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Supine   Listen
adjective
Supine  adj.  
1.
Lying on the back, or with the face upward; opposed to prone.
2.
Leaning backward, or inclining with exposure to the sun; sloping; inclined. "If the vine On rising ground be placed, or hills supine."
3.
Negligent; heedless; indolent; listless. "He became pusillanimous and supine, and openly exposed to any temptation."
Synonyms: Negligent; heedless; indolent; thoughtless; inattentive; listless; careless; drowsy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books



... matter of course, copied her fashionable standards from older lands. While Manhattan society was by no means a supine and merely imitative affair, the country was too new not to cling a bit to English and French formalities. The great ladies of the day made something of a point of their "imported amusements" as having a specific claim ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... single stroke was given, and the horseman, throwing up his hands, grasped the limb which projected over, while his horse passed from under him. He held on for a moment to the branch, while a groan of deepest agony broke from his lips, when he fell supine to the ground. At that moment, the moon shone forth unimpeded and unobscured by a single cloud. The person of the wounded man was fully apparent to the sight. He struggled, but spoke not; and the hand of Rivers was again uplifted, when ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... earth, to make the shapes of all the women unattractive, so that they might create disgust, and no desire arise from thought of beauty. Their half-clad forms bent in ungainly attitudes, forgetful in their sleep, their bodies crooked or supine, the instruments of music lying scattered in disorder; leaning and facing one another, or with back to back, or like those beings thrown into the abyss, their jewelled necklets bound about like chains, their clothes and undergarments swathed around ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... Hungarian Majesty, and her Bartensteins and Ministries, heard enough of those Prussian rumors, interior Military activities, and enigmatic movements; but they seem strangely supine on the matter; indeed, they seem strangely supine on such matters; and lean at ease upon the Sea-Powers, upon Pragmatic Sanction and other Laws of Nature. But at length even they become painfully interested as to Friedrich's intentions; and despatch an Envoy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... applied to very considerable advantage, provided your excellency be enabled to send reinforcements, as without them it is scarcely possible that the government of the United States will be so inactive or supine as to permit the present limited force to remain in possession of the country. Whatever can be done to preserve it, or to delay its fall, your excellency may rest assured will ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... the way; Which when the elder saw, he watched for me As I passed by, and from the chariot-seat Smote full upon my head with the fork'd goad; But got more than he gave; for, by a blow From this right hand, smit with my staff, he fell Instantly rolled out of the car supine. I slew them every one. Now if that stranger Had aught in common with king Laius, What wretch on earth was e'er so lost as I? Whom have the Heavens so followed with their hate? No house of Theban or of foreigner ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... shudder she dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed, hideously revealed ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... dear, were I man, and a man who loved my quiet, I would not have one of these managing wives on any consideration. I would make it a matter of serious inquiry beforehand, whether my mistress's qualifications, if I heard she was notable, were masculine or feminine ones. If indeed I were an indolent supine mortal, who might be in danger of perhaps choosing to marry for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... hard on Bagshot Heath to try Unclos'd to keep the weary eye; But ah! Oblivion's nod to get In rattling coach is harder yet. Slumbrous God of half-shut eye! 5 Who lovest with limbs supine to lie; Soother sweet of toil and care Listen, listen to my prayer; And to thy votary dispense Thy soporific influence! 10 What tho' around thy drowsy head The seven-fold cap of night be spread, Yet lift that drowsy head awhile And yawn propitiously a smile; In drizzly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... intent, adore; And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands In adoration, cry aloud and soar In spirit, high above the supine lands And the low caves of mortal things, and flee To the last fields of the universe untrod, Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea, And the contented soul ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with which God has invested the social compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which the vigorous development of individual life and character depends. Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity. Without it we resort to jejune amusement, and from amusement we are hurried ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... more rational for us, if we must spare this generation, to summon our own to a general massacre, and as we have brought them into the world free, send them out so, and not betray them to destruction by our supine negligence, and then cry, 'It ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction, sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell with the regularity ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... which it declared was so desirable; it prevented no scandal; it arrested no decay; it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle the peace of the Church. Inside the Church the bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, and the worshippers, if such a name can properly be bestowed upon the congregations, were grossly irreverent. Nor was any improvement in the conduct of the Church service noticeable ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... be added as to the treatment of shock when severe. Quiet in the supine position, and the administration of a small amount of stimulant, was usually all that was required. Hypodermic injections of strychnine sulph. grs. 1/30 to 1/10 were useful, and in some severe cases, especially where operations were needed, saline infusions with a ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... discriminate them, satisfied with a rough sketch. He saw indolence roused by a love of humour, or rather bodily fun; sensuality and prodigality with a vein of generosity running through it; a contempt of danger with gross superstition; supine senses, only to be kept alive by noisy, tumultuous pleasures, or that kind of novelty which borders on absurdity: this formed the common outline, and the rest were rather dabs ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... observation. The appendix of a chicken, however, is invariably observed as an auxiliary to the observation of the liver and the gall of a pig. If it is found to be erect, that