Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Prostration   Listen
noun
Prostration  n.  
1.
The act of prostrating, throwing down, or laying fiat; as, the prostration of the body.
2.
The act of falling down, or of bowing in humility or adoration; primarily, the act of falling on the face, but usually applied to kneeling or bowing in reverence and worship. "A greater prostration of reason than of body."
3.
The condition of being prostrate; great depression; lowness; dejection; as, a postration of spirits. "A sudden prostration of strength."
4.
(Med.) A latent, not an exhausted, state of the vital energies; great oppression of natural strength and vigor. Note: Prostration, in its medical use, is analogous to the state of a spring lying under such a weight that it is incapable of action; while exhaustion is analogous to the state of a spring deprived of its elastic powers. The word, however, is often used to denote any great depression of the vital powers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Prostration" Quotes from Famous Books



... Valley of the Shadow of Death, from which there seemed no escape to the Mount Zion beyond. If she dragged herself out of the deep pit of mental despondency, it was to fall into a still deeper one of physical prostration. The bleedings and blisters ordered by her physician could help her but little. What she needed to make her well was new pupils and honest boarders, and these the most expert physician could not give her. Is it any wonder that she came in time to hate Newington Green,—"the ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... happened two summers ago at a well-known resort in the mountains, which even at this late day it quickens my pulse to recall. I was one of the very few eyewitnesses of the "tragedy," and it nearly put me to bed with nervous prostration. It was about twilight one evening when I passed near the lake on my way to ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... rock, and the eggs look to be only a couple of inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we should find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots die of nervous prostration. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... while I was with him, and the doctor said that if he had such another he could not last out the night. Once, after waking from the prolonged and weary sleep of prostration which used to follow these collapses, he said to me, with a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... awoke feeble, dazed and ill. In a little while her mind rallied sufficiently to recall what had happened, but her symptoms of nervous prostration and lassitude were alarming. Mrs. Whately was sent for, and poor Mr. Baron learned, as by another surgical operation, what had been his share in imposing on his niece too severe a strain. Mrs. Waldo whispered to Miss Lou, "Your mammy has ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... with her dazed, lovely eyes, allowing him to arrange the cushions under her head with a simple acquiescence which seemed to him the sweetest thing in the world. Now that the first dread was relieved, he felt a guilty satisfaction in the knowledge of her prostration, and of the damage done to horse and cart. It was impossible that she could drive back to Norton without some hours' rest, and a special providence seemed to have arranged that the accident should take place close to his own gates. He was too much engrossed in his own interests ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Mura'ash raised his head and, seeing the two Princes standing in lieu of falling down to worship, said to them, "O dogs, why do ye not prostrate yourselves?" Replied Gharib, "Out on you, O ye accursed! Prostration befitteth not man save to the Worshipful King, who bringeth forth all creatures into beingness from nothingness and maketh water to well from the barren rockwell, Him who inclineth heart of sire unto new-born scion and who may not be described as sitting or standing; the God ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... calamity men had gathered the heroisms of their future; out of the desert of their exile they had learned the power to return as conquerors. The greater things within him awakened from their lethargy; the innate strength so long untried, so long lulled to dreamy indolence and rest, uncoiled from its prostration; the force that would resist and, it might be, survive, slowly came upon him, with the taunts of his foe. It was possible that there was that still in him which might be grander and truer to the ambitions of his imaginative childhood under adversity, than in the voluptuous sweetness ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... first pregnancy, acquired an overpowering aversion to a half-breed Indian woman who was employed in the house as a servant. Whenever this woman came near her she was at once seized with violent trembling, which ended in a few minutes with vomiting and great mental and physical prostration, lasting several hours. Her husband would have sent the woman away, but Mrs. X insisted on her remaining, as she was a good servant, in order that she might overcome what she regarded as an unreasonable prejudice. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... intervals of two, three, and many months, without appreciable cause, and by the purely spontaneous effect of their illness, a very marked change takes place in the condition of the two brothers. Both of them, at the same time, and often on the same day, rouse themselves from their habitual stupor and prostration; they make the same complaints, and they come of their own accord to the physician, with an urgent request to be liberated. I have seen this strange thing occur, even when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicetre, and the other living ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... first weeks of the siege he had been anxious, agitated, nervous; he wandered through the house like a soul in trouble; he had moments of inconceivable prostration, during which tears could be seen rolling down upon his cheeks, and then fits ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... being that comes near him from the moment