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Abnormally   /æbnˈɔrməli/   Listen
Abnormally

adverb
1.
In an abnormal manner.  "His blood pressure was abnormally low"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Abnormally" Quotes from Famous Books



... regulate the quantity of grapes borne in a vineyard and so be made somewhat helpful in preventing alternate bearing. Abnormally large crops are usually followed by partial crop failure and biennial bearing sometimes sets in, but the large crop may be reduced by pruning and the evil consequences wholly or partly avoided. It follows that pruning must depend ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... many things can be learned readily from books, even about the most difficult parts of surgery. Three things the surgeon has to do:—"to bring together separated parts, to separate those that have become abnormally united, and to ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... others presently to be given, were made in a sitting-room at the temperatures just specified. It therefore appears that a temperature of about, or rather above, 70o F. destroys the sensitiveness of the radicles, either directly, or indirectly through abnormally accelerated growth; and this curious fact probably explains why Sachs, who expressly states that his beans were kept at a high temperature, failed to detect the sensitiveness of the apex of ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... were deferred in order to release sources for war production. In resuming public works construction, it is desirable to proceed only at a moderate rate, since demand for private construction will be abnormally high for some time. Our public works program should be timed to reach its peak after demand for private construction has begun to taper off. Meanwhile, however, plans should be prepared if we are to act promptly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... large measure to any settled conditions and that radical changes, especially sudden and large reductions, are fraught with evils. Long before a new tariff law goes into effect, even months in advance of its passage, while it is merely in prospect, the course of trade is abnormally affected. If the rate is likely to be raised, large importations take place under the lower rate, and for a considerable time after the law goes into effect imports are small, while prices rise ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... Christianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely common sense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... theoretical interest is the contrast between eosinophil and neutrophil cells. At the height of ordinary leucocytosis, the number of eosinophil cells is diminished often to disappearance; whilst during its decline they occur in abnormally high numbers. Hence it follows that the eosinophil and neutrophil cells must react towards stimulating substances completely differently, and in ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... and mental disorder. The statement of this physician may be the first note of alarm which will awaken the city to its duty in regard to the theater, so that it shall at least be made safe and sane for the city child whose senses are already so abnormally developed. ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... afterwards his cousin, slightly heavy with wine, went to bed. Clarges, abnormally wakeful, tried to read Bell's Life which lay before him and waited until Bovey was fast asleep. They occupied the same room, a large double-bedded one, which opened into a bathroom and parlour en suite. When ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... flashed forth fine rays at unexpected intervals to cheer her, and her hungry heart also began to seek satisfaction. For Beth was by nature well-balanced; there was to be no atrophy of one side of her being in order that the other might be abnormally developed. Her chest was not to be flattened because her skull bulged with the big brain beneath. Rather the contrary. For mind and body acted and reacted on each other favourably, in so far as the conditions of her life were favourable. Such congenial intellectual pursuits as she was able to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... is a phrase in which the words are associated abnormally. The car does not sleep. It is a specially constructed car in which the passengers may ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... course returned to his office and tried to bury himself in the work that he found there—but his attention wandered; he was overstrung, excited abnormally, so that the whole world stood to him as a strange, unnatural picture, something seen dimly and in exaggerated shapes through coloured glass. That evening with Stephen shone upon him now with all the vigour of colour of a real fact in a multitude of vague shadows. The reality ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... Made abnormally wakeful by that which had just occurred, I remained for a considerable time retired well down under the covering as regards my person, but with my eyes open and every sense on the alert. Eventually, however, my vigilance ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... prominent sacrum; the laceration was transverse and quite extensive, but the woman made a good recovery. Schauta pictures an exostosis on the promontory of the sacrum. Blenkinsop cites an instance in which the labor was neither protracted nor abnormally severe, yet the rupture of the vagina took place with the escape of