is, at right angles to the intestine, it is considered a favorable omen but if found in a horizontal or supine position with reference to the intestine, it is said to be highly inauspicious. In every case which I saw the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... son Had in contempt." Already had his words And mode of punishment read me his name, Whence I so fully answer'd. He at once Exclaim'd, up starting, "How! said'st thou he HAD? No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye The blessed daylight?" Then of some delay I made ere my reply aware, down fell Supine, not after ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... in one! It is life, and more than life; it is love. Forever and forever it teaches the same wonderful, terrible mystery. We aspire, yet we fall; love would fain give us wings wherewith to fly; but the wretched body lies prone—supine; it cannot soar to the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... have it decided here, in a trial before a jury, that my conduct has been the opposite of his. {224} And I am afraid—afraid, I say, for I will speak all my mind to you—that though when the time comes you may drag me in spite of my entire innocence to the same ruin with them, you are now utterly supine. For, men of Athens, you appear to me to be altogether unstrung, waiting to suffer the horrors which others are suffering before your eyes, and taking no precautions, no thought for the city, which for so long has been exposed to destruction in many a dreadful form. {225} ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... love: enjoyed it to the full. He sat and dreamed over his absinthe futile dreams of power. He was too weak to strike a blow—too weak to raise a hand. Then she took up his cause; intrigued, enlisted our interests, raised his supine and powerless ambitions to a throne. There he abandons her at the foot of the stairs by which he mounted; and refuses her his Crown. He talks now of a more Royal alliance." Jusseret spread his hands in ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and burned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... sands he cross'd, Where blasted Nature pants supine, Conductor of her tribes adust To Freedom's adamantine shrine; And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast, He snatch'd from under fell Oppression's wing, 70 And taught amidst the dreary waste The all-cheering hymns of liberty ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... United States must resist by every means in its power. "In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the responsibility incurred, and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow." Yet "there is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor beneath which axe shielded and defended a people's safety ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... were mortgaged and to the hardest man in seven counties? What though his grandfather had obviously fallen supine before the old man's tempting sin, which is avarice, and was bound to break him? Was fate not playing ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... together with the weight of bed-clothes, hampers our movements and probably makes us more cowardly. A man will meet pain or danger boldly if he be standing upright—occupying that erect position which is his as Lord of Creation; but his courage does not well so high if he be supine. We are awakened suddenly by the feel that some superhuman Presence is in the room. We are transfixed with terror, we cannot find either the bell-rope or the matches, while we dare not leap out of bed and make a rush for the door lest we should encounter we know not ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... lay out; level, flatten; prostrate, knock down, floor, fell. Adj. horizontal, level, even, plane; flat &c 251; flat as a billiard table, flat as a bowling green; alluvial; calm, calm as a mill pond; smooth, smooth as glass. recumbent, decumbent, procumbent, accumbent^; lying &c v.; prone, supine, couchant, jacent^, prostrate, recubant^. Adv. horizontally &c adj.; on one's back, on all fours, on its ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... proper that all sorts of accounts should be closed some time or other,—by payment, by composition, or by oblivion. Expedit reipublicae ut sit finis litium. Constantly taking along with me, that an extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it, and at length to relax into a supine neglect, I propose, Sir, that even the best, soundest, and the most recent dents should be put into instalments, for the mutual benefit of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... him from this state of supine despondency. The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents denied by his father's unwise decree. As a substitute, though of less potency, Ronald strove to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... shocked by present events. The image of Vittoria, the traitress, floated over the soldiery marching on Milan through her treachery. Never had an Austrian force seemed to him so terrible. He had to yield the internal fight, and let his faith sink and be blackened, in order that his mind might rest supine, according to his remembered system; for the inspiration which points to the right course does not come during mental strife, but after it, when faith summons its agencies undisturbed—if only men ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the images, supine, Deathstill, lifesweet, with folded palms she lay: And kneeling there as at a sacred shrine A young man wan and worn who seemed to pray: 40 A crucifix of dim and ghostly white Surmounted the large ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... investigators, is commerce. The carrying trade is the means whereby commerce is conducted, and this carrying trade, an industry once of vastly greater importance to our people than all shipbuilding has been, is now, or ever can be, is a business that Congress by its supine neglect has deliberately thrown into the hands of Europeans, and sacrificed American shipowners at the ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman

... horror, his sense of revolt, he cursed the State of which he was a citizen. He would have resigned his commission at the moment, so intense was his resentment of the supine, careless, jovial, slattern Government under which ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... Cape York Peninsula, in Northern Queensland, a girl at puberty is said to live by herself for a month or six weeks; no man may see her, though any woman may. She stays in a hut or shelter specially made for her, on the floor of which she lies supine. She may not see the sun, and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until the sun has gone down, otherwise it is thought that her nose will be diseased. During her seclusion she may eat nothing that lives in salt water, or a snake would kill her. An old woman ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... to become more conspicuous in the labours of R. Columbus, G. Fallopius and Eustachius. While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress of science, the other nations of Europe were either in profound ignorance or in the most supine indifference to the brilliant career of their zealous neighbours. The 16th century had commenced before France began to acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Jacques Dubois, Jean Fernel and Charles Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers were less solicitous ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... in, but there was no response. In a passion of soldierly wrath, the veteran commanded a bayonet charge; not a man sprang forward at the summons which British soldiers are wont to welcome with cheers. The cowed infantry remained supine, when their officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge!' which so rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray. The gunners only, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... mine no more; the campus is a departed glory; I shall no longer sing the 'Alma Mater' with you when the chimes ring at ten. The whole challenge of the city is missing. Nothing opposes me, there is no task for me to do. I must be supine, acquiescent, smiling, non-essential. I am like a runner who has trained for a race, and, ready for the speeding, finds that no race is on. But I've no business to be surprised. I knew it would be like this, didn't I? the one thing is to make and keep mummy happy. She needs me so ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... imparting the consistency of iron to padded leather. At last the novice directed a frantic assault at the champion's nose, rising on his toes in his excitement as he did so. Skene struck up the blow with his right arm, and the impetuous youth spun and stumbled away until he fell supine in a corner, rapping his head smartly on the floor at the same time. He rose with unabated cheerfulness and offered to continue the combat; but Skene declined any further exercise just then, and, much pleased with his novice's ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... never TAME the beast; A house protects him, savoury viands sustain:- But loose his neck and off he goes again: So stole our Vagrant from his warm retreat, To rove a prowler and be deemed a cheat. Hard was his fare; for him at length we saw In cart convey'd and laid supine on straw. His feeble voice now spoke a sinking heart; His groans now told the motions of the cart: And when it stopp'd, he tried in vain to stand; Closed was his eye, and clench'd his clammy hand: Life ebb'd apace, and our best aid no more Could his weak sense or dying heart ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... but recognize the duty they owe as citizens and as men of truth, they would, by uniting, soon sweep away the serious discredit to our country and to Republican Institutions, the festering corruption of this city and of the State; yet it is to their supine, nay wicked tolerance of the evil that we owe the specimens of judicial corruption by which we are robbed and dishonored. Can it be said that any system of education can be sound, which shall fail to demonstrate, at least to the older pupils, ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands

... merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home fashion in which they gave those instincts play. They did not scour the seas for their victims, neither did they till their island. There was no need for so much exertion. They lay supine upon their rocks and waited until a sail appeared above the horizon. Even then they did not stir till nightfall. But after it was dark, they lighted bonfires upon suitable promontories, especially towards Brecqhou and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... went away to break threshing machines, but a man who committed persons for breaking threshing machines had his ricks burnt; another suffered the same thing who defended his threshing machines. I believe the two offences to be committed by the same persons. The magistrates are supine and terror-struck; but they have no police, no military. Sir E. Knatchbull doubts whether they would arm as yeomen. Peel does not seem to me to view with sufficient alarm the effect these burnings will produce upon men's minds, and the example of impunity. Nothing ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... still in the same position. At last the tremendous and incessant blows, dealt by the most active member of the trio, seemed actually to have exhausted the immense vitality of the great bowhead, for he lay supine upon the surface. Then the three joined their forces, and succeeded in dragging open his cavernous mouth, into which they freely entered, devouring his tongue. This, then, had been their sole object, for as soon as they had finished their barbarous feast they departed, leaving him ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... unknown would do next, brought the sweat to his brow and limbs and set him trembling like one with an ague. Not a breath disturbed the bushes, yet he felt that the man was there—there across the opening in the forest with his eyes fixed upon the supine figure near the fire. Had he not been warned by that mysterious feeling which had kept his eyes open and his nerves alert he, Enoch Harding, might now be lying unconscious with a deadly ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... opposition, an able and patriotic Bourbon accepting his new position, and wielding power for the benefit of the people and not of a class, might perhaps have exercised an authority not much inferior to that possessed by the Crown before 1789. But Louis, though rational, was inexperienced and supine. He was ready enough to admit into his Ministry and to retain in administrative posts throughout the country men who had served under Napoleon; but when the emigrants and the nobles, led by the Count of Artois, pushed themselves to the front of the public service, and treated ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... at him out of her fine eyes, yet the unconscious courage of her graceful poise—erect, with head thrown back so that he could even see the pulse beat in the brown throat—suggested anything but supine surrender to her terror. Before he could reach her she had slipped into the night, and ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... with her needle upon a dainty tea-cloth, pausing now and again to hold a whispered and one-sided conversation with Nobby, who lay at inelegant ease supine between us. Perched upon the arm of a deep armchair, my sister was subjecting the space devoted by five daily papers to the announcement of "Situations Required" to a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... infatuate he Listening, uncased at once his polished bow.