of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to be repeated to the police or to the judge. This total severance, so simply effected between the prisoner and the world, gives rise to a complete overthrow of his faculties and a terrible prostration of mind, especially when the man has not been familiarized by his antecedents with the processes of justice. The duel between the judge and the criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on its side the dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible coldness ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... that chord is struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration of spirit—a sickness of heart and mind—a bitter longing to lie down and die—the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... startling news within the next few weeks. Mrs. Hartley had come to be very fond of Lettice, and she guarded her jealously, with all the tyranny of an old woman's love for a young one. The first thing, in her mind, was to get rid of the nervous prostration from which Lettice had been suffering, and to restore her to health ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... torrid heat, discovering Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, and the Gulf of Paria, and making his first landing on the continent, at the Pearl Coast, near the mouth of the Orinoco, in what is now Venezuela. This voyage witnessed many disasters—the rebellion of Roldan, the severe prostration of the admiral by fever, and his seizure and imprisonment in chains ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... prostration, he consented to live with her. Then, when they remained together as if they had been legally united, the same colonel who had displayed indignation with him for abandoning her, objected to this irregular connection ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the external ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... came to be healed. He said: "I am suffering from nervous prostration, and have to eat beefsteak and drink strong coffee to support me through a sermon." Here a skeptic might well ask if the atonement had lost its efficacy for him, and if Christ's power to heal was not equal to the power of daily meat and drink. ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... confined by his wound, which had been a much more serious one than that inflicted upon Ellen; and in his then state of prostration, was not as well prepared to scorn the motives of Durant, or penetrate his designs, as he might have been under more favorable auspices; and having no reason to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly repentant man, he entered into his plans at ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... embarked, and had a very happy voyage. Having arrived at the isle of Serendib, I acquainted the king's ministers with my commission, and prayed them to get me speedy audience. They did so, and I was conducted to the palace, where I saluted the king by prostration, according to custom. That prince knew me immediately, and testified very great joy at seeing me, 'Sinbad,' said he, 'you are welcome; I have many times thought of you since you departed; I bless the day on which ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... was indeed given her head in the weeks that followed, for Mrs. Salisbury steadily declined into a real illness, and the worried family was only too glad to delegate all the domestic problems to Justine. The invalid's condition, from "nervous breakdown" became "nervous prostration," and August was made terrible for the loving little group that watched her by the cruel fight with typhoid fever into which Mrs. Salisbury's exhausted little body was drawn. Weak as she was physically, her spirit never failed ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris

... the fancy; and in the spirit of unreal creation, a wild self-will which rejoices to waft into the presence of the beautiful, and of unbridled laughter, cold blasts from the region of pure affright. There is in this, however, no prostration of strength—quite the reverse! Not a nervous and enfeebled sensibility, yielding itself up to a diseased taste for pain.—No child fascinated with fear, and straining its eyes to take in more horror. But here the unconquerable consciousness of strong life throws itself with an unmastered glee ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... I had now been a long time awake, and this, with the prostration of my strength from mental suffering, had at length deadened the nerve of pain; so that, despite all my misery, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... possible to judge approximately whether that oncoming, whining, unseen thing from above would land dangerously near or ineffectively far from us. The knowledge was common to all of us and all of our ears were keenly tuned for the sounds. Time after time the collective judgment and consequent prostration of the entire party was proven well timed by the arrival of a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... have nervous prostration if I ride in that wagon," she said. "Every minute expecting it to collapse isn't any too good for one who has just been drowned, and ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... was handcuffed and taken to the police station on foot, while the Sub-Inspector followed in a palanquin. Kumodini Babu's women-folk filled the house with their lamentations; and his eldest son, Jadu Nath, was the first to recover from the prostration caused by sudden misfortune. He had a pony saddled and galloped to the railway station, whence he telegraphed to his uncle, Ghaneshyam Babu, the pleader, "Father arrested: charge receiving stolen goods". Ghaneshyam arrived by the next train, and ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... throat by means of a goose quill, has been highly recommended. Frequent gargling of the throat and mouth, with a solution of lactic acid, strong enough to taste sour, will help to keep the parts clean, and correct the foul breath. If there is great prostration, with the nasal passage affected, or hoarseness and difficult breathing, a physician should ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... perspective, despite his genius and his youth, Lord Byron often fell into a sort of mental prostration, which was, says Dallas again, "rather the result of his particular situation, feeling himself out of his sphere, than that of a gloomy disposition received ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... draped the window. Even an ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment, would assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses consciousness of physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in the far future, just as sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which pierces the clouds and draws ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... discomfort, was reduced to order, and those tender lenitives which only woman's thought and woman's sympathy can bring to the sick man's couch, were applied to solace and alleviate the agonies of pain or the torture of fever and prostration." ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... sign of the cross. A peasant with a bushy beard and a surly face, dishevelled and unkempt, came into the church, and at once fell on both knees, and began directly crossing himself in haste, bending back his head with a shake after each prostration. Such bitter grief was expressed in his face, and in all his actions, that Lavretsky made up his mind to go up to him and ask him what was wrong. The peasant timidly and morosely started back, looked ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... father, and had been in miserable health for years before we left Illinois. He had gained surprisingly on the journey, yet quickly felt the influence of impending fate, foreshadowed by the first storm at camp. His courage failed. Complete prostration followed. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... year. In this protracted contest the chief scene of naval hostilities was to be the West Indies; but beyond even the casualties of war, the baneful climate of that region insured numerous vacancies by prostration and death, with consequent chances of promotion for those who escaped the fevers, and found favor in the eyes of their commander-in-chief. The brutal levity of the old toast, "A bloody war and a sickly season," nowhere ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... of Berlin, Chicago, and Peking, with millions more, are so slight that you can't remember their names—or even to have heard them, for that matter. Really, Thaddeus, I am surprised at you. What you expect to get out of this besides nervous prostration I must confess ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... to them as I ran by, and after incredible efforts of intelligence, I was only able to murmur in a silly tone: "If any one asks for me, say I am not in!" Then I cleared in three jumps the stairs leading to my cell, and I sank upon my bed in a state of complete prostration. ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... might just as well be," was the growling answer. "He's shipping an airship, all taken to pieces, and he has nervous prostration for fear it will be broken. I don't believe the old ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton

... leg develop quickly and may terminate fatally in a few hours. These are general dulness, stiffness, prostration and loss of appetite. Lameness is a prominent symptom. The animal may show a swelling in the regions of the shoulder and hindquarters or on other parts of the body. The swelling is very hot and painful at first, but if the animal lives for a time, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... seen, previous to the debut of the Witness, the Church of Scotland converted by Conservatism into a sort of mining tool, half lever, half pickaxe, which it plied hard, with an eye to the prostration and ejection of its political opponents the Whigs, then in office; and not much pleased to see the Church which we loved and respected so transmuted and so wielded, we solemnly determined that, so far at least as our modicum of influence extended, no tool-making politician, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... could not answer, her voice was too choked with weeping. At last, however, between sobs, burying her tear-stained face on Rafael's shoulder, she began to speak, completely crushed, fainting from virtual prostration. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... into it. The great thing is to keep the affected surface of the skin from the contact of the air. The part will shortly get well, and the skin may or may not peel off.—Constitutional Treatment. If the burn or scald is not extensive, and there is no prostration of strength, this is very simple, and consists in simply giving a little aperient medicine—pills (No. 2), as follows:—Mix 5 grains of blue pill and the same quantity of compound extract of colocynth, and make into two pills—the dose for a full-grown person. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... said the latter; "No, I never did," returned he that asked the first question, "but I am sure of it—I have heard a person that was in England say so!!"—This was the pure effusion of a mind subdued to prostration by wonder. In England this was carried to such lengths, that the panegyrists of young Betty seemed to vie with each other in fanatical admiration of that truly extraordinary boy. One, in a public print, went so far as to assert, that Mr. Fox (who, as well as Mr. Pitt, was at young Betty's ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought of the brute ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... of rest and of appetite, but even induced such a disturbance of assimilation and nutrition that the resulting hypochondriacal condition that developed from these enervating causes ran the patient into a low condition, ending in complete prostration of all vital powers and death, without the intervention of any other disease. The subject was a timid, retiring man of about fifty-five years, and this was the first and only time that the prepuce had ever caused him any annoyance,—a ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... speech is getting worse, and I have noticed that the boss has mentioned it to me a