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Enchain   Listen
verb
Enchain  v. t.  
1.
To bind with a chain; to hold in chains.
2.
To hold fast; to confine; as, to enchain attention.
3.
To link together; to connect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Enchain" Quotes from Famous Books



... and mountains, whose heads are in the clouds; of the savage nations, the cannibals who are man-eaters, and a race of people in Africa whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders: these travellers' stories would so enchain the attention of Desdemona, that if she were called off at any time by household affairs, she would despatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant hour, and drew from her a prayer, that he would ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... drastic than they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent. of all the vows we have ever made. "Do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility with vows.... Take this warning; it is of great importance." (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter myself on ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... are not only written in a manner well calculated to enchain the attention of young readers, but teach at the same time such important lessons of sobriety, industry and cheerfulness, that we should like to see them in the hands of every boy in the land."—Galesburg ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... words, or, indeed, about anything else. His prostration was so great that he did not care at first to follow out any line of thought or to move a limb. A sensation of absolute rest and total indifference seemed to enchain all his faculties. He did not even know where he was, and did not care, but lay perfectly still, gazing up through the overhanging branches into the bright blue sky, sometimes dozing off into a sleep that ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... to be demonstrated that thirty is the age of virtue. At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficult to guard, that in order successfully to enchain her within the conjugal Paradise, resort must be had to those last means of defence which remain to be described, and which we will reveal in the Essay on Police, the Art of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... advancing, Onward moves the host, While their morion plumes are dancing Where the foes are most. Mortal terror strikes the Paynim At the chieftain's name; But the knight's sad thoughts enchain him— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... They say That all the rumors wholly underrate The real importance of his talk to-day. I've been informed, on good authority, That he will have the Devil on the platform And publicly enchain him to a cart For ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... sailor such portions as he could call to mind of the wonderful story which for centuries to come is destined to enchain the attention ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... keep in, keep in check, keep within bounds; hold in leash, hold in leading strings; withhold. keep under; repress, suppress; smother; pull in, rein in; hold, hold fast; keep a tight hand on; prohibit &c 761; inhibit, cohibit^. enchain; fasten &c (join) 43; fetter, shackle; entrammel^; bridle, muzzle, hopple^, gag, pinion, manacle, handcuff, tie one's hands, hobble, bind hand and foot; swathe, swaddle; pin down, tether; picket; tie down, tie up; secure; forge fetters; disable, hamstring (incapacitate) 158. confine; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... each step, against our will Does memory, with pernicious skill, Our captive thoughts enchain, Recalls each joy that treach'rous smiled, And of green griefs and sorrows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... her unwelcome gossip, and, glancing at her child, she decided, however true it might be, she had a pledge which would enchain him yet. Ere long, the mother's inveterate hate crept out into some neighbor's enclosure, and, caught up hastily, they passed the secret round till it became none, and Lewis was sent for, the brother by whom Jack was employed. The neighbors saw her fade ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... by supporting the opposite party. The masses of the people were simply pawns in these political contests, yet few of them understood that all the excitement, partisan activity and enthusiasm into which they threw themselves, generally had no other significance than to enchain them still faster to a system whose beneficiaries were continuously getting more and more rights and privileges for themselves at the expense of the people, and whose wealth was consequently increasing ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... conviction that he had been called to a great work. He was hungry; and the thought came to him whether or not he was able to change the stones into bread. Then the conviction arose that his authority was not great enough to enchain the affections of the people. He wondered if God would not support him if he fell; but Reason answered, "God will not sustain you if you disobey the laws of nature." Then, standing on the top of a mountain, he conceived the idea of possessing the surrounding lands, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... all its difficult forms to awaken and enchain the interest, and to inspire the love of the man of genius or the ambitious student of aesthetics, has also those more simple ones for the delight of the humbler mind. Even the babe that lies in its mother's ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... if to leaven the memory of those atrocities (which were often of such a nature that they seemed to give the lie to the existence of a beneficent Deity), that there was ever interwoven with the web of life an eternal tale of love—love to inspire great deeds and noble aims; love to enchain the beast in woman and man; love, whose constant expression was the sacrifice of self upon the altar of the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... more, Democritus! arise on earth, With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth; 50 See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools the eternal jest: Thou who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece: Where wealth, unloved, without a mourner died; And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of favourites ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... against Christ, in his effort to waste the Church, suppress the truth, crush mankind, and despoil Jesus of His crown, people, and kingdom. It is Christ against Satan, determined to resist, defeat, enchain, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... undoubtedly a person of quick intelligence, and endowed with the gift of imparting a vivid, dramatic interest to any narrative: he told several ancient legends connected with the castle, in such a manner as to enchain the attention of his hearers. One story excited the deepest interest in ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... between human beings; love and hatred enchain certain individuals to one another for a whole series of incarnations; many a victim of the past is to be found again in those unnatural sons who send a thrill of horror through society when it hears of some heinous crime—they have become the torturers of their former oppressors. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... excited, he leapt several inches from the floor as if about to precipitate himself over the desk. All these eccentricities were forgotten when once the great heart began to open its treasures to us, and the subject of his resistless oratory began to enchain our souls. In his vivid description of "Magnificent India" its dusky crowds and its ancient temples, with its northern mountains towering to the skies; its dreary jungles haunted by the tiger; its crystalline salt fields flashing in the sun; and its ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... no longer. Mark it well, enchanting Divas. Enchant if you will; 'tis your function. But do not think to enchain? Enmesh a young Marchese in the tangles of Neaera's hair. A paternal governor puts his fingers before his eyes; and lets a smile be seen on his lips beneath them. But do not seek to bind him by less easily broken ties. A vigilant and moral governor ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... fond embrace still clung to her mute and trembling lips! Would he always love her? Would he always be so fond? Would he be as faithful as he was now devoted? Ah! she would not lose him. That heart should never escape her. Her life should be one long vigilant device to enchain his being. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... Beulah village, after its sleep of months under deep snow-drifts it had waked into the adorable beauty of an early New England summer. It had no snow-capped mountains in the distance; no amethyst foothills to enchain the eye; no wonderful canyons and splendid rocky passes to make the tourist marvel; no length of yellow sea sands nor plash of ocean surf; no trade, no amusements, no summer visitors;—it was just a quiet, little, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... unusually stunning ... That's even more than beauty. But you've never yet known the bounds and the power of your appearance; and, mainly, you don't know to what a degree such natures as yours are bewitching, and how mightily they enchain men to them, and make out of them more than slaves and brutes ... You are proud, you are brave, you are independent, you are a clever woman. I know—you have read a great deal, let's presuppose even trashy books, but still you ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... went to Berlin. There he passed for a prodigy. The Elector, wishing to become the patron of so rare a genius, manifested a disposition to attach him to himself, and to send him to Italy to complete his musical education. But when the father was consulted, he did not think it wise to enchain the future of his son to the Court of Berlin, and he excused himself, saying that he was now an old man, and that he wished to keep near him the only son who remained to him; and, as in those days it was not prudent to oppose a prince on his own land, ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... Christ, my Dove dost reign Where the vulture gnaws no more: Thou dost, snow-white Lamb, enchain Tigers fierce, and wolves restrain ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... Fronde, it was apparently to unite himself with the Queen, and the higher his ambition soared, the more necessary it was to cover it with respect and deference, in order to hasten and secure the treaty on foot, and to enchain the monarchy with his own fate. But the fiery Conde was incapable of such a line of conduct. Finding unexpected obstacles where previously he had met with facilities and hopeful anticipations, he lost his temper, and resumed the imperious ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... the young man sought in vain to enchain his incoherent thoughts. He could think of nothing vividly. He could ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... Polity, by Freedom rear'd! Hail, sacred Freedom, when by law restrain'd! Without you, what were man? A grovelling herd, In darkness, wretchedness, and want enchain'd. Sublimed by you, the Greek and Roman reign'd In arts unrivall'd! O, to latest days, In Albion may your influence unprofaned To godlike worth the generous bosom raise, And prompt the sage's lore, and fire the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... though her face sae fair be, As nane could ever mair be; And though her wit sae rare be, As seenil do we see; Her beauty ne'er had gain'd me, Her wit had ne'er enchain'd me, Nor baith sae lang retain'd me, But for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... was herself, that she maintained her brilliant repartees; her fire of wit, her bon mots that were repeated from one to the other. Her powers of conversation were of the highest order. She could enchain twenty people at once, and keep all their intellects in active exercise. It was with difficulty she did that now; she was thinking so entirely of the golden head, with its opal stars. Then came another stir among the brilliant groups—the entree ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... that his own pride and selfishness had destroyed the faculty by which he could see God. The blind are not more oblivious to color than he was to those divine qualities which are designed to win and enchain the heart. A man may ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... ourselves, we then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty. Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions, pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues from the depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... her bed, she called to mind the several beauties of young Ganymede; first his locks, which being amber-hued, passeth the wreath that Phoebus puts on to make his front glorious; his brow of ivory was like the seat where love and majesty sits enthroned to enchain fancy; his eyes as bright as the burnishing of the heaven, darting forth frowns with disdain and smiles with favor, lightning such looks as would inflame desire, were she wrapped in the circle of the frozen zone; in his cheeks the vermilion teinture of the rose ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... inevitable that there the man should become less free than it has been thought that he was before the blessed Saviour was accepted as the Master and the ruler of his life. Men say to themselves and to one another, "Yes, I shall be freer to act, I shall be nobler in my action, but I shall certainly enchain mind and spirit, I shall certainty bind myself to think, away from the rich freedom of thought in which I have been inclined to live." We make very much of free thought in these days. Let us always remember that free thought means the opportunity to think, and not the opportunity ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... it had for a time hidden this idea in the recesses of the Christian heart. As yet too weak to attack civil laws, it had said to the powers—"I leave you still for a short space of time possession of the political world, confining myself to the moral world. Continue if you can to enchain, class, keep in bondage, degrade the people, I am engaged in the emancipation of souls. I shall occupy 2000 years, perchance, in renewing men's minds before I become apparent in human institutions. But the day ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... papal authority, the emancipation of men's minds from the spiritual authority. The principle of liberty and of free consent, elevated by the Constituent Assembly into a living active right, tended rapidly to destroy the absolutist dogma which from Rome aims more than ever to enchain the universe. The high aristocracy of the Roman Catholic clergy well know the impossibility of retaining the soul in darkness, in the midst of light inundating the intelligence of men; for this reason they carried off their Pope to Gaeta; for this reason they now refuse all compromise. They know ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... very scanty, though the elder of the two, dutifully and admiringly obeyed the more distinct, though less connected, utterances of the little dark-eyed girl, eked out by pretty imperious gestures, that seemed already to enchain the little white-frocked cavalier to her service. All the time it was droll to see how the two ladies could pay full attention to the children, while going on with their own unbroken stream ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I feel a cold face lit, That makes me burn, the while itself doth freeze: Two fragile arms enchain me, which with ease, Unmoved themselves, can move weights infinite. A soul none knows but I, most exquisite, That, deathless, deals me death, my spirit sees: I meet with one who, free, my heart doth seize: And who alone can cheer, hath tortured it. How can it be that from one face like ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... could, previously to the deciding outrage, have considered myself as everlastingly united to vice and folly? 'Had an evil genius cast a spell at my birth; or a demon stalked out of chaos, to perplex my understanding, and enchain my will, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... latter country had recently sacrificed its whole navy in Napoleon's cause, and whose army was still engaged for him in the north. The treaty of Tilsit was, in fact, nothing less than a league, avowed or secret, to enchain the world; most of the European countries were already enslaved, and those that were not were threatened. Even England was menaced; but England was still destined to be the avenger ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... more so indiscreet As erst, I'll be, to let thee from me part: Nay, I'll still hold thee, let what may befall, And of thy mouth so sweet Such solace take as may content my heart So this be all my art, Thee to entice, me with thine arms to enchain: Whereon but musing ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... oratorical power or professional erudition. He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were spiced with neither humor nor wit. And yet, says one of his biographers, in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the value of his instructions and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off the palm from all the gifted men who, at various periods, taught by his side. A friend ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell

... and forgets nothing. But do not delay: you are urged on by the times, by events, by conspirators, and by ambitious men; and in another direction, by the anxiety which agitates the French people. It is in your power to enchain time, master events, disarm the ambitious, and tranquillize the whole of France by giving it institutions which will cement your edifice, and prolong for our children what you have done for their fathers. Citizen first consul, be assured that ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... all anxiety had already gone by, and with it the motive for a Protestant alliance for the King had ceased. Anne had not quite such disadvantages of nature as has been asserted: she was accounted amiable:[135] but she could not enchain a man like Henry; he had no scruple in dissolving the marriage already concluded; Anne made no opposition: the King preferred to her a Catholic lady of the house of Howard. But the consequent alteration was not limited to the change ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke



Words linked to "Enchain" :   hold, confine



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