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Complication   /kˌɑmpləkˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Complication

noun
1.
The act or process of complicating.
2.
A situation or condition that is complex or confused.
3.
Any disease or disorder that occurs during the course of (or because of) another disease.
4.
A development that complicates a situation.  Synonym: ramification.
5.
Puzzling complexity.  Synonyms: complicatedness, knottiness, tortuousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Complication" Quotes from Famous Books



... unexpected complication, but Dale saw success in it; and after pausing for a few minutes to think, he began to climb sidewise toward it inch by inch over a part that was perilous in the extreme, till he was within four feet of the swinging loop. Then, glancing upward to ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... ponder about my own special work I need not say. There is not the complication of an English colony, it is true; that makes a ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of parables, denotes that you will be undecided as to the best course to pursue in dissenting to some business complication. To the lover, or young woman, this is a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... been a stranger. I think, too, that the fragrant cup of tea and the delicate bit of toast, taken to the sick man, may have brought to his mind tender recollections of a time when he lived like a gentleman, and dispelled for a little while the memory of the family troubles, and the complication of misfortunes which had reduced him to poverty and a dying bed in this comfortless ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... entirely original. The last-mentioned play was produced at Court some time before 1590, and we cannot doubt, was attended by our greatest dramatist. At any rate the lessons which Shakespeare learnt from Lyly in the matter of plot complication are visible in the Midsummer Night's Dream, which was produced in 1595[130]. The intricate mechanism of this play, reminding us with its four plots (the Duke and Hippolyta, the lovers, the mechanics, and the fairies) of the miracle with its imposing but unimportant divinities in ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... the council said to Umballa: "It would be wise to lock her up for the present. We all face a great complication." ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... them, Jack Darcy was more than puzzled, set at sea in a bewildering way, without chart or compass. Had Fred ceased to care for Sylvie? Had she never loved him? Or was some other feeling holding him back,—a kind of family complication, a sense of duty to the others so high that he would not offer them a divided regard, any sooner than her? He believed mothers had a peculiar sense of possession in their sons; but they surely had married other ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones, covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... squeaking bark. Wolves, white and gray, howled about the camp at night, and their cousin, the coyote, seated in the dusk of evening upright on the grass, with nose turned to the sky, saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a score of petulant voices were pouring together from the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... dramatic works is true also of Goethe's. Even Egmont makes little effect on the public, because it contains scarcely any complication or development; and if Egmont fails, what are we to say of Tasso or Iphigenia? That the Greek tragedians did not look to interest as a means of working upon the public, is clear from the fact that the material of their masterpieces ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... record. At one time the bold accuser of Despotism, she has with marvellous celerity turned to the inthralment of oppressed races. Maxim has superseded maxim, until her code of international law is a bewildering complication of anomaly and contradiction. To humble her rivals by every means, and to encourage the efforts of a people striving for freedom only when decided advantage would accrue to herself, has been her constant policy. This is true of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... understood the importance of the first measure, insisted stubbornly that England should cede this point, and finally won the day. That the United States were not confined to a strip of land along the seacoast was chiefly due to Jay. And here a new complication came in. Jay had from the first suspected that France was playing a double game, and convincing evidence of duplicity now fell into his hands. To obtain concessions for herself, France was secretly encouraging England to refuse the American claims on the New Foundland fishing ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More

... but her eyes did not open, nor was there the slightest sign of motion in the features. Lady Penelope shrieked faintly, hid her eyes, and hurried back from the bed, while Lord Etherington, his looks darkening with a complication of feelings, remained gazing on the poor woman, as if eager to discern whether the spark of life was totally extinct. Her grim old assistant hurried to the bedside, with some spirits ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... not necessary for the patient to remain in bed longer than three or four days; nevertheless, the treatment should be just the same as prescribed in the case of the real measles, so as not to leave any weakness or subsequent complication. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... that he had been very much concerned then at the possible consequences. But as he was making this artless confession I said to myself that, whatever consequences and complications he might have imagined, the complication from which he was suffering now could never, never have presented itself to his mind. Slow but sure (for I conceive that the Book of Destiny has been written up from the beginning to the last page) it had been coming for something ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... passing by the common way of the novels of Bandello to the Elizabethan stage. The earlier story of Alboin's youth, if less valuable for emphatic tragedy, being without the baleful figure of a Rosamond or a Clytemnestra, is even more perfect as an example of tragic complication. Here again is the old sorrow of Priam; the slayer of the son face to face with the slain man's father, and not in enmity. In beauty of original conception the story is not finer than that of Priam and Achilles; and it is impossible to compare the stories in any other