couple of times now, and it almost breaks my heart to know that my position is going to get away from me. No one realizes how much one suffers, and I'm afraid I'm going to break down with nervous prostration soon. When one day is over with me, I wonder how I am going to get through with ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... her grasp,—all of which she had ever dreamed! And now it was gone! Each of her three companions strove from time to time to draw her into conversation, but she seemed to be resolute in her refusal. At first, till her utter prostration had become a fact plainly recognised by them all, she made some little attempt at an answer when a direct question was asked of her; but after a while she only shook her head, and was silent, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... prostration of her intellect, the old woman was insensible even to her consolation. She sipped and drank, it is true; but as if the stream warmed not the benumbed region through which it passed, she continued muttering in a crazed ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Reverence. It should be interwoven with all our Thoughts and Perceptions, and become one with the Consciousness of our own Being. It is not to be reflected on in the Coldness of Philosophy, but ought to sink us into the lowest Prostration before him, who is so astonishingly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... once carried through the streets of a city a famous wooden Image, to be placed in one of its Temples. As he passed along, the crowd made lowly prostration before the Image. The Ass, thinking that they bowed their heads in token of respect for himself, bristled up with pride, gave himself airs, and refused to move another step. The driver, seeing him thus stop, laid his whip lustily about his shoulders and ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... of Opium, Arsenic, or Strychnine, when taken in time, there is a | | cure, but for an over dose of tobacco there is none; its effect on the | | system is Paleness, Nausea, Giddiness, Lessening of the heart's action,| | Vomiting, Purging, Cold-sweating, and utter Prostration, such as no | | other poison can induce, then death! Its evils are numerous we will | | notice a few as follows. | | | | 1. It impregnates the whole system with two of the most fatal poisons, | | NICOTINA, and NICOTIANIN. | | | | 2. With either of which the system is subjected to continuous repair, ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous

... be serviceable when it arises from a temporary prostration of spirits: during which the mind is insensibly healing, and her scattered power silently returning. This is better than to be the sport of a teasing hope without reason. But to indulge in despair ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... cruise in times of peace. Though not unprecedented, the display of activity and of sustained energy made by him at such an advanced period of life is unusual; and the severity of the strain upon the mental and physical powers at that age is evidenced by the prostration of Farragut himself, a man of exceptional vigor of body and of a mental tone which did not increase his burdens by an imaginative exaggeration of difficulties. He never committed the error, against which Napoleon cautioned his generals, "de ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... courage and energy under the trying circumstances that often occurred, commanded their voluntary reverence for the untaught, uncivilized Indian chief. The day and night wore away, and when they had hoped to resume their journey they found that a fever had succeeded the prostration produced by the poison, and she was too ill to travel. Dismayed at this new calamity, they were at a loss for awhile how to proceed. Their guide settled the point for them by insisting that the sick girl should be conveyed on a litter back to the village, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... all kinds of women,—the old ones like me that never went to school much, and Hallie's kind, that sort o' walked through the orchard and picked the nearest peaches, and then starts in at thirty to take courses in Italian Art, and Marian, who gives her teachers nervous prostration, and Sylvia, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... marquis sent him to bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he reached the watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as he went. The next day he did not appear. He thought himself he was doomed, but his illness was only the prostration ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... pushing matter back into the realm of the human mind. Bodily states are becoming recognized as manifestations of mental states—not vice versa, as has been ignorantly believed for ages. A prominent physician told me the other day that many a condition of nervous prostration now could be directly traced to selfishness. We know that hatred and anger produce fatal poisons. The rattlesnake is a splendid example of that. I am told that its poison and the white of an egg are formed of exactly the same amounts of the same elements. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of government by the people. Our objects are the restoration of equal rights and the prostration of those aristocratical usurpations existing in the state of monopolies and exclusive privileges of every kind, the products of corrupt and corrupting legislation. . . . At this moment we are the only large nation on the face of the earth where the mass of the people ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... Adams to stay with me until her return. I can't make out the trouble, but I have learned the address of the Farnsworths and—oh, well, I may as well tell you, Miss Adams talked in her sleep. She arrived here utterly exhausted, and on the verge of nervous prostration. But, it may be, some sleep will set her nerves right, if the cause of the trouble can be removed. And,—I know I am intruding,—but I can't help thinking that it's a lovers' quarrel, and you ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... been more to the purpose if Miss Frere had issued a general warning to the people of the Hebrides