fine, cool spring, and most of them were lying down. But Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant- Colonel Hector St. Hilaire sat on empty kegs, with a board on an empty box between them. The great game which ran along with ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... die with their husbands as they have vowed, or of grief for their loss, and are wholly devoted to their interests. Among "bad wives" are those that wed their husband's slayer, run away from their husbands, plot against their husbands' lives. The penalty for adultery is death to both, at husband's option—disfigurement by cutting off the nose of the guilty woman, an archaic practice widely spread. In one case the adulterous lady is left the choice of her own ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... undoubtedly be perused at length by all who feel deeply on the subject of negro slavery. Of the authoress, Mrs H. B. Stowe, it may be said, that her chief merit consists in close observation of character, with a forcible and truth-like power of delineation. In plot, supposing her to aim at such a thing, she decidedly fails, and the winding-up of her dramatis personae is hurried and imperfect. Notwithstanding these defects, however, she has succeeded in rivetting universal attention, while her aims are in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... we should carefully consider our bearings in the circle of Providence and our position in the ages. The story and work of redemption are grand, full of interest and thrilling incidents; still we must take things in their order. Some stories we read are very fascinating. The plot culminates, the characters and incidents converge toward and centre in the hero. At such a point we are often carried away with our sympathy for the hero; we become anxious for him, and desires to know the issues, and so are tempted ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... part of the great defence. She remained in Rome, probably in the house of her kinswoman Laeta, the widow of Gratian. That she had a grudge against Serena seems certain, though the whole story of the plot to marry her to Eucherius, Serena's son, would appear doubtful. That she initiated her murder, as Zosimus[1] asserts, is extremely improbable and altogether unproven. However that may be, after one of his three sieges ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... explain this mystery to you," said Zanoni. "I discovered the plot against you,—no matter how; I frustrated it thus: The head of this design is a nobleman, who has long persecuted you in vain. He and two of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre, having directed ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... which his orders were obeyed displayed something of the man. It displayed something more to the two hurrying men. It suggested to both their minds that the whole thing had been prepared for. Perhaps even the employees of this man were concerned in their chief's plot. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... explained that they had been a good many hours without eating, supper was immediately placed on the table, while provisions were carried out to the troopers, who sat down in a circle on the grass-plot—it could not be dignified as a lawn—with their horses picketed near them. The ladies went out to see them as they sat in the sunlight, not at all inconvenienced by its glare. They seemed merry, careless fellows, laughing and chattering away in their own curious lingo—a ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... pray for victory in war. Each deity not only promises but actually grants the suppliants precisely what they ask; for Arcite, though fatally wounded, is victorious in the battle, and Palamon in the end weds Emily. Although Boccaccio's Teseide furnished the general plot for this Knightes Tale, Chaucer's story is, as Skeat says, "to all intents, a ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... Pizarro had directed Rocco to kill a prisoner in a certain dungeon, she overheard a good deal of the plot, and she began to fear it might ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... the way into his little garden. Certainly there was not much room in it for the jackdaw to hide, and it only needed a glance to see that he was not there. The only possible place was in a large old medlar-tree which stood in the middle of the grass plot, with a wooden bench and table under it. It was nearly bare of leaves now, and a few sparrows were hopping about in its branches. Ambrose turned his eyes to the roof of a barn which ran along one ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... at this disclosure, but my surprise was as nothing compared to that in hearing the plot which the woman's now diseased mind had concocted. She said she was going to bear reproach no longer (for, though her husband never murmured, at least in words, his friends and her neighbors were ever ready ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... Bombay were discovered at Kolhapur wearing the garb of sanyasis, i.e., mendicant ascetics. They confessed that they had left their homes, to which the police wisely restored them, to invoke the assistance of a great ruling chief of Southern India in a plot to exterminate the hated foreigner, and their main object in starting upon this insane venture had been to regain their hold upon their husbands' affections by a great "patriotic" achievement. That real sanyasis are frequently the missionaries of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... mentions the perverted appetites of pregnant women, and says that they