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Inefficient   Listen
adjective
Inefficient  adj.  
1.
Not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired, or achieiving the effect by unnnecessary and excessive expenditure of resources; inefficacious; as, inefficient means or measures; inefficient methods are too expensive.
2.
Incapable of, or indisposed to, effective action; habitually slack or remiss; effecting little or nothing; as, inefficient workmen; an inefficient administrator.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inefficient" Quotes from Famous Books



... modify her formula or something. Else we'll never get rich. Slow down the rate of growth, dilute it—ought to be more profitable too.... Have to find out how cheaply the inoculant can be produced—no more inefficient hand methods.... Of course the fastness of growth wouldnt affect the sale to farmers—help it in fact. No doubt she'd had more than I originally thought in that aspect, I conceded generously. We ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... generals and a number of privates. When the story was brought to Lincoln, he said it was too bad about the men. Someone suggested that it was a pity the generals had been taken, but Lincoln said that did not matter much, as he could make some more. Joffre has made it uncomfortable for the inefficient generals in France. Many of them have lost their commands and most of them live in fear of his quiet but ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... is that one revels in the possibility of metempsychosis and pictures him as being born again to some dreary and thankless occupation, a scavenger or a sewer-cleaner, or, better still, penned in the body of some absurd and inefficient animal, a slug or a jelly-fish, where he might learn to be passive ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... with the small lower middle-class household knows how often the life of the little "general" resembles that of an animal rather than a human being. All day long she drudges in a muddling, inefficient way, continually scolded for her inefficiency yet never really taught how to do anything properly. Her work is never done, for she is always at the beck and call of her employers; yet she lives apart in social isolation, is referred to contemptuously ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... very inefficient one, its energy being small for the current used, as compared with a revolving motor of the usual kind. But it has the advantage of being ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... the chances were that de Barral should have fallen upon a perfectly harmless, naive, usual, inefficient specimen of respectable governess for his daughter; or on a commonplace silly adventuress who would have tried, say, to marry him or work some other sort of common mischief in a small way. Or again he might have chanced on a model of all the virtues, or the repository of all knowledge, or ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... really laid hold of the grace of God, because he has not been taught to trust only to the grace of God to lead and preserve him in the way of life. He will begin to distrust the Gospel as a very inefficient instrument, and this will lead him to become indifferent to it, and finally fall away from it entirely. A real danger of apostasy and despair exists wherever the Roman dogma of man's natural free ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... overwhelmingly agricultural. Major impediments to growth include frequent cyclones and floods, government interference with the economy, a rapidly growing labor force that cannot be absorbed by agriculture, a low level of industrialization, failure to fully exploit energy resources (natural gas), and inefficient and inadequate power supplies. An excellent rice crop and expansion of the export garment industry helped growth in FY91/92. Policy reforms intended to reduce government regulation of private industry and promote public-sector efficiency ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... industrial opportunity and social justice. This they cannot attain until they be permitted to enter the higher pursuits of labor. Two reasons are given for failure to enter these: first, that Negro labor is unstable and inefficient; and second, that white men will protest. Organized labor, however, has done nothing to help the blacks. Yet it is a fact that accustomed to the easy-going toil of the plantation, the blacks have not shown the same efficiency ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... while his brothers' feathers go some distance. In order to invalidate this view of himself the distribution of the feathers is put off on chance, as if to a higher determining power. This has always been a favorite excuse with lazy and inefficient people. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... and 350 flat-bottomed transports built for the conveyance of an invading army to England. These demands were perforce complied with. Nevertheless Napoleon was far from satisfied with the State-Government, which he regarded as inefficient ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... information. The embassy in a foreign country, as a watching, remonstrating, proposing extension of its country of origin, a sort of eye and finger at the heart of the host country, is now clumsy, unnecessary, inefficient, and dangerous. For most routine work, for reports of all sorts, for legal action, and so forth, on behalf of traveling nationals, the consular service is adequate, or can easily be made adequate. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... press a trigger. And that time, he felt equally sure, would come sooner or later. His muscles were growing cramped. He could not forever double himself up like a four-bladed jackknife behind the altogether inefficient shelter of the rock. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... glass tube, that instrument of torture, was in a corner; and among other furniture, the dotor himself was seen seated, unconcernedly enjoying his pipe, and who, having found that human means were inefficient, had had recourse to supernatural, and had prescribed, as a last resource, the talisman, which it was my fate to write. A new dervish excited new hopes, for I saw that I produced much stir as I entered the sick room, I asked for paper with an air of authority, as if I felt great ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... a machine ship is working at a lathe. An officer of the company comes into the shop, a gentleman in white collar and good clothes! He stands behind the mechanic and "curses him out" because his work is inefficient. When he turns away, the man at the lathe says, "Who was that guy anyway? What business has he to teach me my job?" Instead of accepting the criticism, he resents what he considers unwarranted interference by a man in ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have to walk across a cold room at night—refinement of torture—in order to turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone enough to condemn these establishments, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... The woman's crime in marrying for support. Her blunder in marrying an inefficient man for love. The proper union. Mutual aid of husband and wife. Manipulating a husband. By deceit. By tact. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... the union was congenial, and added greatly to the power and resources of the latter. The duchies of Alencon and Berry more than equalled in extent the actual domain of the King of Navarre; for, from the time when Ferdinand the Catholic (in July, 1512) wrested from brave Catharine of Foix and her inefficient husband John[230] all their possessions on the southern slope of the Pyrenees,[231] the authority of the titular monarch was respected only in the mountainous district of which Pau was the capital, and to which the names of Bearn or French Navarre are indifferently applied. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... leave his church, will lessen the calls on his people, will enable them to raise their ministers' incomes, and eventually confer much happiness on the churches, and relieve them from pressing difficulties; whereas the systems now adopted are very inefficient, and will take three times as long to get rid of the existing burdens. I would also suggest, for the prevention of debts being again accumulated, that no chapel be allowed to be erected without advancing half the money required for building it, ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... more. If we could infuse the spirit of this kind of discipline into family and school life, making it systematic and continuous from the earliest years, there would be fewer morally "slack-twisted" little creatures growing up into inefficient, bloodless manhood and womanhood. It would be a good deal of trouble; but then, life is a good deal of trouble anyway, if you come to that. We cannot expect to swallow the universe like a pill, and travel on through the world ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... the titles of vice-admiral and rear-admiral. To this tribunal were committed fishing disputes in general, and the maintenance of peace among sailors and fishermen. It may be supposed that these rough sailors were both corrupt and inefficient. "I must be a pretty sort of a judge if I could not do justice to myself," said one west country sailor, when charged with delivering an interested judgment. At the close of the season the judges disappeared, together with their cargoes ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... returning home, rushed to my room, fell upon my knees, and implored my Father to inflict at once the punishment due to lukewarmness and apostasy. How vain had been all my previous desire to distinguish myself—how arrogant my pretensions—how inefficient my weak attempts! I was not worthy of the commission with which I had been invested, and I besought heaven to degrade the wretch who could not speak at the seasonable moment, and to bestow it upon one worthier of its love, and abler to perform ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... deepened by the fact that she would not be able to go with Laura and Violet to Three Towers Hall, a boarding school to which she had wanted to go all her life. The high school in North Bend was notoriously poor and inefficient, and the girls had set their hearts on attending Three Towers in the fall. And now, because of the broken statue, Billie could ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler

... does not denote decided force of character, or energy of constitution, yet it has a certain sphere of normal action which is essential to the harmony of mind and body. If this region is largely developed, the constitution is languid, inefficient, sensitive, and abnormally disposed. But if it be deficient, the volitive energies preponderate, and there is a lack of those susceptibilities of constitution, which prevent excessive waste. The ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... the shelter of the hut waited, and only Buck and Blue Grass Pete stood near the blanket-covered doorway. There was little enough confidence in the inefficient shelter of the hut, but it was their natural retreat and so they accepted it. Then the moment of tension passed, and Buck, glancing swiftly round the hut, seized a hammer and hastily secured the covering ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... with these crazy dreams, it was because of his secret discontent with the Commune itself. He had lost all confidence in its members, he felt it was inefficient, drawn this way and that by so many conflicting elements, losing its head and becoming purposeless and driveling as it saw the near approach of the peril with which it was menaced. Of the social reforms it had pledged itself to it had not been able to accomplish a single one, and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... stated my conviction, and the reasons for it, that Socialism is essentially undemocratic and unChristian, as well as unAmerican. Yet after all it is in the practical realm of experience that it has proved to be most lacking and inefficient. To prove this, it is hardly necessary to point to the classic illustrations of the utter failure of Socialism when actually tried in France under the leadership of Louis Blanc and Albert during the days of the Second Republic in the year 1848, or again when tried ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers

... wanted sense, had not his situation been incurably absurd. In his young time he had served creditably enough against the Turks; twice commanded the REICHS-Army in the Marlborough Wars, and did at least testify his indignation at the inefficient state of it. His Foreign Politics, so called, were not madder than those of others. Bremen and Verden he had bought a bargain; and it was natural to protect them by such resources as he had, English or other. Then there was the World-Spectre of the Pretender, stretching huge ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... next to Macedonia as the poorest component in the old Yugoslav federation. Although agriculture has been almost all in private hands, farms have been small and inefficient, and the republic traditionally has been a net importer of food. Industry has been greatly overstaffed, one reflection of the rigidities of Communist central planning and management. Tito had pushed the development of military industries in the republic with the result that Bosnia hosted ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... well know, I have not always been an enthusiast on the subject of teaching. The task of cramming knowledge into these self-sufficient, inefficient youngsters of both sexes discourages me at times. The more stupid they are, the less they are aware of it. If my department were geography or mathematics, I believe I should feel that I was accomplishing something, for in those branches application and industry work wonders; but in English literature ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... stewardess h'is, ma'am," she explained, "and most h'inefficient! I told the Captain when she come aboard that I didn't 'ave much opinion of her, and now he'll see how it h'is. I'm h'ashamed that such a thing should 'appen on the 'Spartacus,' ma'am,—I h'am, h'indeed. H'it never would 'ave ben so h'under h'Eliza, ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... returned to their section at the outbreak of war. The loss of New Orleans, our only large city, aggravated this trouble, and we had no means of repairing the long lines of railway, nor the plant. Even when unbroken by raids, wear and tear rendered them inefficient at an early period of the struggle. This had a more direct influence on the sudden downfall of the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... let us business men get behind the churches and their preachers. Never mind if they are not perfect. Never mind if their theology is out of date. This only means that were they efficient they would do very much more. The safety of all we have is due to the churches, even in their present inefficient and inactive state. By all that we hold dear, let us from this very day give more time, money and thought to the churches, for upon these the value of all we ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... that when the Italians entered Rome and made it the capital of their kingdom they did not drive out the French troops, which had already been withdrawn; they drove out the papal troops, the picturesque and inefficient foreign volunteers who remained behind. Every memorial of that event, therefore, is a blow at the Church, so far as the Church is identified with the lost temporal power. One of the chief avenues is named Twenty-second September Street because the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... with lighter and more powerful engines and longer runways than by refining the airplane. Fuel economy of an engine has ceased to be the deciding factor. Higher utilization of a high speed Jet at least in part offsets the inefficient use of fuel. The only time the Diesel had a chance was from the middle 20's perhaps on thru WW-2 for certain things due to gasoline shortage. To sum it up, the thing that licked them worst was the use of a single valve for inlet and ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... the signal and ordered a further supply of the beer for which Mr. Keggs had a plebian and unbutlerlike fondness. His companion turned the conversation to the prospects of one of that group of inefficient middleweights whom Steve so heartily despised, between whom and another of the same degraded band a ten-round contest had been arranged and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... principle; he would compromise cheerfully on a method which did not mean surrender of the principle. He perceived that there were in political life many bad men who were thoroughly efficient and many good men who would have liked to accomplish high results but who were thoroughly inefficient. He realized that if he wished to accomplish anything for the country his business was to combine decency and efficiency; to be a thoroughly practical man of high ideals who did his best to reduce those ideals to actual practice. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... early in the spring of 1782, these savage incursions became so frequent and galling, and the common mode of fighting the Indians on the line of frontier, when forced to do so in self-defense, proved so inefficient, that it was found absolutely necessary to carry the war into the country of the enemy. For this purpose an expedition against the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky, was gotten up in May, and put under the command of Colonel William Crawford, a brave soldier ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... would be the gravest mistake that you could possibly make; for we, who are natives of the greatest fighting nation that the world has ever known, can teach you much in the art of war, your knowledge of which is of the slightest. Your weapons are poor and inefficient, and you know nothing of strategy and generalship; but we can instruct you in those important matters, and also teach you how to make new and powerful weapons, by means of which you will be able effectually to subjugate the nations which now threaten you. Say, then, will you destroy us, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... to Algerines and pirates of all kinds, and the audacity which seems to mark their acts, are good evidence of the inefficient state of our navy in King Charles's reign. Witness the following extract. 'LYME, April 21, 1679.—Yesterday, a small vessel called the William and Sarah, bound for Holland from Morlaix, put in here to avoid two Turks men-of-war, as he very much suspects them to be, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... yet but fairly commenced, when a break in the 'piff-paff' chorus warned Andreas that he was losing influence, women and men were handing on a paper and bending their heads over it; their responses hushed altogether, or were ludicrously inefficient. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... cost of labor [to the capitalist] is high or low. The reverse of this would be oftener the truth: the cost of labor is frequently at its highest where wages are lowest. This may arise from two causes. (1.) In the first place, the labor, though cheap, may be inefficient. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... were more abundantly and carefully fed, and used the lomi-lomi constantly. It is supposable, too, that in the wars which prevailed among the tribes the weaklings, if any such were among the chiefs, were pretty sure to be killed off; and thus a natural selection went on which weeded out the small and inefficient chiefs. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... is certain, the process is not a unitary one, nor is it a simple one. Just so long as habit is discussed in general terms, without any recognition of the complexity of the process or to the specific bonds involved, just so long will the process of habit formation be wasteful and inefficient. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... set of delft—her great and never-ending joy—to great effect. Then she tied her apron about her, and went into the kitchen to make the mayonnaise dressing for the potato salad, to slice the ham, and to help the cook (a most inefficient Irish person, taken on only for that month during the absence of the family's beloved and venerated Sing Wo) in the matter of preparing the Sunday ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... for the return to civilian life of our gallant men and women in the armed services. They must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line, or on a corner selling apples. We must, this time, have plans ready— instead of waiting to do a hasty, inefficient, and ill-considered job at ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... general reader, may be made that only the legal part has succeeded or has lasted. That legislation which is aimed at social equality, all of it Federal legislation, has generally proved unconstitutional, and that part which has been aimed at political equality has, for one reason or another, been inefficient. Moreover, the great attempt in the Fourteenth Amendment to place the ordinary social, civil, and political rights of the negro, and necessarily, therefore, of every one else, under the aegis of the Federal government, Federal courts, and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... expended, with no thought of reimbursement, sums, the amount of which he would not specify, on disinfectants. This he had done because he knew by bitter—by most bitter—experience that the management of the college was slack, dilatory, and inefficient. He might even add, almost as slack as the administration of certain houses which now thought fit to sit in judgment on his actions. With a short summary of his scholastic career, and a precis of his qualifications, including his degrees, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... That the industrially inefficient are often of subnormal intelligence has already been demonstrated in a number of psychological investigations. Of 150 "hoboes" tested under the direction of the writer by Mr. Knollin, at least 15 per cent ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the name when set against the guilt of this transaction. But, if the memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... those various spiritual offices for which he is presumably "chosen." His vows do not call upon him either to be a politician or a matinee idol, nor is it his business to sow doubt where he is paid for preaching faith. If the Church is losing its influence, it is largely because of its inefficient interference in secular affairs, and because of the small percentage of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... else. Much anxiety was aroused for the safety of the city, where all classes feared danger. The leading members of the senate were old and infirm, and enervated by a long period of peace: the aristocracy were inefficient and had forgotten how to fight: the knights knew nothing of military service. The more they all tried to conceal their alarm, the more obvious it became. Some of them, on the other hand, went in ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... New Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies. A Deity, or great First Cause, can hardly be said to be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others. But upon all subjects of this nature their ideas are indistinct and indefinite, as they are not naturally a reasoning ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... spontaneous act of thoughtfulness. It has degenerated into a perfunctory habit, but it should not be so. Excellent service deserves a recompense just as slip-shod service does not. And no one has a right to spoil a waiter (or any one else) by tipping him for inefficient work. In hotels and restaurants the standard fee is ten ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... of GDP, and generates 20% of exports. The service sectors, including public administration, account for 48% of GDP and employ nearly 20% of the labor force. Basic problems facing the economy include a high population growth rate, a high unemployment rate, a lack of basic services, a large and inefficient public sector, and an export sector dependent mostly on coffee and bananas, which are subject to ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... ought to be Mr. Thomas's curate," answered he, "but that I am too inefficient to merit the name. General Melwyn's family never attends the parish ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... governed, will not yield to a more enlarged scale of politics, incompatibility in the laws of different states, and disrespect to those of the general government, must render the situation of this great country weak, inefficient, and disgraceful. It has already done so, almost to the final dissolution of it. Weak at home, and disregarded abroad, is our present condition, and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... results from the rule of the specialist is the destruction of the AMATEUR. So real a fact is the tyranny of the specialist that the very word "amateur," which means a leisurely lover of fine things, is beginning to be distorted into meaning an inefficient performer. As an instance of its correct and idiomatic use, I often think of the delightful landlord whom Stevenson encountered somewhere, and upon whom he pressed some Burgundy which he had with him. The ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Education, there is much doing in this Country, but in a disjointed, expensive, inefficient manner. Instead of one all-pervading, straight-forward, State-directed system, there are three or four in operation, necessarily conflicting with and damaging each other. And yet a vast majority really desire the Education of All, and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... themselves new principalities overnight; kingdoms would arise, and vanish with the waning of a moon. What would this, or any other country, become, were law, order, the police and every restraining influence made absolutely inefficient? Were California one state today; a dozen next week; in July six or seven, and next December but a purlieu to Arizona?