respect than that ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... by his architectonic features, nature only expresses, just as in the animals and other organic beings, her own intention. It is true the intention of nature may go here much further, and the means she employs to reach her end may offer in their combination more of art and complication; but all that ought to be placed solely to the account of nature, and can confer no advantage on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... it did not swallow romance it should have done so. I don't suppose I could ever think as much of any woman as I do of you, and I know that no woman could make my house so bright and cheerful. I was afraid of any complication that might hurt my prospects as a physician, my standing in the opinion of a careful and discriminating public; so, influenced by that sense of self-protection, I broke our engagement. But now I beg of you ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... have we really developed any considerable proportion of the potential human quality available to meet the demand for wits? What are we doing to discover, encourage and develop those supreme qualities of personal genius that become more and more decisive with every new weapon and every new complication and unsuspected possibility it introduces? Suppose, for example, there was among us to-day a one-eyed, one-armed adulterer, rather fragile, prone to sea-sickness, and with just that one supreme quality of imaginative courage ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... complication needed to explain an oscillation of the wind veering, for instance, by the west from south-east to north-east, then suddenly returning in the same great curve from north-east to south-east, so as to make in thirty-six hours a prodigious ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... turn the time to gravity—a gravity not dissipated even when the Prince next spoke. He had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. A handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. Mrs. Assingham, so far, was right. But there were the facts—the good relations, from schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which one of them had arrived. "She can come, you know, at ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... enchantment. The power of movement is as mysterious as the power of thought. Memory, and dreams that are the indistinct echoes of dead memories are alike inexplicable. Universal harmony springs from infinite complication. The momentum of every step we take in our dwelling contributes in part to the order of the Universe. We are connected by ties of thought, and even of matter and its forces, with the whole boundless Universe and all the past ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... recovery is desperate; they might allay and mitigate the disease, but it could never be quite healed, nor the body politic be brought again to a good habit as long as property remains; and it will fall out, as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore you will provoke another, and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others, while the strengthening one part of the body weakens the rest." "On the contrary," answered I, "it seems to me that men cannot live ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... cruisers were still at large. He urged that orders should be sent to stop their presence in British colonial ports securing coal and supplies[1309]. Three days later Bruce repeated his warning[1310]. This was, apparently, a complication unforeseen at the Foreign Office. In any case Russell at once made a complete face-about from the policy he had outlined in reply to Lord Houghton. On May 30 he instructed Cowley in Paris to notify France that England thought the time had arrived for recognition that the war was ended ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... most troublesome complication, and a position that daily became more serious. At one time, in April, he was in hopes of seeing his affairs right themselves again, in spite of the absence of all news of Soult's operations in Portugal. Marshal Victor, urged by the King of Spain and by his staff to obey ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... nothing but the countersign and massacres fathers and mothers, crying, 'Vive le Tsar!' Truly, it seems his heart can only be touched by the sight of Natacha. And that again has caused a good deal of anxiety to Feodor and me. It has caught us in a useless complication that we would have liked to end by the prompt marriage of Natacha and Boris. But Natacha, to our great surprise, has not wished it to be so. No, she has not wished it, saying that there is always time ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... sister of his lost friend should be here—here where she could watch his every action, and from those actions deduce the secret workings of his mind, tracing his doubts home to their object, made a complication of his difficulties that he could never have anticipated. It brought him back to that consciousness of his own helplessness, in which ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... nor the weapon makes things any clearer to Walt, but rather add to their complication. With increased astonishment ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... likewise furnished him with money to defray the expenses of the journey. He was imprudent enough to carry with him a quantity of merchandise, and thereby excited the cupidity off the natives, with whom he was engaged in constant disputes. After a complication of difficulties, he took a northern route, intending to penetrate through Ludamar. The last intelligence received from him was dated from Simbing, the frontier village of this state, and was merely comprised in the following brief note, addressed to Dr. Laidley ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... believed that the President was within the control of the cabinet cabal, for they made an angry complaint against Anderson, and imperiously demanded "explanations." For two days the President wavered. An outside complication tended to open his eyes. On the 31st of December Floyd resigned the portfolio of war; and, on the same day, the President sent to the Commissioners a definite answer that, "whatever might have been his first inclination, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... Kin peck soliloquizes thus: "I fell into a most unquiet sleep. I thought I saw Cliqueteaux, the old croupier, who died of love for me—of that and a complication of other disorders. A man that was a genius, with a wart on his nose. It was