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Sham   /ʃæm/   Listen
Sham

verb
(past & past part. shammed; pres. part. shamming)
1.
Make a pretence of.  Synonyms: assume, feign, simulate.  "He feigned sleep"
2.
Make believe with the intent to deceive.  Synonyms: affect, dissemble, feign, pretend.  "He shammed a headache"



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"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books



... obtain a hearing. He spoke with great vigour and fluency. He denounced the letter as an outrage which should be proclaimed from one end of Europe to the other; that it was not their town, or their club, or themselves had been insulted, but Ireland! that this mock-lord (cheers)—this sham viscount—(greater cheers)—this Brummagem peer, whose nobility their native courtesy and natural urbanity had so long deigned to accept as real, should now be taught that his pretensions only existed on sufferance, and had no claim beyond the polite ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... to the adventure, was caught by the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham porphyry pillar. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... a backwoods town plays a prominent part. The hero of the story is made a victim of their annoying intrigues, but finally comes out triumphant by smashing the petty red tapism, knocking down the sham pretentions and by actual use of the fist on the Head Instructor ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... of the real Jack Benson on the scene, in contrast with the sham one, had opened the boatbuilder's eyes. He could not fathom, yet, what it all meant, but he was certain that his hitherto trusted young captain would be able to explain ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... as in the sixteenth century, there is a figure on the great cross. It is curious to note an attempt, during the rage for pseudo-classic architecture in the last century, to beautify the reredos by placing sham funeral urns in its niches. These were fortunately removed in 1820, and in recent years they have been replaced by a series of statues intended to reproduce as far as possible the original effect. In the Builder for October 10, 1892, a large reproduction was given of a very interesting ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... meaning to probable guilt. Apparent indicates less assurance than probable, and more than seeming. A man's probable intent we believe will prove to be his real intent; his seeming intent we believe to be a sham; his apparent intent may be the true one, tho we have not yet evidence on which to pronounce with certainty or even with confidence. Likely is a word with a wide range of usage, but always implying the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... eternity for his faithlessness." The characteristic of Leslie Stephen's essays is that they are less directed to showing that orthodox theology is untrue as that there is no reality about it, and that its solutions of difficulties are sham solutions. If it solved any part of the mystery, it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. It is "a mere edifice of moonshine." The writer makes no attempt to prove by logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason. He bases this ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury

... combats that are conventional among the German students. I do not see why a young Prussian should not have scars all over his face if he likes them; nay, they are often the redeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlightening countenance. The duel may be defended; the sham duel may ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... is given by Gruenstein of boys engaged in a sham fight. At first the contending parties are timorous, appearing afraid of ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... "Bless my pillow sham!" cried Mr. Damon. "I think I can get a good night's sleep now. So they have formally accepted your giant ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... way. In the first place the Pawnees were quite certain to perceive the sham, and, in case they were deceived, they were likely to tomahawk Otto so as to end the annoyance. These two considerations kept him plodding along with the party, which, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... with gifts of magic. The girls go sight-seeing along the coast of Kohala, and Mailelaulii weds the king of Kohala, Hikapoloa. He gets them to send for the supernatural pearl fishhook with which their brothers catch aku fish, but the hook sent proves a sham, and the angry chief determines to induce the brothers thither on a visit and then kill them in revenge. When the five arrive with a boatload of aku, the sisters are shut up in the woman's house composing a name ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... all were seated as Brilliana had disposed; Sir Blaise had completely surrendered his dignity to her spell. Even Halfman found pleasure in the grotesque sham trial. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... school, my new friend told me, was a sham, for, instead of there being some dozen of masters, as stated in the prospectus sent to Uncle George, there were only two besides "The Doctor"—Mr Smallpage, the mathematical master, called by the boys "Smiley," on the lucus a ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... erected like the great temple described in scripture, practically without hammer or nails. Being molded from concrete, it is practically proof against weather and time, and it is fireproof in a sense of the term far more literal than that generally adopted in large cities. There is no sham work, from basement to tower. Italian marble, terra cotta and Mexican onyx are the principal materials used, and nothing "equally as good" ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... as an ugly sore in the State, to be healed, is tended and watered as a fair flower by a clerical government. Pray give something to yonder sham cripple; give to that cadger who pretends to have lost an arm; and be sure you don't forget that blind young man leaning on his father's arm! A medical man of my acquaintance offered yesterday to restore his sight, by operating for the cataract. The father cried aloud with ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... winter and well into the beginning of spring. Accompanying Mrs. Fowler on her busy rounds, she discovered that here also, as in the house in Hill Street, the chief end of life was to keep up an appearance; here also the supreme effort, the best energies, were devoted to a sham—to a thing which had no actual existence. Though Mrs. Fowler was rich beside Mrs. Carr, Gabriella soon found out that she was not nearly so rich as her neighbours were, not nearly so rich as her position in society exacted that she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... reported of them, privately, among other things noted in these first glimpses, that "they had everything about them in the most perfect style; ivory-backed brushes, and lovely inlaid dressing-cases, Ginevra; the best all through, and no sham!" Yes, indeed, if that could but be said truly, and need not ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Germany, were fighting for truth, honesty, and private judgment against priestcraft and ecclesiastical tyranny. The scepticism and cynicism of which he was often accused were on the surface. They were