[6] That bow, the laden brows of a wild goat Salacious had supplied; him on a day Forth-issuing from his cave, in ambush placed 125 He wounded with an arrow to his breast Dispatch'd, and on the rock supine he fell. Each horn had from his head tall growth attain'd, Full sixteen palms; them shaven smooth the smith Had aptly join'd, and tipt their points with gold. 130 That bow he strung, then, stooping, planted firm The nether horn, his comrades bold the while Screening him close with shields, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must lack ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... party would be starting for the hunt—a hunt from which, he felt sure, they would never return. Then it was certain that a treacherous attack would be made upon the ship and the island, and yet here he lay supine, knowing all this, and yet unable ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... almost heard her distressed voice as if on the verge of resentful tears calling to the dog, the unsympathetic dog. Perhaps she had not the power of evoking sympathy, that personal gift of direct appeal to the feelings. I said to Fyne, mistrusting the supine attitude of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... the announcement pointed out that the mission would be concerned with important frontier questions, still more with the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a supine government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other powers had been playing a filching and encroaching game at the expense of the British lion in these parts, and it was more than time that he should open his sleepy eyes upon what was going on. As to the young officer who was to command ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tall and exceedingly supine proportions, wore pinks and blues and an invariable necklace of pink paste pearls to fine advantage, and a fuzz of yellow bangs that fell down over her eyes, only to be ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... defiance, I swam my fastest and most furious racing-stroke, till my breath gave out with a gasp, my breast felt like bursting, and my heart beat heavily on my ribs. So I lay supine upon the water, closed my eyes, and derived a surfeit of joy ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... of cowardice. It is a question of common sense. A few country lads cannot oppose a government. With what weapons can they do so? Courage I honour; without it all active virtues are supine; but it is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the ignorant ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... it is fair to suppose that the larger part of the women of the State have consented to the present form of government. Now, this is assuredly a willful and unworthy perversion of the truth. These women are simply ignorant, simply supine. They have neither affirmed nor denied. They have not thought at all upon the subject. But there are two thousand women in Massachusetts who think and act, to say nothing of the thousands of intelligent men there who believe in the same doctrine. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... few simple precautions, and the application of proper remedies, will check the unnatural loss in most of these cases very promptly. In the first place, absolute rest, chiefly in a supine position, must be observed not only during the menstrual period, but for a few days previous to its commencement. If this does not restrain the flow, then cool and even cold compresses may be applied to the lower part of the abdomen and to the small of the back. In severe ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... could so early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led. Susan was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing the same system, which her own judgment acknowledged, but which her more supine and yielding temper would have shrunk from asserting. Susan tried to be useful, where she could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such interposition, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... justly denominated a supine indolence of mind has been my state of existence since I last returned to Scotland. In a livelier state I had often suffered severely from long intervals of silence on your part; and I had even been chided by you for expressing my uneasiness. I was willing to take advantage ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... to do so—why was I able to save my son alone? Ought I not also to have rescued the man that I had accepted for a husband, guilty though he were? Yet I let him die! What do I say? Oh, merciful heavens, was I not accessory to his death by my supine insensibility, by my contempt for him, not remembering, or not willing to remember, that it was for my sake he had become a traitor and a perjurer? In what am I benefited by accompanying my son so ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... supine, and straight as an arrow, on the sloping sod of this hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaining her warm hold of Jude's hand. He reclined on his ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... won't you answer?" He lay supine, his eyes closed, his mouth half open, with brown soft hair on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still showing in his features contracted with pain. From beneath the bandage on his forehead ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... Mr. Newman, supine in his chair, knew the preliminary stages of the process well. They took longer than usual to-night; both of them were unkeyed and had to compose themselves to the affair. But at last the visible world, the wall before him, commenced ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... were the hills, save where supine The dozing goatherd lay, Or, at a rude and broken shrine, The peasant knelt to pray; Or where athwart the distant blue Thin saffron clouds ascend, As Carbonari, hid from view, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... extended with an east-west orientation corresponding to the axis of the fissure; the foot bones were to the west, at the mouth of the cave, and the crania were in the tapered interior. The published report does not indicate whether placement was prone or supine. ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey

... times bigger than the female. Then they don't breed in harems and the male hair seal does not stay on shore. A fur seal swims with his fore flippers, a true seal with his hind flippers. A fur seal stands upright on his fore flippers, a hair seal lies supine. A fur seal has a neck, a hair seal has practically none. A fur seal naturally has fur, the hair seal has no undercoat whatever. A pup fur seal is black, a pup hair seal is white. Different? Obviously! Pity the old name ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... valour dare Nor aught confront and challenge fortitude: And where no outward token could declare The hidden worth congenial heart would hail, Hail with each kindred chord vibrating there;d Since virtue wakes not but when griefs assail, Or travail burthens, or temptations try, Slumbering supine, till roused by adverse gale, In the deep sleep of moral lethargy, Joy's fullest cup, by hope or doubt unstirred, Curdling the while ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... anticlimax fairly off the brink; and declares, "In the grammar which shall be the work of my pupils, there shall be found no nouns, no pronouns, no articles, no participles, no verbs, no prepositions, no conjunctions, no adverbs, no interjections, no gerunds, not even one single supine. Unmercifully shall they be banished from it."