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Distinctness

noun
1.
The quality of being sharp and clear.  Synonym: sharpness.
2.
The state of being several and distinct.  Synonyms: discreteness, separateness, severalty.
3.
The quality of being not alike; being distinct or different from that otherwise experienced or known.  Synonyms: otherness, separateness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Distinctness" Quotes from Famous Books



... make out the s.s. Cox); "The City of New York," "Senator Morton," "The Senate has resolved to print a thousand extra copies," "The Americans in London have resolved to celebrate the coming Fourth of July!" All this my own ears heard spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by the then circular disc armature of just such another little electro-magnet as this I ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... morning of February the clearness of the atmosphere was in truth almost African. Under the cloudless sky every detail of the great view from the terrace stood out with a magical distinctness. The lines of the mountains were sharply defined against the profound blue. The forms of the gray rocks scattered upon their slopes, of the peasants' houses, of the olive and oak trees which grew thickly on ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... there are many events which I have drawn with blurred edges by reason of the distance of time; but from this to the end of my story I have the pettiest details of it in mind, many of them with a horrid distinctness. ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... White Chalk. Chalky Matter now forming in the Bed of the Atlantic. Marked Difference between the Cretaceous and existing Fauna. Chalk-flints. Pot-stones of Horstead. Vitreous Sponges in the Chalk. Isolated Blocks of Foreign Rocks in the White Chalk supposed to be ice-borne. Distinctness of Mineral Character in contemporaneous Rocks of the Cretaceous Epoch. Fossils of the White Chalk. Lower White Chalk without Flints. Chalk Marl and its Fossils. Chloritic Series or Upper Greensand. Coprolite Bed near Cambridge. Fossils of the Chloritic Series. Gault. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... moment, happening to cast my eyes upon the stone, whose characters a transverse light from my southern window brings out with singular distinctness, another interpretation has occurred to me, promising even more interesting results. I hasten to close my letter in order to follow at once ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... composition or distinctness of parts is ever to be attended to, as it is one part of beauty, as has been already said: but that what I mean by distinctness of parts in this place may be better understood it will be proper to explain ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... moral satisfaction. Then the first thought independent of personal sensations came into his head. He wondered when Therese would come in and begin talking. He saw vaguely a human figure in the room but that was a man. He was speaking in a deadened voice which had yet a preternatural distinctness. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... figure on the road, at first dimly, then with a sudden distinctness as a gleam of moonlight shone out. He stood a little way up the road to Cecily's right. She did not see him yet, for she looked up to Merrion. He took a step forward, his tread sounding loud on the road. There was a sudden turn of Cecily's head. A moment's silence followed. He came up ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... well convinced before the publication of my first book, that the priests would do or say very little against me or my work; and several persons can testify, that I made declarations of this kind, with distinctness, in their presence. The reasons I gave for this opinion were these,—that they feared an investigation, and that they feared further disclosures. They must desire to keep the public mind calm, and diverted with other matters; and to ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... horror by that means, and comes with redoubled force by deception. There is no circumstance of danger and pain of which I have not had the experience, for a continued series of above a fortnight; during which time I have settled my affairs, after my death, with as much distinctness as the hurry and the nature of the thing could admit of. In case of the worst, the Abbe Grant will be my executor in this part of the world, and Mr Mackenzie in Scotland, where my object has been to make you and my younger brother ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... Mr. Sheridan to see Mr. W. Lake, and to state his situation, and how the office was circumstanced; and for further distinctness to make a minute in writing * * ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... months following, in anything like their proper sequence. The effort to do so brought a pain shooting through his head. Up to the moment when the yellow hair had waved in his face, everything had kept a ghastly distinctness. He remembered each instant and each emotion. After that all was dark confusion, with only here and there a detached, inconsequent memory ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... in the latter book he had learned to know and love one fine type of boy, in the former he learned to know and to love a whole school. The two brothers, Stephen and Oliver Greenfield, and Wraysford, and Pembury, and Loman stand out with strong personality and distinctness; and especially admirable is the art with which is depicted the gradual decadence of character in Loman, step by step, entangled in a maze of lies, and degraded by vice until ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... distinctness from Vasari's account of Michelangelo's work at S. Lorenzo is that a practical Italian architect, who had been engaged on buildings of importance since this work was carried out, believed it to have infused freedom and new vigour into architecture. That freedom and new ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... year's crew—was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all at once I caught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the mountain-side just across the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw with perfect distinctness, as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright male costume,—birds I had never seen before except in winter. Presently a third one, in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till now behind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time, and then dropped into ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... that time blessed with long and keen vision, I saw this beautiful face with perfect distinctness. I saw even the blue veins that traced their wanderings on the whiteness ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Ha-chaw!" issued from the cupboard with horrible distinctness. Miss Poppleton paused for a second, then made an instant dart, and seized the culprit in the very midst of her ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... hour remained between her and the moment when she would be getting into the train, and on going out of the gallery her senses all seemed awake at the same moment; she saw and felt and heard with equal distinctness, and she seemed to be walking automatically, to be moving forward as if on wheels. She met a friend on her way home, but it was like talking to one across a river or gulf; she wondered what she had said, and hardly heard, on account of the tumult within her, what ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere and daylight clothe the eternal rock and yesterday's imitation portico; and as the soft northern sunshine throws out everything into a glorified distinctness—or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to burn in the high windows across the valley—the feeling grows upon you that this is a piece of nature in the most intimate ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... a man of few words, and those not too carefully chosen. So prolonged was the monotonous murmur, however, that Desmond by and by found himself wondering what was the subject of his lengthy discourse; he even strained