have been known to eat plaster, ashes, dirt, charcoal, flour, salt, spices, to drink pure vinegar, and to indulge in all forms of debauchery. Plot gives the case of a woman who would gnaw and eat all the linen off her bed. Hufeland's Journal records the history of a case of a woman of thirty-two, who had been married ten years, who acquired a strong taste for charcoal, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... ears on the road twenty yards away. The boy, Curnow, flicked flies off them occasionally. He saw his mistress go into the cottage; come out again; and pass, talking energetically to judge by the movements of her hands, round the vegetable plot in front of the cottage. Mrs. Pascoe was his aunt. Both women surveyed a bush. Mrs. Durrant stooped and picked a sprig from it. Next she pointed (her movements were peremptory; she held herself very upright) at the potatoes. They had the blight. All potatoes ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... denied the thing, and appealed to the unlikeness of the characters. It was agreed that there was no resemblance at all in the hands; but asserted that the doctor had two hands; his physic hand and his plot hand, and the one not a jot like the other. Now this was the doctor's plot hand, and it was insisted that, because it was not like one of his hands, it must ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... that the early chapters of The Moulding Loft (METHUEN) are liable to plunge you into some mental agitation, due to the author's deliberately baffling method of starting her plot. The hero, for example, is introduced to us abed, and semi-delirious, waited upon by a pale and sinister young female whom he detests. He appears to be in a house strange to him, which contains also an unpleasant old woman and a queer little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various

... reached the plot of the piece, where it says, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road," Uncle Peter took a drink, Phil Merton took the same, Stub took an oath, ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... to marry Mrs. Stanhope, thinking thereby to get control of her money and the money she held in trust for Dora. The lady was weak and sickly, and the teacher had tried to hypnotize her into getting married, and had nearly succeeded, but the plot was nipped in the ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... game? You speak as though it were some kind of cards or plot. What do you mean?" and Tamara, with ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... father-in-law, Baron von Hoffman, would put up the money, he could afford to dream. He once remarked confidentially to a friend, "I veel make ze millions and millions by ze great enterprizes in America, and zen I veel go home to France, and veel capture my comrades in ze French armee, an veel plot and plan, and directly zey veel put me in command, and zen I veel swoop down on ze government, and first zing you know I veel mount the zrone." One time his agent at Medora, his ranch on the Northern Pacific, wrote him at ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... to treat his colleague, Winwood, the Secretary of State, with as little ceremony as if he had been a junior clerk, thereby incurring the resentment of that very high official. Common hatred of Bacon made a strong bond of union between Coke and Winwood, and Winwood joined readily in the plot newly ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... impertinent in the midst of great affairs. To Congress, it was apparently a proposal to deprive members of the patronage which to many of them was the real gratification of their position, the only way in which they felt their distinction and power. To such members reform was a plot to deprive the bear of his honey, the dog of his bone, and they ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... adventure. It was said that he was born in one quarter of the globe, educated in another, initiated into warfare in the third and buried in the fourth. In his boyhood he was the friend and pupil of Guy Fawkes; he engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, and after witnessing the terrible fate of his master, he escaped to Spanish America, where he led for years a sort of buccaneer life. He afterwards returned to Europe, and then followed years of military service wherever his hireling sword was needed. But the soldier of fortune was ill-paid ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... had actually occurred in real life, and that he knew the personages. In the Dialogues it is assumed that the play had been written by the hero himself, and the hero is the chief speaker. Not a word is said from which the reader would guess that Diderot had borrowed the substance of his plot and some of its least insipid scenes from Goldoni. We can hardly wonder that he was charged with plagiarism. Yet it was not deliberate, we may be sure. When Diderot was strongly seized by an idea, outer circumstances were as if they did not exist. He was swept up into the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... time, was prostrated. Vain had been all this deceit; her mother was not happy; was not blinded. Edouard might come and tell her his story. Then no power could keep Josephine silent. The plot was thickening; the fatal net was drawing closer ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... The plot is nothing. The idea of choosing such an environment and doing the story in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... she asked, in an altered voice after a pause. "Are you in the plot, too, as well as