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Slur   Listen
verb
Slur  v. t.  (past & past part. slurred; pres. part. slurring)  
1.
To soil; to sully; to contaminate; to disgrace.
2.
To disparage; to traduce.
3.
To cover over; to disguise; to conceal; to pass over lightly or with little notice. "With periods, points, and tropes, he slurs his crimes."
4.
To cheat, as by sliding a die; to trick. (R.) "To slur men of what they fought for."
5.
To pronounce indistinctly; as, to slur syllables; to slur one's words.
6.
(Mus.) To sing or perform in a smooth, gliding style; to connect smoothly in performing, as several notes or tones.
7.
(Print.) To blur or double, as an impression from type; to mackle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slur" Quotes from Famous Books



... the cathedrals, which is called "intoning." It is a plaintive, rhythmical chant, with as strong an unction of the nasal as ever prevailed in a Quaker or Methodist meeting. I cannot exactly understand why Episcopacy threw out the slur of "nasal twang" as one of the peculiarities of the conventicle, when it is in full force in the most approved seats of church orthodoxy. I listened to all in as uncritical and sympathetic a spirit as possible, giving myself up to be lifted by the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... who had thus frightened him and, in Tom's opinion, cast a slur upon the Scouts, made matters worse by scrutinizing him (or so he fancied) whenever they met upon the deck. But that was all there was to it, and the captain's mess boy did his allotted tasks each day, and stood for no end of jollying from ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the man who laboured in his art or guild, began to slacken. No longer was there the same eagerness noticeable which used to boast openly that its rewards consisted in the consciousness of work well done. Instead, idleness became the badge of gentility, and trade a slur upon a man's reputation. No city can long survive so listless and languid an ideal. The Archbishop, therefore, denounced this new method of usurious traffic, and hinted further that to it was due the fierce rebellion which had for a while plunged Florence ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... very well. I also know how much ignorance and senseless prejudice the pioneers of these educational reforms have had to overcome in the introduction of the newer and better methods. The point I wish to make carries no slur upon the ideal which the best modern pedagogy is striving for; it is, on the contrary, an appeal for the support and furtherance of that ideal on the part of intelligent citizenship generally, and of conscientious parenthood particularly. I believe firmly in the kindergarten; I believe ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... retardation of the comets with the idea of their passage through an ether: for, however rare this ether be supposed, it would put a stop to all sidereal revolution in a very far briefer period than has been admitted by those astronomers who have endeavored to slur over a point which they found it impossible to comprehend. The retardation actually experienced is, on the other hand, about that which might be expected from the friction of the ether in the instantaneous passage through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... there is no one to cast a thought upon the matter: all who take the least interest repose entire faith in the Institute. Hence the French discoverer turns all his thoughts to the Institute, and looks for his only hearing in that quarter. He therefore throws no slur upon the means of knowledge, but would say, with M. Demonville: "A l'egard de M. Poisson,[632] j'envie loyalement la millieme partie de ses connaissances mathematiques, pour prouver mon systeme d'astronomie aux plus incredules."[633] This system is that the only bodies of our system are the earth, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... and some other tradesmen at Frankfort, so soon as they learned his departure, had forwarded their accounts to the care of the Amsterdam firm; and, although his father had not the remotest intention of paying them, he was incensed in the extreme at the slur thus cast upon his house and name. In short, the unlucky artilleryman at once saw he had no chance of a single kreuzer, or of the slightest countenance from his father. His applications to his brothers, and one or two to more distant relatives, were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... not, brother, for tho I slur them over now, as things slight and nothing, his crimes being in the bud, it would gall my heart, they should ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... locomotion. These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... must bend that neck which refuses obedience to the canons. He must be restrained, who does an injury to the whole Church; who is proud in heart; who has a greed after a name given to none other; who by such a singular name throws a slur upon your empire also in putting ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... know the full offence of this born villain, This creeping, coward, rank, acquitted felon, Who threw his sting into a poisonous libel,[db] And on the honour of—Oh God! my wife, The nearest, dearest part of all men's honour, Left a base slur to pass from mouth to mouth 160 Of loose mechanics, with all coarse foul comments, And villainous jests, and blasphemies