—Things, heaven knows, are bad enough as they are; there is no dearth of crime and cheatery. Still, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... above is a very inefficient and rather absurd translation of the French. It turns upon the fact that in the French language the word ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... replied, "Words. Words. Words." That is a world-old trouble. The mechanical calling of words is not expression, by a long stretch. Did you ever notice how hollow a memorized speech usually sounds? You have listened to the ranting, mechanical cadence of inefficient actors, lawyers and preachers. Their trouble is a mental one—they are not concentratedly thinking thoughts that cause words to issue with sincerity and conviction, but are merely enunciating word-sounds mechanically. Painful experience alike to audience and to speaker! ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... want it—why we must have it settled. There was a time when the embargo law threw our slaves out of employment. The North then contemplated a dissolution of the Union. Why? Because she thought the Government wanted power—was inefficient. Now, there is a sense of insecurity felt throughout the South. Our property is depreciating, going down every day. We feel this want of security very deeply, this want of faith in the Government under which we live. The ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... one moment after I get a hint even that any portion of those who raised me to it are wearied of seeing me there. The old members of the party will all recollect how clearly I foresaw and foretold that I should be found a very inconvenient as well as a very inefficient leader, so soon as the great Protection battle was brought to a close. I predicted all that has since occurred; and no one more cordially agrees than I do in the wisdom of the present decision, the spirit I presume of which is that no great party ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... factories that our supplies depended. What happened? Hundreds, thousands of them left work at noon on Saturdays, and then started drinking, and did not appear at their work until the Tuesday or Wednesday following, and when they came they were inefficient, muddled. Work that required skilled hands and clear brains had to be done by trembling hands and muddled brains. The War Minister told us that there was a wastage of 10 per cent. of our munition-making power. He told us, too, that between thirty and forty days of the whole working ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... he gets into an environment, a vocation and a marriage which permits of his doing what he wants to do he will be miserable, inefficient, unsuccessful ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... said Bolaroz, hastily, unable to gloat as he had expected. "The recapture of the assassin who slew my son would have meant much to Graustark. It is unfortunate that your police department is so inefficient." Dangloss writhed beneath this thrust. Yetive's eyes went to him, for an instant, sorrowfully. Then they dropped to the fatal document which Gaspon had placed on the table before her. The lines ran together and were ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... European civilization. Beneath this incredulity, this stupefaction, there was among most of the Frenchmen whom I personally encountered a secret dread that France was unready for the great ordeal of war and that its outbreak would find her divided by political parties, inefficient in organization, corrupt in some of her Government departments. The Socialists and Syndicalists who had fought against the three years' service might refuse to march. Only a few months before a deputy had hinted at grave scandals in the provisioning ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... water. You are a patriotic American. Have you forgotten that a warship of your country with six hundred of her devoted citizens was sent to the bottom by the treachery of one of this effete race? The war was an inefficient revenge. The country still flourishes. It is for you to avenge America. With money Marsine can establish a republic in Spain within twenty-four hours.' Sirdeller hesitates. He would point out that it had never been ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a simple, swift illumination of the fancy. Moments when, wrought upon by a single word—a look—an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost—inductions lead nowhere. Moments when the inharmonious becomes harmonious, the indiscreet discreet, the inefficient efficient, and the inevitable evitable. I mean," she corrected herself hurriedly—"You know what I mean! If you have not felt it you ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... been secured that are possible on machines limited by the standard gauge of the track, 4 feet 8 1/2 inches, and the curves which present railway lines and conditions of construction demand. Now, withal, the steam locomotive mechanically considered is inefficient, as it must take with it a large weight of fuel and water which must be transformed into steam under fixed conditions. If for example, we have one train a day working over a certain line, there would ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... the great complaint of Europe against our conduct of the war is our 'inefficient blockade.' If we are to attach faith to those arch-factors of falsehood, the New Orleans newspaper editors, a vessel leaves their port daily and securely for the Havana. It was the same journals which some months since announced in each succeeding ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... he had found food and housing for a time. I watched him from the turn in the road, as he went lightly down the slope towards South Tickle—his trim-clad, straight, graceful figure, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, lithe in action, as compared with our lumbering gait; inefficient, 'tis true, but potentially strong. As I walked home, I straightened my own shoulders, held my head high, lifted my feet from the ground, flung bold glances to right and left, as I had seen him do: ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... export earnings and about one-quarter of GDP. These oil revenues and a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows down to the lower orders of society. Import restrictions and inefficient resource allocations have led to periodic shortages of basic goods and foodstuffs. The nonoil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for about 20% of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include the production of ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... from improper breathing, inasmuch as the brain, the spinal cord, the nerve centers, and the nerves themselves, when improperly nourished by means of the blood, become poor and inefficient instruments for generating, storing and transmitting the nerve currents. And improperly nourished they will become if sufficient oxygen is not absorbed through the lungs. There is another aspect of the case whereby the nerve currents themselves, or rather the force from which the nerve ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... it is the only solution of the race-question that is worthy of humanity.... Thus alone can the over-population of the earth be controlled: the efficient peoples must secure themselves elbow-room by means of war, and the inefficient must be hemmed in, and at last driven into "reserves" where they have no room to grow ... and where, discouraged and rendered indifferent to the future by the spectacle of the superior energy of their conquerors, they may crawl slowly ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... quite inefficient. If a man who is poor commits murder and is taken, he will be imprisoned, and perhaps even shot; but if he is rich and has friends, he may rely on it no very severe consequence will ensue. It is curious that the most respectable ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... on the defensive, but to capture or destroy whoever should oppose the construction of the works, or disturb the settlements. The choice of Captain Trent for this service, notwithstanding his late inefficient expedition, was probably owing to his being brother-in-law to George Croghan, who had grown to be quite a personage of consequence on the frontier, where he had an establishment or trading-house, and was supposed to have great influence ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... Peruvians were insisting that Bolivar come to assist them, and the Constitutional Congress of Peru even instructed the President to ask the Libertador Presidente to inform his home government that the government of Peru ardently besought him to lend his assistance. Aware of the inefficient organization of the Peruvian forces, Bolivar strongly advised that attacks should not be made at once in order to see whether negotiations could bring about the desired results, or to allow time in which to improve the condition of the army. He argued that no movement ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... said John Ball, speaking this with a kind of proviso to himself, that the words so spoken were intended to be taken as having any meaning only on the presumption that that document which he had seen in the other room should turn out to be wholly inoperative and inefficient at the present moment. In answer to these side-questions or corollary points as to the deduction or non-deduction of the loan, Mr Slow answered not a word; but when there was silence between them, he did make answer as to ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... Well, it is a dead old planet; will its decay vitiate their own blood and leave them the half-willing prey of a Circumstance they do not dream of now? Dewey will take the Philippines, of course. He would be an inefficient fool if he did not, and he is the reverse. The Spanish in Cuba will crumble almost before the world realizes that the war has begun. The United States will find itself sitting open-mouthed with two huge prizes in its lap. It may, in ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... a draught of cold water should have cured thee when the most precious drugs failed," said the Hakim, "thou mayest reason on the other mysteries attendant on this matter. For myself, I am inefficient to the great work, having this morning touched an unclean animal. Ask, therefore, no further questions; it is enough that, by sparing this man's life at my request, you will deliver yourself, great King, and thy servant, from a ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... master. His slaves were always better fed, better clad, and had greater privileges than any I knew in the Old Dominion; and of course, the patrol had long had an eye on them, anxious to flog some of "those pampered niggers, who were spoiled by the indulgence of a weak, inefficient, but ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... the Commission democracy is an inefficient weapon. Nothing but disappointment is in store for men who expect a people to outrage its own character. A large part of the unfaith in democracy, of the desire to ignore "the mob," limit the franchise, and confine power to the few is the result of an unsuccessful ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... recently in Mexico, and the efforts of the British nation in their behalf, together with many other co-operating causes seem to indicate the interposition of Divine Providence in favour of the oppressed. In HIS Almighty hand, the most inefficient causes sometimes produce the most astonishing effects, and often the very means made use of to rivet the chains of oppression are so overruled by Him as to burst the bonds they were designed to perpetuate. We may therefore rest assured that He will in his own good time crown our labours ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... on a probability," argued Griffith. "Of all the heedless, inefficient papa's boys, he takes the cake! He wasn't H. V.'s secretary except in name. Wine, women, sports, and gambling— nothing else under his hat. Always had a mess on his desk. Ten to one, he got your package mixed in the litter, and shoved ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... morning by my application for a tooth-brush. Such a thing was never seen or heard of in a prison. I was obliged therefore to use my middle finger, which I found a very inefficient substitute. Another difficulty arose on the shirt question. The prisoners are allowed a clean outer shirt every week, and a clean inner shirt every fortnight. I explained that I would prefer the order reversed, but was told that I could not be accommodated. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... wall rose sheer a hundred feet above the original bed of the stream, leaving it in part revealed; and this barrier checked and stayed the once resistless flood against which an entire mountain range had proved inefficient. Presently for hundreds of miles each way the transmission lines would carry out power to those seeking light, to those employing labor; and the used water ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... having been again and again rejected by the Lady Henrietta Addison, kidnapped the obdurate fair one, and imprisoned her in a crag-castle in the Highlands. Having kept her for a week in deferential durance, and shown her that he was not the inefficient nincompoop she had taken him for, he threw open the prison gate, and said to her: "Go! I set you free!" The moment she saw the gate unlocked, and realized that she could indeed go when and where she pleased, she also realized that she had not the least wish to go, and flung ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... it seemed, had bad health, and no daughters; she always had a companion of some sort, and was never satisfied with the one she had. In Holland, as in England, it seemed posts were not easy to fill satisfactorily, for those often in want of employment were also constitutionally inefficient. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... the unimpeachable truism, "God is great." Not to fall back on the gods, where a proximate principle may be found, has with us Westerners long since become the sign of an efficient as distinguished from an inefficient intellect. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... that people who pique themselves upon being men of the world, or women of fashion, are rivalled in all their boasted knowledge and discernment by young creatures, whose faculties they may deem very inefficient, and which are indeed so in all the higher requisites of mind and the attainments ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... Emperor Aurelian, and pledged their faith to an adventurer called Antiochus, or Achilles, who had assumed the purple, this splendid town was attacked and razed to the ground. Repenting of his hasty determination, the Roman prince gave orders that Palmyra should be immediately rebuilt; but so inefficient were the measures which he adopted, or so imperfectly was he obeyed in their execution, that the city in the desert has ever since been remarkable only as a heap of magnificent ruins. The first object that now presents itself to the traveller ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... our hopes of happiness hereafter, in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Was our devotion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance, which this new doctrine would make it? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing—a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection? Was this self-destroying, visionary theory the work of the profound ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... gaily to see the land-locked bay and the strange old town of Stromness; and the house was silent and lonely without them and Rahal wished that her husband would come home and talk with her, for her soul was under a cloud of presentiments and she said to herself after a morning of fretful, inefficient work: "Oh, how much easier it is to love God than it is to trust Him. Are not my dear ones in His care? Yet about them I am constantly worrying; though perfectly well I know that in any deluge that may come, God will find an ark for those who love and trust Him. Boris knows—Boris ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... to Mr. Leigh: his school is wholly inefficient. Your son should go through the usual course of instruction given at the Royal Academy, which, with a good deal that is wrong, gives something that is necessary and right, and which cannot be otherwise ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... plain between the armies, the Lacedaemonians drew up their cavalry before their main body and the Thebans drew up theirs over against them; but the cavalry of the Thebans had been exercised in wars with the Orchomenians and Thespians, while that of the Lacedaemonians was at that time in a very inefficient condition; for the richest men maintained the horses, and, when notice of an expedition was given, the men appointed came to ride them, and each taking his horse, and whatever arms were given him, proceeded at once to the field; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... to be expected, the inefficient diplomacy displayed in the preparations for the world war brought down severe criticism of our diplomatic abilities, and if the intention at the Ballplatz was to bring about a war, it cannot be denied that the preparations ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... with an invalid, one wants things particularly nice." And she hurried past them in search of the head waiter. The worry of nursing her husband had fixed a plaintive frown upon her forehead; she was pale and looked unhappy and more than usually inefficient, and her eyes wandered more vaguely than ever from point ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... with a stenographer he visited not only the classrooms and shops but every corner of the great institution. He would return to his office with a notebook full of memoranda of matters to be followed up or changed, and of people to be commended or censured for their efficient or inefficient handling of this, that, or the other piece of work. Once after writing a series of letters calling attention to ragged tablecloths, unclean napkins, and uncleanliness in other forms in kitchens, bakery, and dining-rooms without the desired result, he ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... of travelling must be added the fact, that a Swedish vessel does not advance at all if the weather is unfavourable. Most of the passengers considered that the engines were inefficient. However this may be, we were delayed twenty-four hours at the first half of our journey, from Stockholm to Calmar, although we had only a slight breeze against us and a rather high sea, but no storm. In Calmar we cast anchor, ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... education. It was easily come by, but he was of opinion that if he had not had it, "if I had been brought up a milksop, with a nurserymaid everlastingly at my heels, I should have been this day as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster School, or from any of those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities." The spot is a sandy bank above the Bourne, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... by one of the attendant experts. "We have theorized that an underling may be permitted to make some of his own decisions, leaving only the more extensive ones for the master. This seems to us inefficient and liable to error, yet it is a possible system. Is ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris

... telegraphs, the telegraph of Wheatstone and Cooke, called the Magnetic Needle Telegraph, inefficient as it is, was invented five years after mine, and the printing telegraph, so-called (the title to the invention of which is litigated by Wheatstone and Bain) was invented ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... foolishly honest British officials would be all gone. The pikelhaube and the lash, blackmail and coercion would take the place of generosity. Africa would better be back under the Arabs again, for the Arabs had no system to speak of and were inefficient. Some Arabs have a heart—some ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... verdict of posterity upon the conduct and motives of Sir William Berkeley, the causes of the Rebellion stand out with great clearness:—England's selfish commercial policy, the Culpeper-Arlington grant, the Dutch wars, storms and pestilence, inefficient if not corrupt government, excessive taxes. The only wonder is that the insurrection did not occur earlier. In fact two mutinies did break out in 1674, when the excessively heavy taxes of that year were announced, but the rebels lacked leaders and were suppressed ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... house-dwelling people, suddenly put out on the open road, would hurriedly snatch as they fled. And the people made his heart ache, even to the deadening of his own sorrow, as he noted their wobegoneness. For these were the sick, the infirm, the poor, the inefficient, who had been unable for one reason or another to migrate with the main body of the Saints earlier in the season. Many of them were now racked by fever from sleeping on the damp ground. These bade fair not to outlast some of the lumbering carts ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... Railroads were few and inefficient: telegraph lines but in their infancy. Intercourse among the people, outside of a narrow fringe on the Atlantic coast, was cumbersome, and impeded by many obstacles. Primitive conditions everywhere prevailed, and communities brooded in silence, growing stragglingly in sluggish ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... and the families deprived of their estates, that they might soon expect to enjoy them again. Catulus protested in vain, and the civil strife constantly increased, without any apparent probability that the Senate, now weak and inefficient, would or could successfully interfere. Finally it was decreed that Lepidus and Catulus should each be sent to the provinces under oath not to turn ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... would be more fitting. The social worker has become an indispensable part of the hospital organization, an investigator to bring in facts, a social adjuster to bring about cure. For a hospital to be without a social service department is to confess itself behind the times and inefficient. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... progress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfection in plans and workmanship. The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers and seamen have many times in our history given to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond that of the naval list. That they will again do so upon occasion I do not doubt; but they ought not, by premeditation or neglect, to be left to the risks and exigencies of an unequal combat. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... how cruel I was in forcing you back, where the deadly viper had been coiled; in making you take that dark, solitary walk in search of the sleeping Alice; and even last night I might have spared you your lonely night watch, if I would. Had I told you that you were too inexperienced and inefficient to be a good nurse, you would have believed me and yielded your place, or at least shared it with another. Do you still think ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... reveal where it was procured and who had procured it. He thought of a shot in the back in a lonely place when Flint would be homeward-bound at midnight—his unvarying hour for the trip. No—somebody might be near, and catch him. He thought of stabbing him in his sleep. No—he might strike an inefficient blow, and Flint would seize him. He examined a hundred different ways—none of them would answer; for in even the very obscurest and secretest of them there was always the fatal defect of a risk, ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... party looked a different way for peace and security. At length the majority agreed to call back their Stuart kings. Charles II, son of the Charles I they had beheaded, was voluntarily replaced upon the English throne. Religion had once more proved inefficient as the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... rates, and full preparatory training. A keen observer of social facts has stated: The intelligence offices of New York alone receive from servants yearly over three million dollars, and are notoriously inefficient. This, or even half of it, would provide a great centre with training-schools, lodgings for all who needed them, and a system by which fixed rates were made according to the grade of efficiency of the ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... to affix the prices, to describe the qualities, and to put down the amount of each on hand. This was no light task, and he worked hard at it into the middle of the night. But long before that time came he had thrust away from him the inefficient lists with which he had been supplied, and trusted