not to drink tea as black as porter, and, above all, not to boil it. The pale anaemic faces one so often sees in the north and west, the mental prostration and actual insanity so alarmingly on the increase in the Long Island, are unquestionably due, in great measure, to the abominably strong tea that is swilled in such quantities there. A Tarbert doctor told me that the medical profession now talk quite familiarly ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... in future whatever might be further necessary to improve and preserve their constitution. They thought otherwise,' continued Jefferson; 'and events have proved their lamentable error; for after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic, the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private happiness, and the foreign subjugation of their own country for a time, they have obtained no more, nor ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... papers with resolution on Kansas men; description by Chicago Herald; seized with nervous prostration at Lakeside, O.; sympathy of people and press; secret of vitality; letter on maternity hospitals; on "hard times;" on woman's dress; Mrs. Stanton's birthday celebration; Miss Anthony magnanimously refuses to take the lead; tribute ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... paused suddenly. So Morrow was on the verge of nervous prostration, eh? That was bad. It had been Matt's experience that, as a usual thing, but two things conduce to bring about nervous prostration—overwork and worry; and in Morrow's case it must be worry, for Kelton did all the work! Kelton, too, looked haggard ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... islands had almost failed. However, in another fortnight I was again at Mota with some six or seven tons of yams. I found things lamentably changed. A great mortality was going on, dysentery and great prostration ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hard, dear," she remonstrated. "You must relax a little when you are away from the office, or you'll have—oh, brain-fag, or nervous prostration, or some such ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... brought him to the end of his melancholy meditation, he began to reflect how he could best amuse himself in the interim, before quitting this vale of tears. The candle was still blinking feebly on the floor, shedding tears of wax in its feeble prostration, and it suddenly reminded him of the dwarf's advice to examine his dark bower of repose. So he picked it up and snuffed it with his fingers, and held it aloof, much as Robinson Crusoe held the brand in the dark cavern with the ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... the ground and lay at full length upon his face, with his arms outstretched in an attitude of utter prostration. I sat down by him, clasping my knees, and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... delay, to the poor girl's assistance. Yet fear of exposure, of ridicule, of loss of caste, held her a helpless prisoner in her own home, where she paced the floor and moaned and wrung her hands until she was on the verge of nervous prostration. If at any time she seemed to acquire sufficient courage to go to Louise, a glance at the detective watching the house unnerved her and prevented her from carrying out her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... gain by being impertinent, sir? I know very well that you have received a severe shock; but I know equally well, that if you were as you ought to be, you would not feel it in this way. When one sees a man in the state of prostration in which, you are, common sense tells one that the body must have been neglected, for the mind to gain such ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... head drooped on his breast; his strong hands rested listlessly on his knees: his attitude was that of utter despondency and prostration. But in the expression of his face there were the signs of some dangerous and restless thought which belied not the gloom but the stillness of the posture. His brow, which was habitually open and frank, in its ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... word supplicium has this religious meaning, which also appears in supplicatio. The other and more common meaning of 'execution,' 'capital punishment,' or 'severe chastisement,' likewise originates in the prostration of the person so punished. [64] Seque remque is an unusual expression for et se et rem. [65] Quam; before this word we must supply magis, 'they carried on the government more with acts of kindness than with fear.' This ellipsis before quam is not uncommon. [66] ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... peculiarly weak in its educational facilities, by a strange dullness and inertia due to the economic prostration of the farming industry. For the two decades following 1880 the country schools have failed to keep pace with the city schools. Prof. Foght says, "While the public attention has been centered on work and plans for the improvement ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... tapers. The young priest could no longer distinctly see the crutches on the roof, the votive offerings hanging from the sides, the altar of engraved silver, and the harmonium in its wrapper, for a slow intoxication seemed to be stealing over him, a gradual prostration of his whole being. And he particularly experienced the divine sensation of having left the living world, of having attained to the far realms of the marvellous and the superhuman, as though that simple iron railing yonder had become the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... that I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging statement she went no further, merely involved herself in contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration. She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even after we had the detailed facts about her early life ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... associates was a grievous thorn which came to the pioneer during the progress of the war. The first marked disagreement between him and them occurred at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society not a month