Marcos and Uncle Ramon? Have you been scheming all this time as well, that ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... of parties: there were parties already enough in the House, and it was essential that at least the Whig party should be kept together, to which Lord Palmerston assented. He (Lord Palmerston) then repeated his complaints against that plot which had been got up in this country against him, and urged on by foreigners, complained particularly of Lord Clarendon, Mr Greville of the Privy Council, Mr Reeve, ditto, and their attacks upon him in the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... fortune to enable him to live as he pleased. In the diligence which conveyed him home he dreamed of a delightful life of idleness. The shattering of his castles in the air was terrible. When he reached the Faubourg, and could no longer even recognise the Fouques' plot of ground, he was stupefied. He was compelled to ask for his mother's new address. There a terrible scene occurred. Adelaide calmly informed him of the sale of the property. He flew into a rage, and even raised his hand ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... The Colonel began to understand that something more than wantonness had inspired Payton's conduct the previous night. Either he had been privy from the first to the plot to waylay the horse; or he had bought it cheaply knowing how it had been acquired; or—a third alternative—it had been placed in his hands, to the end that his reputation as a fire-eater might protect it. In any event, he had had an interest ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... now only ten of them left, with himself, continued Llewellyn, and he could see that Moody wanted him to be killed, it being all a pretence about casting lots. Some of the men saw through the plot, too, as well as he did and took his part. It was then that a fight came about, and in it he got that slash across his face which ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... number only five or six were known before. They are exceedingly curious as pictures of early manners and amusements; very simple in construction, and containing few characters. One is a comic dialogue between two persons as to the best way of managing a wife. Another has for its plot the adventure of a husband sent from home by the seigneur of the village, that he may obtain access to his wife; and who is checkmated by the peasant, who repairs to the neglected lady of the seigneur. Some are entirely composed of allegorical characters; all are broadly ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... uttered,—words of transient madness, yet most characteristic:—"Oh God! help me, is all my cry. Yet I have little faith in the Paternal love I need, so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth. I feel calm, yet sternly, towards Fate. This last plot against me has been so cruelly, cunningly wrought, that I shall never acquiesce. I submit, because useless resistance is degrading, but I demand an explanation. I see that it is probable I shall never receive one, while I live here, and suppose I can bear the rest of the suspense, since ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... garden bed of her own. Hazel went with her uncle to buy plants for this, and she had great fun taking geraniums and pansies out of their pots and planting them in the soft brown earth of the round garden plot; and every day blue-eyed Ella, her doll, sat by and watched Hazel pick out every little green weed that had put its head ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... well to the fore, and would be one of the first to gain the box-office. A quarter of an hour had still to elapse before the doors opened; and Maurice borrowed his companion's textbook, and read studiously, to acquaint himself with the plot of the opera. Madeleine took out Wolzogen's FUHRER, with the intention of brushing up her knowledge of the motives; but, before she had finished a page, she had grown so interested in what two people behind her were ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... him; and at last I gained my point. Tui Mbua agreed to go to the neighbourhood of the hostile town, if I would bring its principal men to meet him at an appointed place. So we went. This chosen place was a fine plot of ground enclosed by magnificent chestnut trees. I went on to the town, with a few unarmed men. The people received us well; but it was difficult to make the old heathen, brought up on treachery and falsehood, believe that I was to be trusted. But in the end the chief and twenty of his men consented ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... Valentine; For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter; But, Valentine being gone, I'll quickly cross, By some sly trick blunt Thurio's dull proceeding. Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift, As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift! ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... a dressing for soil. In this last connexion, however, it must be remembered that only certain soils are improved by an addition of lime in any shape, and therefore carbide residues must not be used blindly; but if analysis indicates that a particular plot of ground would derive benefit from an application of lime, acetylene lime is precisely as good as any other description. Naturally a residue containing unspent carbide, or contaminated with tarry matter, is essentially valueless (except as mentioned below); while ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... she began, coolly and cuttingly, "are very much indebted to you, Dr. Harford, for so cleverly unmasking the traitor in our midst. This woman has called it a miserable trap, and I want to say that I feel that only by such a contrived plot has it been possible to uncover the truth and lay the trouble at the door of ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... of it. After a time, when the autumn twilight had fallen on them like a benediction, she took her courage in her hands and told of her visit to the house on the Avenue, and about the parrot and the plot. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... went back, and on a paper wrote,— "Your dog has harmed me not, and why should you, That I have never wronged, plot harm to me? You made me slave, you sold away my bride, And now you set your hounds upon my track, Because I seek the freedom that is mine. Though you have wronged me, still I do you good, For in an oak, the largest of the grove, Upon the cotton-field of Richard Wain, Hid in a hollow ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... give to thee 'All heaven besides,' what could I then, But, as a child, to Him complain That whereas my dear Father gave A little space for me to have In His great garden, now, o'erblest, I've that, indeed, but all the rest, Which, somehow, makes it seem I've got All but my only cared-for plot. Enough was that for my weak hand To tend, my heart to understand. Oh, the sick fact, 'twixt her and me There's naught, and ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... nor like the sketch of history which appeals to our interest to-day. It has not the unity of purpose which marks the novel, nor the broad outlook over events which characterizes the history. Plotting is abundant, but plot in the technical sense there is none. Events are recorded in chronological order, but there is no march of those events to a denouement. While it would be wrong to say that there is no one hero in a saga, it would be more correct to say that that hero's name is legion. ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... letter, and excites the jealousy of Marie, who imagines it written by a woman, deceived by the expressions, "My beloved Raymond," and the signature of "The Being dearest to your Heart," and the mysterious rendezvous appointed, all of which is, in fact, written by his exiled father. This plot, however, fails, through the candour and devotion of Marie; and the knight keeps the tryst which his father had appointed at a ruined hermitage, formerly tenanted by the preceptor of Raymond, on a lonely hill above the Vallee d'Aspe. Here ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... had been on the plot, fearing a discovery and punishment, flew to arms; Lewis Gordon, Ogilvie, Athol, and others, under Middleton's command, putting out a number of fair pretexts for their rising. This might have destroyed all; yet, by God's mercy, all was quickly ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... he went to his uncle to demand his father's inheritance. Albrecht was a rude and uncouth man, and refused disdainfully the demand, whereupon the noblemen of the disputed territory stirred up the young prince to form a plot against him, all having evidently different views of the lengths to which they would proceed. This was just at the time that the Swiss, angry at the overweening and oppressive behaviour of Albrecht's governors, were first taking ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... negligence appear, who had twice disregarded their application to him. Alexander was greatly incensed, and on finding that Limnus had defended himself, and had been killed by the soldier who was sent to seize him, he was still more discomposed, thinking he had thus lost the means of detecting the plot. As soon as his displeasure against Philotas began to appear, presently all his old enemies showed themselves, and said openly, the king was too easily imposed on, to imagine that one so inconsiderable as Limnus, a Chalastrian, should of his own head undertake such an enterprise; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... may infer the high standing of Mr. Heyward in South Carolina, from the fact that he was selected with four other freeholders to constitute a Court for the trial of the conspirators in the insurrection plot at Charleston, in 1822. Another of the individuals chosen to constitute that court was Colonel Henry Deas, now president of the Board of Trustees of Charleston College, and a few years since a member of the Senate ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... day," continued Mrs Keswick, "a lady arrived; and as soon as I saw her drive into the gate I felt sure it was Roberta March, and that the two had hatched up a plot to come and work on my feelings, and so I wouldn't come near ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... are set, the plot is laid, Ruin awaits thee,—hapless maid! Seduction sly assails thine ear, And gloating, foul desire is near; Baneful and blighting are their smiles, Destruction waits upon their wiles; Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps, Vice clasps her hands, and ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... shelter the coffee from the sun. The alleys between the trees were carpeted by rich green turf, forming pleasant glades. The plantations were generally neatly fenced and often extensive; as much as twenty or thirty acres in one plot. Every now and then they passed on the roadside a noble tree, with wide-spread, drooping branches, a species of banyan tree, under which was often seen a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... thirty-seven years ago Since first began the plot that I'm revealing, A fine young woman, whom you ought to know, Lived with her husband down in Drum Lane, Ealing. Herself by means of mangling reimbursing, And now ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... hard work to screw Tim's courage up to the necessary point, but his sense of obligation to Matthew finally overcame his well founded fears of Fred Worthington's strong arms, and he promised to take part in the disappointed rival's dastardly plot. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey

... too had sent off for Ulred, the armourer, and he brought with him a gossip who had also been present. I asked the king's permission to introduce them, and they entirely confirmed your story. Fitz-Urse exclaimed that it was a Saxon plot to do him harm, and I could see that the bishop was of the same opinion; but the king, who is ever anxious to do justice, declared at once that he was sure that the two craftsmen were but speaking the truth. He sternly rebuked Fitz-Urse ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... had been erected on a new piece of ground by a certain obliterator of historic records who had run down from London and back in a day. The site whereon so long had stood the ancient temple to the Christian divinities was not even recorded on the green and level grass-plot that had immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated graves being commemorated by eighteen-penny cast-iron crosses warranted to last ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... other dramas of Schiller's last period, William Tell has no plot in the technical dramatic sense. There is no snare of circumstances laid which forces a hero, after vain attempts to elude or unloose it, to tear his way out at the cost of more or less innocent lives. We see the representatives of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... this way. Let John buy you a ticket to the Piraeus. If you go from one Greek port to another you don't need a vise. But, if you book from here to Italy, you must get a permit from the Italian consul, and our consul, and the police. The plot is to get out of the war zone, isn't it? Well, then, my dope is to get out quick, and map the rest of your trip ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... in which they tried their own cases, and inflicted their own punishments. Stealing and quarrelling were punished—but most of all treachery. When I came there first there was a man, Meunier, from Rheims, who had given information of some plot to escape. Well, that night, owing to some form or other which had to be gone through, they did not take him out from among the other prisoners, and though he wept and screamed, and grovelled upon the ground, they left him there ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my 'sweeps,' which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the star-light nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar-frost, without a human being near enough to be within call. I knew too little of the real heavens to be able to point out every object so as to find it again without losing ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... wilt not seek anything else. Wilt thou not cease to value many other things too? Then thou wilt be neither free, nor sufficient for thy own happiness, nor without passion. For of necessity thou must be envious, jealous, and suspicious of those who can take away those things, and plot against those who have that which is valued by thee. Of necessity a man must be altogether in a state of perturbation who wants any of these things; and besides, he must often find fault with the gods. But to reverence and honor thy own mind will make thee content with thyself, and ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... this plot of ground [Lynnhaven Bay] we got good store of mussels and oysters, which lay on the ground as thick as stones. We opened some and found ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... them. He adopted the plan of employing good writers upon the different parts of a drama, and while himself superintending the whole and writing prominent parts, yet entrusting to his assistants a great portion of the composition. It was his genius which arranged the plot and guided the selection of characters, but the glory should have often been divided with his humbler co-laborers. Victor Hugo wrote a play which the censors would not allow to be brought out. He read it to Dumas. The ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... for the shoddy goods And plod and plot and plan, And if you win the paltry prize Go prize it—if you can, But I would hurl it in your face To hold ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin

... once came to the conclusion that they were plotting mischief; but he could form no idea of the nature of the plot—whether it was to rob a hen-roost on shore, or capture the wooden fort that frowned upon them from the heights above. He was sorry to see John permitted to enter this conclave of mischief; but because his brother ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams

... him, and that she has imposed virginity upon herself in order to insure his inheritance. So the maiden believes her nurse, and puts full confidence in her. One promises to the other, and gives her word, that this plot shall be kept so secret as never to be revealed. At this point their conversation ceases, and the next morning the emperor summons his daughter. At his command she goes to him. But why should I weary ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes



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