himself wholly to his imagination. So may be seen the inspired schoolmaster who has beneath his hands the wretched verses of a dull pupil. For awhile he attempts to reduce to reason and prosody the futile efforts ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... obelisk in the Prado which marks the resting-place of the patriot dead. I saw the regent of the kingdom, surrounded by his cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoon under a blazing sun over the dusty mile that separates the monument from the Ayuntamiento. The Spaniards are hopelessly inefficient in these matters. The people always fill the line of march, and a rivulet of procession meanders feebly through a wilderness of mob. It is fortunate that the crowd is ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... "loafer'' or a careless or inefficient workman will lower the efficiency or slow up the production of the men about him, no matter how earnest or industrious their natural habits. Night work by clerks, also, is taken by some office managers to indicate a slump in industry ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... without doing the pregnancy any harm. Many other drugs are reputed to have great efficacy in causing the expulsion of the product of conception; unfortunately, they are too well known to require enumeration. They are usually unreliable, and are absolutely inefficient in doses small enough not to endanger the mother's life, provided the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... simple justice, dishonesty had never for an instant associated itself in his mind with Firmstone. He deemed him inefficient and lacking a grasp of conditions; but, brought face to face with a question of honesty, there was repugnance at the mere suggestion. His face showed it. Luna caught the look instantly and began to ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... will. The man who now wields the lash is irresponsible. He may, if he pleases, cripple or kill, without fear of consequences; except in so far as it may concern profit or loss. To a man of violent temper—as my old master was—this was but a very slender and inefficient restraint. I have seen him in a tempest of passion, such as I have just described—a passion into which entered all the bitter ingredients of pride, hatred, envy, jealousy, and the ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... and narrow blade, which glittered not like the swords of the Franks, but was, on the contrary, of a dull blue colour, marked with ten millions of meandering lines, which showed how anxiously the metal had been welded by the armourer. Wielding this weapon, apparently so inefficient when compared to that of Richard, the Soldan stood resting his weight upon his left foot, which was slightly advanced; he balanced himself a little as if to steady his aim, then, stepping at once forward, drew the scimitar across the cushion, applying the edge so dexterously and with so little ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process is performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, the slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences are punished and rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal statutes, the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world, at the puerile fictions which make every declaration and every plea unintelligible both to plaintiff and defendant, at the mummery of fines and recoveries, at the chaos of precedents, at the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely we see the barbarism ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... States must be free to face European complications. But the Mexican crisis proved definitely the weakness of the military system. Though the regulars who accompanied Pershing proved their worth, the clumsy inefficient mobilization of the National Guard, on the other hand, indicated as plainly as possible the lack of ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... of Japanese Industrial Conditions Japanese Labor Cheap but Inefficient Actual Cost of Output Little Cheaper than in America Laborers in a State {xii} of Deplorable Inexperience Illustrations of Japanese Inefficiency Some Current Misconceptions Corrected Labor Wage Has Increased 40 Per Cent, in Eight Years The Burden of Taxation High Tariff Will Decrease ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... 'that titles and offices have been accorded, from time to time, without any regard for the fitting qualifications of those to whom they were presented. The truth that such a state of things does occasionally exist has been brought before our eyes during the past few days by the abandoned and inefficient behaviour of one who will henceforth be a marked official; yet it has always been our endeavour to reward expert and unassuming merit, whenever it is discovered. As we were setting forth, when we were interrupted in a most obstinate ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... inefficient son, the country went asunder. One branch of the family carried out the Counter-Reformation in Styria; while, north of the Danube, the majority of the inhabitants was either Lutheran or Utraquist, that is, attached to ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... regiment, yes! I have put a body of our patrole on a service where they can scarce be inefficient, viz. I have stationed them in the house, instead of without; and I shall myself bear them company through the greater part of the night: to-morrow I shall remove all that I possess of value to—(the county ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the day. It is said to show the uselessness of big ironclads in naval warfare. But as the "Camperdown," which sent the "Victoria" to the bottom in a few minutes, has herself sustained very little damage, it looks as though "rams" were anything but inefficient. There has never yet been an engagement between two fleets of ironclads, and no one knows how they would behave in an actual battle. Our own impression is that both fleets would go to the bottom, and this opinion is shared by a good ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... strong situations we are more or less commonplace. Loder's first remark as he glanced round the disordered room seemed strangely inefficient. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... that he had broken up my combinations, exposed Wilson's division to disaster, and kept Gregg unnecessarily idle, and further, repelled his insinuations by saying that such disjointed operations as he had been requiring of the cavalry for the last four days would render the corps inefficient and useless before long. Meade was very much irritated, and I was none the less so. One word brought on another, until, finally, I told him that I could whip Stuart if he (Meade) would only let me, but since he insisted on giving the cavalry directions without ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... Latin and the secular part of the college discipline I will say nothing, except that it was generally inefficient. The theological and Biblical teaching was a sham. We had come to the college in the first place to learn the Bible. Our whole existence was in future to be based upon that book; our lives were to be passed in preaching ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... overworked because some unaccountable glamour leads them to continue to bring up their girls in the same inefficient physical habits which resulted in so much misery to themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught, exhausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to them a degradation which they will spare to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... confectioner who supplied the cake, the head gardeners at Kencote and Mountfield who—obligingly—supplied the floral decorations; the organist who presided, as organists always do, at the organ, and gave a rendering, a very inefficient one, of Mendelssohn's Wedding March; the schoolmaster who looked after the children who strewed flowers on the churchyard path; the coachman who drove the happy pair to the station; the station-master who arranged for them a little salvo of his own, which ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... is the impression bequeathed by Slavery in regard to these Southern blacks, that they are sluggish and inefficient in labor! Last night, after a hard day's work, (our guns and the remainder of our tents being just issued,) an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... country, in every part of which bands of marauders were openly defying the law, the panic of the Church and of society at