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Imbroglio   Listen
noun
Imbroglio  n.  (pl. imbroglios)  (Written also embroglio)  
1.
An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.
2.
A complicated and embarrassing state of things; a serious misunderstanding or disagreement, especially one that is bitter. "Wrestling to free itself from the baleful imbroglio."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Imbroglio" Quotes from Famous Books



... which he called his foreign policy was not encouraging. He was deeply involved in Italian politics, where the daring of Garibaldi had reopened the struggle between clericals and liberals. In France itself the struggle between parties was keen. Here, as in the American imbroglio, he found it hard to decide with which party to break. The chimerical scheme of a Latin empire in Mexico was his spectacular device to catch the imagination, and incidentally the pocketbook, of everybody. But in order to carry out this enterprise he must be able to avert or withstand the ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... adoptable and generally adopted Set of Prayers and Prayer-Method, was what we can call the Select Adoptabilities, 'Select Beauties' well edited (by [OE]cumenic Councils and other Useful-Knowledge Societies) from that wide waste imbroglio of Prayers already extant and accumulated, good and bad. The good were found adoptable by men; were gradually got together, well-edited, accredited: the bad, found inappropriate, unadoptable, were gradually forgotten, disused and burnt. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... by man for his pleasure, or by what we call Natural Selection in the struggle for life, and under changing conditions. I do not wish to say that God did not foresee everything which would ensue; but here comes very nearly the same sort of wretched imbroglio as between freewill and preordained necessity. I doubt whether I have made what I think clear; but certainly A. Gray's notion of the courses of variation having been led like a stream of water by gravity, seems to me to ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... even the appearance of foreign intervention in her dispute with America. But as yet no official information of his rejection had been received by Mr. Gallatin, nor did any reach him until March. Without it he could not well leave St. Petersburg. Meanwhile a diplomatic imbroglio, caused by the failure of the emperor to inform Romanzoff of Castlereagh's second refusal to accept the offer of mediation, embarrassed the commission all winter. Nor yet were they aware that the British minister, driven to the wall by the second offer of the emperor, had made proposals to Monroe ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... marriage and the hour when I spake of it and curse him who counselled it!); and without doubt or diffidence I can say that being moved in mind by the mention of wedlock thou dreamedst that a handsome young lady embraced thee and didst fancy thou sawest her when awake. But all this, O my son, is but an imbroglio of dreams." Replied Kamar al-Zaman, "Leave this talk and swear to me by Allah, the All creator, the Omniscient; the Humbler of the tyrant Caesars and the Destroyer of the Chosroes, that thou knowest naught of the young lady nor of her woning-place." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... not the least desire to tell her why, for it was simply a craven fear of being drawn himself into the imbroglio; but with the usual tactics of a man who is ashamed of himself, he took the high hand. 'God forbid, my dear Miss Hazeltine, that I should dictate to a lady on the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... imbroglio!" I whispered, as he joined me at the table, where hot soup and cold chicken ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... of him at all. A pale sickly shadow in torn surplice is presented to us here; weltering bewildered amid heaps of what you call 'Hebrew Old-clothes;' wrestling, with impotent impetuosity, to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would recognize the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations; with his frank affections, inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... residing within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time, now, to talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not in Lichfieldian human nature to discuss a mere domestic imbroglio when here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory assassination ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... British Army is to be maintained at such a footing as to give weight to the voice of Great Britain in the councils of Europe, we must have two distinct armies; namely, one for home service, ready for a European imbroglio, and a second to which the defence of the colonies can be entrusted. The objection to this has been, hitherto, the great expense, for it has always been taken for granted that this Colonial Army would consist of white soldiers; ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... imbroglio! The missing husband found and, like most missing husbands, found to be entirely undesirable. And Lola, obviously imagining her summons to be from me, was at that moment speeding hither as fast as the Marechal ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... of the Faithful, who came to himself and knowing her for Kut al- Kulub, said, "Is this the Day of Resurrection and hath Allah quickened those who are in the tombs; or am I asleep and is this an imbroglio of dreams?" Quoth Kut al-Kulub, "We are on wake, not on sleep, and I am alive, nor have I drained the cup of death." Then she told him all that had befallen her, and indeed, since he lost her, life had ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... debacle of civilisation, need we interest ourselves overmuch in the immediate occasions and circumstances of the huge quarrel. We want to know not how Europe flared into war, but why. Our object is so to understand the present imbroglio as to prevent, if we can, the possibility for the future of any ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... of "Warrington") on his right. On either side sat Judge Adam Thayer of Worcester, Charles Field, Williard Phillips of Salem, Colonel Henry Walker of Boston, Mr. Ernst of the Boston Advertiser, and Judge Henry Fox of Taunton. The condition of Russia and the Conkling imbroglio in New York; the new version of the Testament and the reason why German Liberals, transplanted to this soil, immediately become conservative and exclusive, were all considered. Carl Schurz, with his narrow ideas ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... imbroglio, Fandor had meant to send Juve a wire on his arrival at Verdun; on second thoughts he had decided against it. Probably the spies, or the Second Bureau, or both, were keeping a sharp watch on Vinson: it would be wiser to refrain from any communication which might reveal ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre



Words linked to "Imbroglio" :   mistaking, embroilment, situation, misunderstanding



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