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Irregular   /ɪrˈɛgjələr/   Listen
Irregular

adjective
1.
Contrary to rule or accepted order or general practice.
2.
Not occurring at expected times.  Synonym: unpredictable.
3.
(used of the military) not belonging to or engaged in by regular army forces.  "Irregular warfare"
4.
(of solids) not having clear dimensions that can be measured; volume must be determined with the principle of liquid displacement.
5.
Falling below the manufacturer's standard.
6.
Deviating from normal expectations; somewhat odd, strange, or abnormal.  Synonym: atypical.  "Atypical clinical findings" , "Atypical pneumonia" , "Highly irregular behavior"
7.
Lacking continuity or regularity.  Synonym: temporary.  "Employed on a temporary basis"
8.
(of a surface or shape); not level or flat or symmetrical.
9.
Independent in behavior or thought.  Synonyms: maverick, unorthodox.  "Maverick politicians"



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"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books



... master's work upon their heads, and their own under their arms, and woe betide those who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... they had lent all the day to a farmer; but a tawny girl ran with great speed, barefooted, and brought them to the camp. I now dismounted, and gave my horse, with my stick, to the care of one of the men. The family circle was formed into an irregular circle round some pale embers, some of them sitting cross-legged on the grass, and others standing. I placed myself so as to have the women and children chiefly before me. The woman who could read, was seated opposite me: the men, the tents, ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... suggest," he said roundly, lifting his head and poising a hand to hold attention, while he thought upon what it was he should suggest—"this is what I would say. It seems rather irregular, doesn't it? to debate the matter in the presence of an outsider. You see it yourself. That is partly what I meant. Now I have met Mr. Fromentin," he gave the name its English vowels with an obstinate emphasis, "and I have heard his statement. You have heard it too. If he wishes ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... down-stairs arose the babel of the drinkers, punctured suddenly by a tinkling shiver of broken glass, and then another, and by a soaring fragment of unsteady, irregular song.... ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... do the outside trampin', Heller. Ye know the tradditions an' docthrines av the Church well enough, an' y' are a dab at Latin. As for yer not bein' av the prastely office, I'll jist lay hands on ye an' qualify ye for the same. If it happens to be a bit irregular, why, the ind justifies the manes, ye remimber, or the ancient Fathers are all wrong, which is onpossible. An' now, Heller, do tell these poor, benighted, lazy loons that I must have me coky-nuts fresh, an' as great a variety av fish as can ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a continuous roar. And we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning, arid, desolate valley cut by this ravine of turbulent water which seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without being able to fertilize these rocks, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... testimony, and his omnipotent justice had spoken. On the 21st of July, 1719, the Duchess of Berry, eldest daughter of the Regent, had died at the Palais-Royal, at barely twenty-four years of age; her health, her beauty, and her wit were not proof against the irregular life she had led. Ere long a more terrible cry arose from one of the chief cities of the kingdom. "The plague," they said, "is at Marseilles, brought, none knows how, on board a ship from the East." The terrible malady had by this time been ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... rendered his country an important service as special envoy to Algeria. Half a century ago this colony was an endless source of trouble to France. Although the rebel Arab chieftain Abd-del-Kader had surrendered in 1847, an irregular warfare was kept up against the French authority by the native Kabyles, stimulated by their Mohammedan priests, and particularly through so-called "miracles," such as recovery from wounds and burns self-inflicted by the Marabouts and other fanatic ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... to the same cause. But, in spite of all such drawbacks on the British side, Louisbourg got much the worst of it. The French had to fire from the centre outwards, at a semicircle of batteries that fired back convergingly at them. Besides, it was almost as hard to hit the thin, irregular line of British batteries as it was to miss the deep, wide target of overcrowded Louisbourg. The walls were continually being smashed from without and patched up from within. The streets were ploughed from end to end. Many houses were laid in ruins: only one remained intact ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... the literary part of him worked its way into the matter-of-fact part of him with the gradualness of the daylight through a shadowy wood. It was not constant in its development. For many years it was little more than an irregular deepening of his two original characteristics, taste and rhythm. His taste, fed on Blackstone, Shakespeare, and the Bible, led him more and more exactingly to say just what he meant, to eschew the wiles of decoration, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... had left the matches upon the beach as causing too much anxiety. Thus they set off. Yulee with the range and the bow and arrows, and Bo with his pop-gun. It did not take long to explore the island; it was only about an acre in all, and irregular in shape. They came to the clump of trees but did not dare go in, though Yulee was pretty sure that the cave must be in there. They left that, however, for a future tour, and came back without