provoked by what he felt to be hypocrisy and sham. They were not his true self. He believed firmly unflinchingly, and always in "the grand, simple landmarks of morality," which existed before all Churches, and would exist ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... some paradox or odd saying at him, and watch his awkward attempts to catch it, and then while he was just on the point of getting at some idea of it to bewilder him with some new enigma. To her he seemed to be what he was not, simply a sham, a heavy piece of hypocrisy. Formalism and ostentatious piety she recognized as part of the business of a Nonconformist minister, in whom they were excusable, as his grave garb would be, but they seemed insufferably out of place ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... certainly arises from the hollowness of the outward forms which pass current in society and at home for vital Christianity. These spurious forms, fortunately or unfortunately, soon betray themselves. How little there is in them becomes gradually apparent. And rather than indulge in a sham the budding sceptic, as the first step, parts with the form and in nine cases out of ten concerns himself no further to find a substitute. Quite deliberately, quite honestly, sometimes with real regret and even at personal sacrifice he takes up ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... the events of the momentous year were the representatives of the centralizing principle. But the effective centralizing principle was not represented by the Emperor, for he stood for what was after all largely a sham centralism, because it was a centralism on a scale for which the Germanic world was not ripe. Princes and margraves were destined to be bearers of the territorial centralization, the only real one to which the German peoples were to attain ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... has two stories," continued Uncle Frederick, "the one, about a sham fight in Sweden, is a good half-hour long. But the other, the battle of Waterloo, generally lasts from an hour and a half to two hours. I have heard it three times." ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... had, for me, consisted not so much in her surpassing loveliness of person, though doubtless that had had its effect upon me, as in that angelic purity and fascinating simplicity and truthfulness of character which I now discovered to be a mere worthless sham. It was evident enough that Merlani had been her lover—most probably her accepted lover—when I appeared upon the scene; and that, dazzled by my appearance of superior wealth, she had in the most heartless and cruel ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... violence to the principles of the ancient constitution—all these topics, we say, would, if we were so inclined, supply us, as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay, with abundant opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but we decline to raise sham debates on points where there is no contest. We can have little historic difference, properly so called, with one who has no historical difference on the main facts with anybody else: instead, then, of pretending to treat any great questions, either ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... best, That would take off the test, And made a sham speech to attempt it; But being true blue, When he found 'twould not do, Swore, damn him, if ever ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... who will give money to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics—a piece of the sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a glass of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints, if he could thereby extract something even from the poorest ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... like a true-born Englishman," he said cheerily. "How does that song go? I forget. There, never mind. I won't act like a sham, even if I am where there's so much Dutch courage. Now, look ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... Shelby saw Dr. Crandall step from his phaeton to his little sham Greek temple of an office at the foot of his lawn, and followed him. The bluff physician greeted him ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... sham, and Toby, who was quite out of breath with excitement, was much incensed at being ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... &c 549; prevarication, equivocation, shuffling, fencing, evasion, fraud; suggestio falsi &c (lie) 546 [Lat.]; mystification &c (concealment) 528; simulation &c (imitation) 19; dissimulation, dissembling; deceit; blague^. sham; pretense, pretending, malingering. lip homage, lip service; mouth honor; hollowness; mere show, mere outside; duplicity, double dealing, insincerity, hypocrisy, cant, humbug; jesuitism, jesuitry; pharisaism; Machiavelism, organized hypocrisy; crocodile tears, mealy-mouthedness^, quackery; charlatanism^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... 549; prevarication, equivocation, shuffling, fencing, evasion, fraud; suggestio falsi &c (lie) 546[Lat]; mystification &c (concealment) 528; simulation &c (imitation) 19; dissimulation, dissembling; deceit; blague[obs3]. sham; pretense, pretending, malingering. lip homage, lip service; mouth honor; hollowness; mere show, mere outside; duplicity, double dealing, insincerity, hypocrisy, cant, humbug; jesuitism, jesuitry; pharisaism; Machiavelism, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... that one is so ashamed of one's face that one dare not let it be seen in public, or it is an attempt to deceive the world into accepting you as something other than you are. It has the same effect on the observer that those sham oak beams and uprights that are so popular on the front of suburban houses have. They are not real beams or uprights. They do not support anything, or fill any useful function. They are only a thin ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... furnished in the most elegant style, and everything seemed to be calculated for love, pleasure, and good cheer. The service of the dining-room was made through a sham window in the wall, provided with a dumb-waiter revolving upon itself, and fitting the window so exactly that master and servants could not see each other. The drawing-room was decorated with magnificent looking-glasses, crystal chandeliers, girandoles in gilt, bronze, and with a splendid ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... been ruined by the Budget, I think it very kind of you to receive me so well. When I remember all the injuries you have suffered—how South Africa has been lost; how the gold mines have been thrown away; how all the splendid army which Mr. Brodrick got together has been reduced to a sham; and how, of course, we have got no navy of any kind whatever, not even a fishing smack, for the thirty-five millions a year we give the Admiralty; and when I remember that in spite of all these evils the taxes are so oppressive and so cruel that any self-respecting Conservative will ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... had a sham bedstead in that room? The idea of it riled up something besides sympathy in my bosom. I had rather see bare walls than a bedstead like the one he died on. Why don't they ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... desires are drawn towards knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasure—I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one. ...