the child into the abdomen of the mother, and was from thence extracted by Cesarean section. A peculiarity of this case was the easy expulsion from the uterus, no instrumental or other manual ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... eager, upward look which should focus all, in spirit as well as in actual direction, upon the flying, luminous figure. In some attempts she succeeded and in some she failed. There was one old woman, with abnormally deep wrinkles, and shoulders somewhat out of drawing, whose face had caught a curiously inspired look; Madge did not dare touch her again for fear of losing it. Her artist, on the other hand, the ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... have remained for a much longer period nearly constant. And this, I am convinced, is the case. That the struggle between natural selection on the one hand, and the tendency to reversion and variability on the other hand, will in the {154} course of time cease; and that the most abnormally developed organs may be made constant, I can see no reason to doubt. Hence when an organ, however abnormal it may be, has been transmitted in approximately the same condition to many modified descendants, as in the case of the wing of the bat, it must have existed, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... by abnormally stimulating the emotions, predispose strongly to religious fervor. Epilepsy is one of these, and in Swedenborg and Mohammed, both epileptics, we see distinguished examples of religious mystics, who, no doubt honestly, accepted the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... little greyhound, but it sickened and died. Remembering that a comrade-in-arms possessed a Turkish dwarf with an abnormally large head, he cast about to procure some such monstrosity for her amusement. He sent her jewellery—necklaces torn by his soldiers from the breasts of ladies in surrendered towns, rings wrested from ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... mind (which ought to have been given up entirely to bacteria) was filled with the face and fortunes of one who was either living a lie or suffering from an abnormally developed brain. Singular and sad predicament for a man who had determined to move slowly and with calm foresight. Furthermore, the whole world in which his love lived and moved was repellent, silly, and morbid. Since his meeting with her he had tried to read some of the journals devoted to her ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... because they present both characters in conjunction. The upper row of figures likewise shows the close similarity of hair-tracts, and the direction of growth on the part of the hair itself, in cases where the human ear happens to be of an abnormally hirsute character. But this particular instance (which I do not think has been previously noticed) introduces us to the subject of hair, and hair-growth, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... allow him a safe return. A melancholy warning of the dangers of the Brig is fixed to the rocky wall of the headland, describing how an unfortunate visitor was swept into the sea by the sudden arrival of an abnormally large wave, but this need not frighten away from the fascinating ridge of rock those who use ordinary care in watching the sea. At high tide the waves come over the seaweedy rocks at the foot of the headland, making it necessary ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... you are not merely fighting people. You are fighting an idea. It is only for an idea that men and women martyr themselves. With Cara this idea has become morbid—an obsession. She has inherited it together with an abnormally developed courage, and her conception of courage is to face what ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... ever before seen teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile, however, was by no means unpleasing, as might be supposed; but it had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In moments of excitement ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... they have so far proved eminently satisfactory. The Arctic cold of the winter in Canada, with the temperature below zero, and the tropical sun of India, have as yet failed to shake the stability of the composition, or abnormally injure its shooting qualities." Dr Anderson is of opinion that cordite should not be stored in naval magazines near to the boilers. Professor Vivian B. Lewes, in his recent Cantor Lectures before the Society of Arts, suggests that the magazines ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... dependent upon the state of the weather. When the weather is unusually wet the start is late. The plant suffers from the rank growth of grass and weeds, and extra labor is required to keep the fields clean. In abnormally hot weather, especially after rains, the plant sheds its leaves, thus exposing the bolls, which fall off, whereupon replanting becomes necessary. In addition to injuries by the weather the cotton-plant is subject to depredations by insects. Of late years the greatest pest ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... Wingate, one moment," Phipps intervened. "The magnitude of our operations in wheat has been immensely exaggerated. We are not abnormally large holders. There are a dozen firms ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... their native soil would kindle the sparks of interest in German literature that she supposed every well-taught child possessed, into the roaring flame of enthusiasm. She could not believe that Letty had no