further adventure to their landing ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... help at hand in cases of emergency. Mr. A. strongly condemned this policy. It withheld laborers from the estates which needed them; it was calculated to make the regular field hands discontented, and it offered a direct encouragement to the negroes to follow irregular modes of living. A third obstacle to the successful operation of free labor, was the absence of the most influential proprietors. The consequences of absenteeism were very serious. The proprietors were of all men the most deeply interested in the soil; and no attorneys, agents, or managers, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... both his old and peculiar friendship for Aldous, and his eager wish to find a new friend in her—to adopt her into their comradeship. Something very winning, too, in his whole personality—in the loosely knit, nervous figure, the irregular charm of feature, the benignant eyes and brow—even in the suggestions of physical delicacy, cheerfully concealed, yet none the less evident. The whole balance of Marcella's temper changed in some sort as she talked to him. She found herself wanting to please, instead of wanting to conquer, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the form came alike from old England, where an irregular area known as a "town" or a "township," constituted the unit of representation in the shiremoats and the membership of the church parish. Almost every town and parish officer known in England was created by the new towns in New ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... Armed Forces (JAF; includes Royal Jordanian Land Force, Royal Naval Force, and Royal Jordanian Air Force); Badiya (irregular) Border Guards; Ministry of the Interior's Public Security Force (falls under JAF only in wartime ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... curious change in the ground. It seemed now, in many places, to be like a soft, chalky limestone, which ran in pockets and seams between strata of very hard rock. I called Miela's attention to it once, and she pointed out a number of irregular shaped, small masses of a substance which in daylight I assumed might be yellow. These were ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... pounds a year. And, indeed, the doctor himself had not much money in spite of his good practice. He played cards every night at the club, and always lost. Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses through a building society, and let them. The tenants were irregular in paying the rent, but he was convinced that such speculations were profitable. He had mortgaged his own house in which he and his daughter were living, and with the money so raised had bought a piece of waste ground, and had already ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... rose the irregular outline of the mainland, but on all other sides there was nothing but an illimitable stretch of long, ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... named one man to the throne, the fleet named another. If intrigue and shameless deceit gained it in one case, murder succeeded in another. Relationship or connection by marriage with the last possessor helped but rarely. This frequent and irregular change, and the personal badness of most sovereigns, caused endless confusion to the realm. This is the staple of the thousand years in which the election of the emperor Leo I., in 457, stands at the head. On the death of Marcian, following that of Pulcheria, in whose person ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... finding that the Chinese who accompanied these reverend gentlemen were completely ignorant of the nature of a complicated machine, whose motions, regulated by the most ingenious mechanism that had ever been constructed in Europe, represented all those even of the most irregular and eccentric of the heavenly bodies; nor in perceiving that they seemed to be rather disappointed in the appearance and operations of this instrument. It was obvious, from the few questions put ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... me to be certain, since ether is a universal medium. Up to now it has been capricious in the places which it has attacked, but the difference is only a matter of a few hours, and it is like an advancing tide which covers one strip of sand and then another, running hither and thither in irregular streams, until at last it has submerged it all. There are laws at work in connection with the action and distribution of daturon which would have been of deep interest had the time at our disposal permitted us to study them. So far as I can trace them"—here ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... her aunt. When they had walled them up, the men turned with lighter hearts to see what was going on. As they did so there rang out the sharp, peremptory crack of a rifleshot from the escort, followed by another and another, but these isolated shots were drowned in the long, spattering roll of an irregular volley from the plain, and the air was full of the phit-phit-phit of the bullets. The tourists all huddled behind the rocks, with the exception of the Frenchman, who still stamped angrily about, striking his sun-hat with his clenched hand. Belmont and Cochrane crawled ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... filled. We were free of the garden below our windows, quite long in its irregular rambling shape, bordering the cliff. The walls were perfectly smooth and high, ending in the masonry of the building; and as I studied the great stones I became convinced that the whole structure was extremely old. It was built like the pre-Incan ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... city limits is about four miles in its extreme length, and three in its breadth; but is very irregular in its outline, and does not cover so much ground as the above measurement ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... length