— The Republic • Plato

... box out of her bosom, which she called good luck, she took out of it two large pearl pendants, giving them in like manner to Fortunata to view: "See," quoth she, "what 'tis to have a kind husband, I am sure no woman has better." "What," said Habinas, "hast thou put the sham on me? thou toldst me thou couldst be contented with glass beads; and for this trick, if I had a daughter I'd cut off her ears; tho' were there no women what were the rest worth? This is to piss ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... you do so, she's a very tatling woman. Whats the matter? How now? Mist.Page. O mistris Ford what haue you done? You'r sham'd, y'are ouerthrowne, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... door had no sooner closed upon her than Tilda stretched out a hand. The sick woman watched, panting feebly, making no sign. The purse—a cheap thing, stamped with forget-me-nots, and much worn at the edges where the papier-mache showed through its sham leather—contained a penny and a halfpenny; these, and in an inner stamp-pocket a scrap of paper, folded small, and ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... systems have arisen; in our own enlightened age, growing up by the side of Physics, Ethics, and other really progressive sciences, there is a weary waste of knowledge, falsely so-called. There are sham sciences which no logic has ever put to the test, in which the desire for knowledge invents the ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... much powder and energy should be wasted on a helpless farm-house, and dreaded to think what the real thing must he, if this was only sham. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... overwhelming—too much like a bomb. I think you must be one of the supermen one reads about. You would want your own way and nothing but your own way. Now, Freddie will roll through hoops and sham dead, and we shall be the happiest pair in the world. I am much too placid and mild to make you happy. You want somebody who would stand up to ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... to him that he had not put on his jacket, and resuming this, and proving its many buttons to be a sham, for it fastened in a feminine manner by means of a series of hooks and eyes, he made a bound to the settee, grinning with pleasure as he threw it open, dived down, and brought out a glistening ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... besides providing for the united attack on Holland, included Charles's undertaking to proclaim himself a Romanist and to reintroduce the Roman Catholic faith into England,—While Buckingham was sent to France to carry on the sham negotiations which led to the public treaties of the 31st of December 1670 and the 2nd of February 1672. He was much pleased with his reception by Louis XIV., declared that he had "more honours done him than ever were given to any subject," and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... regard me as a shilly-shallying pedant. On my part,' he added drily, 'I am not slow to retaliate. Every term I live I find the young man a less interesting animal. I regard the whole university system as a wretched sham. Knowledge! It has no more to do ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Morning's Operations Looked Like; Whether an Officers' Ward or a Men's Ward is the nicer; Who Deserves Stripes; C.O.'s Parade and its Terrors; Advantages of Volunteering for Night Duty; The Cushy Job of being in charge of a Sham Lunacy Case; Other Cushy Jobs less cushy than They Sounded; and so forth; until at last protests began to be voiced by the wearier folk ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... months and years have been passed in these proceedings, and the parties to the suit are exhausted, and the whole matter in dispute is worn out with age, then these men, as if they were the very heads of their profession, often introduce sham advocates along with themselves. And when they have arrived within the bar, and the fortune or safety of some one is at stake, and they ought to labour to ward off the sword of the executioner from some innocent man, or calamity and ruin, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... rights withstood," was surprised in his own house by major Weymies, who tore him away from his shrieking wife and children, marched him up to Cheraw court-house, and after exposing him to the insults of a sham trial, had him condemned and hung! The only charge ever exhibited against him was, that he had shot across Black river at one of Weymies' ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... than He gets. I want a love that holds out. I just hate shams," she went on, becoming more excited. "I don't care what fine names you give them—whether it's marriage, or education, or culture, or religion, if there's no heart in it, it's a sham, and I hate it. I hate a lie. But a thousand times more, do I hate a life that ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... conflict, by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them. In the case of Tetrao umbellus, a good observer (23. 'Land and Water,' July 25, 1868, p. 14.) goes so far as to believe that the battles of the male "are all a sham, performed to show themselves to the greatest advantage before the admiring females who assemble around; for I have never been able to find a maimed hero, and seldom more than a broken feather." I shall have to recur to this subject, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... wait. Besides, we need not imagine that it is possible to go on like this until our patience is exhausted. Sooner or later, flurried by my pestering, the Scarites refuses to sham dead. Scarcely is he laid on his back after a fall, when he turns over and takes to his heels, as though he judged a stratagem which succeeded so indifferently to ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... wrote a sham letter of condolence to the bereaved widow, and asked permission to go at once and console her. Had it been De Berney he would have gone, but with Madame Hanska he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... Will it be so with my thoughts? Dare I assert, as I sit writing here, with the wild waters slipping past the cabin windows, backwards and backwards ever, every plunge of the vessel one forward leap from the old world—worn-out world I had almost called it, of sham civilization and real penury—dare I hope ever to return and triumph? Shall I, after all, lay my bones among my own people, and hear the voices of freemen whisper in ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... there is the confidence trick, in which the rustic is beguiled by the honest stranger into trusting him. This trick was practised three hundred years ago. Or there is the ring-dropping trick, it is as old as the hills. Or there is the sham sailor—now very rarely met with. When we have another war he will come to the front again. We have still the cheating gambler, but he has always been with us. In King Charles the Second's time he was called a Ruffler, a Huff, or a Shabbaroon. The woman who now ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... Day there was a Triumph on the river at Westminster, with a sham-fight and a great shooting of guns and hurling of balls of wild-fire. The Queen was there, and the ambassadors of France and Venice, with the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel and Southampton. Master Carew took a wherry to Whitehall, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... treaty and alliance with France for mutual supports and for a Dutch war; and when various pretended obstacles and difficulties were surmounted, a sham treaty was concluded with their consent and approbation, containing every article of the former real treaty, except that of the king's change of religion. However, there was virtually involved, even in this treaty, the assuming of absolute government in England; for the support ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sallow, hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old man, with the sham teeth, they have a queer taste. THAT is what ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... docile, gay, and lovable, in the midst of this war for freedom on which they have intelligently entered. Last night, before "taps," there was the greatest noise in camp that I had ever heard, and I feared some riot. On going out, I found the most tumultuous sham-fight proceeding in total darkness, two companies playing like boys, beating tin cups for drums. When some of them saw me they seemed a little dismayed, and came and said, beseechingly,—"Gunnel, Sah, you hab no objection to we playin', Sah?"