—Neef's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... flat &c. 251; flat as a billiard table, flat as a bowling green; alluvial; calm, calm as a mill pond; smooth, smooth as glass. recumbent, decumbent, procumbent, accumbent[obs3]; lying &c. v.; prone, supine, couchant, jacent[obs3], prostrate, recubant[obs3]. Adv. horizontally &c. adj.; on one's back, on all fours, on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... a new-born butterfly from the durance of its self-spun cocoon, with an unutterable sense of youth and strength and freshness and felicity; and opening my eyes I would see on the adjacent couch the form of Mary, also supine, but motionless and inanimate as a statue. Nothing could wake her to life till the time came: her hours were somewhat later, and she was still in the toils of the outer life I had ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... the people of Calabar. They were taller and more muscular, their nose was higher, the mouth and chin were firmer, their eye was more fearless and piercing, and their general bearing contrasted strongly with that of the supine ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... one. Straightway he uncased his well-polished bow, made from [the horn of] a wild, bounding goat, which he indeed surprising once on a time in ambush, as it was coming out of a cavern, struck, aiming at it beneath the breast; but it fell supine on the rock. Its horns had grown sixteen palms from its head; and these the horn-polishing artist, having duly prepared, fitted together, and when he had well smoothed all, added a golden tip. And having bent the bow, he aptly lowered it, having inclined it against ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... surroundings which should wound his vanity ended in his lolling back at full length in the chair with his eyes on the ceiling. But, remembering suddenly that he was really the bearer of a message to Clarence, it struck him that his supine position was, from a theatrical view-point, infelicitous. In his experiences of the stage he had never delivered a message in that way. He rose awkwardly to ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... they can remember. 'I did not burst on them gloriously. I am glad to say that they think I am a much better mother than I am a writer, and that the family attitude in general has been attentive but not supine. They regard it exactly as a banker's ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... worth a dressing. Yet that little piece of obus lodged somewhere inside his skull, above his left ear, so the radiographist says, and he's paralyzed. Paralyzed all down the other side, and one supine hand flops about, and one supine leg flops about, in jerks. One bleary eye stays open, and the other eyelid stays shut, over the other bleary eye. Meningitis has set in and it won't be long now, before we'll have another empty bed. Yellow ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... on the ground, upon his back, and remained stretched out there, with arms outspread and supine; a stream of blood flowed from his breast, on the left. The sergeant and two soldiers leaped from their horses; the officer bent over and opened his shirt: the ball had entered his left lung. "He is dead!" exclaimed ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... miserable prophet or almanac maker, for my predictions are seldom verified. I thought the present session likely to be a very supine one, but unless the evening varies extremely from the morning, it will be a tempestuous day—and yet it was a very southerly and calm wind that began the hurricane. The King's Speech was so tame, that, as George Montagu said of the earthquake, you might have stroked it.(726) ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... a few seconds would come utter blankness again; her last chance would be gone for saving Roger and herself. Should she make a struggle for it and die fighting? Or was it better to continue her supine pretence and quietly allow the needle to reduce her once more to a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... first on him. But, galled and stung by a sense of my follies and demerit, I strove to throw the blame on others. We kept nightly orgies in Palazzo Carega. To sleepless, riotous nights, followed listless, supine mornings. At the Ave Maria we showed our dainty persons in the streets, scoffing at the sober citizens, casting insolent glances on the shrinking women. Juliet was not among them—no, no; if she had been there, shame would have driven me away, if love had not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... with any earlier arrangements for defense, the new plans marked a great advance; but when judged in the light of the possible necessity of repelling American invasion, they were plainly inadequate. A burst of criticism followed from England; press and politicians joined in denouncing the blind and supine colonials. Did they not know that invasion by the United States was inevitable? "If the people of the North fail," declared a noble lord, "they will attack Canada as a compensation for their losses; if they succeed, they will attack Canada in the drunkenness of victory." If such an invasion ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... as she watched Antonia go away down the road, suggesting supine submission rather than a friend in need, her heart failed her. Had she done wisely? Fectnor had never stepped aside for any man. He seemed actually to believe that none must deny him the things he wanted. He seemed an insane creature when you thwarted ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... though no fault be thine For that red horror far across the sea; Though not a tortured wretch can point to thee, And curse thee for the selfishness supine Of those great Powers that cowardly combine To shield the Turk in his iniquity; Yet, since thy hand is innocent and free, Arise, and show the world the way divine! Thou canst not break the oppressor's iron ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... "Dundreary Married;" and the captain, who, it afterwards appeared, had in former years suffered divers things at the hand of an obnoxious mother-in-law, grew more excited than ever, and became furiously indignant, not only at the all-assuming lady, but also at the supine Dundreary, who allowed himself to be thus imposed upon. He grumbled and muttered, and really seemed as if he would make for the stage, as he said, "to give the old creetur a piece of his mind." Even Norman was ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... e. throwing herself on her back with feet upward. If it is meant that she counterfeits death, then of course the parallel with the pankratiast will only hold good to the extent of the supine posture.] ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... hear. How distant are they still! what sad extent Of desolation must we overcome! Aroar, what wretch that nearest us? what wretch Is that with eyebrows white, and slanting brow? Listen! him yonder who bound down supine, Shrinks yelling from that sword there engine-hung; He too among my ancestors?" "O King! Iberia bore him, but the breed accursed Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east." "He was a warrior then, nor feared the gods?" "Gebir, he feared the Demons, not the Gods; Though them indeed ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... the author. The works of both are full of autobiographical confidences. Like Dante, Milton was forced to become a party by himself. He stands out in marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of the Civil War, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration, a self-opinionated, unforgiving, and unforgetting man. Very much alive he certainly was in his day. Has Mr. Masson made him alive to us again? I fear not. At the same time, while we cannot praise either the style or the method of Mr. Masson's work, we cannot refuse ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... dreams, if our eyes could but once have been opened upon the bright intellectual fancies, and anticipations; or upon the spiritual movements, of some of those by the side of whose supine and deserted forms it may have been our privilege to watch; but who, on waking into restored consciousness, remember not what they may have seen, or imagined, or may perhaps have ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... dread Erinnys to the Argive maid. Before her eyes, within her breast she dwelt A secret torment, and in terror drove Her exil'd through the world. 'Twas thou, O Nile! Her tedious wandering ended. On thy banks Weary'd she kneel'd, and on her back, supine Her neck she lean'd:—her sad face to the skies, What could she more?—she lifted. Unto Jove By groans, and tears, and mournful lows she plain'd, And begg'd her woes might end. The mighty god Around his consort's neck embracing hung. And pray'd her wrath might finish. "Fear no more "A rival ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... the sorrow, and such were the consolations of Edwin. But far different was the situation, and far other scenes were prepared for his faithful shepherdess. For some time after she had been seized by Roderic, she had remained unconscious and supine. The terrors that had preceded the fatal capture, had overpowered her delicate frame, and sunk her into an alarming and obstinate fit of insensibility. They had now almost reached the palace of the magician, when she discovered the first symptoms of returning life. The ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... she heard him—always silent and supine, except when suspicious persons came into the yard—baying softly to himself, plainly (to her) voicing the weariness of his unhappy life. She sat up in bed and listened to him, and to his master shouting to him at intervals to "be quiet"; and she ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... the Bible always with him,—never the will of Christ. But although he could dispose of the question thus satisfactorily, yet, as he lay ill, supine, without any distracting ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... your spirit to-day. You are citizens of no mean city, members of no common state, heirs of no supine empire. You will many of you exercise influence over your fellow men: some will study and interpret our laws, and so become a power; others will again be in a position to solace and exalt, as destined to be doctors ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... Already I had begun to realize how fatally I had underrated the lady of the hyphen, in imagining I had only to come and see and conquer Aunt Jane. The grim and bony one had made hay while the sun shone—while I was idling in California, and those criminally supine cousins were allowing Aunt Jane to run about New York at her own wild will. Miss Higglesby-Browne had her own collar and tag on Aunt Jane now, while she, so complete was her perversion, fairly hugged her slavery and called it freedom. Yes, she talked ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... two consonants is generally—short, we find, in some instances, a long vowel in this position. For example, it would appear that the vowel of the supine and cognate parts of the verb is long if the vowel of the present indicative, though short, is followed by a medial (b, g, d, z), as ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord

... were at peace within himself, and cried peace, peace, to himself, yet if he be not at peace with God, shall his peace be called peace? Shall it not rather be named supine security? If a man be at variance with himself, and his soul disquieted within, there is more fear than danger if he be at peace with God. It is but a false alarm, that shall end well, but if he have peace ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... story every morning of my life, by the year's end he will be my master," said Burke, "and I shall believe him, however untrue and improbable his story may be;" and if, whilst the Anti-corn-law League can display such perseverance, determination, and system, its opponents obstinately remain supine and silent, can any one wonder if such progress be not made by the League, in their demoralizing and revolutionary enterprize, that it will soon be too late to attempt even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... all the earth whereon they dwell, And all the heavens they are inhaling, And powers, whereof I cannot tell— Dark miscreants, supine and wailing, Until ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... the man in black, "is a grand one, with unbounded vitality. Compare it with your Protestantism, and you will see the difference. Popery is ever at work, whilst Protestantism is supine. A pretty church, indeed, the Protestant! Why, it can't even ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... and are forced to protect ourselves as best we may. When courts fail, the people must act. What protection is left us, when our highest police official is slain in our very midst by the Mafia and his assassins turned loose upon us? This is not the first case of wilful murder and supine justice; our court records are full of similar ones. The time has come to say whether we shall tolerate these outrages further or whether we shall set aside the verdict of an infamous and perjured jury and cleanse our city of the ghouls which prey upon it. I ask ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... as well as I how much the people were dejected; that if their spirits should be quite sunk they could never be raised; that they must be supported; that I would influence the people; and that he should do what he could with the Parliament, who, in my opinion, ought not to be supine, but to be awakened at a juncture when the King's departure had perfectly drowned their senses, adding that a word in season would infallibly ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... walks to the balustrade, Idly notes how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... These friends were in the game that of playing with the disparity between her aspect and her character. Her character was attested by the second movement of her face, which convinced the beholder that her vision of the humours of the world was not supine, not passive. She enjoyed, she needed the warm air of friendship, but the eyes of the American city looked out, somehow, for the opportunity of it, from under the lids of Jerusalem. With her false indolence, in short, her false leisure, her false pearls ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... almost an essential ingredient of a holiday such as Cosmo had been accustomed to make of his birthday: constantly active as his mind was, perhaps in part because of that activity, he was ready to fall asleep any moment when warm and supine. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... prospects of the next day. It was a question with them whether I should continue the march. Mostly all were of opinion that, since the master was sick, there would be no march. A superlative obstinacy, however, impelled me on, merely to spite their supine souls; but when I sallied out of my tent to call them to get ready, I found that at least twenty were missing; and Livingstone's letter-carrier, "Kaif-Halek"—or, How-do-ye-do?—had not arrived with Dr. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... of Lorenzo the arts languished and Michel Angelo's supine and hanging figures in his tomb are there ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... or two away on his left lay another supine figure, elbows on the ground, and hands arched above his brow to shade his eyes, gazing out to sea. He, too, was a tall and powerful man, and when he moved there was a glint of armour from the chain mail in which his body was cased, and from the steel casque about which he had swathed his green ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... Haney in a new light also. For the first time he seemed like an old man, sitting there, supine, garrulous, in the midst of those self-contained people. "Gosh! how he did talk! He took too much wine, I reckon, but that didn't make all the difference." In truth, his imperiousness, his contempt, had been melted and charmed away by the genial smiles of his auditors. Even Mrs. Crego ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... Derrick, a vulgar lad, aping gentility, behind her. Closer and closer came the waters; a shark's gray hide glittered a few feet from him. Death, sure of his prey, nibbled and played with it; in a little while he lay supine and unconscious. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... of no use. Intimidation had been worse than hopeless; even bodily force would not avail. She cast one lurid glance at the supine figure, and gave up the quest in that direction as sheer waste of time. With new determination, she again essayed the closet, tossing shoes and rubbers behind her in an unsightly heap, quite heedless of the confusion of rights and lefts. At last, in a dark corner, behind ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... and blindly fled. Outside upon the deserted deck I was met by a steward who ministered to me until such a time as I was able to leave the rail and with his help to drag my exhausted frame to the privacy of my stateroom where I remained in a state of semi-collapse, and quite supine, for the greater part of the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... Lawrence, although he had keener intelligence, was not quite so fine a type as his father, and in consequence stood rough wear better. But he too, in spite of his physical courage, now and then showed a supine carelessness and tried to avoid, instead of boldly grappling with, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... Paterson, and questioned him as to what he had heard. His excuse for not personally communicating the story which he had allowed to drift to the governor's ears by chance, was that he thought that what he had heard must have come to King's knowledge also: a supine and almost flippant explanation of neglect in a matter which was serious if the allegations were true. He affirmed also that one of the French officers had pointed out to him on a chart the very place where they intended to settle. It was in what is ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... Himalayas, also flourishes. The wild lilac forms a beautiful feature in the spring landscape. Wild fruit trees, such as the apple, pear and plum, are common. The vast forests of the middle ages disappeared under the supine Turkish administration, which took no measures for their protection, and even destroyed the woods in the neighbourhood of towns and highways in order to deprive brigands of shelter. A law passed in 1889 prohibits disforesting, limits the right of cutting timber, and places the state forests ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... to free his shoulder of Ivana's supine weight against it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breath half out of his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... time that lady had extended a supine hand it had been to offer him one of the most serious affronts that can befall a self-respecting landlord; now the hand contained only cordiality, and in that spirit Mr. Cone ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... even thine, Can't wake up Berne, where folks supine All go to bed at half-past nine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... to his room, locked the door, flung himself on his sofa, and burst into a violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started, as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly tossed from him; and the hand so firmly clenched that the very bones seemed ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... looked out of the moss, and I often reposed upon tufts of ranunculus. Bushes of phillerea were very frequent, the sun shining full on their glossy leaves. An hour passed away swiftly in these pleasant groves, where I lay supine under a lofty fir, a tower of leaves ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the disintegrating forces of a supine ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... utterance of veritable history, and his own [20] spiritual discernment, this man must have risen above worldly schemes, human theorems or hypotheses, to conclusions which reason too supine or misemployed cannot fasten upon. He spake inspired; he touched a tone of Truth that will continue to reverberate and renew [25] its emphasis throughout the entire centuries, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... leaf and bud, Passed on with a weary air, Till lo! he came to a pool of mud, And some hogs were rolling there. Then in he plunged with gleeful cries, And down he lay supine; For they had no mud in paradise, And they ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... alarming sensible dangers or calamities to enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently, and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one who believes these great truths, if he takes a serious review of them, and has them present to his mind, to remain insensible: transient ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... cigarette. After the blinding flare of the match, night seemed to have fallen instantaneously. As their boat crept on to the slow creaking sweep, both maintained silence, Rudolph rebuked and lonely, Heywood supine beneath a ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... in sleep and ease, No action leave to busy chronicles: Such, whose supine felicity but makes In story chasms, in epoch's mistakes; O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down, Till, with his silent sickle, they are mown. 110 