obscene; While sneering nobles, in more polished guise, Whispered the tale, and smiled upon the lie Which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... soprano, and a bass and tenor, too. I can thrill and slur and frill and whirr and shake you through and through. I'm a Jews' harp—I'm an organ—I'm a fiddle and a flute. Every kind of touching sound is found ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... confirm by the following anecdote, which is going the round of the Brigade, what I recently told you about our friend Boyce. I shouldn't worry you, but I feel that if one has cast an unjustifiable slur on a brother-officer's honour—and I can't tell you how the thing has lain on my conscience—one shouldn't leave a stone unturned to rehabilitate him, even in the eyes of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... instead of having to be extricated, with due effort, like a respectable watch of size and position, from a fob in the waistband? No! Not if the whipper-snapper were backed by all the Horse Guards that ever were, with the Life Guards to boot. Poor Osborne might have known better than to cast this slur on his father's flesh and blood; for so dear did he hold ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Yaeki Muggie, a pleasant-voiced lad, who always wore in his face the slur of conscious shame of birth, died apparently from heart failure, an after-effect of rheumatic fever. Tom and Nelly mourned deeply and wrathfully. Smarting under the rod of fate, they sought with indignant mien counsel upon ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... tyrant, and wanted her not to go. And then he smiled, and owned that he hoped some day she would be tired of it; whereat she raged, and begged him to forbid her, if he really thought her whole life had been so shocking, declaring in the same breath that she would never disown her family, or cast a slur on her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... man's voice faltered and stopped. He was going to have made a remark that would have cast a slur on the character of his late partner, so ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... slur cast upon the pipe band, the only band, in his opinion, worthy of any real man's attention, was intensified by his lapse into his habit of profanity, which, out of deference to the Pilot, he for some weeks had been earnestly striving to hold ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... that the Greeks then pronounced the penultimate vowel according to the acute accenta; not as we slur it over. In old Hebrew we have the transliteration of four Greek words; in the languages of Hindostan many scores including names of places; and in Latin and Arabic as many hundreds. By a scholar-like comparison of these remains we ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... and sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... Jones the Acting British Agent had written to the Acting High Commissioner (December 30, 1898): 'I will only remark that the enclosed report ... seems to show that the Public Prosecutor (Krause), who has been deeply offended by the slur cast upon his judgment through the orders from Pretoria to keep the accused in prison instead of out on bail, was more inclined to defend than to prosecute and showed an extraordinary desire to incriminate either the British Vice-Consul or the South African League for what he termed contempt ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... mother says, "Never do anything that you need be ashamed of, Algernon, and then you never need be ashamed of anything you do," and, beaming mildly at him, seems surprised at the clearness of her own logic. The boys tell him that he's "worse than a girl," and the girls repudiate the implied slur upon their sex by indignantly exclaiming that they are sure no girl ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... and he"—(indicating my husband by a jerk of his head)—"grew rather sick of each other! Whether you own it or not, I know you did; and it would give me pleasure to hear it. You need not take it personally. I assure you that it is no slur upon him—everybody does. I have talked to lots of fellows who have gone through it, and they all ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... was common at that time. So it seems that Shakespeare already had friends in London, some of them "worshipful," too, who were strongly commending him as a poet, and who were prompt to remonstrate with Chettle against the mean slur cast ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Board of Works. He is modest and kindhearted, and has much in him of the habits of his grandfather; not one of that purse-proud and haughty kind of men. That is why I have written to him and made the request on your behalf. Were he different to what he really is, not only would he cast a slur upon your honest purpose, honourable brother, but I myself likewise would not have been ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the Shelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's conduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await their publication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile there remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... dead there was no need to keep the authorship of those letters a secret, and before he left Littlefield Anstice had the satisfaction of knowing that Mrs. Carstairs' name had been effectually cleared from the slur