at the base was, roughly, three hundred feet, and its thickness varied from three hundred feet or more at the center, to a few feet at each end. Roughly, then, its basic outline was that of an irregular parallelogram, while its profile was that of a flat-topped cone. For some moments the little group stood in silence as they gazed up at the yellowish-gray ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... north and northeast, makes almost the circuit of the town, about half a mile from it, before emptying into the creek. Several small brooks, flowing from the north into Indian Creek, make deep ravines, which leave a series of ridges, very irregular in outline, but generally parallel to the river. About half a mile below the mouth of Indian Creek, Hickman Creek, flowing eastwardly, empties into the river at right angles with it. Small branches ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... stones and looked like broad splashes of white paint. The north sides of the pointed roofs on the towers were white, too, and gleamed in the occasional bursts of sunshine that interrupted the fierce weather. In the forest, the slanting branches of the firs were loaded down with irregular masses of snow, through which the needle foliage looked as black as ink. Not a spot of colour was visible anywhere, for everything ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... in almost their whole course can be traced through present-day gardens and back premises, shewing the four sides of an irregular parallelogram. Their dimensions, roughly speaking, are on the north and south sides about 600-ft., by about 350-ft. at the eastern, and 300-ft. at the western end, their thickness being about 16-ft. The material employed was the Spilsby sandstone, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... many tribes of men and originating in the attempt to combine leaves, vines, and branches for purposes of comfort, are flat because of function, the degree of flatness depending upon the size of filaments and mode of combination; and in outline they are irregular, square, round, or oval, as a result of many causes and influences, embracing use, construction, material, models, &c. A close approach to symmetry, where not imposed by some of the above mentioned agencies, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes

... blood had been charged by a prairie instinct passing through three generations. She was part of this life. Her mind was free and strong, and her body was free and healthy. While that freedom and health was genial, it revolted against what was gross or irregular. She loved horses and dogs, she liked to take a gun and ride away to the Poplar Hills in search of game, she found pleasure in visiting the Indian Reservation, and talking to Sun-in-the- North, the only good ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... from axillary buds, in old trees, except where the terminal bud has been prevented from continuing the branch. This tendency gives to the tree its characteristic size of trunk and branches, and lack of delicate spray. On looking closely at the branches also, they will be seen to be quite irregular, wherever there has been a flower-cluster swerving to one ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... allowed my hair and beard to grow, and had dispensed with as much as possible of my ordinary erect mien and lightness of step; for I was very much afraid, if I were not careful, that the wise king would find out that there was something irregular in my longevity, and an old man may continue to look old much longer than a middle-aged man can continue to ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... by a debility, from the depression of which I cannot always rouse my patient. When the fits proceed from dentition, I lance the jaws, and give an emetic, and follow it up with cooling purgative medicine. When they are caused by irregular and excessive exercise, I open the bowels and make my exercise more regular and equable. When they arise from excitation, I expose my patient more cautiously to the influence of those things which make so much impression on ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... take part in the actual advance were concentrated between Jerusalem and Akabah. Under command of Djemel Pasha, Turkish Minister of Marine, there were gathered some 50,000 troops consisting mostly of first line troops of the best quality, reenforced by about 10,000 more or less irregular ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... rolling on park grass. Instead, she led him to a tea-room behind a candy-shop on Tottenham Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored tiles set in the wall, and green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches of white roses. A waitress with wild-rose cheeks and a busy step brought Orange Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea and a jug of clotted cream for him, with a ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... usually variable. Through the middle of the strait a current may be considered to set constantly to the eastward, but on each side, both flood and ebb tides extend to a quarter of a mile or to two miles from the shore, according to the wind and weather, and are consequently very irregular. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... proposals with derision. They did not even give serious answers, obviously considering the new city as a mere temporary gathering and encampment of adventurers and outlaws, which would be as transient as it was rude and irregular. They looked to see it break up as suddenly and tumultuously as it had been formed. They accordingly sent back word to Romulus that he must resort to the same plan to get women for his city that he had ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... proper state of the world to be simply that of a vast and disorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get, trampling down its children and old men in the mire, and doing what work it finds must be done with any irregular squad of labourers it can bribe or inveigle together, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great deal may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation strong-elbowed and strong-hearted as we are—not ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... picture of an old-fashioned English dairy— green-shadowy, dark, dank, and cool—floored with great irregular slabs, mostly of green serpentine, polished into smooth hollows by the feet of generations of mistresses and dairy-maids. Its only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy, which stood ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... ancient inhabitants; and we learn from the description of Mr. Robertson, that it has since undergone scarce any change. 'Strathcarron,' he says, 'is still in the old state.' Throughout its whole extent the turf cottages of the aborigines rise dark and thick as heretofore, from amid their irregular patches of potatoes and corn. But in an adjacent glen, through which the Calvie works its headlong way to the Carron, that terror of the Highlanders, a summons of removal, has been served within the last few months on a whole community; and the graphic sketch of Mr. Robertson ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... nothing within or without which does not please the eye, and, after the din of yadoyas, its silence, musical with the dash of waters and the twitter of birds, is truly refreshing. It is a simple but irregular two-storied pavilion, standing on a stone- faced terrace approached by a flight of stone steps. The garden is well laid out, and, as peonies, irises, and azaleas are now in blossom, it is very bright. The mountain, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... in attempting to reduce these various facts to any rule or law. The inconstant number of the additional digits—their irregular attachment to either the inner or outer margin of the hand—the gradation which can be traced from a mere loose rudiment of a single digit to a completely double hand—the occasional appearance of additional digits in the salamander ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... winter and summer alternately reign for periods varying according to the latitude, and regions where summer follows summer with scarcely an appreciable variation. At the same time the many and varied elevations and subsidences of portions of the Earth's crust, bringing about the present irregular distribution of land and sea, have entailed modifications of climate beyond those dependent on latitude; while a yet further series of such modifications have been produced by increasing differences of elevation in the land, which ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... possibly with a very badly fashioned quill-pen. There was very little writing upon it, and this of the raggedest sort. To their intense disappointment it bore no name to tell where in the seven seas it might be. That the chart was of some coast was certain. A deep, irregular bay occupied the central part of the sheet. Two long promontories jutting from east and west nearly closed the seaward or southern end. The single word "Watter" was written beside a dot high up on the paper and ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... that I entertained any unusual regard for her. I agreed to this, and now we understand each other. I feel very confident and happy. The other person has no regular time for offering himself, and if any effort of mine can avail he shall not find an irregular opportunity." ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... opening of the valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And its walls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed and cleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenient retreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appalling barrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on a slant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, waving upwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, and bowing as if ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the heat of the day had passed, the head keeper, as Peter called him, came with his followers to bring a fresh supply of their monotonous food and water; and it was he who, at irregular times, would come to change the sentry, peering through one of the holes to make sure that his prisoners were safe, and then going away as silently as ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... with red hair—an eye of a reddish hazel, with very long lashes; the eyebrows were dark, and clearly defined; and the short hair showed to advantage the contour of a small well-shaped head. His features were irregular; the complexion had been sanguine, but was now faded, and a yellow tinge mingled with the red. His face was more wrinkled, especially round the eyes—which, when he laughed, were scarcely visible—than is usual ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... be found to agree very well; for when it is asserted that veins of loadstone have nothing to do with the variation of the compass, it is to be understood of the constant variation of a few degrees to the east, or to the west: but in cases of this nature, where the variation is absolutely irregular, and the needle plays quite round the compass, our author's conjecture may very well find place: yet it must be owned that it is a point far enough from being clear, that mines of loadstone affect the compass at a distance; ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... stage of the siege General Gordon determined to try the metal of his troops, and the experiment succeeded to such a perfect extent that there was never any necessity to repeat it. On 16th March, when only irregular levies and detached bodies of tribesmen were in the vicinity of Khartoum, he sent out a force of nearly 1000 men, chiefly Bashi-Bazouks, but also some regulars, with a fieldpiece and supported by two steamers. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... part or organ of the creature that contains them. They are not found in every shell, nor of the same size and shape in any two. They are eccentric and accidental, probably also morbid excrescences, thrown out by some individuals of the species in irregular forms and at uncertain times. They probably owe their origin to the presence of some minute foreign substance within the shell, which is distasteful to its occupant. Not being able to cast out the intruder, the feeble but diligent inhabitant ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... from Louisiana P. B. S. Pinchback, Mr. Bruce spoke out, cogently presenting the facts as he saw them, contending that the gentleman had been regularly elected and that the National Government would, by declaring his election irregular and not expressive of the will of the people, repudiate the very government that it had recognized.[108] Pinchback was not seated, but the records show that his title was as sound as that of scores of senators whose ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... in No. 2—a camp, (23) the hands then placed together as in No. 3, and in this position, both moved in short irregular upward and downward jerks from side to side—many wik'-i-ups, (24) then indicate the chief of the tribe as in No. 7—meaning that it was one of the camps of the chief of the tribe. (25) Make a peculiar whistling sound of "phew" ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... front of his almost buttonless shirt and worn undervest and showed them on his left breast the scoring where a sharp blade had marked an irregular circle on ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... the earth, terminated in a similar manner; and these two great examples admonish the world, that the vast and profound calculations of this age of intelligence may be followed by the same results as the irregular impulses of religious frenzy in ages of ignorance ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... THE UPPER EXTREMITIES are sixty-four in number, and are classified as follows: The Scapula, Clavicle, Humerus, Ulna, Radius, Carpus, Metacarpus, and Phalanges. The Scapula, or shoulder-blade, is an irregular, thin, triangular bone, situated at the posterior part of the shoulder, and attached to the upper and back part of the chest. The Clavicle, or collar-bone, is located at the upper part of the chest, between the sternum and scapula, and connects ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... children what they themselves did not have than are American fathers. The man who is most eager that his son should have a college education is not the man who has two or three academic degrees, but the man who never went to college at all. The father whose boys are allowed to be irregular in their church attendance is the father who, as a boy, was compelled to go to church, rain or ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... and other letters was partly due to the state of his health; the continual anxiety and work of his life at Frankfort, joined to irregular hours and careless habits, had told upon his constitution. He fell seriously ill in St. Petersburg with a gastric and rheumatic affection; an injury to the leg received while shooting in Sweden, became painful; the treatment adopted by the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... the same person to have drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious, boastful of her charms, haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious pomp and gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed in all their force and lustre, as well as the irregular grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. Take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... of which were decorated with trees and flowering shrubs of the hardier species; until, ascending by a gentle slope, we issued from the grove, and stood almost at once in front of a low but very neat building, of an irregular form; and my guide, shaking me cordially by the hand, made ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... On the farther side of the road there is a stretch of short turf, some hundred yards wide; and beyond that an irregular line of silver birches; and beyond that the blue of distant hills, for the Common slopes down where the trees begin. Between the silvery wood and the road, through the midst of the wide belt of turf, and parallel ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... barrels of the carbines well forward. Graham and Connell, peering through their field-glasses, their elbows resting on the turf, were side by side about the centre. Behind them, nearly a hundred paces down the southward slope, stood the horses in an irregular line, a corporal remaining in charge, keenly watching the movements of his superiors, yet keeping constant control of the four horse-holders, who, like himself, remained in saddle. There could be no telling what moment ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... of the month a disastrous defeat was inflicted upon the Hungarians under the command of General Dembinsky at Kapolna. Kossuth had made the mistake of superseding Goergey by that commander. Now Goergey was reinstated. The Hungarians rallied. On March 5, the Magyar Csikos, or irregular cavalry, under Janos Damjanies, defeated the Austrians under General Grammont at Szolnok. A few days later the Hungarian army in Transylvania, under General Bem, retrieved their ill-fortune by another glorious victory ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... an entirely arbitrary discretion even in the First Lord of the Treasury himself; it will not be safe to leave with him a power of diverting the public money from its proper objects, of paying it in an irregular course, or of inverting perhaps the order of time, dictated