Such is not Charles' too, too active age, Which, govern'd by the wild distemper'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... was only when they realized that the Boer party were determinedly hostile—organizing very large encroachments upon the privileges of the Uitlanders and designing fresh burdens to be borne by them—and when it became clear that the dangers threatening as a result of their own supine attitude were worse than any disfavour with which they might be viewed on account of political action, that they began to take an active part with others in the agitation for reform. It was not until the Volksraad in the Session of 1895 revealed their real policy and their ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... voice or a hand to interfere with them. It has been explained why, though it should be added that in the way of firearms there was only the single worthless Springfield rifle in the house. It was mother and daughter who held the three lads supine. Had they been left free they would have acted immediately on first learning of ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... not the pretentious pawnbroker in spirit and manner that so often presides over the destinies of American banks, but he was a philosophical financier who understood perfectly the strength and weakness of the system under which he worked, and who, while he wondered at the supine idiocy of the people that would permit of the prevailing Dick Turpin methods of high finance, never took his eye from the horizon of public action, where daily he expected to see "the cloud no bigger than a man's hand" that was to expand ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... people is absolute, ignorant, and therefore supine. The cattle have a scourge, but the loss of money makes men active. When the rinderpest appears, governors issue proclamations. When horses show the glanders, quarantine is established. But when a father's flock is cut off, it is done before he can move, and other fathers will not ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... that period assigned by the royal psalmist for the general term of mortality; when the infirmities of age would no longer permit him the free exercise of those faculties, which he had hitherto so advantageously employed in the service of the community, far from sinking into a supine indolence, or assuming a supercilious disregard of the world, he still continued his application, even in the decline of life, to the improvement of physic, and the benefit ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead

... assimilation of this vast mass of humanity. No wonder thoughtful Americans stand aghast before it. At the same time, the only thing to fear is failure to understand the situation and meet it. As Professor Boyesen says: "The amazing thing in Americans is their utter indifference or supine optimism. 'Don't you worry, old fellow,' said a very intelligent professional man to me recently, when I told him of my observations during a visit to Castle Garden.[5] 'What does it matter whether a hundred thousand more or less arrive? ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... the beach stretched an unbroken line of wreckage. Here and there, things, humanly shaped, lay prone or supine or twisted into crazy attitudes. Some had been flung far up the slope beyond the water-line. Others, rolling back in the torrent of the tide, engaged in a ceaseless, grotesque frolic with the foamy waters. Out of a mass of wood caught between rocks and rising shoulder-high above it, a woman's ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... from the cabin. By his side he may have the heir-apparent, Paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark naked, and a model of young human beauty. And there will always be the favourite and perhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under mats and whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a more private hour, and found Tembinok' retired in the house with the favourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and a commercial ledger. In the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... white tents and flaring bunting, and the pennons blowing all down the long ranges to measure the wind for prone riflemen. "Lying prone on the back," by the way, is a phrase which creeps into many newspapers during Bisley week. It would clearly not do to speak of a "supine" rifle-shot. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... irregularities of nouns as to number (i. e. which want the singular, which the plural), the third to teach the irregularities of verbs (i. e. their deviations from the generic forms of the preterite and the supine): this is what they profess to teach. Suppose then their professions realised, what is the result? Why that you have laboriously anticipated a case of anomaly which, if it do actually occur, could not possibly cost more trouble to explain at the time ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Madame Amerbach is supine to the brain of Madame the duchess." She rose and moved silently to the window and peered out. He thought her to be star-gazing; but she was not. She was endeavoring to see where Maurice ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... we cannot move, And humbled groan beneath the hand of Jove. His ample maw with human carnage fill'd, A milky deluge next the giant swill'd; Then stretch'd in length o'er half the cavern'd rock, Lay senseless, and supine, amidst the flock. To seize the time, and with a sudden wound To fix the slumbering monster to the ground, My soul impels me! and in act I stand To draw the sword; but wisdom held my hand. A deed so rash had finished all our fate, No mortal ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... original match to the magazine by inciting the late Mr. Dearman's coolies. Apparently a relentless, terrible fanatic and bitter hater of the English, for his councils were all of blood and fire, rapine and slaughter, he taunted his hearers with their supine cowardice in that the Military Prison still held out, its handful of defenders still manned its walls, nay, from time to time, made sallies and terrible reprisals upon a careless ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... souls, through dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger, And conscious still of the divine Within them, lie on earth supine No longer. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... this tremendous certainty, and all the lore gathered and massed about it—this is Religion. Young as I was at the time I now speak of, ignorant and dumb as I was, I had my moments of exultation and humility,—moments so wild that I was transported out of myself. I left my body supine in its narrow bed and soared above the stars. At such times, in an aether so deep that the blue of it looked like water, I seemed to see the Gods themselves, a shining row of them, upon the battlements of Heaven. I called Heaven Olympus, and conceived of Olympus as a towered city upon ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett



Words linked to "Supine" :   passive, inactive, unresisting, resistless, unerect



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