—which objection I disclaimed; ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... had apprised him that Harrison with a large force was at Sandusky, about sixty miles distant. The chief proposed that the Indians should gain the road which led from Sandusky to Fort Meigs and that a sham battle should be enacted there to deceive the garrison, who would naturally suppose that some of Harrison's force, coming to the fort, were being attacked. They would hasten to the assistance of their comrades, ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond

... he has to sham delite At weary speeches nite by nite, And to administer the Law Without no blunders or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and a melodramatic situation. They should learn—and that they can only learn by cultivation—to discern with joy and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true, and to turn ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was," gasped the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plunder!' blast him! That would have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! He had me there—but he hadn't devil enough in him to make an end of me. Not ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... so often headed: 'To Lady Kenmure, under illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? Think of having to nurse your humbug of a husband through a shammed illness. Think of having to take a hand in sending in a sham doctor's certificate because your husband was too much of a time-server to go to Edinburgh to give his vote for a persecuted church. Think of having to wear the title and decoration your husband had purchased for you ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... told him that the rest of the Aesir were gone to the Peacestead—a broad, green plain which lay just outside the city. This was the playground of the Aesir, where they practiced trials of skill one with another, and held tournaments and sham fights. These last were always conducted in the gentlest and most honorable manner; for the strongest law of the Peacestead was, that no angry blow should be struck, or spiteful word spoken, upon the sacred field; and for this reason ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... to go into the highways and byways, and compel people to come in. Was he doing this? Or were not they rather compelling him to keep out—outside their doors at any rate? He began to have an uneasy feeling as though ere long, unless he kept a sharp look out, he should drift into being a sham. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... who in the depths of the country led such a wretched life of struggles, of suppressed rebellion, of unuttered poetry, who to get away from Lousteau had climbed the highest and steepest peak of her scorn, and who would not have come down if she had seen the sham Byron at her feet, suddenly stepped off it as she recollected ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... and much time was killed there in conversation, card-playing, and chess. Among the group assembled, one crisp afternoon in February, was an old gentleman, called Shamsundar Ghosh, and known to hosts of friends as "Sham Babu". He was head clerk in a Calcutta merchant's office, drawing Rs. 60 a month (L48 a year at par), which sufficed for the support of his wife and a son and daughter, respectively named Susil and Shaibalini. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... value beyond the sham: As well the counter as coin, I submit, When your table's a hat, and ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... sick list, including the first and third lieutenant, the master, and several of the youngsters, all like myself, suffering from the influenza. The sailors have christened it the Dardanelles fever; and the men who are well, swear the others sham illness, in order to escape the working through the Hellespont. Should the captain get impatient and resolve to beat up, there will be no end to the tacking, and the orders, "Her helm's a lee, and mainsail haul," will be ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... "how funny! My name is Vane too—Carol Vane. It's not a sham one either, such as a lot of girls like me take. It's my own—at least, I have always been called Carol, and Vane ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... sense of interpretation of the splendid scores of life. In fact again, a man must achieve his own individuality before he can realise that the sense of his separateness which he has laboured under so long is a sham and ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... Where is the term that's claptrappier? Means out of temper, or out of your mind. Boot-black or old crossing-sweeper's far happier, Tied to his task in the town—as you'll find. Picking up coppers far better than picking up Shells by the sea, or sham friends on the snore. Bah! What have buffers to do with such kicking-up Heels? It's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... letter with leave to part, and then our ship quitted the fleet and steered for England. The other two paquets he still detained, carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed some time to exercise the men in sham attacks upon sham forts, then alter'd his mind as to besieging Louisburg, and return'd to New York, with all his troops, together with the two paquets above mentioned, and all their passengers! During his absence ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... as mad as a March hare! If I thought you were a gentleman, I'd—by Jove, I will, too! See here, you fellow: I'll fight you for it—pistols, or any thing. Come, now. I'll drop all considerations of rank. I'll treat you as if you were a real count, and not a sham one. Come, now. What do you say? Shall we have it out? Pistols—in the woods there. You've got all your infernal crew around you, you know. Well? What? You ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... dressed well, and moved in good society, by no means founded thereon his claim to be called a gentleman. He never liked L—, because he saw that he had no principle whatever; that all about him was mere sham. The consequence was that he was hardly civil to him, a circumstance which L—was slow ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... cloudy duke! we understand each other— And without words. What could I not unriddle, Wherefore the daughter should be sent for hither, Why first he, and no other should be chosen To fetch her hither? This sham of betrothing her To a bridegroom [9], whom no one knows—No! no! This may blind others! I see through thee, brother! But it beseems thee not to draw a card At such a game. Not yet! It all remains Mutely delivered up to my finessing. Well—thou ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... for damages. Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treason, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases, wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual, and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... resignation," said the young Viscount de Segur. At Paris curiosity was the prevalent feeling; but the jokes were bitter. "The comptroller-general has raised a new troop of comedians; the first performance will take place on Monday the 20th instant," said a sham play-bill: "they will give us the principal piece False Confidences, followed by Forced Consent and an allegorical ballot, composed by M. de Calonne, entitled The Tub of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... sham. Perhaps I have indulged her too much, and not begun early enough to subdue her violent temper. She is very wilful, and needs ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped our plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), and all the "unmeaning repetition" of silly little sham Gothic churches and meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at all in them, that men had thrust into the face of their sweated God, even as they thrust cheap food into the ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... our hotel-window, turn now from the sham picturesqueness of the Church to the real and unconscious picturesqueness of every day. It is the orange-season, and beneath us streams an endless procession of men, women, and children, each bearing on the head a great ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... another's assertion or tale. To assist a man in cheating. The file kidded the joskin with sham books, and his pall capped; the deep one cheated the countryman with false cards, and his ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were, mechanically to her hand. This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful power! A rush of disgust came over her. All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and sham. Everybody then would look at that little ring; and she was a coward, saving herself from them! When she was alone again, she slipped it off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell. Only this little shining ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... I was 'bleeged to do it?" retorted Peter, with a pout that might have emulated that of his wife on the occasion of their engagement. "D'you s'pose dem raskils don' know a real kick from a sham one? I was marciful too, for if I'd kicked as I could, dere wouldn't be a whole bone in your carcass at dis momint! You's got to larn to be grateful, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... pockets, he came across the pocketbook, with its sham contents, of which mention has already ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... would be obliged to use. The logic of his whole position would convert him into an enemy of the machine, in so far as the machine was using any governmental function for private, special, or partisan purposes. The real "Boss" would destroy the sham "Bosses"; and no other means, as yet suggested, will, I believe, be sufficient to accomplish such ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... eye, its external appearance is more pleasing than that of the building we just left. The one central and four terminal towers, with their open, kiosk-like tops, are really graceful, and the slender spires which surmount them are preferable to the sham of sheet-iron turrets. Thanks, too, to the necessity of projecting an annex for hydraulic engines from one side of the middle, the building is distinguished by the possession of a front. The main cornice is forty feet in height upon the outside; the interior ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... shoddyism, and it is difficult at times to distinguish the real from the sham. The woman who is covered with jewelry, looking like a travelling doorplate, is the kind from whom we expect the bow to vary, in coldness or cordiality, according to the clothes we wear, or the entertainments we are able to give. With such people money means everything, brains and breeding being ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt

... learnt—though this knowledge may not have passed beyond the stage of feeling—that the universe is one simple texture, in which all things have their explanation and their place. Combing out the confusions which enmesh it, losing its sham and separate life and finding its true life there, it will know what to love and how to act. The goal of this process, which has been called entrance into the freedom of the Will of God, is the state described ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... similar dangers surround our inner culture and our spiritual life, and that an intellectual underworld threatens our time, which demands a no less rigorous fight until its vice is wiped out. The vice of the social underworld gives a sham satisfaction to the human desire for sensual life; the vice of the intellectual underworld gives the same sham fulfilment to the human longing for knowledge and for truth. The infectious germs which it spreads in the realm ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... day she had truly loved him, for she had been a wise observer of men and affairs, and Lester had always appealed to her as a real man. He was so sane, she thought, so calm. He was always intolerant of sham, and she liked him for it. He was inclined to wave aside the petty little frivolities of common society conversation, and to talk of simple and homely things. Many and many a time, in years past, they had ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... Is your religious belief a sham or conviction? Do you sing on Sunday, "we shall know each other there," or do you make it a point to know and love your brother here, ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... was appointed for the trial of the unknown device, and the boys separated with their curiosity on tiptoe as to the nature of the other improved method of swimming. They had no idea that it was a humbug, for "Ben" never practised sham. He was so much of a genius that, no doubt, he had something ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... the feeble bearer of a great name, was emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and Solferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as it always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men. And such were the German leaders,—William, strong, upright, warlike, "every inch a king;" Von Roon, Minister of War, a master of administrative detail; Bismarck, the master ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... saw no safer course than to help on the sham. "Right," he said again; "only, mother, dear, how shall ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... arming and fighting—like the waves of the flowing tide in a sou'-wester, Sunday came in upon Sunday, roaring on his flat, defenceless shore, Sunday behind Sunday rose towering, in awful perspective, away to the verge of an infinite horizon—Sunday after Sunday of dishonesty and sham—yes, hypocrisy, far worse than any idolatry. To begin now, and in such