sparks. One of her children being so abnormally clever, it must be sheer obstinacy on the part of the other that prevented it from acquiring the knowledge offered daily in such unstinted quantities. She had no illusions in regard to Letty's person, and felt that as she would never be pretty it was ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... minutes there wasn't a sign of life in the hole. The observation—if one could call so short a glimpse at so abnormally acting a colony an ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... had no choice, limping piteously on his sprung leg with his jaw hanging so that the missing teeth were abnormally conspicuous. Outside his door a single torch flared and back of its waver stood a semicircle of unrecognized avengers, coated in black slickers with hats turned low and masks upon their faces. They led him away into the darkness while more lustily than before, though ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... acclimatization has given the Colony one or two plagues and some minor nuisances, it would be ridiculous to pretend that these for a moment weigh in the scale against its good works. Most of the vegetable pests, though they may flourish abnormally for a few years in the virgin soil, soon become less vigorous. With the growth of population even the rabbit ceases to be a serious evil, except to a few half-empty tracts. The truth is that outside her forests and swamps New Zealand showed the most ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... This abnormally susceptible youth had remarkable experiences, all within his own soul, during his sojourn, of a few days only, on the present occasion, under Madame de Warens's hospitable roof. These experiences, the autobiographer, old enough ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... of the horses to the other. She saw the dilated pupils, the abnormally full forehead, the few coarse hairs growing just above the eyelid, and they told her ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... exclaimed. "I didn't see her, either. She's the most abnormally inconspicuous person I ever heard of. What did she ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... grade than the imports, but is dependent under normal conditions on supplies from Brazil and India. The American deposits are chiefly in North and South Carolina, and have been worked only during periods of abnormally high prices or of restriction of imports. Known reserves are small and the deposits will probably never be important producers. During the war, however, the United States became the largest manufacturer of thorium nitrate and gas mantles and exported ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... holding Romney and Moorefield, and on Johnston's recommendation Loring and part of his troops were transferred elsewhere. The enemy showed no intention of advancing. The season was against them. The winter was abnormally wet; the Potomac was higher than it had been for twenty years, and the Virginia roads had disappeared in mud. In order to encourage re-enlistment amongst the men, furloughs were liberally granted by the authorities ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... symptoms. Call it hysteria, or what you will. I call it an injustice on the part of the Higher Power. I suppose that is blasphemy, but I am forced to it. Can that girl help the longings for her rights, her longings which are abnormally acute because of her over-fine nervous system? Those longings, situated as she is, can never be satisfied in any way except for her own harm. Meantime she eats her own heart, since she has nothing ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... alfalfa fields be spotted, because in places the nurse crop lodged and smothered the plants, or because excessive moisture destroyed them on the lower portions of the field in an abnormally wet season, the renewing process is simple indeed. It consists in disking those parts so thoroughly as to destroy all vegetation that may have become rooted on them, and sowing seed in the usual way without a nurse crop. But should the low places be ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... uncommon among civilized people. Throughout Europe many men, who lived years ago, are reverenced as Saints, and, who, from the accounts given of them, were demented. Why, it is even claimed that there is but one step from the abnormally gifted to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... into the room, for a moment Nigel had the impression that she was a stranger coming in. Why was that? His mind repeated the question, and he gazed at her with intensity, seeking the reason of his impression. She was looking strangely, abnormally fair. Had she again, despite the conversation of the morning, "done something" to her face? Was its whiteness whiter than usual? Or were her lips a little redder? Or—he did not know what she had done, whether, indeed, she had done anything—but he felt troubled, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... have very delicate walls, and are so few in number that they could hardly cause a tentacle to bend with precision to a definite point. Though I carefully looked, I could never detect any wrinkling of the surface at the bending place, even in the case of a tentacle abnormally curved into a complete circle, under circumstances ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... in living in a rarified atmosphere. Neither have they abnormally developed lungs. God has made ample provision for the comfort of His creatures throughout