large as the projects of the Lollards shaped themselves into more daring and revolutionary forms, added a fresh keenness to the national discontent at the languid and inefficient prosecution of the war. The junction of the French and Spanish fleets had made them masters of the seas, and what fragments were left of Guienne lay at their mercy. The royal Council strove to detach the House of Luxemburg from, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... only wise and right if, under such circumstances, the vessel had not attempted to pursue her course, but had put into the nearest port. Such was not the case, however, and though she was known to be in a most inefficient state, she proceeded on her voyage. It was about six o'clock on Thursday evening when the "Forfarshire" passed through the Fairway, the water which lies between the Farne Island and the mainland. It was night ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay the headlong propensity to vice, to abate the madness of ambition, will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound regard and deference for religion, a constant recognition of our dependence upon God, and of our obligation and accountability to Him; an ever-present, ever-pressing sense of His universal ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... perhaps entitled to as much respect as any that has ever been urged against the study in question. And so far as the objection bears upon those defective methods of instruction which experience has shown to be inefficient, or of little use, I am in no wise concerned to remove it. The reader of this treatise will find their faults not only admitted, but to a great extent purposely exposed; while an attempt is here made, as well as in my earlier ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... ceremonious suit, gave to his head a ridiculous appearance. He was gazing at the earth with an expression of absorbed and acute melancholy. When he reached the end of the path, he looked round, at a loss, then turned, as if on an inefficient pivot, and set himself in motion again. Edwin was troubled by this singular episode. And yet his reason argued with his instinct to the effect that he ought not to be troubled. Evidently the sturdy Darius ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... accepting the position of Secretary of Public Health in your Cabinet, I wish to say that it will be my sole purpose to prove myself possessed of the larger patriotism which would defend our race against retrogression and annihilation, not by such antiquated and inefficient methods as immigration restriction or mechanical warfare, but by the improvement of the ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings

... of the inefficient state and the endless difficulties of the great fleet concentrated at Cadiz, and regarded its presence there as a standing danger. Collingwood was reinforced, and it was decided to send Nelson out to join him, take over the command, blockade ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... predecessor, it was favourably received, and much danced in the best circles. Still it failed to achieve the decided success which might have been reasonably expected from its elegance and beauty. Perhaps one reason of this disappointing result was that many inefficient performers attempted to dance it before they had mastered its somewhat difficult step, and brought it into disrepute by their ungraceful exhibitions. But the grand secret of its partial failure lay in the mania for rapid whirling ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... THE attainment of a stable peace is the first public duty; the second is the achievement of an efficient government. Where politics are corrupt and inefficient all social progress is obstructed; and all such ideals of a reshaped human society as the Socialists yearn toward must be postponed until we have learned to run the machinery of government smoothly and effectively. The backward condition of peoples whose government ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... or corps commander; but, the presence of one of our regular civilian judge-advocates in an army in the field would be a first-class nuisance, for technical courts always work mischief. Too many courts-martial in any command are evidence of poor discipline and inefficient officers. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... country at large, a sufficiently high standard. The examinations are not sufficiently extensive and intensive to separate the sheep from the goats. The unqualified thus rush in and drive out the qualified, for the efficient cannot compete with the inefficient. The calling is in no sense a "closed" profession, and consequently in the lower ranks it is scarcely ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... break out, Hillsborough would at once be removed. For in that case it would be the policy of the government to conciliate the colonies, at any cost, for the time being. This crisis passed by, fortunately for the secretary and unfortunately for the provinces. Yet still the inefficient and ill-friended minister remained very infirm in his seat. An excuse only was needed to displace him, and by a singular and unexpected chance Franklin furnished that excuse. It was the humble and discredited colonial agent who unwittingly but not unwillingly gave the jar which ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... that when the officers is inefficient, the crew can take charge peaceably an' bring the ship into port. It's all law an' in the records. There was the Abyssinia, in eighteen ninety-two, when the master'd died of fever and the mates ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... genial influence—and of which, each member, albeit bowed down by sympathetic grief, attempts to lift his drooping head, and to others open some source of comfort, which to the kind speaker, is inefficient ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... was a part of the sentence of such as were destined to be cropped. But they often found it easier to fabricate false ears than to gain a livelihood away from the arena of their exploits; and this measure, severe and cruel as it was, was found inefficient to rid the capital of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... made to them was in these words. "We will have no share in a traffic, consisting in rapine, blood, and murder." He then took a survey of a system of duties progressively increasing, and showed, that it would be utterly inefficient; and that there was no real remedy for the different evils complained of, but in the immediate prohibition ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... mixing them in the requisite quantities when the proper time arrives, are as trustworthy, perhaps, as it is possible for any automatic gear to be; but some are objectionably complicated, and a few are positively inefficient. There are two difficulties which the designer of automatic mechanism has to contend with, and it is doubtful whether he always makes a sufficient allowance for them. The first is that not only must ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... may even at that age have been useful. In other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the plan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, I am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to either. I went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and a considerable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's Commentaries, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... fashioned, Captain Cook says, by rubbing one stone upon another until brought to the required shape; but, after all, they were found very inefficient for their purpose. They soon became blunted and useless; and the laborious process of making new tools had to be begun again. The delight of the islanders at being put in possession of a material which was capable of taking a comparatively ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... letter over to myself I feel how weak are my words, and how inefficient to explain to you the exact position in which I stand; but they will suffice to convince you that I am assuredly purposed to resign this parish of Hogglestock, and that it is therefore incumbent on you, as patron of the living, to nominate ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, but he, at least, has the courage of his iniquities. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black



Words linked to "Inefficient" :   uneconomical, incompetent, efficient, wasteful, inefficiency, uneffective



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