placed upon it by a censorious and ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... country, which was governed by a common-wealth: so that there lies no parallel betwixt his cause and Mr Hunt's, except in the bare notion of a common-wealth, as it is opposed to monarchy; and that's the thing he would obliquely slur upon us. Yet on these premises, he is for ordering my lord chief justice to grant out warrants against all those who have applauded the "Duke of Guise;" as if they committed a riot when they clapped. I suppose they paid for their places, as well as he and his party did, who hissed. If he were ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... that the excellence of a dinner largely depended upon the quality of the cigar that followed it, and went on to remark that he did not on this matter expect the support of the Labour Party. Mr. JACK JONES stentoriously resented this slur upon their taste. "We like a good cigar as well as anybody," he shouted, adding somewhat superfluously, "Who has a better right to a good dinner?" This outburst may have shaken the CHANCELLOR'S conviction that Havana cigars are indubitably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... it whether ye like it or not," blazed Sir Terence at him. "I mean you to take advantage of it. D' ye think I'll suffer any man to cast a slur upon Lady O'Moy? I'll be sending my friends to wait on you to-day, Count; and—by God!—Tremayne himself shall ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... considered at the time to be an indication that the political party then in power was going mad in preparation for its destruction by the gods. The Press in commenting upon the appointment did not attempt to cast a slur upon the sanctity and spiritual fervour of the new Bishop, but it felt bound to observe that the presence of such a man on the episcopal bench was an indication that the party in power was oblivious of the existence of an enraged electorate ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... of wild bees And after them of eggs a clutch, Haws, berries of the juniper; Who, King, could cast a slur ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... horse let loose into a field, runs to the extremity of it and around it, the first thing he does—so do we range over every part of the picture, but with wondrous rapidity, before our impression of the whole is perfect. We must not, therefore, slur over any thing; the difficulty in art is to give the necessary, and so made necessary, detail of foreground unostentatiously—to paint nothing, that which is to tell as nothing, but so as it shall satisfy upon examination; and we think so the old masters did paint the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... Finn had, without grudging, without lust, without vain boasting, without chattering, without any slur on any one of the Fenians. Finn never refused any man: he never put away any one that came to his house. If the brown leaves falling in the woods were gold, if the white waves were silver, Finn would have given away the ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory

... page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that theism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox point of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures are toto genere distinct in the scholastic ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... took his pipe from between his lips to offer protest against this slur, but changed his mind, and resumed smoking, ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... fellow's eyes flashed angrily. He turned upon her suddenly, but on second thought did not utter the words forming on his lips. She realized the unintentional slur she had cast, and was about to explain. But on second thought she, too, remained silent; for she read him, and knew that it was perhaps the only way for her to gain her point. They stood there, bodies inclined to the storm in the manner of seamen on sloped decks, unyieldingly ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... raise a cheer by some paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment of the lord mayor, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a part at the age of one or two and twenty. On Lord Holland no such slur could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must acknowledge that a public life more consistent is not to be found in our annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmony with every other part; and the whole is in perfect ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... so common is dried-apple-pie among them that, when a Tivertonian finds this makeshift appearing too frequently on his table, he has only to remark, "I should think this was Horn o' the Moon!" and it disappears, to return no more until the slur ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... was much more energetic than her husband, and had made out quite a plan of the manner in which George should proceed. She discussed the matter with him at great length. The one difficulty she was, indeed, obliged to slur over; but even that was not altogether omitted in her scheme. "Whatever incumbrances there may be, free yourself from them at once," ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... laugh and the cost of that hatchet became a standing joke and a slur on my "business ability." What aggravated me most was, that the rascals were not so far out in their calculation. And was I so far wrong? That hatchet was my favorite for nearly thirty years. It has been "upset" twice by skilled workmen; and, if my ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... his eyes, Than that my lord thro' me should suffer shame. Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, And yet not dare to tell him what I think, And how men slur him, saying all his force Is melted into mere effeminacy? O me, I fear that I am ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... bring in the Devil playing at push-pin with the world, or like Domitian, catching flies,—that is to say, doing nothing to the purpose,—this is not only deluding ourselves, but putting a slur upon the Devil himself; and I say, I shall not dishonor Satan so much as to suppose anything in it; however, as I must have a care to how I take away the proper materials of winter-evening frippery, and leave the goodwives nothing of the Devil ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... felt that Singleton was entirely unequal to such a storm of intelligence as this; and, as I hurried down to the office, my chief sensation was that of gratitude that the cloud had broken before I was out of the way; for I knew I could do a great deal in an hour, and I had faith that I might slur over my digest as quickly as possible, and be at Mrs. Pollexfen's ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... said a young man whose voice affected to slur his r's after the fashion of the day, and who probably assumed to lead the conversation at the table d'hote, on ordinary occasions, "you know the Companions of Jehu ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... ordinary character, but a thorough man of the world, and with some strange caprices. The suspicion crossed her mind that he might be not only in peril himself but also a source of danger. She had determined during the ride home that even though he meant no slur upon sacred things he should carry his mocking spirit no more into them. Therefore, after a moment's thought, she turned toward him with a manner of mingled frankness and dignity, and said, "Mr. Gregory, I regret what has occurred this evening. I have a painful sense of the ludicrous, and ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... might have beamed on their hearts, with all the advantages of civilisation, and far greater happiness than they had hitherto enjoyed might have been their lot. No blame can be attached to Columbus, no slur can be cast on his fair fame. He had achieved a glorious undertaking in discovering a new world, but on its inhabitants he had been thus the instrument of bringing the direst of curses, and, instead of promulgating the faith he professed, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... of business?" Her voice, as he noted once more, was clear and full, her enunciation without provincial slur, clean ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... tract was not included in later editions of Swift's complete works. Sir Walter Scott puts forward an explanation suggested by Dr. Barrett, who believed the reason to have been, that this "jeu d'esprit might be interpreted as casting a slur on an hospital erected upon Lazors-Hill, now on the Donny-Brook road near Dublin, for the reception of persons afflicted with incurable maladies." The reason seems a poor one, though it may have been ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... everybody thinks I am a Liberal. Lady Moyne was the first who mentioned to me this slur on my character. Babberly evidently believed it. Then, shortly after the Belfast meeting, I had a letter, marked "Private and Confidential," from Sir Samuel Clithering. Although Clithering is not a member of the Government, he is in close touch with several very important Ministers. Under ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... retorted with some spirit, for the implied slur upon Our Square stung me. "In fact, I was reading one of our local publications when you inter—when you arrived. It ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... thought it best at this stage to transpose the story from the first to the third person. Any narrative, unless it is negative in its material, is hard to give in the first person; for where the narrator has played an active, positive part, he must either curb himself or fall under the slur of braggadocio. Yet, the world wants the details exactly as they ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... by no means over-scrupulous as to the perfection of his own handiwork when he could slur over a job without fear of detection; while the standard of morality which he set up for himself, certainly, to judge by his own daily life, did not speak much for the acuteness of ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... from every by-road, field, and wood, and an admirable mother of thunderbolts. Ashby and Ashby's men were alike smarting from a late rebuke, administered in General Orders. They felt it stingingly. The Confederate soldier enthroned on high his personal honour, and a slur there was a slur indeed. Now the memory of the reprimand was a strong spur to endeavour. The cavalry meant to distinguish itself, and pined for a sight ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... seizing the astounded Margari by the cravat, "you are a refined scoundrel. You persuaded my dear nephew Coloman to take that false step and then you yourself changed the forty florins into forty