all of His infinite creations, and we of Mars are not excepted from ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... instinct becomes abnormally acute, and, one day, when the priest looked at her commiseratingly, she had divined what moved him. However it was, she drove him into a corner with a question to which he dare not answer yes, but to which he might not answer no, and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... physical strength and vigor, no doubt, but carrying within him a nature more than commonly alert and impressible. His organization, though thoroughly healthy, was both complex and high- wrought; his character was simple and straightforward to a fault, but he was abnormally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' opinion concerning him. It might be thought that he was overburdened with self- esteem, and unduly opinionated; but, in fact, he was but overanxious to secure the good-will and agreement of all with whom he came in contact. There was some ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... words by heart, in prose or rhyme; so that I believe my remembrance of events depends much more upon the events themselves than upon my possessing any special facility for recalling them. Perhaps I am too imaginative, and the earliest impressions I received were of a kind to stimulate the imagination abnormally. A long series of little misfortunes, connected with each other as to suggest a sort of weird fatality, so worked upon my melancholy temperament when I was a boy that, before I was of age, I sincerely believed myself to be under a curse, and not only myself, but ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford

... the bar overhead with a long pething-pole, like an abnormally long and heavy alpenstock, in his hand; he selects the beast to be killed, stands over it in breathless . . . silence, adjusts his point over the centre of the vertebra, and with one plunge sends the cruel point with unerring aim into the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... rather abnormally normal about this. Persons of robust emotions seldom think very much about them. The temperament that cultivates its emotional soil assiduously, warms it, waters it and watches anxiously for the first sprouts, gets a rather anemic growth for its pains. Which ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... tell a bigger one than that," said Win laughing, "but perhaps you'll swallow it because your friend Bill told it to me. He said that some time in the sixteenth century there was an abnormally low tide, lower than any one had ever known. Some fishermen who happened to be out between Orgueil and the coast of France came in and reported that they had distinctly seen down in the channel the towers ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... emaciated, with gaunt, hollow face, abnormally bright eyes and sallow skin, entered. He was well, but modestly, dressed; and he coughed a little now, as though the two flights' climb had overtaxed him—it was the man who had headed the subscription list to the Flopper half an hour before in ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... difficulties are all of Nature's doing," he said. "It's just the abnormally hard rock that is bothering us. Only for that we'd be all right, though we might have petty difficulties because of the mean acts of Blakeson & Grinder. But I don't ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... to meet the brunt of it, was an introspective, a psychological generation. And the great war has made it doubly introspective, and doubly absorbed in itself. The mere perpetual strain on the individual consciousness, under the rush of strange events, has developed men and women abnormally. ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... other matters. On ordinary days the boys had a very real freedom, only limited by the hour at which they must return, and Ishmael and Killigrew nearly always took their rods and spent the half-holidays at Bolowen Pool, rarely catching anything, for the trout were abnormally shy; but Ishmael at least had the true fisherman's temperament, and was content to sit all day at one end of a rod and line even without a fish at the other. As for Killigrew, he was soon following where Ishmael led, and would have gone bug-hunting with him had he so decreed, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... are a most unsatisfactory person," she went on, not heeding my annoyance. "Most abnormally modest people are. If I were to stick you with this hat-pin, for instance, you would accept the matter as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... crepitations in relation to each individual. They increased or decreased in every phase of health, thought, or excitement, and were extinct the moment death had mastered its victim. About twenty years later, experiments were made with a man in Paris, who had an abnormally acute sense of sound (Nature's compensation for want of sight, as he had been born blind). In a very short time this man could detect the slightest change or irregularity in these crepitations, and through the changes was able to tell with wonderful ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro

... pregnant, and that it was by no means rare in Manchester for women to be confined at fifteen years of age. In such cases, the influence of the warmth of the factories is the same as that of a tropical climate, and, as in such climates, the abnormally early development revenges itself by correspondingly premature age and debility. On the other hand, retarded development of the female constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all. {162c} Menstruation ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... did not gauge the proper moment for retreat, but continued with the fighting and were almost annihilated by the Lancers because of their lack of discretion in that respect. The burghers of the Free State, in particular, had the instinct of retreating abnormally developed, and whenever a battle was in progress large numbers of burghers could be observed going in an opposite direction as rapidly as their ponies could carry them over the veld. The lack of discipline in the commandos made such practices possible; in fact there was no ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... Vanity of Human Wishes, and a minor fragment or two, probably deserve more respect than would be conceded to them by adherents of modern schools. His most ambitious work, Irene, can be read by men in whom a sense of duty has been abnormally developed. Among the two hundred and odd essays of the Rambler, there is a fair proportion which will deserve, but will hardly obtain, respectful attention. Rasselas, one of the philosophical tales popular in the last century, gives the essence of much of the Rambler ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... something very earnest in the expression of Harvey Trueman's face—a soberness that is seldom found in men under fifty. A straight, strong nose, large nostrils and clean shaven upper lip that is abnormally long; cheek bones that stand out prominently; gray eyes set rather deep in his head for so young a man; a square chin protruding slightly; and wearing a frock coat that falls to his knees in limp folds, Trueman is a ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... again little things would be said in her presence that would set her a-thinking—little things such as what the Professor has just said. She may easily have been abnormally sensitive on the point—made more prone to reflection than usual—by last night's momentous announcement. Anyhow, she resolved to talk to Tishy about her parentage as soon as they should get back to the drawing-room, where they ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... triumph came and went upon his countenance like a flash, but when the life hangs upon the decision of a moment the wits become abnormally sharp. Jack Smith saw it, halted upon his second headlong onslaught, and turned round.—Too late: Molly was gone. He brought his gaze back upon his enemy and saw ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... to make of Mr. Champneys's niece. She was abnormally silent, unbelievably unobtrusive, singularly still. Watching her, he found himself wishing she would smile, at least occasionally: he longed to see what her mouth would look like if it should curve into laughter. She had exquisite teeth, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... to describe the exact physical traits that marked Sheridan's personality as to make a list of the characteristic mental attributes that distinguished him from others. There were perhaps no special, single, salient points. At least none were abnormally developed. In making an estimate of the man it was the ensemble of his qualities that had to be considered. He had to be taken "all in all." So taken, he was Sheridan. He was not another, or like another. There was no soldier of the civil war with whom he fairly can be compared ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... legs had become from any cause reduced in weight, this would give the false appearance of the wings having increased in relative weight. Now a reduction of this nature has certainly occurred with the Burmese Jumper, in which the legs are abnormally short, and in the two Hamburghs and Silk fowl, the legs, though not short, are formed of remarkably thin and light bones. I make these statements, not judging by mere eyesight, but after having calculated the weights of the leg-bones relatively ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... brief word of explanation is necessary here. Every New England village that has any trout-fishing in its vicinity has also a legend of a huge trout, a great-grandfather of fishes, praeternaturally wise and wary, abnormally fierce and powerful, who lives in some particular pool of the principal stream, and is seen, hooked, and played by many anglers but never landed. Such a traditional trout there was at Samaria. His lair was in a deep hole of the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... Perhaps laughter was somewhat rare in that old garden. Tamzine, who was weeding at the far end, lifted her head in a startled fashion and walked past us into the house. She did not look at us or speak to us. She was reputed to be abnormally shy. She was very stout and wore a dress of bright red-and-white striped material. Her face was round and blank, but her reddish hair was abundant and beautiful. A huge, orange-coloured cat was at her heels; as she passed us ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to worldly activity. Absolutely certified philosophies {91} seeking the inconcussum are fruits of mental natures in which the passion for identity (which we saw to be but one factor of the rational appetite) plays an abnormally exclusive part. In the average man, on the contrary, the power to trust, to risk a little beyond the literal evidence, is an essential function. Any mode of conceiving the universe which makes an appeal to this generous power, and makes the man seem as if he were individually helping ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... nothing." "No, not at all, only very uncomfortable"—and then I explained the situation to him—that my dress was so tight I could neither move nor eat. He was most indignant—"How could women be so foolish—why did we want to have abnormally small waists and be slaves to our dressmakers?