circumstances, to study the evidences of Christianity, were about as reasonable as to send a man, whose children were crying for their dinner, off to China ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... show. If it ever happen that they fall, as it generally does, they will at once understand how friendless they are. So they say Tarquin observed in his exile that he never knew which of his friends were real and which sham, until he had ceased to be able to repay either. Though what surprises me is that a man of his proud and overbearing character should have a friend at all. And as it was his character that prevented his having genuine friends, so it often happens ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... "and always she says: 'Well, let it be!' She takes her losses, Curly, and sometimes she forgets. But if she ever forgets what is in my heart tonight—if she forgets that—then life is never worth while to her again. There's nothing to do then—it's all a sham and a fraud. If that's what life means I don't want to live ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... black-walnut or oak or mahogany. If that isn't greeting him with lying lips and a deceitful heart, the moral law isn't as clear as it ought to be. You may think it's of no consequence, certainly not worth making a fuss about, but I tell you this spirit of sham that pervades our whole social structure, that more and more obtrudes itself in every department of life, comes from the bottomless pit, and will carry us all thither, unless we resist it, even in these milder manifestations, as we would resist the Father of Lies himself. Truth ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... darkened heavens, is not the ample-bosomed, begarneted, crimson-lipped Minna angling in its gaudy dance decoy in the Behrenstrasse; nor the satin-clad, pencilled-eyed Amelie ogling from her "reserved" table in the silly sham called Moulin Rouge; nor yet the more baby-glanced, shirtwaisted Ertrude laughing in the duntoned Cafe Lang. Berlin is not she who beckons by night in the Friedrichstrasse; nor the frowsy she who sings in the bier-cabarets that hover about ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... difference, the evidence of mind and taste, instead of mere money, is seen on every side. Simplicity and beauty are united as far as possible. Everything is the best of its kind and devoid of veneer and sham. There is no lavish and vulgar profusion, and there is a harmony of color and decoration that makes every room a picture in itself. Moreover, the house does not grow suddenly shabby after you leave those parts ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... Occasionally sham fights are inaugurated, when brave meets brave in all the fierceness of battle array to go through the motions of Indian warfare, circling around the foe, or bunching together, come down on the enemy with startling suddenness, discharging a cloud of arrows, then, wheeling ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... temperance and asceticism.—Asceticism looks like temperance. People who practice it often pride themselves upon it. But it is a hollow sham. And it has done much to bring discredit upon temperance, for which it tries to pass. What then is the difference between temperance and asceticism? Both control appetite. Both are opposed to intemperance. But they differ in the ends at which they aim. Temperance controls ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... to them idle and of rather puerile subtlety. They had seen the ruin of most of the systems built up a priori by daring philosophers, and deemed it more prudent to listen to the advice given by Kirchhoff and "to substitute the description of facts for a sham explanation of nature." ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... house with her, I'm in love with her, and it's only just now, this minute, that I've, not understood, but really seen her. I have seen her and I lifted up my hands in amazement. Don't look at me, please, with that sham sarcastic smile, which does not suit your sober features. Well, now, I suppose you want to remind me of Annushka. What of it? I don't deny it. Annushkas are on my poor level. And long life to all Annushkas and Zoyas and even Augustina Christianovnas! You ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... Germany, she knew very well what she was about in backing up Austria-Hungary in this matter.... Servian concessions were all a sham. Servia proved that she well knew that they were insufficient to satisfy the legitimate demands of Austria-Hungary by the fact that before making her offer she had ordered mobilization and retirement of ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... have come from the hardy population of Maine, whose entire fighting force, as shown by the muster-rolls, was then but 2,855. [Footnote: Parsons, Life of Pepperrell, 54.] Perhaps there was not one officer among them whose experience of war extended beyond a drill on muster day and the sham fight that closed the performance, when it generally happened that the rustic warriors were treated with rum at the charge of their captain, to put them in good humor, and so induce them to obey the word ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... received the highest number of electoral votes, it would have been a plain and easy matter for the letter of the Constitution to have expressed this spirit, or indeed to have done away altogether with this machinery of a sham election. The Jackson men had only to state their argument in order to expose its hollowness; for they said substantially that the Constitution established an election without an option; that the electors were to vote for a person predestined by an earlier occurrence to receive their ballots. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... house, but quiet in the movements of all persons in the room; speaking, not in a whisper, but in a low and gentle voice; walking carefully, not in a silk dress nor in creaky shoes, but not on tiptoe, for there is a fussy sham quietness which disturbs the sick far more ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... plan than that, sir,' broke in Ken quickly. 'Put Horan and myself in the boat. Give us some pistols. We'll sham shipwrecked. Most of us can hide in the bottom of the boat. The launch won't have much of a crew. With a rush we ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... see them in the stereoscope. They will be surprised to be told that they see most objects as large as they appear in Nature. A few simple experiments will show how what we see in ordinary vision is modified in our perceptions by what we think we see. We made a sham stereoscope, the other day, with no glasses, and an opening in the place where the pictures belong, about the size of one of the common stereoscopic pictures. Through this we got a very ample view of the town of Cambridge, including Mount Auburn and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... the old French quarter, Just out of Rampart street, I wend my way At close of day Unto the quaint retreat Where lives the Voodoo Doctor By some esteemed a sham, Yet I'll declare there's none elsewhere So skilled as Doctor Sam With the claws of a deviled crawfish, The juice of the prickly prune, And the quivering dew From a yarb that grew In the light of a ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... to confederates, and Higli Pasha was too contemptible a coadjutor. Nahoum had faith in no one save Mizraim the Chief Eunuch, but Mizraim alone was better than a thousand; and