his ears to catch, if it might be, some fragments of it; but nothing came into distinctness out of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... hours passed and he did not stir. His stillness made his hearing more acute. The trampling of feet over his head came to him with great distinctness. He heard the singing of wind at the porthole, and, now and then, the swish of waters as they swept past the schooner. He wondered what Tayoga was doing and what would Willet think when he came back to Albany and found him gone. It gave ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... instantaneous glimpse of her face, but he had seen it with strange distinctness, as one sees an object by a flash of lightning; and he still saw it, as one seems still to see the object in the after-darkness. Every line of the features lived in his eyes, even an almost indistinguishable ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... somewhere she could hear the soft trickling of water with maddening distinctness now and then. Oh, if she could but quench this terrible thirst! The pony was somewhat refreshed with his grass and his drink of water, but the girl, whose life up to this day had never known a want unsatisfied, was faint with hunger and burning with thirst, and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... she looked on, wondering who the strangers could possibly be, when the words fell with startling distinctness on her ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... possible, a true statement of their case. They had made conditions, and those conditions had been reluctantly complied with; and, to prevent future errors, the nature of the compact ought to be explained with the utmost distinctness. They had replaced the bishops in authority, and the bishops might be made use of at some future time, indirectly or directly, to disturb the settlement. A fresh pontiff might refuse to recognise the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... Tom, and followed the rest of us forrard. Reaching the fore rigging, he climbed into it, and began to make his way leisurely aloft. I could see him with a fair amount of distinctness, as the moon was very clear and bright, ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson

... social inheritance from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled their tendencies of control and influence in varieties of social functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make the highest ideals of each and all seem ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... existence, accompanied by dim but ever present memories of a Destiny more vast—very distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful. We live out a youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never mistaking them for dreams. As memories we know them. During our youth the distinctness is too clear to deceive us even for a moment. But the doubt of manhood dispels ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... following day is written with a feeble hand, and scarce one pencilled word tallies with its neighbour in form or distinctness—in fact, it is seen at a glance what exertion it cost him to write at all. He says no more than "Ill" in one place, but this is the evident explanation; yet with the same painstaking determination of old, the three rivers which they crossed have their ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... of characterization exhibited by the author fascinates us; we gaze and examine as if we were face to face with real personages, whose passions are laid bare, whose life is traced, whose countenance is portrayed with miraculousness, distinctness and verisimilitude. All the phenomena of life in the camp, the court, the boudoir, the low faubourg, or the country chateau are ranged in order, and catalogued. This is done with relentless audacity, often with a touch of grotesque exaggeration, but always with almost wearying minuteness. ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden

... lady for whose benefit these gifts are brought together. The preface of Mr. Bryant and the letter of Mr. Butler, tell her story with sufficient distinctness, and the readiness with which our men and women of letters have so generally complied with her request, shows what eloquence she bears in her presence and statement. Some certificates from her pupils in drawing, who testify to her love of nature and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... nature,' by Wordsworth in the lines on Tintern Abbey, and lately by Mr. Roden Noel in his noble poems of Pantheism. It is more or less strongly felt by all who have recognised the indubitable fact that religious belief is undergoing a sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety, vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the fermentation of the change is felt, who have abandoned their old moorings, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... steamer, which Electra's untrained eyes, almost blinded by spray, could barely discern; and her heart beat like a muffled drum as it drew nearer and nearer. Once she heard a low, chuckling laugh of satisfaction escape the captain; then, with startling distinctness, the ringing of a bell was borne from the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... slowly among the forest trees, veiling the deeper recesses. Yet, near at hand, within the limited segment of vision which the engineer commanded, everything could be made out with reasonable distinctness. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... wore on, the thin, scarcely perceptible veil of vapour that had dimmed the richness of the sky tints in the early morning gradually thickened and seemed to be assuming somewhat of a distinctness of shape. I just succeeded in securing the meridian altitude of the sun, for the determination of our latitude, but that was all. Half an hour after noon the haze had grown so dense that the great luminary showed through it merely as a shapeless blur ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... a flash of genial light came the thought, "If Mr. Hemstead will never look at me again, there is One who will"; and she sprang up, and, having found a Bible, turned again to its shortest text, remembering, with a quick sob, how she had first discovered it. With almost the distinctness and reality of actual presence, there rose up before her mind One who, with bowed head, wept with men for men. Every tear of sympathy appeared to fall on her bruised heart; and hope, that she believed dead, began to revive. She just clung to one ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... minute on the dull oblong of the blind, and minute by minute that horrible thing on the bed took something of distinctness. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... it would not last, that love was moonshine, love would pass. And how passionately—and withal how fruitlessly!—had she revolted against that pronouncement of his! She had declared that such was not love, and he—he had warned her against loving too well, giving too freely. With cruel distinctness it all came back to her. She felt again those hot kisses upon brow and lips and throat. Though he had warned her against giving, he had not been slow to take. He had revelled in the abandonment of that first free love of hers. He had drained her of all that she held most precious that he might ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... late President of the United States. He deceased last evening at the hour of half-past 10 o'clock, in the midst of his family and surrounded by affectionate friends, calmly and in the full possession of all his faculties. Among his last words were these, which he uttered with emphatic distinctness: ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... before men the appearance of their departed friends. The counterfeit is perfect; the familiar look, the words, the tone, are reproduced with marvelous distinctness. Many are comforted with the assurance that their loved ones are enjoying the bliss of heaven; and without suspicion of danger, they give ear to "seducing spirits, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... be terrible in its fine distinctness—"my teaching has been of little avail if you have not understood the point, that one has not good manners for the effect they produce—but for what is due to one's self. This person—who, I admit, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... person in the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, "Bartholomew Fair," less clear cut, less ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... augment the force of the voice, and make it more distinct and articulate. For that purpose they invented a kind of large vessels of copper, which were disposed under the seats of the theatre, in such a manner, as made all sounds strike upon the ear with more force and distinctness. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... the nature of that moral evidence, never amounting to demonstration, by which religious doctrines are sustained, and from the fact, that whilst the word of God reveals what is necessary to salvation with entire distinctness, it leaves undecided, or to be deduced from clearer passages of Scripture, many points which are both interesting and important, as well as naturally sought for by the constitutional, systematizing ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker

... newspaper in the breakfast-room, seemed less affected by my presence than any body I had seen since my arrival. He was a hard-featured, strong-built, perpendicular man, with a remarkable quietness of deportment: he spoke with deliberate distinctness, in an accent slightly Scotch; and, in speaking, he made use of no gesticulation, but held himself surprisingly still. No part of him but his eyes moved, and they had an expression of slow, but determined good sense. He was sparing of his words; but the few that he used said much, and went directly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... exhausted by the thought, he fell back and was silent. In a few moments, he raised his head and spoke: this time with open eyes, and with some distinctness. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... "The distinctness of these groups of foods," says Dr. Hunt, "and their relations to the tissue-producing and heat-evolving capacities of man, are so definite and so confirmed by experiments on animals and by manifold tests of scientific, physiological and clinical experience, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... at the distinctness with which she heard what was said in the next room. That was doubtless due to the construction of the vault, as she vaguely guessed. It was true that Don John spoke very clearly, but she could hear the servants' subdued answers almost as well, when she listened. It seemed to her ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... Scalpellum, I give a summary of the facts, and discuss the whole question. The penis (Pl. IV, fig. 9 a) in the hermaphrodite, I. quadrivalvis, is singular, from the length of its unarticulated support, and from the distinctness of the segments in the ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... with marital custom."[238] Every word has a history of accidents which have befallen it, the beginnings of which are lost in the abyss of time.[239] In the Middle Ages the word "Word" came to mean the Word of God with such distinctness that the romance languages adopted parabola, or derivatives from it, for "word."[240] The students of linguistics recognize metaphor as another great mode of modifying the signification of words. By metaphor they mean the assembling of like things, and the selection and extirpation ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... exchanged for men of his own regiment—the First Kentucky Cavalry (Rebel)—who were captured at the same time he was. I happened to get very close to him while he was standing there talking to his old acquaintances, and I made a mental photograph of him, which still retains all its original distinctness. He was a tall, heavy man, with a full, coarse, and somewhat dull face, and lazy, sluggish gray eyes. His long black hair was carefully oiled, and turned under at the ends, as was the custom with the rural beaux some years ago. His face was clean shaved, except a large, sandy goatee. He wore ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... clock strikes twelve, and the third watch begins. The thunder of the city has rolled from the air. Slight sounds now cut the night with a distinctness that excites your attention. You hear the tinkling of the bell of the street-car in the far distance; the baying of the dog; the stamp of the horse in the adjoining street; the slamming of a saloon door; ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... seem to have been required to give their personal attendance, the important circumstances of election and representation not being mentioned in the treaty with John;—neither does it contain any stipulation of sufficient distinctness applicable to cities and boroughs, for which the charter provides no more than the maintenance of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... strongest arguments which have been adduced to prove the original and permanent distinctness of species is, that varieties produced in a state of domesticity are more or less unstable, and often have a tendency, if left to themselves, to return to the normal form of the parent species; and this instability is considered to ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... thought, but she resisted, and presently she was alone in the strange room. She supposed it must be cooler after the storm. She felt strong and languid. She could feel the shape and weight of each limb; sounds came to her with perfect distinctness; the sounds downstairs and a low-voiced conversation across the landing, little faint marks that human beings were making on the great wide stillness, the stillness that brooded along her white ceiling and all round her ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... again, with extreme distinctness. "I'm small for my age, I know. But I shall never grow any more now. How old ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... like a sheet of water for trying a rifle; the splash of the ball shows with such distinctness the accuracy or the defect in the shooting. It was necessary that I should fire my guns off in order to clean them that evening: I therefore tried their power ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... volumes of 'The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon,' which form perhaps the most complete biography ever written. It is a book of absolute candor as well as infinite research, giving with equal distinctness all the evidence which makes for its hero's dishonor and that which tends to justify the writer's reverence for him. Another work by Mr. Spedding, 'Evenings with a Reviewer,' in two volumes, is an elaborate refutation, from the original and authentic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... see this nocturnal landscape, for his anger seemed, as it were, to lay a hand over his eyes. But gradually the brilliancy of the two stars, the larger and the smaller, caught his attention, then the dark distinctness of the mountains, and then the gray shimmering road and the strange light on the lake. But the more the great silent picture of the night gained power over his soul, the more did it appease his anger, until there grew in the mind of this strange man a stillness and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... flames rose, alternate with the figure of a robed man, his head encircled by a halo. The light of this lamp, after dazzlingly striking on marble, snow-white and round—the slab of a centre-table beneath—on all sides went rippling off with ever-diminishing distinctness, till, like circles from a stone dropped in water, the rays died dimly away in the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... he contemplates rent quite in its true light, [1] and has interspersed through his work more just observations on the subject than any other writer, has not explained the most essential cause of the high price of raw produce with sufficient distinctness, though he often touches on it; and by applying occasionally the term monopoly to the rent of land, without stopping to mark its more radical peculiarities, he leaves the reader without a definite impression of the real difference ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus

... constructed with more and different lenses; but would he not see with augmented power within the natural limits of vision? At any rate, some persons seem to have opened more eyes than others, they see with such force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails, like a spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how many did Henry Thoreau? how many did Audubon? how many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert senses ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the sky, mingling its tints with the passing clouds, sometimes obscured by them, and then breaking out between them, lie the glacier regions. These glaciers, in the setting sun, look like rivers of light pouring down from the clouds. Such was the scene, which I remember with perfect distinctness as enchaining my attention on one point ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... visions of silver palaces built about the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, "Our Father, which ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... sentence-building. Ideally, words should be individual and atomic. Every modification they suffer by internal change of sound, or by having prefixes or suffixes tacked on to them, involves a curtailment of their free use and a sacrifice of distinctness. It is quite easy, of course, to think confusedly, even whilst employing the clearest type of language.... On the other hand, it is not feasible to attain a high degree of clear thinking, when the only method of speech available is one that tends toward wordlessness—that is ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... which leaves Slumberleigh station for London a little after twelve, is not there?" asked Charles, with great distinctness, of the butler as he entered the hall. He had observed as he came in that ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of imagery ... To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They trusted to memory what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye, and told by guess what a few hours before they had known with certainty.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... friend during his last illness, with characteristic distinctness: "If I die, you may inscribe on my tomb stone, Died of the Mahoning Railroad;" so great had been his devotion to the interests of the road, and so severe the personal exposures which its supervision had required of him, who was characteristically more ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only, but those with clear distinctness now, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... souls—are like the sun, which shines very plainly as it moves across the sky of our life of things—showing them in all distinctness and clearness; so that we see things as they happen to us with our eyes of daylight. But as the sun throws its dim twilight shadows even beyond our earth, so do the souls of men of great mind and imagination see, faintly, beyond ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... neglected place, we shall call, for distinctness sake, Gray Forest. It was then the property of the younger son of a nobleman, once celebrated for his ability and his daring, but who had long since passed to that land where human wisdom and courage avail naught. The representative of this noble house resided ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... two walked, Fred slightly in advance, was marked with such distinctness by the hoofs of the six horses that had passed along it in Indian file but a short time before that it was no trouble for the boys to recognize it, nor were they likely to have any difficulty in keeping to it throughout the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... on rowing the longer distance, however, when I heard a bell ringing somewhere in the direction of Eastern Point. It was striking in measured time, and the sound came across the water with great distinctness. It puzzled me a little, till I remembered there was a fog-bell as well as a light-house on the Point. Hoping that the tolling would continue, I aimed for the bell as straight as possible. With a couple of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... excellencies of the drama besides this dramatic probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination of the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they tend to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the chief end, that of producing and supporting ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... I was very much disturbed; the safe was fireproof and I hoped to find the letters, but, alas! the safe and all its contents were destroyed—" The banker stopped short; he had made the last statement with startling distinctness. ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey

... The older and larger was much beyond middle life, red, fat, and dressed in black stuff, good as to fabric, but uncommonly bad as to fit. The other was young and pretty, refined, tastefully dressed, and only the more interesting for the look of permanent anxiety that asserted itself with distinctness about the corners of her eyes and mouth. She held by the hand a rosy, chubby little child, that seemed about three years old, and might be a girl or might be a boy, so far as could be discerned by masculine eyes. The man did not see this fifth member of their ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... so faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the promises of the other. All appears to aid our union—but are we yet together? I know not why, lovely Mary, but a chill penetrates my breast, amid the warm fountains of future bliss, and the idea of our meeting has lost its distinctness. But all this will pass away, all will change into happiness, when I press your hand to my lips, your heart to mine. The rainbow shines yet brighter on the dark field of the cloud, and the happiest moments of life are but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... and presently gaining in distinctness, came the fall of horses' hoofs and the rumble of wheels along the highway. A little cavalcade was soon passing beneath the archway. First there dashed in two horsemen, who had sprung to the ground almost as soon as their steeds' ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... the pine forests had faded to heavy grey, the pale glint of water and ice seen and gone again in a moment, the monstrous nakedness of rock spires and slopes, rising towards him and sliding away again beneath with a crawling motion—all these had lost their distinctness of outline, and were veiled in invisible white. As he looked yet higher to right and left the sight became terrifying, for the giant walls of rock rushing towards him, the huge grotesque shapes towering on all ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... had reported, the frightful war dance, peculiar to the American savages, was enacted in sight of the trappers' position. The battle songs and shouts which accompanied the dance reached the ears of the whites with fearful distinctness. Any other than hearts of oak with courage of steel would have quailed before this terrible display of savage enmity and ferocity. This dance, to men well skilled in the ways of the Indian warrior, was a sure signal ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... may be inferred from all that has been previously narrated. The republic knew its own mind, and had always expressed itself with distinctness. The Spanish Government having at last been brought to disclose its intentions, there was an end to the negotiations for peace. The rupture ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... staircase hung a great cluster of pansies, purple and white and gold. Mr. Whittier called our attention to their wonderful resemblance to human faces,—a resemblance which we so often see in pansies, and which was brought out with really startling distinctness in this picture. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... not been to chronicle facts, but to put together a series of pictures of persons and events, so as to arrest the attention and give some individuality and distinctness to the recollection, by gathering together details at the most memorable moments. Begun many years since, as the historical portion of a magazine, the earlier ones of these Cameos have been collected and revised to serve for school-room reading, and it is hoped that, if these ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... step at a time, scarcely daring to breathe as he shifted his weight again and again from one foot to the other. On the first landing, a board creaked with alarming distinctness. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... of Camilla had been sprung from a fresh Italian well; neither the elegiac-melodious, nor the sensuous-lyrical, nor the joyous buffo; it was severe as an old masterpiece, with veins of buoyant liveliness threading it, and with sufficient distinctness of melody to enrapture those who like to suck the sugarplums of sound. He would indeed have favoured the public with more sweet things, but Vittoria, for whom the opera was composed, and who had been at his elbow, was young, and stern in her devotion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Defiance first, and Veitch's Extra Early second. It appears to be fully as dwarf as the earliest Erfurts, and to have a little larger head. It has been said, even by the introducer, to be the English duplicate of the Early Dwarf Erfurt, but there is no doubt of its distinctness from that variety, as was afterwards recognized. There was another German variety, however, name not given, at the Chiswick trials referred to, which was reported to be identical with Dean's Snowball. Mr. Dean says: "The Snowball may be told by one unfailing test, viz.: when the heads ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... was said round the fires. A short distance away the surgeons were still at work with the more serious cases, while the soldiers roughly bandaged each other's wounds; but as, gradually, the distant firing increased in fury, and seemed to grow in distinctness, men who had lain down sat up to listen. There was no longer any talking, and a ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... to see another," replied the mariner, shading his eyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line away to starboard had lost somewhat its distinctness, and over the day an almost imperceptible ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... How the shells shrieked and whirled over us! I found myself somehow humming the "Ride of the Valkyrie," which these shells had suggested; then the Maxims would play a few bars, or a sharp volley ring from the left. The rocky kopje was vocal with rattling echoes, while with piccolo distinctness the air above and about us sang with the sharp ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... by his nurse is of this kind. The surprise of the nurse mingled with joy; that of Ulysses checked by prudence, and clouded by solicitude; and the distinctness of the action by which the scar is found; all concur to complete the subject. But the picture, having only ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... civilization had an Eastern origin, so we shall feel little difficulty in assigning Greece as the birthplace of humour. A greater activity of mind now begins to prevail, reflection has gradually given distinctness to emotion, and the ludicrous is not only recognised as a source of pleasure, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... room was full of men and girls. The woman Stanton was there and, wheeling, she uttered a cry that startled Allie. Was this white, glaring-eyed, drawn-faced woman the one who had gone for Neale? Allie began to shake. She saw and heard with startling distinctness. The woman's cry had turned every face toward the stairway, and the buzz of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... The glare of that sun! The chill of that unnatural wind! Every moment seemed to me an hour. I can remember with such distinctness the whole day, each thing as it happened; conversations which seemed so senseless, preparations which seemed so endless. The taste of the things I tried to eat: the smell of the grass on which we sat, and the pine-trees above our heads: the sound of fire blazing ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... with still more marked and lofty distinctness, "John Wesley and Mary Em-me-line." It seemed to Mr. Hamlin that human accents could not convey a more significant and elevated ignoring of some implied impropriety in his invitation. He was for a ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Longstreet, and from the heights of Stafford, where the reserves were posted in dense masses, a great storm of shot and shell burst upon the Confederate lines. "For once," says Dabney, "war unmasked its terrible proportions with a distinctness hitherto unknown in the forest-clad landscapes of America, and the plain of Fredericksburg presented a panorama that was dreadful in its grandeur." It was then that Longstreet, to whose sturdy heart the approach of battle seemed always welcome, said to Jackson, "General, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... than her contemporary, Mrs Alfred Shaw is, nevertheless, the most pure, polished, and cultivated English singer we ever heard on the boards of our national theatre. The finish and refinement of her style, and the clear distinctness of her enunciation, make her the worthy model for the imitation of all who are desirous to excel. Were our future debutanti trained on the system which has thus developed the powers and capabilities of these eminent artists, less frequently would be observed the musical disappearances of which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... show! Everybody was somebody else. Only the QUEEN and the PRINCE were beyond the power of error. She found them out at once. She was enthusiastic about the distinctness of the PRINCE's voice in reading the Address, and she bent forward so as not to lose a syllable of the QUEEN's gracious reply. She explained everything wrong. A few ladies looked at her, mutely beseeching some respite for their ears; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... which desperation gave energy to the Athenians, and ambitious hope inspired their foes with more than wonted vigour, the fleet of the Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The whole scene can be reproduced with wonderful distinctness; for the low shores of Plemmyrium, the city of Ortygia, the marsh of Lysimeleia, the hills above the Anapus, and the distant dome of Etna, are the same as they were upon that memorable day. Nothing has disappeared ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... then the sound of men talking, and, what was strange, a noise as of paddles, These outside sounds were muffled and indistinct, but as the night went on they heard a laugh ring out from below, loud and shrill, followed by a confused murmuring, which quickly gained distinctness in the form of a wild chant. The denizens of the underground world were on the move. Looking down over the parapet they saw a spurt of flame, and as the fire made for itself a ring of red light far down in the dark, they could make out dimly the forms ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... magnolias prevented me from seeing the girl—at the same time that it hid both myself and horse from her sight. The chirrup of the cicadas alone hindered me from hearing all of what was said; but many words reached my ear, and with sufficient distinctness, to give me a clue to the subject of the promised revelation. Delicacy would have prompted me to retire a little farther off; but the singular caution I had received from my companion, prevented me from ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... gave place to a little pathway which ran alongside the Viorne; and the moonlight, flowing through this gap, cast a broad band of radiance across the road. When the first insurgents reached this patch of light they were suddenly illumined by a sharp white glow which revealed, with singular distinctness, every outline of visage or costume. And as the various contingents swept on, the young people thus saw them emerge, fiercely and without cessation, from ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... recorded above; and a voice repeated them with awful distinctness in the blue depths overhead, and