after his wife's prostration. The clash came between the leader and his great coadjutor Wendell Phillips over a resolution introduced by the latter, condemning the Government and declaring its readiness "to sacrifice the interest and honor of the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... playful deprecation. Did she know the exertion required for cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount of perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of Bass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking two lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The Southern gentleman undertakes to affirm that ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... time the father paid his first visit to his child. He found her weak and wasted; the violent applications which had been necessary for safety had robbed her of all strength—had effected, in fact, a prostration of power, which she never recovered, from which she never rallied. Mr Fairman was greatly shocked, and asked the physician for his opinion now. The latter declined giving it until, as he expressed himself, "the effects of the fever, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... that was easily arranged. A little discreet wire pulling and Esther was once more established as school mistress of District Number Fifteen. People shook their heads, but by the time of the first snowstorm they had ceased to prophesy nervous prostration, and by the time sleighing was fairly established they were ready to admit that the girl had acted ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... acute, or else the effect of some warm draught which they had made him swallow, his voice grew stronger and clearer, and he turned quite with violence in his bed, so that all began again to entertain the hope which we had lost only upon witnessing his extreme prostration. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... reappeared at the door, her butterfly turban somewhat deranged with the violence of her prostration, giving a whimsical air to her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... me: a multitude of elves: a host supine; foes' prostration: a conflict of men on the Dodder[8]: oppression of Tara's king: in youth he was destroyed; lamentations ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... catastrophe,' says Cousin Feenix, 'that events do occur in quite a providential manner; for if my Aunt had been living at the time, I think the effect upon a devilish lively woman like herself, would have been prostration, and that she would have fallen, in point of fact, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... what medical men call malignity in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... impenetrable, insensible, in as good health as the first day, with his iron constitution, followed the sledge in silence. On the 20th of January the weather was so bad that the least effort caused immediate prostration; but the difficulties of the ground became so great that Hatteras and Bell harnessed themselves along with the dogs; the front of the sledge was broken by an unexpected shock, and they were forced to stop and mend it. Such ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... finding himself in his room, but could scarcely even murmur a few words, so great was his weakness. Gideon Spilett examined his wounds. He feared to find them reopened, having been imperfectly healed. There was nothing of the sort. From whence, then, came this prostration? Why was Herbert so much worse? The lad then fell into a kind of feverish sleep, and the reporter and Pencroft remained near the bed. During this time, Harding told Neb all that had happened at the corral, and Neb recounted to his master the events ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... that those two previous interviews had been both long and exciting; and the consequent prostration was greater than usual; so though Mr. Linden did take down the hand which covered his eyes, and did meet the doctor's look with his accustomed pleasantness, his words were few. Indeed he had rather the air of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... in the new and most desirable quarters commenced, it was with a stranger as the teacher. Our little schoolmistress was to spend the winter in the home where she had been so tenderly cared for during the long time of bodily prostration which followed the overstraining of her nervous system at the time of her escape with the ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... a melancholy ruin will be left if you do not speedily return. Indeed, it is pretty bad. The boys are quite terrible, and even my "angels" are becoming infected. Your special pet, Coley, after reducing poor Mr. Locke to the verge of nervous prostration, has "quit," and though I have sought him in his haunts, and used my very choicest blandishments, he remains obdurate. To my remonstrances, he finally deigned to reply: "Naw, they ain't none of 'em any good ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... usually thrown into a state of nervous prostration by the difficulties that beset his task. By a perusal of the following hints he may learn to acquire an invulnerable calm, and if he follows the directions given he can reckon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... magnesia 10 grains, peppermint water 11 drachms, spirits of nutmeg 1 drachm. Administer this twice a day. It acts as a tonic and stimulant and so partially supplies the place of the accustomed liquor, and prevents that absolute physical and moral prostration that follows a sudden breaking off from ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... at one time. I was always breaking down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge of doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. But ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... Room, I found the Princess alone on the dais, receiving the company. "Nervous prostration" had made it impossible for the Prince to be present. He was confined to his bed-chamber; and the Doctor was ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... sight the truth that the real quality of the Renaissance was intellectual—that it was the emancipation of the reason for the modern world—we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before the idols of the Church—dogma and authority and scholasticism. Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, without ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... always reverted to the brass button, although he found few to listen to or encourage him in his idea. His medical patrons were a constant source of suffering to him, but he bore with them patiently; sometimes reviving from his prostration as if inspired, then lapsing as suddenly into his old state of semi-pain and total feebleness. As a last hope, he was removed from his fourth floor in the Place Valois, to become an inmate of the Bicetre, and a domiciled subject of contention ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... the least touch was a torment. At last she sank into a state of insensibility from sheer exhaustion, so that she was supposed to be dying, even to be dead; and her grave was dug, and the sacrament of extreme unction was administered. She rallied from this prostration, however, and returned to the convent, though in a state of extreme weakness, and so remained for eight months. For three years she was a cripple, and could move about only on all-fours; but she was resigned ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... week you will experience considerable monetary prostration, but just as you have become despondent, at the very tail end of the week, the horizon will clear up and a slight, dark gentleman, with wide trousers, who is a total stranger to you, will loan you quite a sum of money, with ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... continue. The profuseness must be measured by the condition of the individual. Where health seems fully maintained there would appear no cause for anxiety. But if there is a marked increase over the amount usual for the individual, if great weakness and prostration is produced, either at the time or afterward, it may be called profuse, and the cause may be either debility, that is weakness, or plethora, which means fullness. If from the latter, there will be throbbing headache, pain ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... up-stairs I am comparatively safe," said Joseph. "If he stayed below with us I fear I should have a return of my nervous prostration." ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... his turning in at her gate with the tidings of her husband's safety. Night after night she Jay awake, hoping, praying that she might hear his step returning on a furlough to which wounds or sickness had entitled him. The natural and inevitable result was illness and nervous prostration. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... Mrs. Flint had cried, lifting herself from the lace pillows, "what do you expect me to do especially when I have nervous prostration? I've tried to do my duty by Victoria—goodness knows—to bring her up—among the sons and daughters of the people who are my friends. They tell me that she has temperament—whatever that may be. I'm sure I never found out, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... looked in vain for a vaginal opening; the finger, gliding along the perineum, came in contact with the distended anus, in which was recognized the head of the fetus. The woman from prolongation of labor was in a complete state of prostration, which caused uterine inertia. Payne anesthetized the patient, applied the forceps, and extracted the fetus without further accident. The vulva of this woman five months afterward displayed all the characteristics of virginity, the vagina ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... a Christian, when he was buried, was placed on his knees. This notion they have got from our habits of prayer. Moslems never kneel, properly speaking, at prayer. Their attitudes at prayer are in style and essence, prostration. The ladies, growing bolder, began to speak of the "Bad Place," the ultima thule of Moorish discussion with Christians, imitating the fire of perdition with their hands and mouth, wafting the air with those, and blowing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... observes: "When the chains of the Alps and the Apennines had not yet been stripped of their magnificent crown of woods, the May hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of Lombardy, was much less frequent; but since the general prostration of the forest, these tempests are laying waste even the mountain-soils whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this plague. [Footnote: There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock companies which insure ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... is among them no great proof of merit to be wealthy and powerful, to wear a garter or a star, to command a regiment or a senate, to have the ear of the minister or of the king, or to possess any of those virtues and excellencies, which, among us, entitle a man to little less than worship and prostration. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... her knees, and buried her face in the coverlid of the bed, but no prayer rose to her lips—an utter prostration of soul was there, but the shrine of her God was dark and voiceless; the waves of human passion had flowed over it, and marred the purity of the accustomed offering. Hour after hour still found her on her knees, yet she could not form a single petition to the Divine Father. As Southey has ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... been a nervous sufferer for nine years; had a belief of incurable disease of the heart, and was subject to severe nervous prostration if I became the least weary. I was told that if I should read your books they would cure me. I commenced reading them: in ten days I was surprised to find myself overcoming my nervous spasms without the aid of medicine; ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy



Words linked to "Prostration" :   algidity, move, movement, heat hyperpyrexia, nervous prostration, heat prostration, compliance, crack-up, unwellness, prostrate, illness, motility, motion, malady, collapse, shock



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com