thousand. You wanted to ruin the young man's future and bring a slur upon the family. I know everything. His honour the magistrate told me all about it yesterday, and that is why I hand you over to the law for punishment." And with that he shook him so violently that ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... wild animal show down there is just immense," the other went on, not heeding the slur cast upon his reputation; for like many boys, Bobolink had a pretty tough skin, and was not easily offended; "and I guess I've thought about what I saw done there heaps of times. So Coney stands for wild animal ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... numberless skippable pages are not consumed in photographic description of the ill-assorted furnishings of the heroine's room or cosmos; nor in setting forth the myriad phases of thought undergone by the hero in seeking to check the sway of his pet complexes. (This drearily flippant slur on realism springs from pure envy. I should rejoice to write such a book. But I can't. And, if I could, I know I should never be able to stay awake long enough ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... people. Actually religion so accentuated the social divergence that the Pharisees were shocked when Jesus mingled in a friendly way with this class and even added one of them to his traveling companions. The parables of the lost coin, lost sheep, and prodigal son were spoken in reply to the slur, "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them" (Luke 15). The elder brother of the prodigal pictures this ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... inclination I ought to have for my own Country, had almost perswaded me to rest my self there, and to make my native tongue the basis of this universall reduction but then the rest of the Europaean world (which I have no reason to slur or contemne) would have as ill resented the project, as we did it in the Germans, who would long agoe have challenged this honour to themselves. I had in the end no other course to take, but to throw myselfe upon the Latine, in which I luckily ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier

... bears evidence of Malone's revision.[19] It was necessary, of course, to re-orient the essay, which after the formula of the Gentleman's Magazine was addressed to Mr. Urban. At least one passage, which carried a slur upon publishers, may have been changed to suit Mr. Nichols.[20] But more indicative of his carefulness are his revisions of words and phrases. "The whole fabrick" of Chatterton's poems became "the beautiful ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... do it.—Save you, Monsieur Florimel! Faith, me thinks you are a very janty fellow, poudre et ajuste, as well as the best of 'em. I can manage the little comb; set my hat, shake my garniture, toss about my empty noddle, walk with a courant slur, and at every step peck down my head: If I should be mistaken for some courtier now, pray ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... they do oftener than repeat words; they will seek here then to save themselves pains; they will contract two or more syllables into one; ('toto opere' will become 'topper'; 'vuestra merced', 'usted'; and 'topside the other way', 'topsy-turvey'{230}); they will slur over, and thus after a while cease to pronounce, certain letters; for hard letters they will substitute soft; for those which require a certain effort to pronounce, they will substitute those which require little or none. Under the operation of these causes ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)—my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... his prejudices and his foibles. There was something in Mr. Crabbe's intricate points that did not, after all, so ill accord with the Doctor's purblind vision; and he knew quite enough of the petty ills of life to judge of the merit of our poet's descriptions, though he himself chose to slur them over in high-sounding dogmas or general invectives. Mr. Crabbe's earliest poem of the Village was recommended to the notice of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds; and we cannot help thinking that a taste for that sort of poetry, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... which the inutility of their efforts to please her gave birth in the bosoms of certain of the men, she preserved a reputation for discretion beyond all suspicion. One circumstance of her life might indeed have cast a slur upon her fair fame if her irreproachable conduct, added to her natural graces, had not condoned a species of notoriety which opinion in England very generally reproves. The Duchess of Devonshire had friendly relations with the celebrated Charles James Fox, and that friendship had taken the ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... discourses on deaths and witchcraft, and, with no intentional slur on the medical profession, on medical methods and burial customs, concluding with sundry observations ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... Phaddhy, considering that it was a first station; and if the dinner goes as well off as the breakfast, they'll be biting their nails: but I should not wish myself that they would have it in their power to sneer or throw any slur over you about it.—Go along, Dolan," exclaimed his Reverence to a countryman who came in from the street, where those stood who were for confession, to see if he had gone to his room—"Go along, you vagrant, don't you see I'm not gone to the tribunal yet?