Flemming felt in his inmost soul the contrast between the holy heavens, and the mockery of laughter, and the idle words, which fall back from the sky above us ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... raises it to the height of dramatic poetry, consists in leaving it doubtful to the father and mother what is the meaning of the excitement on the beach and the confused cries which reach their ears, until one cry comes home to them with terrible distinctness, "The crutch is floating!" It would be hard to name any single phrase in literature in which more dramatic effect is concentrated than in these four words—they are only two words in the original. However ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... watchman who dwelt in a tower at the end of the Bridge Bifroest. Heimdall was his name, and he was endowed with the sharpest ear and eye that ever warder possessed. He could hear grass and wool grow with the utmost distinctness. The AEsir, notwithstanding their supreme position, had need of such a warder, with his Gjallar-horn, mightier than the Paladin Astolfo's, that could make the universe reecho to its blast. The truth was, over even the high gods of Asgard hung a Doom which was mightier than they. It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... the pictures of some child-loving bishop like St. Nicolas, but must needs fix his contemplation upon a certain Bishop of Bingen who was eaten by rats. Mark could not remember why he was eaten by rats, but he could with dreadful distinctness remember that the prelate escaped to a castle on an island in the middle of the Rhine, and that the rats swam after him and swarmed in by every window until his castle was—ugh!—Mark tried to banish from his mind the picture of the wicked Bishop Hatto and the rats, millions of them, just going ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... to the skeleton, the degree of distinctness of the several breeds from G. bankiva ought to be noticed. Some {260} writers speak of the Spanish as one of the most distinct breeds, and so it is in general aspect; but its characteristic differences are not important. The Malay appears to me more distinct, from its tall ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... upon the unwilling of the world," she continued, speaking slowly, yet with extraordinary distinctness, "that its greatest honors are often conferred. The name of my successor has been balloted for, secretly. It is you, Peter Ruff, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... contained, however, a short description of his Newtonian telescope, and he speaks of it with a just pride: "I believe that for distinctness of vision this instrument is perhaps equal to any that was ever made." He was, at least, certain of having obtained excellence in ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... supported in the controversy, on the same general principles, but with more of method and distinctness, and, I will add, with greater force and beauty and perfection, both of thought and of language, by the other distinguished writer, to whom I have already referred, Mr. Davison; who, though not so well known ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Forbes, with equal distinctness. "I'm not going to be left here alone—with all these trees. I'm going ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... words, after ideas have begun to become clear by means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category belongs the comparative hocher for hoeher in the sentence hocher bauen (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request when playing with building-stones). The understanding ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... the sun out of the sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand: Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana, the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater distinctness of idea to the magnificent ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... for her ideals, I would wish, with the utmost respect, to offer some comments on one specific aspect of present affairs, as they affect America, which does not seem to have been marked off with the distinctness its importance ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... relentings on Monday, and, as if to make amends for her harshness, assumed something of a summer softness. The sun had not the glaring brightness that dazzles, and the atmosphere, purified by the recent rain, revealed through its crystal depths objects with unusual distinctness. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Continent. Sitting at a desk in a large office building in New York, Lord Northcliffe took up two telephone receivers and placed one at each ear. In the first he heard the surf beating at Coney Island, New York, and in the other he heard, with equal distinctness, the breakers pounding the beach at the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Certainly this demonstration justified the statement made a few years before by another English traveler. "What startles and frightens the backward European in the United ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... and fling me back again, as it drove out and flung back Brother Paul." But the result of his solitude was specious and deceitful. As pictures seem to float before the eyes after the eyelids are closed, so his past life, now that it was over, seemed to rise up before him with awful distinctness. Sitting alone in his cell, every event of his life with Glory passed before him in review, and harassed him with pitiless condemnation. Why had he failed to realize the essential difference of temperament between himself and that joyous creature? Why had he hesitated to gratify ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... threshold Clotilde took in the whole scene with cruel distinctness—the press wide open and completely empty; Martine maddened by her fear of fire; Felicite radiant, pushing into the flames with her foot the last fragments of the envelopes. Smoke and flying soot filled ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... of his pages will have fresh cause to admire, not merely the firmness and self-command of that illustrious man, but his abilities as a commander and a statesman. We have especially to thank Mr. Bancroft for the distinctness with which he shows how much the success of the Northern army was due to Washington's disinterested advice. His high praise of the commander-in-chief sometimes glances aslope, and lights in the form of censure of some of his subordinate officers; and we should not be surprised ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... the descriptive phrases in Appendix 4 (The Seven Ages of Man) through which Shakespeare gives life and distinctness to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of inflexible poetic justice impartially administered upon king and varlet, pope and beggar, oppressor and victim, projected amidst the unalterable necessities of eternity, and moving athwart the lurid abyss and the azure cope with an intense distinctness that sears the gazer's eyeballs. The Divina Commedia, with a wonderful truth, also reflects the feeling of the age when it was written in this respect, that there is a grappling force of attraction, a compelling realism, about its "Purgatory" and "Hell" which are to be sought in vain in the delineations ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... and the distance which he had already gained, hindered Don Cornelio from perceiving the tone of irony in which he spoke; but almost at the same instant the speaker elevated his voice to a high pitch, though only the last words were heard with distinctness. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... what was written once", it was the mission of Christ, it is the mission of all great personalities, of all the concrete creations of Genius, to bring out into distinctness and vital glow. It is not, and cannot be, brought out,— and this fact is emphasized in the poetry of Browning,— it cannot be brought out, through what is born and resides in the brain: it is brought out, either directly or indirectly, by the attracting power of magnetic ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... there is in a word. Sometimes it discloses in painful distinctness the past, at others it reveals a prophetic page of the future; who would ever suppose there was anything in that little insignificant word to occasion a thought, unless it was whether it is pronounced Corfoo or Corfew, and it's so little consequence which, I always give it the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... examination of Sibley's vocabulary that Gallatin reached the conclusion of the distinctness of this language from any other known, an opinion accepted by most later authorities. A recent comparison of this vocabulary by Mr. Gatschet, with several Caddoan dialects, has led to the discovery that a considerable ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... implied in the whole form of worship) are of no apologetic value, and it is not possible summarily, on such grounds, to call the enemies before the judgment-seat of God. It was not enough to allude, in a way so general, to what could not be at once perceptible; greater distinctness and particularity would have been required. But if a single declaration—a direct Messianic prophecy—form the question at issue, our passage only can be meant; for it is the only prophecy of Christ which Moses, on whose person great stress is laid, uttered in his own name. Moreover, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... are more liable to virescence than others. The common honeysuckle, Lonicera Periclymenum, is one of these, and it is noticeable in this plant that the calyx remains unaffected—a circumstance which Morren says shows the distinctness of virescence from frondescence; for, in this instance, we have the most foliaceous portion of the flower remaining unchanged, while the corolla and other organs, usually less leaf-like in their nature, assume a green colour; but this may rather ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... lifelessness for a second in his clasp and then were drawn away and took determinate hold of the chair-back. Again the flush came to Fleda's cheeks, brought by a sharp pain,—oh, bodily and mental too!—and after a moment's pause, with a distinctness of utterance that let him know every word, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... be in at all to-night," he answered, in a hard, dry voice that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... Accordingly we order the viceroys of Nueva Espana to send to our royal Council of the Indias in each trading fleet, a copy of the registers that the ships brought from those islands, and also of those of the ships sent thither; and all shall be made with great distinctness and clearness. [Felipe II—Madrid, January 17, 1593; and Toledo, June ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... swam to middle of the lake, the imprudent little fellow also stripped and went into the water. There were some idle stragglers looking on, and when I was far, very far from the sport, the fearful shout came along the level surface, of "Help, help, he is drowning!" and with dreadful distinctness, as if the voice had been shrieked into my very ears, I heard the poor lad's bubbling and smothered cry of "Ralph Rattlin!" Poor fellow, he thought there was safety wherever I was, for I had often borne him over the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... have said, we were not at church in the afternoon; and when I do not go, we have the evening service read to us, as it is at church; which Mr. Adams performed now, with his usual distinctness and fervour. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... said, flushing rather diffidently, "that you quite grasped just who you have on board," and then with great distinctness he added: "He is R. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... dawn, coming up the bank of Singing Water, that will be my mother's friend, Granny Moreland, who joins us on the north over there. She is frank and brusque, so she says what she thinks with unmistakable distinctness, but her heart is big and tender and her philosophy keeps her sweet and kindly despite the ache of rheumatism and the weight ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... Then he had tried to reach the spring, but had fainted either before reaching it or after leaving. This he knew, because the mark of Tom's coat, part of his waist-belt and the handle of his bowie-knife were all impressed on the softish ground with sufficient distinctness to be discerned by a sharp eye. The moccasined footprints told of Indians having found Brixton—still alive, for they would not have taken the trouble to carry him off if he had been dead. The various sizes of the moccasined ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and kohlrabi are derivatives of one species, and rape or colza, turnip, and probably rutabaga, of another species? And who that is convinced of this can long undoubtingly hold the original distinctness of turnips from cabbages as an article of faith? On scientific grounds may not a primordial cabbage or rape be assumed as the ancestor of all the cabbage races, on much the same ground that we assume a common ancestry for the diversified human races? If all our breeds of cattle came ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... once, a circular rift of clear sky—as clear as I ever saw—and of a deep bright blue—and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the greatest distinctness—but, oh God, what a scene it was ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... thus wrote to the governor, he wrote also to the minister, Seignelay, and expressed his views with great distinctness. "I feel bound in conscience to tell you that nothing was ever heard of so extraordinary as what we see done in this country every day. One would think that there was a divided empire here between the king and ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... hundred-dollar offer was followed by a hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember. When Judge Whipple drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a warning to those that knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came out with the aggressive distinctness of a man who through a long life has been used to opposition. He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed himself clear of the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to the floor. But there ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... excited imagination predominated over the realities which his eyes received, he could have thought himself surrounded rather by a band of demons than of human beings; the walls seemed to drop with blood, and the light tick of the clock thrilled on his ear with such loud, painful distinctness, as if each sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on the naked nerve of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... and then plunging into shadow. It was not dark; she could see the brush and the wild-berry vines that crawled between the trunks. Then she turned towards the fire that burned at the foot of a ledge. Two or three figures moved about the rocks behind it; sometimes picked out with hard distinctness so that she could see their brown faces and travel-stained overalls, and sometimes fading ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped up with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was to serve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he exclaimed, "You don't escape me, masquerading madam," or some such words, and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to notice ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... that gospel of great joy which is by and by to be realized by toiling Humanity, and he announced ethical principles fit for the time that is coming. The great originality of his teaching, and the feature that has chiefly given it power in the world, lay in the distinctness with which he conceived a state of society from which every vestige of strife, and the modes of behaviour adapted to ages of strife, shall be utterly and forever swept away. Through misery that has seemed unendurable and turmoil that has seemed endless, men have thought on that gracious ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... military qualities that made Bismarck great seem to me to stand out with particular