by the proportion of value, which ought to regulate his application of payment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... cells are pushed apart and scattered. The cells occurring in the cleft of the berry are straight, narrow, and long, becoming as long as 1 mm, and resemble bast fibers somewhat. On the surface of the berry, and sometimes in the cleft, there are found smaller, thicker cells, which are irregular in outline, club-shaped ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... weeks before the birth of the child, certain irregular, heavy, cramp-like pains occur in the abdomen and back. For a half-dozen pains they may show some signs of regularity; but they usually die down only to start up again at irregular intervals. These are known ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... it consists of the tympanum, mastoid cells, and Eustachian tube. The tympanum contains four small delicate bones, viz. the malleus, the incus, the stapes, and the os orbiculare, joined to the incus. The intermediate ear displays an irregular cavity, having a membrane, called the membrana tympani, stretched across its extremity; and this cavity has a communication with the external air, through the Eustachian tube, which leads into the fauces, or throat. The membrane of the tympanum is intended to carry the vibrations of the atmosphere, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various

... into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... was so bright that he could see it bobbing up and down with the little waves. Slowly it receded from the shore, flashing and turning as it went. The wind was carrying it out to sea. Soon it became a mere speck, doubtfully discerned at irregular intervals; and then the mystery of it was swallowed up by the greater mystery of the ocean. Geddie stood still upon the beach, smoking and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... trophy of bluish green South Kensington certificates for geometrical drawing, astronomy, physiology, physiography, and inorganic chemistry adorned his further wall. And against the Carlyle portrait was a manuscript list of French irregular verbs. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... that engaging way she had. She had hardly looked up again at Michael since the beginning, the exigencies of the dinner-table being excuse enough for not turning her head; but his eyes often devoured her fascinating, irregular profile to try and discover her real ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... sharpness of his own; and she inherited, not from him, but from her mother, a largeness of heart that entered proportionately into the working of her mind. She had a masculine capacity for study; for, though I suspect her early schooling was irregular, she remained a student all her life, and by painstaking industry made herself acquainted with any subject that she had to handle. Her command of history and her imaginative power are shown in such books as "Valperga" and "Castruccio"; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... accompanies him. THEKLA follows him with her eyes at first, walks restlessly across the room, then stops, and remains standing, lost in thought. A guitar lies on the table, she seizes it as by a sudden emotion, and after she has played a while an irregular and melancholy symphony, she falls gradually ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "It's an irregular little sheet of water with several small islands in it; and if these Germans go clear in, we'll nab them easily. But if they don't, we may have ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... does is to present to us a long curved line of which the summits correspond to the heights of high water, while the depressions are the corresponding points of low water. The long undulations of this curve are, however, very irregular. At spring tides, when the sun and the moon conspire, the elevations rise much higher and the depressions sink much lower than they do at neap tides, when the high water raised by the moon is reduced by ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... the jaws of the gully, the irregular cavalcade advanced scatteringly over the plain. Only for a short distance, however; for, as if by a common understanding rather than in obedience to any command, all came to ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... out of their pale, by uniting themselves with women of other castes, led not by considerations of righteousness but by uncontrolled lust, cause numerous mixed castes to come into existence whose occupations and abodes depend on the circumstances connected with the irregular unions to which they owe their origin. Having recourse to spots where four roads meet, or crematoria, or hills and mountains, or forests and trees, they build their habitations there. The ornaments they wear are made ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... rather more powerfully than the casual visitor who has never been initiated by practical experience into their difficulties. To him, the huge buttress which runs down from the Moench is something more than an irregular pyramid, purple with white patches at the bottom and pure white at the top. He fills up the bare outline supplied by the senses with a thousand lively images. He sees tier above tier of rock, rising in a gradually ascending scale of difficulty, covered ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... saved France from multiplied bankruptcies, nor her state-creditors from dying through want; and the French, in the midst of their external prosperity, are often distinguished from the people whom their armies have been subjugated, only by a superior degree of wretchedness, and a more irregular despotism. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... further of her. Britt wrote once or twice, but did not allude to either Clarke or the Lamberts, and Serviss did not care to ask particularly about them. It was better for him not to be concerned further with the girl's singular history. He hated the irregular, the pretentious. His own life, so clear, so well regulated, made her daily performances the more monstrous. The whole had become so foolish in retrospect that he refrained from speaking of it, even ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... way of the sun. It is so irregular that it is impossible for man to devise a clock that will keep the sun's time. The sun accelerates and retards as no clock could be made to accelerate and retard. The sun is sometimes ahead of its schedule; at other ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... said to have been red, or, according to most of his portraits, of a sandy hue. As he rode, with extreme grace, upon a fine bay gelding presented to him by the Duke of Perth, the bystanders remarked that an "irregular smile," as one of them has expressed it, lighted up, by fits, a countenance which told but too plainly every emotion of the heart. An anxious, watchful look was, at times, directed to those around and near him; and, in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... climate is temperate and rather damp; the soil is varied and irregular, but a large proportion is a thin-skinned clay. More than four-fifths of the total area is under cultivation. The crop of wheat is comparatively insignificant; but a large quantity of oats is grown, and a great proportion of the cultivated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... these several days has been very irregular. We have two with us and they do not at all agree. The road less bad. At one place we saw bamboos of the thickness of a man's thigh. There were myriads of very small flies this evening, which teased us much. Occupied some huts we found ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... sufficiently well clothed with woods and hedgerows, yet the poverty of the soil in most places prevents the timber from attaining a large size. Still it has its beauties. The lanes wind along in a natural curve, continually fringed with irregular borders of native turf, and lead to pleasant nooks and corners. One who knew and loved it well very happily expressed its quiet ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... will form a drop twice the radius of one of the original drops. We may safely conceive hundreds and thousands of such combinations to take place until a cloud mass is formed, in which the constituent parts are more or less in contact, and, therefore, behave electrically as a single conductor of irregular surface, upon which is accumulated all the electricity that was previously distributed over the surfaces of the millions of particles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... they stretch themselves along the horizon like fissures into a brighter world. They suddenly enlarge, they gain upon their dark boundaries, now they break through them, as the waters bounding the edge of a lake inundate in irregular pools the arid banks. Then a fierce opposition begins, banks and long dikes accumulate to arrest the progress. The clouds are oiled like ridges of sand, tossing and surging to present obstructions, but like the impetuous raging of irresistible waters, the light breaks through them, demolishes ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... as Vesalius and Spigelius and those old fellows used to put their skeletons? I don't think anything of such objects, you know; but what should he have it in his chamber for? As I had found his pulse irregular and intermittent, I took out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass for looking into people's chests with your ears, and laid it over the place where the heart beats. I missed the usual beat of the organ.—How ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... Much of the want of success in the various departments of industry, and many of the failures that are constantly occurring among business men, are justly attributable to the fits of attention and the irregular modes of study they became habituated to in their school-boy days. Hence the mischief of long vacations, and the evil of beginning studies before the age at which they may be understood. Parents and ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... was finished (1869), and how they are carried now. In 1867, to the perils of the snow and wind and of mountain travel, were added dangers from desperadoes, white as well as red, so that mail deliveries were few and far between, and very irregular, while too often both the carriers and their packs were lost. Slow as the old way was, however, the snow sometimes makes the new way even slower. In spite of miles and miles of snow-sheds and snow-fences, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... into forty-seven parts, by simply turning screws and opening springs. Most of these parts are struck in dies, and then finished by milling and filing. The process of this manufacture is called swaging,—the forming of irregular shapes in iron by means of dies, one of which is inserted in an anvil in a cavity made for the purpose, and the other placed above it, in a trip-hammer, or in a machine operated in a manner analogous to that of a pile-driver, called a drop. Cavities are cut in the faces of the dies, so that, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... such irregular vowel changes as Flinders for Flanders, and conversely Packard for Picard. Pottinger (see below) sometimes becomes Pettinger as Portugal gives Pettingall. The general tendency is towards that thinning of the vowel ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... exceeded the bishop's worst apprehensions. He was a lean, lank, dark young man with long black hair and irregular, rather prolonged features; his chin was right over to the left; he looked constantly at the bishop's face with a distinctly sceptical grey eye; he could not have looked harder if he had been a photographer or a portrait ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... be hardly fair to say that Doctor Perkins, a former resident of the village, was a quack; he may be described in milder phrase as an irregular practitioner. He belonged to none of the accepted schools, but treated his patients in accordance with certain theories of his own. The doctor had a habit of relating remarkable stories of his own achievements, and the most wonderful of these was his account of an attempt that he once made to cure ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... from claimed archipelagic baselines continental shelf: to depth of exploitation exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: irregular polygon extending up to 100 nm from coastline as defined by 1898 treaty; since late 1970s has also claimed polygonal-shaped area in South China Sea up to ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... nearly all the white wood should be cut away, leaving only head shoots to some one single or middle shoot of a main branch. The under-wood, old wood, and irregular and ugly wood, should also be cut away, as recommended at the cutting of gooseberries. In pruning or cutting raspberries, the old wood should be cut quite away, and the stems of the last ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin

... anxious to make her feel welcome—and failed. They called her "Raine." The other two men did not call her anything at all. They were both sandy-complexioned and they both chewed tobacco quite noticeably, and when they sat down in their shirt sleeves to eat, Lorraine had seen irregular humps in their hip pockets which must be six-guns; though why they should carry them in their pockets instead of in holster belts buckled properly around their bodies and sagging savagely down at one side and swinging ferociously ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... for about one-third of its length. In the above-mentioned colours white markings are objectionable. The utmost that is allowed being a small spot, or a few hairs, on the chest. Dappled:—A silver grey to almost white foundation colour, with dark, irregular spots (small for preference) of dark grey, brown, tan, or black. The general appearance should be a bright, indefinite coloration, which is considered especially useful in a hunting dog. WEIGHT—Dachshunds in Germany are classified by weight as follows:—Light-weight—Dogs ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high Pause ere it wakens tempest;— (7 22 6, 7.) Here when the moon Pause is clearly irregular, but it appears in editions 1818, 1839, and is undoubtedly Shelley's phrase. Rossetti cites a conjectural emendation by a certain 'C.D. Campbell, Mauritius':—which the red moon on high Pours eve it wakens tempest; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Here is help!" cried Richard; and forgetting that he was alone, and that the cry was somewhat irregular, "To the Arrow! to the Arrow!" he shouted, as he fell upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the nursery, and especially the English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... courage and self-devoted heroism of the women, which encouraged and strengthened the flagging patriotism of the men. The militia who had been captured with the city regarded themselves as absolved from a parole which did not protect them from enlistment in the ranks of the Crown, and the irregular bands of Marion, Pickens and Sumter received large accessions. Mill-saws were roughly forged into sabres and pewter table-ware melted and beaten into slugs for the shot-guns with which the men were armed. The British dared not forage except in force, the pickets were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... rigid in its lines. "Scared to death," was the mental note of a good many who saw him. But his step was firm. As Elizabeth looked at him, she felt proud that such a man loved her. He was not handsome. His features were irregular, but his eyes were clear and fearless. If a certain cowardice had held him back from this ordeal, it was surely not because he trembled for himself. The life he had lived and the battles he had fought had given a compression ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... One cause of irregular dyeing may be mentioned, as it is occasionally met with, namely, the presence of foreign fibres in the goods, cotton in wool fabrics, and even of different varieties of the same fibre. All dyers know that dead or immature ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... for her courses had not come on, and shed flood of tears. She would lose her John, poor fellow! When in that way she was always pitying him, but she was always irregular in her menstruation, which rendered it difficult to judge of her condition. Oh! she was sure she was now in the family way, she had symptoms; she had asked her sister how she had felt when she had conceived, and her own symptoms were the same. "My ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... stationed on top of the wall surrounding the yard, and played continuously while two long lines of men and women, following in one anothers' footsteps, trotted around the place and described several figures. The lines would turn, break up and form again at irregular intervals. The heavy feet of the dancers struck the ground without the slightest attempt at rhythm, while the shrill notes of the music succeeded one another rapidly and with desperate monotony. The dancers who tired withdrew without interrupting the dance, ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... early morning, with the first tinge of violet in the east, the irregular cavalry and the second division (Lyttelton's) with Wynne's Brigade started upon their widely curving flanking march. The country through which they passed was so broken that the troopers led their horses in single ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle



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