—But ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... down. 'But allow me to ask you, Signor de Tsanin, will not your duel throw a slur on the reputation of a ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... Peter Blood that the argument should have left him unmoved. It is a little thing, perhaps, but in a narrative in which there is so much that tells against him, I cannot—since my story is in the nature of a brief for the defence—afford to slur a circumstance that is so strongly in his favour, a circumstance revealing that the cynicism attributed to him proceeded from his reason and from a brooding over wrongs rather than from any natural instincts. "I care nothing ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... asserts that at Nottingham he was at the head of fifty or sixty thousand men; and Turner gives him, at the most, between six and seven thousand. The latter seems nearer to the truth. We must here regret that Turner's partiality to the House of York induces him to slur over Edward's detestable perjury at York, and to accumulate all rhetorical arts to command admiration for his progress,—to the prejudice of the salutary moral horror we ought to feel for the atrocious perfidy and violation of oath to which he owed the first impunity that ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... wilful and deliberate falsehood in denying his connection with P. J. Sheridan, Sir Charles Lewis reappeared on the scene, and, with protest of his desire that the Irish leader should have the earliest opportunity of clearing his character from the slur cast upon it, moved that the printers of the Times be brought to the Bar on a charge of breach of privilege. Mr. W. H. Smith, then fresh to the leadership, did his best to shake off this inconvenient counsellor. Sir Charles's proposal was burked; but he had laid the powder, which was soon after ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... From his very cradle he had been, as it might seem to the superstitious, marked by fate for a destiny peculiarly severe. His real birth was long disputed, without the shadow of a reason, except what was suggested by a base court intrigue. This slur upon his legitimacy, which was afterwards virtually wiped away by the British Parliament, was nevertheless the greatest obstacle to his accession, there being nothing so difficult to obliterate as a popular impression ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... cried Mrs. Mayburn, bristling up, "neither Grace nor I will permit such an implied slur upon ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... was a deed of wonderful courage, and no man denied it, but it is curious that so stern a supporter of discipline as Havelock did not see that his son had put himself in a position where he had no right to be, and in so doing had thrown a slur on the bravery of the major, who except for the accident of his horse being shot would have led the men himself. But Havelock, full of pride in his son's action, insisted, to the great mortification of the 64th, on recommending him for the Victoria Cross, though the young man ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... only the present situation can be turned to advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic and beneficent transformation. If they are to have ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... attributes, His power, His wisdom, His forethought for small wants, His providing of luxuries for His creatures. On the other hand, do not let us be disingenuous enough to shirk the mystery which lies in pain, in cruelty, in all which seems to be a slur upon His work. The best that we can say for them is to hope that they are not as bad as they seem, and possibly lead to some higher end. The voices of the ill-used child and of the tortured animal are the hardest of all ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... far as Elissa was concerned, these charges were utterly untrue. None could throw a slur upon her, and as for these rare human sacrifices, she loathed the very name of them, nor, unless forced to it, would she have been present had she guessed that ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... time of my second refer, And spell that backward, my third behold— A hero of monstrous strength. They aver He held up a temple its fall to defer, And ate forty pounds (but I hope 'tis a slur) Every day for his food, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... a representative meeting, it's time some reply was made to Maude Helm's insinuations. The main object of Maude's remarks seems to be to cast a slur upon Gipsy Latimer, and to imply that she's taken an unfair advantage in coming to the fore. Every girl in this room knows that Gipsy Latimer refused the Presidency of the Guild, and only accepted the editorship because it was forced upon her. Did any one of those who ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... mechanic, sport spoiler and bruiser, eh? Some combination." And Siebold turned away with something too much like a sneer on his fine face. Gus was hurt, but smiled, as usual. Tony resented the slur. ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... meat in silence, using his hunting knife for fork and knife, and drinking water from the tin cup which he had filled a short distance away, and from which the others, excepting Deerfoot, also drank. Instead of answering the slur of Hawkins, he acted as though he did not fully catch his meaning, and did not care to learn. What he had said, however, rankled in the heart of Burt, who, holding his peace until all were through eating, addressed ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... Girl I Left Behind Me," in the traditional manner. On our arrival at Valcartier we marched over to the ground assigned to us, and the men set to work to put up the tents. I hope I am casting no slur upon the 8th Royal Rifles of Quebec, when I say that I think we were all pretty green in the matter of field experience. The South African veterans amongst us, both officers and men, saved the situation. But I know that the cooking ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... says, that Mr. Blackadder was as free to have declared his disapprobation of what was done there, as he was of his not being there—But whether it be not a slur thrown upon the memory of this worthy man, to insinuate that he should suffer such hardships and so many years imprisonment merely out of ill nature, when he was free to have declared what would have satisfied them, must be ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... attend republican meetings and I have abstained from subscribing to republican funds. I also refused to join the Republican Club formed at Cambridge University, though I am far from wishing to cast a slur on those Liberal politicians—Professor Fawcett and others—who did join it. The view I took was that I had no right to make use of my position as a member of the House of Commons, gained largely by the votes of those who ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... hope I do! Look you, Mr. Channing: it is a slur on our office; on me, and on Jenkins, and on Galloway himself. Yes, on Galloway. I say what I mean, and nobody shall talk me down. I'd rather believe it was Galloway did it than Arthur. I shall ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of the English Parliament; for though the results of that commission thoroughly exculpated Sir James Brooke from any blame, there was never any amende honourable made for subjecting him to such an indignity. It was never understood by the natives as anything but a slur on the Rajah's character, and was a terrible injury to his prestige for a time. Indeed, it was the seed of the Malay plot; and if we had all been killed, our own English Government would have been ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... not be imagined for a moment that the Tiger is not an utterly respectable hotel. It is, always was, always will be. Not the faintest slur had ever been cast upon its licence. Still, it had a bar and a barmaid, and indubitably people drank at the bar. When a prominent man took to drink (as prominent men sometimes did), people would say, "He's always nipping into the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... I had better acknowledge it at once so as to preserve the poor animal's character, which was, and is, so far as I know up to the present, as spotless as his coat, never having had a slur cast upon it, save in this one respect, that 'Gyp,' as the master-at-arms said, in his funny way, "smelt ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... frequently read about both of them in the standard English novels; and I had seen them depicted in all the orthodox English dramas I ever patronized. But I did not notice in the appended descriptions any extended notice of heating arrangements; most of the advertisements seemed to slur ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... already?" he repeated. "But not all of them? I know you compose. You are not saying that you are about to give composition up?" A forced and awkward "slur," perhaps; but it served. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... coolness, knows something of her past or present, possibly from Elizabeth, with whom she may be acquainted. This last remark is an insinuation of her unfitness to die, and that her soul is ripe for perdition. The implied slur gradually increases and exaggerates itself in Eleanor's brain, sensitive to a degree. She sees in it a deliberate insult, and following ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... to acknowledge this compact, or to cast any slur upon the father whose reasons for this apparently unnatural conduct were quite disconnected with any fault of his or any desire to ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... the corner waits To smite? If shipwreck, snare, or slur Shall leave me with a head to lift, Worthy of him that ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton

... cried Pan. "My dad, Bill Smith, was as honest a cattleman as ever lived.... Mr. Sheriff, do you share that slur cast on him?" ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... intended to please; it might have pleased some girls, but it did not please this one. Mary's dignity was offended. Anything approaching a slur upon her beloved uncles, or their place of business, or South Harniss, or the Cape Cod people, she resented with all her might. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the shaggy lawyer entered his sanctum, and banged the door, just as Roundjacket, still irate about the slur cast upon his poetry, had commenced reading in a loud voice the fine introductory stanzas—his hair sticking up, his eyes rolling, his ruler breaking the skulls of invisible foes. Alas for Roundjacket!