distinctness: his readiness to take the most tremendous responsibilities, if he could justify his action by the worth of the cause for which he made himself responsible; his moderation after success was assured; his unflinching submission to the dictates of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... the darkness, and listened. We all heard it. The sound came as regularly as a heart-beat, and it was no muffled stroke. The oarsman was using his paddle openly and fast. The sound came from behind us, a little to the north, and, judging from its growing distinctness, it was following hard in our track. There was nothing for it but ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... mirthful or melancholy? is a question that has been discussed so often, that anything new on the subject might be considered superfluous, were it not that the very fact of the discussion is in itself a curiosity worthy of attention. The note in dispute was heard with equal distinctness by Homer and Wordsworth; and indeed there are few poets of any age or country who have not, at one time or other in their lives, had the testimony of their own ears as to its character. Whence, then, this difference of opinion? Listen to Thomson's unqualified assertion, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... all askers of impertinent questions. The youth, understanding the refusal conveyed in that terrible glance, had however enough courage to add, "You don't want them, sir!" This was too much to bear in silence; so he replied with awful distinctness, "But I reckon I shall, sir!" Then dropping his head to the original position, he balanced a large piece of pumpkin-pie on the point of his knife, and gallantly charged with it down his throat. Poor youth! a neighbour relieved his distress, and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... it?" Lady Jersey asked. "Seven minutes after eleven, your ladyship." She paused a moment, and then said, with emphasis and distinctness, "Give my compliments,—give Lady Jersey's compliments to the Duke of Wellington, and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of exclusion is such that hereafter no one can complain of its application. He ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." How the speaker's eye flushed and fired; flushed with tears, and fired with triumph; what a tint rose on the pale cheek, testifying to the exultation he felt; with what tremulous distinctness the words were sometimes given—and heard in the breathless stillness to the furthest corner of the place. It was too much at last. Feeling was wrought too high. Eleanor could not bear it. She bowed her head ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... a very remarkable whisper gallery, the slightest whisper being transmitted from one side to the other with the greatest distinctness. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... when he had succeeded, struggled as fruitlessly to escape the consequences, as the wife of Bluebeard in washing the key of the ensanguined chamber, who, as often as she cleared the stain of blood from the one side, found it showing itself with frightful distinctness on ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... in some experiments as though it contained alumina, but it did not exhibit with sufficient distinctness the red of the latter. Its dead color brightens considerably under the molecular impact, but I am now convinced it does not phosphoresce. Still, the tests with the powder are not conclusive, because powdered carborundum probably does not behave like a phosphorescent sulphide, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... polished rock was transformed into a fairy palace. A score of cascades, the most of them invisible before, leapt into view, falling from the dizzy mountain heights and spraying into misty veils as they descended; and from all of them flashed rainbows of marvelous distinctness and brilliance, waving and dancing—a very riot of color. The tinkling water falling into the bay waked a thousand echoes, weird, musical and sweet, a riot of sound. It was an enchanted palace, and we left it with reluctance, remaining only six hours and going out at ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... a curious little peculiarity in him that I have never heard of in anyone else: a capacity for seeing little waking visions with strange distinctness. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... But this seems the proper place to allude to a recent discovery in connexion with the elephant, which strikingly confirms a conjecture which I ventured to make elsewhere[1], relative to the isolation of Ceylon and its distinctness, in many remarkable particulars, from the great continent of India. Every writer who previously treated of the island, including the accomplished Dr. Davy and the erudite Lassen, was contented, by a glance at its outline and a reference ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... tenuous, as if to suggest the dark looming of the mountain across the narrow valley, and the precipice close at hand behind the building, then once more intervening, white and dense of texture, forming a background which imparted a singular distinctness to the figures grouped in the open space of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... article in The Illustrated London News on June 1st, 1912, Chesterton showed whose side he was on with unusual distinctness. The subject of the article was Earnestness; the moral, that it was a bad quality, the property of Socialists and Anti-Socialists, and Suffragists, and that apathy was ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... lightning only made the picture more startling and awful. The sweet and beautiful face of Alice Green lived before him in frightful distinctness, and his very soul seemed to burn to cinder before ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice, artificial, eighteenth century sentiment. There was a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black avenues and white statues leapt out every minute into short-lived distinctness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... being indisposed, was replaced momentarily by her daughter, a beautiful young lady of about sixteen summers, who read the opening address of her mother; her rich voice pronouncing with such distinctness and beauty, the earnest words, translated into French, won all hearts, and gave to the opening of the congress such a prestige as it would otherwise never have had. After its close, Miss Jones regained ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... we see with a new, clearer vision. And we see certain things that you men have become blinded to through centuries of usage, of selfish, careless struggling for your own ends. We are able to see with the distinctness of truth the right relation of the man and the woman—an equal relation, with equal rights for each, with equal claims on each other, with equal duties to each other in the home and in the world outside the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... early October, not too long ago for some of us to remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at Florence, Italy, took a cab, as on other days, to the Porta Romana. Here, where the out-of-town tariff comes into effect, he paid his man, and set out to walk the rest of the way, thus meeting the various needs he felt: that for economy,—he was a family man ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... future, with a real future before them, with an unexplained life to live: not goblets whose contents have been drained, but fountains that still flow when the traveller who drank from them has passed on. Jarno, for example, a man of firm and definite outlines, and drawn here with masterly distinctness, without a blur or a wavering of the hand in the whole delineation, is yet the unexplained, unexhausted Jarno, when the book closes. He goes forward with the rest, known and yet unknown, a man of very definite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various



Words linked to "Distinctness" :   uncloudedness, clearness, separation, other, softness, definition, clarity, focus, indistinctness, difference, legibility, distinct, discernability



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