hereditary—the genius, not the wart," etc. Now this may be "funny," but it is not dramatic. It reminds one of the most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... down, down. Already he was on the second boat's lines, and taking them out faster than ever. Had we been alone, this persistence on his part, though annoying, would not have mattered much; but, with so many others in company, the possibilities of complication, should we need to slip our end, were numerous. The ship kept near, and Mr. Count, seeing how matters were going, had hastily patched his boat, returning at once with another tub of line. He was but just in time to bend ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... political economy, except Adam Smith, twenty years ago. Whenever I have taken up any modern book upon this subject, I have usually found it encumbered with inquiries into accidental or minor commercial results, for the pursuit of which an ordinary reader could have no leisure, and by the complication of which, it seemed to me, the authors themselves had been not unfrequently prevented from seeing to ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... though fairly famous church in my neighbourhood there is a window supposed to represent an Angel on a Bicycle. It does definitely and indisputably represent a nude youth sitting on a wheel; but there is enough complication in the wheel and sanctity (I suppose) in the youth to warrant this working description. It is a thing of florid Renascence outline, and belongs to the highly pagan period which introduced all sorts ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... and horrible complication of the situation filled me with dismay. Lord Carwitchet's wolfish glance at my rubies took a new meaning. They were safe enough, I believed—but the sapphire! If he disbelieved his mother, how long would she be able to keep it from his clutches? That ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... be remembered, as an additional complication, that in annexing the Punjaub, although it is essentially the country of the Sikhs, who are Hindoos, the inhabitants of the trans-Indus districts are for the most part what are termed Punjaubee Mussulmen, that is, Afghans, ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde

... away grumbling, and the father, after another glance, which showed him his daughter nestling comfortably on the mate's right shoulder, stole away and brooded darkly over this crowning complication. An ordinary man would have run down and interrupted them; the master of the Jessica thought he could attain his ends more certainly by diplomacy, and so careful was his demeanour that the couple in the cabin had no idea that they had been observed—the mate ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... sects together and in their separate churches, kept up by petitions a constant fire. Such a topic could hardly be expected to fix the attention of the people of England, but it derived fresh importance from its complication with the fate of other colonies and the honor of ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to say, in spite of her prayers, and, at last, her tears. The music went on growing in, intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapour broke upwards from out of it; then turned, as if blown sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness. ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... as he steered, it was evident, despite his confidence, that this amiable weakness on the part of Miss Banks was causing him some anxiety, a condition which was not lessened by the considerate behaviour of the mate, who, when any fresh complication suggested itself to him, dutifully submitted it ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... the signature with a sensation of puzzled dismay. Piper married? This was indeed a complication, and a complication which in her most anxious communings she had never thought of. The man had always behaved like a bachelor—for instance he had always made love to the maids. There also came back to her the memory of something her husband had once said, with one of his ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... I could say that the symptoms of the disease are confined to the Churches of the Apostasy! But all the miracles, which the legends of Monk or Rabbi contain, can scarcely be put in competition, on the score of complication, inexplicableness, the absence of all intelligible use or purpose, and of circuitous self-frustration, with those that must be assumed by the maintainers of this doctrine, in order to give effect to the series of miracles, by which all the nominal composers ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... to indicate the complication of the facts, to say nothing of their practical application. I must refer my readers for further details to convenient summaries of the sexual differences, in Havelock Ellis's Man and Woman; Geddes and Thomson's Sex and Evolution; ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... least in the extreme moments of it, all those extraordinary means of intense musical expression which the dramatic composer may have found out in his effort to represent the tragic and extreme moments of dramatic complication. And thus the tendency of the musical art is constantly toward the complex, and toward the bringing together of relations so subtle as to have been unintelligible to earlier musicians, and unintelligible now, at first hearing, to common ears, lacking in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... stroke, from which, however, he recovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired his intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While sinking under a complication of diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen years of his life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of the preceding papers, I have endeavored, my fellow citizens, to place before you, in a clear and convincing light, the importance of Union to your political safety and happiness. I have unfolded to you a complication of dangers to which you would be exposed, should you permit that sacred knot which binds the people of America together be severed or dissolved by ambition or by avarice, by jealousy or by misrepresentation. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... beginning when they please and leaving off when they please, striking an octave above or below (in case they have pitched the tune too low or too high), or hitting some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... pleasure-loving, dishonest in small petty ways, and contemptuous of his thrifty wife's anxious efforts to save money. Still, though it was not perhaps wise to say so just now, it would certainly have been a terrible complication if "little Louisa," as they called her in that household, had married a German—a German who would have had to go back to the Fatherland to take up arms, perhaps, against his adopted country! Anna ought surely to see the truth of that to-day, however ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... particulars would be forthcoming in due course. Or rather, would have been forthcoming. For now the die was cast, and a soul that could have been pastorally satisfied with a lot of the humble type indicated, had been caught in a whirl, or entangled in a mesh, or involved in a complication—whichever you like—of Extravagance, or Worldliness, or Society, or Mammon-worship, or Plutocracy, or Pactolus—or all the lot—and there was an end of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... to me a more serious complication than that of Captain Boomsby's ridiculous suit. I did not know much about law, but I had an idea that a man had a right to his own wife. Colonel Shepard was a lawyer, though he did not practise his profession, and I was entirely willing to leave this matter ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... point in this history must be noted. As the development of the complication of the machine progressed the possibility of further progress has been constantly narrowed. When the history of these machines began as a simple mass of cells, there was a possibility of an almost endless variety of methods of organization. But as a distinct type of organization was adopted ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... turned up at one end of the village of Mortcerf, whilst the other half came in at the other. We were on advanced guard at the time, and so increasing the frontage like this did no harm; but it caused rather a complication in the billets we proceeded ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen

... Yet another source of complication exists in the movement of our own star, the sun. There is no more difficult problem in astronomy than that of disentangling the effects of the solar motion from those of the motions of the other stars. But ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... observation the 13th, at noon, I found myself 25 minutes to the northward of my reckoning; whether occasioned by bad steerage, a bad account, or a current, I could not determine; but was apt to judge it might be a complication of all; for I could not think it was wholly the current, the land here lying east-by-south, and west-by-north, or a little more northerly and southerly. We had kept so nigh as to see it, and at farthest had not been above twenty leagues from it, but sometimes much nearer; and it is not ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... these stores, and of all the necessary Royal Engineers' material, and the work entailed in all these preparations was colossal, and our first real experience of anything of the kind. It is probable that at this time the mass and variety of material required in an attack, reached a degree of complication never equalled either before or after. The German comment on this contained in the diary already mentioned is of interest. "It must be acknowledged," it states, "that the equipment and preparation of the English attack were magnificent. The assaulting troops were amply ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in his needs as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and of himself, the man of modern times struggles through a maze of endless complication. Nothing is simple any longer: neither thought nor action; not pleasure, not even dying. With our own hands we have added to existence a train of hardships, and lopped off many a gratification. I believe that thousands of our fellow-men, suffering the consequences of a too ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... I want to solve my problem and—and leave you out of it; you're a complication, pal—when you talk like—like you've just been talking. It makes my conscience wonder whether I'm honest with myself. I've got to leave you out, don't you see? And so, leaving you out, I don't feel that any woman should be expected to ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... Hervey desires you will tell Mr. Hume how incapable she is of answering his letter. She has been terribly afflicted for these six weeks with a complication of gout, rheumatism, and a nervous complaint. She cannot lie down in her bed, nor rest two minutes in her chair. I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... shrunk from striking at a man—above all, this man—whom so many were assaulting. No. She would leave God to deal with him. Besides, there might be nothing wrong. All might yet be explained, all might yet be set to rights, all—unless, unless Gertrude—Oh, why should there arise this new and terrible complication? Gertrude with her youth and beauty and enthusiasm—why must she be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... more promised himself to have nothing to do with Jeff Durgin or his affairs. But he did not promise this so confidently as upon former occasions, and he instinctively waited for a new complication. He could not understand why Jeff should not have come home to look after his insurance, unless it was because he had become interested in some woman even beyond his concern for his own advantage. He believed him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... full sized street tramcar to run thereon. My negotiations being with a company in a town where there are no steep gradients, and where the coefficient of friction of ordinary wheels would be sufficient for all tractive purposes, I thought it better to avoid the complication involved in employing a large central wheel with a broad surface specially designed for hilly districts, and with which I had mounted a gradient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... bill came up. So did Senator SCHURZ. He approved of almost all propositions which tended to complicate questions, because the more complication the more offices, the more offices the more patronage, and the more patronage the more fees. He knew that it was an alluring precedent which was offered them in the action of the legislature of Georgia, retaining itself for double the term it was elected to serve. But it was the duty ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... complication; cluster, group, band, bevy, gang, company; joint, node, knag, burl, gnarl, knob, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... a ghostly audience, with, if you will, the broadside bulks of black sailing craft at anchor for representatives of the newspaper piers. Annette was a nice girl; if a little commonplace and low-born, yet sweet. What a subject he could make of her father! "The Deserter" offered a new complication. Fellingham rapidly sketched it in fancy—Van Diemen, as a Member of the Parliament of Great Britain, led away from the House of Commons to be branded on the bank! What a magnificent fall! We have so few intensely dramatic positions in English real life that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... intervention of the brain. It might be imagined that the impression received, instead of expanding into more movements spiritualizes itself into consciousness. But as soon as we compare the structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain, we are bound to infer that there is merely a difference of complication, and not a difference in kind, between the functions of the brain and the reflex activity of the medullary system."[Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp. 17- 18 (Fr. p. 15).] The brain is no more than a kind of central telephone exchange, its office is to allow communication or to delay it. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... sensational in incident or complication: as with Richardson, an elopement is the highest stretch of external excitement Miss Austen vouchsafes. Yet all is drawn so beautifully to scale, as in such a scene as that of the quarrel and estrangement of Elizabeth and Darcy in "Pride ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... retreating from Ahmadnagar. He encamped in Berar; he drank more deeply than ever; he died very suddenly the very day that Abul Fazl came up. The death of Amurath removed one complication, but it led to the question of advance. The imperial officers urged a retreat. Abul Fazl had been bred in a cloister; he was approaching his fiftieth year; he had never before been in active service, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... country side, who are sure to assemble in large numbers, would be completely prevented, and, what is of greater importance, the reapers would reach their destination before sundown. The long distance from Claremorris would be certain to prolong a foot march into the night, when all kinds of complication might occur. At the moment of writing the streets are dotted with little knots of people, and the excitement concerning the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... to Bas Rowlett how free of complication had been the arrangement, Bas smiled in contentment. "Start out—an' slip back—an' don't let him git outen yore sight till ye finds out whar he goes an' what he's doin'," came the crisp order. "He's up ter suthin' thet he hain't givin' out ter ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... reality, be many more classes of votes than in the instance taken above. Even in such cases it is practicable, as will presently be shown, to divide the votes proportionately by an actual process of counting and separation. A certain amount of complication is, of course, introduced, but the extra labour involved does not seem impossible. The question whether this extra labour is necessary must be answered by examining the magnitude of the evil which it is sought ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... way through the complication of narrow streets, which perplex that portion of the city, a carriage passed him. It was driven rapidly, but not too fast for the light of a gas-lamp to flare upon a face within—especially as it was bent forward, appearing to recognize him, while a beckoning ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fact that the shrewdest of English statesmen have not been able to see the complication with which the Irish problem is entangled. Macaulay imagined that the religious difficulty was the crux of the Irish question, but Emancipation did not bring the expected peace and contentment in its train. John Bright imagined that the agrarian question was the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... She saw that the doctor knew more than he intended to tell her. Her curiosity and her fear that some other complication had arisen—one which he was holding back—got the better of her judgment. If it was anything about her bairn, she could not wait until the morning. ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... money before they could get a clear idea of it, there would have been two hundred marks; and as it took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two hundred marks would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside that extra complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said Anna-Rose a little out of breath as she got to the end ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... she has been suffering for many years from a complication of female troubles. Her eyes show a heavy scurf rim, indicating an inactive, atrophied skin, poor surface circulation and, as a result of this condition, defective elimination through the skin and accumulation of waste matter and systemic poisons in the system. The areas of stomach ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... the powerful master cones of Shasta, Rainier, Adams, Hood, Baker, and others. Fujiyama, the celebrated mountain of Japan, may be cited as a familiar example of the basic mountain form, the single-cone volcanic peak. Vesuvius is a familiar example of simple complication, the double-cone volcano, while Mauna Loa in Hawaii, including Kilauea of the pit of fire, a neighbor volcano which it has almost engulfed in its swollen bulk, well illustrates the volcano built up by outpourings of lava from vents broken through its sides. Flat and rolling Yellowstone with ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... not necessarily touching, one would say, the grand event of the day, which was Rollo's coming and visit at Chickaree. For that visit was to have been made right early in the morning, and Collingwood was ordered, and even mounted, when there came a message from the mills. Some complication or accident of business made the master's presence necessary. Rollo went to the Hollow, and stayed there till he had but just time left to get to Chickaree before luncheon. This ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and rubbish spread out thereon—remnants from the household stores of the late occupier. Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter, was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... looked at him—hatred for the older man's complication of what should have been a simple departure showing through the pellicule of politeness. He was young for, since this trip had only slight historical importance and none of any other kind, the authorities had felt a junior officer entirely sufficient. It was clear, however, that Clifford ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith

... professions when out of office, the political world waited with much eagerness the measures of this brilliant statesman to maintain the dignity of his country. Mr. Canning appeared sensible of the gravity of the threatened complication, but occupied himself much more in endeavouring to strengthen himself in the Cabinet than in developing a policy likely to realize the expectations of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... solemn joy preserves a sort of bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we intimately consent. But there are writers who, realizing that happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogative of religion, forget this complication, and call all happiness, as such, religious. Mr. Havelock Ellis, for example, identifies religion with the entire field of the soul's liberation from ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... exciting time ahead. So there was, but not in the way I had expected. For when Max goes out to Africa to find the missing one he finds her all right, but himself gets involved in a totally different and not so promising complication. The consequence is that the career of the enriched Josephine and her union with the wicked lawyer (all things about which I greatly wanted to hear) have to be dismissed in a few lines. As compensation we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... method do not recognise the laws of social phenomena as merely a composition of the laws of individual human nature. They demand specific experience in all cases; and they attempt to make effects, which depend on the greatest possible complication of causes, the subject of induction by observation and experiment. The attempt must fail; for, we can neither get by experiment appropriate artificial instances, nor, by observation, spontaneous instances (from history), with the circumstances ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... Mr. Holmes," she said, "because you once enabled my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester, to unravel a little domestic complication. She was much impressed by your ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... For the present, therefore, I have decided that I can only wait, though his contiguity is strangely disturbing to me now, and I hardly retain strength of mind to encounter him. How will the distressing complication end? ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... the opening story, all the material for the second big spread was ready except for one complication. Some involution of trusteeship in the case of two freeholds in Sadler's Shacks, at the heart of the Rookeries, had delayed access to the records. These two were Number 3 and Number 9 Sperry Street, the latter dubbed "the Pest-Egg" by the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... to be going on well, and if no complication occurred, Herbert's recovery might be regarded as certain. But what would have been the condition of the colonists if his state had been aggravated,—if, for example, the ball had remained in his body, if his arm or his leg ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... articles of provision, and especially of the frequent airing and sweetening of the ship, that there was only one man on board who could be said to be much afflicted with the disease; and even in that man, it was chiefly occasioned by a bad habit of body, and a complication of other disorders. ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... of people from the truth, there is another cause which prevents people from seeing the obligation for them of the simplest and most natural personal, physical labor for themselves: this is the complication, the inextricability of the conditions, the advantage of all the people who are bound together among themselves by money, in which the rich man lives: My luxurious life feeds people. What would become of my old valet if I were to discharge ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... wretched race are subject, they are devoid of care, and appear jovial, contented and happy. It is a fortunate circumstance that they possess, and are blessed with such an easy satisfied disposition, otherwise they must inevitably sink under such a complication of misery and wretchedness; what is singularly remarkable, they always carry out a piece of fire, and kindle one near their work, let the weather be so hot ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... Panurge, desperately. "I am as a man bewitched. If I don't marry her I shall waste away with longing." "Then marry her in God's name!" says Pantagruel. And I am no wiser by his counsel, and I have paraded the complication of my folly ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... what I could not venture to do; you can ask the son of Don Juan if, amid the correspondence of his father, which he may have preserved, there be any signed Marigny or Duval—any, in short, which can throw light on this very obscure complication of circumstances. A grand seigneur would naturally be more complaisant to a man of your station than he would be to an agent of police. Don Juan's son, inheriting his father's title, is Monsieur le Marquis de Rochebriant; and permit me to add, that at this ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... line taken by him in the unfortunate complication that had thus arisen? From the very first his action was all that is generous and noble. Not only did he, from the first, entirely acquiesce in the course taken by Lyell and Hooker, but, writing in ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd

... on arriving in London he met with a complication of sorrows, he could, without any great effort, remain on his guard against all seductions. He did so in reality; and Dallas assures us that, even when "Childe Harold" appeared, he still professed positive ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... boat-house on fire, Noddy. It wasn't any of your doings," said Fanny, somewhat disturbed by this new complication. ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... to the complication in the situation arising out of Amundsen's presence in the Antarctic," wrote the English explorer, "but as any attempt at a race might have been fatal to our chance of getting to the Pole at all, I decided to do ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... to intemperance. Again, in those who suffer from any disease affecting directly or indirectly the respiratory functions, such as consumption or heart disease, the supervention of an attack of acute bronchitis is an alarming complication, increasing, as it necessarily does, the embarrassment of breathing. The same remark is applicable to those numerous instances of its occurrence in children who are or have been suffering from such diseases as have always associated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... inquire what is and has been doing by the Falconer family. Even they who are used to the ennui subsequent to dissipation, even they who have experienced the vicissitudes of coquetry, the mortifications of rivalship, and the despair of disappointed vanity, can scarcely conceive the complication of disagreeable ideas and emotions with which Miss Georgiana Falconer awoke the morning after the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... before quoted, tied his hands. Not only would the ordinary difficulties of proving the ownership and destination of a cargo give rise to the usual vexatious disputes, and irritate neutrals, contrary to the spirit of the order; but there was a particular complication in this instance, arising from the occupation of Genoese towns by French troops, and from the close proximity of the neutral and hostile seaboards. These embarrassments might be met, were it permissible to sell the cargoes, and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... design, for that chaste and elegant simplicity which is so essential a part of grandeur. Accordingly we find several of the largest ecclesiastical edifices, the site and contour of which would otherwise entitle them to distinction, disfigured by some overpowering frontispizio, and presenting a complication of decorative details which distort the outline, and, in spite of toilsome and finished sculpture, mar the truth and elegance of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... He views mingled spectacle with profound reverence, sure that through it all is working some divine power. Goodness is dear to the gods, wickedness is abhorrent to them. But the good man is often unhappy,—from strange inheritance of curse, or from complication of events which no wisdom can baffle. Yet from the discipline of suffering emerges the noblest character, and over the grave itself play gleams ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... why Mr. Wells, in seeking "to express the resentment and distress which many women feel nowadays" at their dependence; and in showing sympathy with their natural right of choice, should have burdened himself with all this unnecessary complication of special foolishness on the part of his heroine which alienates our sympathy; and special illegality on the man's position. Perhaps this is to add heroism to her effort to secure the right mate, to indicate how small are any other considerations in comparison to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... permanganate of potassium freely. This patient ultimately recovered, but only after sloughing and prolonged suppuration. I believe that had I incised freely and at once from the palmar surface, I would have been spared this unpleasant complication. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... your own. For myself, I must avow that, in all my reading—and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master statesmen of the world—for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress of Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing like it, and all attempts to impress servitude on such a mighty continental people ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... happiness could be made real for each of them. No: misunderstandings were bound to come, angers and jealousies, conflicting desires, stupid suspicions.... Jenny fidgeted in her chair and eyed Pa with a sort of vicarious hostility. Why, even that old man was a complication! Nay, he was the worst thing of all! But for him, she could drop out! There was no getting away from him! He was as much permanently there as the chair upon which he was drowsing. She saw him as an incubus. And then Emmy ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... direction. At first he thought of nothing; but in a little while the consciousness of his position presented itself to him as something so ugly, dangerous, and absurd, the difficulty of ever freeing himself from the toils of that complication so insoluble, that the idea of going back and, as he termed it to himself, confessing to Councillor Mikulin ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... come of a tolerably good family; and yet, born to wealth—of an inoffensive disposition, careful of the money that I had, and eager to get more,—I have been going down hill ever since my journey of life began, and have been pursued by a complication of misfortunes such as surely never happened to any man but ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was set. There had been many times in the past months when he had said that he must go no further, and as often as he had taken this stand he had yielded it, upon this or that excuse, which he was aware of trumping up. It was part of the complication that he should he unconscious of the injury he might be doing to some one besides his family and himself; this was the defect of his diffidence; and it had come to him in a pang for the first time when his mother said that she would not have the Laphams ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... it. It occurred to me that if a membrane as thin as tissue paper could control the vibration of bones that were, compared to it, of immense size and weight, why should not a larger and thicker membrane be able to vibrate a piece of iron in front of an electro-magnet, in which case the complication of steel rods shown in my first form of telephone, Fig. 3, could be done away with, and a simple piece of iron attached to a membrane be placed at either end ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... point—namely, righteous anger against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness to influence and defiance of authority—her, Theresa's, influence and authority—the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief. Mary's account of to-day's most vexatious transactions betrayed partizanship ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... canon summoned them to his presence, and his face was grave. "I have but now learned," he said, "that the king is at Clipstone Palace. When the knaves thou didst leave stunned in the fen discover it also, they will at once repair thither, and that maketh a new complication of troubles. Let us consult