he was secret—and terrible. Yet Higli had a conviction that Nahoum's alliance with David was a sham, and that David would pay the price of misplaced confidence one day. More than once when David's plans had had a set-back, Higli had contrived a meeting with Nahoum, to judge ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his carcass; and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing for me to find myself hanged; and for what, I beseech you? for murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. But if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself, still that great man will not be much like Wordsworth—the great man will not be Wordsworth's doppelganger. If not impar (as you say) he will be dispar; and why, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... old framed print of a large house, as much of a sham castle as the nature of things would permit; and beneath were the words 'Cheveleigh, the seat ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... said the attendant, "the captain don't; but this chap does. I haven't seen what I have amongst the sick and wounded without picking up a little, and I say Master Corporal here's doing a bit o' sham ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman, she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that the majesty of their woodland aisles—so unlike this pillared sham—had taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature blonde. She began to loathe herself ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... bold, miss,' went on Joe, 'because you seemed anxious about Jack, and I would not lose time. Well, Jack has been and given the governor the sack,—says he has colic too; but we know that is a sham. My mate saw him in Lisson Grove last night. He was walking along, his hands in his pockets, when Ned pounces on him. "What are you up to, Jack?" he says. "Why haven't you turned up at our place? The governor's in a precious wax, I ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... do their duties. Your lessons must be perfect; your drawers kept in order; your clothes mended; you must be punctual at school and orderly at home; do you hear? And if all this is not done, I shall take all your pretended religion for nothing but a sham, and shall pay no respect to it at all. Now go to bed and act religion for a month before I hear you ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... know," and by now her eyes were blinded by the tears clinging to her lashes. "You—you humiliated yourself to serve me; you—you were obliged to pawn something in security for this food. I—I saw you—your excuse for leaving me outside was just a sham. You had no money. I watched through the window, and—and I almost ran away, only my ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... been most friendly since the night I had dug him out from under the catmen, and I knew no way to refuse without exposing myself for the sham trader I was. But I was deathly apprehensive. Even with Rakhal I had never entered ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... and occasional gusts of rolling smoke, it was an easy matter to creep upon the fireman unawares and to bring him to the ground stunned and helpless. That accomplished, Max immediately proceeded to remove the man's tunic and helmet. Dale then understood—it was to be the ruse of the sham sentry outside ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... ascend the valley of a tributary of the Lot, to a spot where it flows out of a pool of unknown depth, called the Gouffre de Lantouy. The road passed under the village of Savagnac, built upon the hillside. A Renaissance castle with sham machicolations, little chambers. with their projecting floors resting on brackets turrets on culs de lampe and with extinguisher roofs, and a high terrace overgrown with vines and fig-trees left to fight their own battle, lorded it over all the other houses, like a sunflower in an onion-bed. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... but a few inches from the wall at the end of the room. This wall is false, and generally of wood. It is built some three or four feet from the real wall of the room, thus forming a closet. As the whole room is papered and but dimly lighted, a visitor cannot detect the fact that it is a sham. A panel, which slides noiselessly and rapidly, is arranged in the false wall, and the chair with the visitor's clothing upon it is placed just in front of it. While the visitor's attention is engaged in ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... these lovers for not carrying out their intention, whether or not it could be pronounced a good one. "Man should carry his best energies into the game of life, whether the stake he is playing for be good or bad—a reality or a sham. As a test of energy, the one has no ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... junior is compelled, for the sake of appearances, to furnish his shelves with law books, and cover his table with counterfeit briefs. Under the Stuarts, he placed a bowl of spurious money amongst the sham papers that lay ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... by sham education, such as is compulsorily given to the masses of the people, we can proceed to examine into the average results effected by more genuine and efficient systems of cramming and instruction. It is not in ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... and completely, and had the governor thereof been as brave as he who met his death in the castle of Porto Bello, there might have been a different tale to tell. As it was, he surrendered it in a most cowardly fashion, merely stipulating that there should be a sham attack by the buccaneers, whereby his credit might be saved. And so Saint ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... part that was performed, was the offering of a sham kangaroo, made of grass, to the fifteen lads, who were still seated as before. One man brought the kangaroo, and a second carried some brushwood, besides having one or two flowering shrubs stuck through his nose, and both seemed to stagger under the weight of their ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... but our modern copyists of Gothic architecture often build solid buttresses capped with weighty pinnacles, to support a wooden roof which has no outward thrust to render them necessary; and even think they ornament their buildings by adding sham spouts of carved stone, while modern waterpipes, stuck on without any attempt at harmony, do the real duty. So, when railways superseded coaches, it was thought necessary to build the first-class carriages to imitate a number of coach-bodies ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect.... They have an earnest purpose, born of conviction that their position and condition are not fully assured, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... in a fatherly manner—a fatherly manner that was as much of a sham as anything else about him—I don't know whether I was more incensed at him or his victim, who received it with evident pride and satisfaction. Nevertheless he ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... endure the daily contact of a social villain, if it be not to have all human virtue as her ally when she snaps the tie that binds her to him, and vindicates the Divine validity of marriage by breaking the fetters of the fatal sham? What is involved in the right of the Magdalen to be a woman redeemed and disenthralled from the bondage of sin? What but the entire reconstruction of society with purity for a law and charity for the executive; with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... leaving her real errand behind. Don't let everybody, just because the door is open, rush in without any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming to. A sham trade, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it. I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We shan't get them back again, this generation. The homes are going. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... naturally want every man who can be spared from civilian life and can be utilized for military operations. It has consequently often seemed necessary for law-makers to be narrow and hard toward the obviously sincere for fear of being too easy and lenient with those suspected of having sham consciences. ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle

... could have cried aloud as she listened. What would that proud lady-mother and that haughty sister say if they but knew how he had tricked her into a sham marriage, and abandoned her then and there? Oh, would they feel pity for ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... the aristocracy of Geneva; neither his liberality nor his wit secured him the good-will of the patriots placed out of the sphere of his influence; they only saw him a sham philosopher, without principles and solidity; a courtier, the slave of rank and fashion; the corrupter of their country, of which he made a jest. Quand je secoue ma perruque, he used to say, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... Charlie's piece of paper fell out on the floor. I had forgotten all about it. Wasn't it a mercy it did not drop while I was with Lady Carriston? This was all it was: "Come down to tea half-an-hour earlier; shall sham a hurt wrist to be back from shooting in ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... one's self was not to be thought of, for what defence is possible to a sham bear against a dozen genuine dogs? Paul could use neither his teeth nor his claws to any purpose, while the dogs could use theirs, as he presently discovered, with ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... field of human knowledge which he has not been among the first to explore; no heights of speculation which he has not scaled; no problem of the world over which he is not fruitfully toiling. Moreover, his thoroughness is the envy of the students of all other countries, and his hatred of sham scholarship ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... owner shrink back. "I was a fool, as you say. But my mistake was that I trusted you. I believed in your pretended friendship for me. I thought you were as honest and honorable as you seemed to be. I didn't know that your religion was all such a rotten sham. I have never cared that you grew rich while I remained poor. All these years I have been sorry for you because I have had so much of the happiness and contentment and peace that you have lost. But you must understand, ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping something he could ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... Catholics, mighty few went to church at all, and most of them were resentful, often bitter, toward the church and hostile toward all kinds of organized religion. They accused the church of not doing its duty toward them, and they declared that organized religion was a sham and a hypocrisy. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... only in all, so far as appears to be known. They occur in the seals of Hen. III., Edward I., Alexander II. of Scotland, and Hugh de Vere. Actual examples of such headpieces are certainly of the utmost rarity. There is a very genuine one in the Tower, and another at Warwick Castle. Some sham ones were in the Helmet and Mail Exhibition, held in the rooms of the Institute in 1880, and are suitably exposed in the illustrated catalogue of this interesting collection.” “Banded mail,” as it is called, has been one of the archæological ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... manager, when all had been served with guns and had taken their places, "those weapons of yours are only dummies. I don't want you lads fooling with powder even in a sham battle. I won't be responsible for your eyes. My regular actors will do all the firing necessary, and they will make smoke enough to cover the film. All I want you fellows to do is aim and pull the trigger. Are you ready now, ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... sky-scraper. Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education was the important thing; but, since we've all three of us got mediocre minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don't you suppose I see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we're surrounded with? That's why I want to buy a place at the very top, where I shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture, like those Renaissance women you're ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... less successful in manufacturing enthusiasm. When one convention of young Democrats failed, for want of support, Douglas saved the situation only by explaining that hard-working Democrats could not leave their employment to go gadding. They preferred to leave noise and sham to their opponents, knowing that in the end "the quiet but certain influence of truth and correct principles" would prevail.[112] And when the Whigs unwittingly held a great demonstration for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," on the birthday of King ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... is but the sheep's clothing covering the wolfish heart, or the white paint hiding the corruption of the sepulchre. It is easy enough to assume the character and manner of a Christian, but to live the Christian life is not so easy. A man can make a sham diamond in a very short time, but the real gem must lie for ages in the earth before it can sparkle with perfect purity. We have far too many of these quickly made Christians amongst us, who have never brought forth fruits meet for repentance, nor gone through the fire of trial, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... Connecticut are Yankee notions, nutmegs made of wood and clocks that won't go. Now, your Civil Service Reform is just such another Yankee notion; it's a wooden nutmeg; it's a clock with a show case and sham works. And you know it! You are precisely the old-school Connecticut peddler. You have gone about peddling your wooden nutmegs until you have got yourself into Congress, and now you pull them out of your pockets and not ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... supplement the old linen-pattern panels of the pulpit, to be coloured to match the old work. "Time," he said, "will bring them all together." Possibly the lapse of two hundred years may do so, but I saw at once that he was right in the principle that no sham should be tolerated in honest work, more especially in a sacred building. We objected also to a new chimney which surmounted the junction of the nave and choir exteriorly: it seemed to smack of domestic detail; but here again he satisfied us by saying that, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory



Words linked to "Sham" :   imitation, belie, cheater, mouth, ringer, Potemkin village, play, play possum, make believe, dissemble, name dropper, fake book, beguiler, imitative, trickster, cheat, fake, bull, counterfeit, misrepresent, bullshit, deceiver, make, feint, talk through one's hat, slicker, take a dive, act



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