—nobody appreciated him, which is perhaps ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... a slur upon yourself too. I cannot bear any mortifications upon you, any more than I can ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... to sleep he knew that he was determinedly ugly. There was the slur of Flagg about his slack efficiency in meeting the schemes of Craig. There was the ireful consciousness that the narrow-gauge folks were giving him a raw deal on that dynamite matter. They had hauled plenty of explosive for the Comas—for Craig. To admit at the outset of his career on the Noda ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... any slur against Baron von Rittenheim, our neighbor and good friend?" The old lady was radiating ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... Platte numbers 3,500. When he wrote to me of his intention to take the exhibition to Duluth, Will offered to make a wager that his own little town would furnish a bigger crowd than would the city of my residence. I could not accept any such inferred slur upon the Zenith City, so accepted the wager, a silk hat ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... propriety. And if ever we want to retrench a little more from where won't we be able to get money? But if the whole balance, if any, be put to the credit of the public fund, every one, inside as well as outside, will fill the streets with the din of murmurings! And won't this be then a slur upon the code of honour of a household such as yours? So were any charge to be entrusted to this one, out of the several tens of old nurses at present employed in the garden, and not to that one, the remainder will naturally resent such injustice. As I said a while back all that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... Sir John Nevil had delivered it to the Privy Council. Even so, it was, inevitably, to this man and this woman, the story of one who had spoken where he should have bitten out his tongue; who, all unwillingly it might be, had yet betrayed his comrades, who had set a slur and a stain ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... the doorway of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room, enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the accustomed, that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by him with looks of friendly recognition would start at the thought of having seen him and slur over the recollection of having ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... little of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr. Mitchell. The engagement had been announced in The Times, The Morning Post, The Manchester Guardian, and the local News. No fear about its being known. And it cast a slight slur of vulgar familiarity over her. In Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in the common esteem tremendously. But she was no longer in Woodhouse. She was in Lancaster. And in Lancaster her engagement pigeonholed her. Apart from Dr. Mitchell she had a magic potentiality. Connected with him, she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... this, my lord," said the counsel, "had not a certain magistrate, in another place, at an earlier stage of this inquiry, used language—in my humble opinion harsh and unwarranted— calculated to cast a slur on that gentleman's character, if not to interfere seriously with his future prospects. I merely wish to say, my lord, that my clients, and those of us who have gone fully into the case, and may be expected to know as much about it even as ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... in you—with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adele had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I'll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adele must go to school; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... we wish to cast a slur upon the latter personage, but it is too much to require that he who keeps a caravansera should look upon every wayfarer as a brother. It is thus with the ostler: his feelings are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various

... Charles, his hot blood all aflame in an instant at the implied slur on Marguerite, "to call you to account for the death of Claude de Pontbriand, and for the foul wrong you did your ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... here yet, why don't they come out of the crowd and receive us?" inquired Martin rather pompously. His insinuation that Dick's fellows might be mixed with the crowd was a slur on the Central ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... people, and that such a narrow, cowardly life is what we, fellow-handicraftsmen, aim at. I see this taken for granted continually, even by many who, to say truth, ought to know better, and I long to put the slur from off us; to make people understand that we, least of all men, wish to widen the gulf between the classes, nay, worse still, to make new classes of elevation, and new classes of degradation—new lords and new slaves; that we, least of all men, want to cultivate the 'plant ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris



Words linked to "Slur" :   mouth, musical notation, smear, efface, smirch, verbalise, blemish, tie, focus, fingerprint, mar, ethnic slur, refer, aspersion, slur over, smudge, splotch, speak, utter, blotch, derogation, blur, disparagement, defect, splodge, denote, obliterate, blot, dim, daub, inkblot



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