together. I include the serving-man because he is such a valiant compeller." And the canon, forgetting his gravity, laughed heartily. And again he laughed. Then he grew grave again. "Pardon me," ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... draughty, unconsidered table by the door. Paragot looked at it, then at Madame Boin and then at his own private and particular table usurped by Monsieur Papillard and his associates, and swore a stupefied oath of considerable complication. A weird, pug-nosed, pig-eyed, creature with a goatee beard scarce masking a receding chin, sat in the sacred seat against the wall. His hat and cloak were hung on Paragot's peg. He was reading a poem to half a dozen youths who seemed all to be drinking mazagrans, or coffee in ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... seemed was the time for Mr. Direck to make his meditated speeches. But an unexpected complication was to defeat this intention. Mr. Direck perceived almost at once that Mr. Britling was probably driving an automobile for the first or second or at the extremest the third time in ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... often disgraced the exertions of both. Oppression thus formed many of the features of their character perfectly to coincide with that of the oppressed half of mankind; for is it not notorious, that dissenters were like women, fond of deliberating together, and asking advice of each other, till by a complication of little contrivances, some little end was brought about? A similar attention to preserve their reputation was conspicuous in the dissenting and female world, and was produced ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... I suppose? Yes, on the whole, then, it's better—I shall be able to talk so much more frankly." She spoke as if, as a rule, circumstances prevented her giving rein to this propensity. "And frankness, of course, is the only way out of this—this extremely tiresome complication. You know, I suppose, that my nephew thinks he's in ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... Netherlands.(551) Modern laws in many cases punish the bankrupt whenever an examination of his books, kept after approved methods, does not demonstrate his innocence.(552) The great facility of fraudulent bankruptcy, where commerce has attained a high degree of development and complication; the absence of honor shown in engaging in speculation for one's own gain with a stranger's capital, and without the real owner's knowledge; the comparatively small number of blameless and irreproachable bankruptcies,(553) certainly ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... ingenuity she manages to cajole me out of my money I know not, but I positively assert that in the last fortnight, according to her account, her unhappy mother has suffered from eleven different incurable diseases. My God! what a complication of misfortune! Why not let them starve? When a man is not capable of maintaining a family, why in Heaven's name does he ever ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... preserve a life so precious and so beloved. Mr. Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow, Birchington-on-Sea, he went thither, accompanied by his mother and sister and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but received no benefit from the change, and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he died on Sunday last ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... the solution of problems typical of the first step, the commander normally sets down the general plan of his immediate superior for the employment of the latter's entire force. When the linking of objective to objective, echelon by echelon, has involved no complication, the immediate superior's general plan will be a sufficient indication of the purpose for which the commander is to ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... I, "that these hieroglyphics might well puzzle a more practised decipherer than myself. Still, I can point out even here a clue which might help detection. There occur, even in these two lines, three or four symbols which, from their size and complication, are evidently abbreviations. Again, the distinct forms are very few, and have obviously been made to serve for different letters by some slight alterations devised upon a fixed rule. In a word, the cipher has been constructed upon a general principle; and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... concussion. It had long been familiar to her that she should have to count with the obstinacy of the world at large, but she now discovered that she should have to count also with certain elements in the feminine camp. This complicated the problem, and such a complication, naturally, could not make Mrs. Farrinder appear more easy to assimilate. If Olive's was a high nature and so was hers, the fault was in neither; it was only an admonition that they were not needed as landmarks in the same part of the field. If such perceptions ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... to a more scrupulous taste, will consist simply in that complication of view which allows us to see wood and wire imitating an imitation, and which delights us less when seen at what is called the proper distance, where the two are indistinguishable, than when seen from just the point where all that is crudely mechanical hides ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... of territory by the Mexican War seemed destined to be a great victory for slavery, because nearly all of it lay south of 36 degrees 30 minutes and hence by the Missouri Compromise could become slave soil. But there was the complication that under Mexico all this wide realm had been free. To exist there legally slavery must therefore be established by Congress, making the case very different from the cases of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, which came under United States ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... allies; to make the House of Bourbon the representatives of a policy interesting to a great part of Europe; and, having thus undone the worst results of Napoleon's rule, to trust to some future complication for the recovery of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine. Nor was Talleyrand's German policy adopted solely as the instrument of a passing intrigue. He appears to have had a true sense of the capacity of Prussia to ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe



Words linked to "Complication" :   situation, hinderance, complexity, development, hindrance, complexness, disease, state of affairs, interference, complicate



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