—men didn't like made-up figures." "Oh, yes, they do; all men admire a slight, graceful figure." "Yes, when it is natural, but no man understands nor cares about a fashionably dressed woman—women ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... decidedly wrong with one's nerves when everybody is constantly "getting on them." They are either highly diseased or abnormally sensitive. Every woman is a slave to every other that ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... the waves on the shore, the mournful sighing of the evening wind among the groaning trees, the monotonous ticking of a dainty buhl clock, and the light fall of the cinders sounded abnormally loud in the dead ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... Ichaboe guano is inferior in value to Peruvian. It exemplifies the influence of small quantities of rain on guano deposits in impoverishing them in their nitrogen. In much of the Ichaboe guano imported into this country a large amount of feathers is found. It also contains an abnormally large quantity of ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... not feel sleepy. Perhaps the after-effects of the drug were such as to produce an abnormally active state of the brain, and the brain must be quiet to have sleep come. For a time Jack lay quietly on his couch. Then he had an attack of the fidgets, and he ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... as nowhere else in London, I believe, and enjoy an old port afterwards which those delightful sinners, our grandfathers, would have sat over half the night, and been pulled out from under the table in the morning perchance. I am not abnormally partial to the pleasures of the table, but I have found a good dinner in combination with first-rate port, rationally dealt with, an excellent tonic for ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... I, born with a question in my mouth, with the ever- present 'non possumus' in me. Here am I, to whom life was one poor futility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally developed; to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only reality; to whom nothing from beyond ever sent a flash of conviction, an intimation, into my soul—not one. To me God always seemed a being of dreams, the creation of a personal need and helplessness, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... are you so abnormally sharp? Have pity on my embarrassment," he pleaded, while Dreda shook her yellow ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Finally the talk with his sister had excited his imagination, and driven sleep from his eyelids. In vain he turned and twisted in his bed, or paced the floor of his chamber. He was not only awake, but abnormally awake, with every nerve highly strung, and every sense at the keenest. What was he to do to gain a little sleep? It flashed across him that there was brandy in the decanter downstairs, and that a glass ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... consequences or our fears, and remembering also that the experience is, for the world, a new one, is there not some hope left us in the thought that possibly the alarmists have been attributing to the fact of popular education itself what in truth is only a temporary consequence of a false, an abnormally-educating method and procedure on the part of our schools? Nay, more; does not the latter afford the true solution of the evil? We believe it has been shown that our teaching methods not only fail in great part, but in a degree positively mis-educate; that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... possible result of the enforcement of wage standardization which requires brief notice, because it was displayed prominently during the war. The demand during the war for certain essentials of warfare was abnormally great, and the result was a steady bidding up of wages for the supply of labor which could assist in the production of these essentials. This led to a constant shifting about of the wage earners from plant ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... encircled by a looming wall of houses. Here and there on benches huddled figures sat, formless and immovable, less like human beings than ghosts come back in the depths of night to find themselves denied an entrance into life, and drooping disconsolate. His footsteps sounded abnormally loud, thrown back from the houses, buffeted between their frowning fronts, as if they were maliciously determined to reveal his presence, wanted him to know that they too were leagued against him. He stumbled over the sidewalk's coping ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... One British firm there, figuratively speaking, "coined" money. They were able frequently to run a steamer, well known in Chinese waters (in which I have travelled myself), between Manila and Hong-Kong carrying refugees, who were willing to pay abnormally high rates of passage. In ordinary times fares ranged from P50 saloon accommodation to P8 a deck passage. On one trip, for instance, this steamer, with the cabins filled at P125 each, carried 1,200 deck passengers (no food) at P20, and 30 deck passengers (with food) ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... enough now, and visible, her lips thickening and assuming the abnormally humid appearance he ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... Uncle Prudent. Like him he was in his forty-sixth year; like him of invariable health; like him of undoubted boldness. They were two men made to understand each other thoroughly, but they did not, for both were of extreme violence of character. Uncle Prudent was furiously hot; Phil Evans was abnormally cool. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... life run the risk of chorea; children suffering from the after-effects of diseases such as rheumatic or scarlet fever, who need particularly to avoid over-exertion or too violent exercise; children of such marked general debility that their power of resisting disease is abnormally low—all these, if neglected, tend to become qualified candidates for the physically defective schools. If they could attend a school designed to suit their needs, they would in many cases be quite able to return, after varying periods, to their places in ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... parody on a gorilla with a grouch against the solar system! We trained these two weeks in hopes that a chariot of fire would come up and take the old man down, but there was nothing doing. He remained abnormally healthy and supernaturally mad. On the morning before the fatal day we all wrote letters home, explaining that we had secured elegant jobs in various emporiums over the city and wouldn't be home until late in the summer. Then we shivered a shake or two apiece and got ready ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... so abnormally normal," retorted Peter—which impressed me as being both clever and true. And when Lady Allie, worrying over that epigram, became as self-immured as a Belgian milk-dog, Peter cocked an eye at me as a robin cocks an eye at a fish-worm, and I had the audacity to murmur across ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... sprains is very generally underestimated, and as a consequence many persons go through life with ankles that are abnormally weak, and even painful in bad weather, and in which there is a tendency to swell and become exceedingly troublesome after a slight wrench. In all true sprains there is more or less actual tearing of the ligaments that bind the joint together, and, if the injury be not properly treated and the joint ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... better term, we call subconsciousness or subliminal consciousness. Moreover, it is not surprising that in the animals, these subliminal faculties not only exist, but are perhaps keener and more active than in ourselves, because it is our conscious and abnormally individualized life that atrophies them by relegating them to a state of idleness wherein they have fewer and fewer opportunities of being exercised, whereas in our brothers who are less detached from the universe, consciousness—if we can give that name to a very uncertain and confused ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... and she acknowledged her husband's introduction graciously. She was dressed for the evening in white. Her eyes looked abnormally large, and she kept dropping her lids as if to keep them from setting in a stare. Her lovely mouth with its soft curves was faded and set. The whole face was almost as stiff as a mask, and even her graceful body was rigid. Ruyler saw Spaulding give her a sharp "sizing-up" look, ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... cannot get reconciled that she should die. And yet she yearns to be "ontbonden" (loosed), and begs of me to pray to that effect. Now, God forgive me, but this dying girl's request I cannot, cannot accede to. Humanly speaking, she simply cannot live; it is only her abnormally strong constitution that fights so grimly. I have wrestled with God for her life. Oh, she must not, may not, die! Think of the weak, frail mother—of the father far, far away in Ceylon! "O ye of little faith"; and yet I firmly believe God ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... other hand, it remains throughout life in the remarkable long-nosed ape of Borneo (Nasalis larvatus). Its finely-shaped nose would be regarded with envy by many a man who has too little of that organ. If we compare the face of the long-nosed ape with that of abnormally ape-like human beings (such as the famous Miss Julia Pastrana, Figure 1.185), it will be admitted to represent a higher stage of development. There are still people among us who look especially to the face for the "image of God in man." The long-nosed ape would have more claim to this than some ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... blood seemed to stop in her veins. Her hand pressed against her heart felt no movement there. Her father, noticing the change in her, exclaimed, "Bertaud is quite right, you are sometimes abnormally pale; do ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... in and our two bronze boys are trying to make a path to the road. We are all so abnormally well and with the nurse and Carlton's friend Dr. Harmen, constitute a lively household though I liked the sweetness of our oneness better. These are happy times and they watch and guard me as ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... were twelve?" queried Gantry. He was not abnormally curious, but Blount's communicative mood was unusual enough to ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... when they dropped for a wink at a neighbour. Joanna waltzing with Socknersh to the trills of Mr. Elphick, the Brodnyx schoolmaster, seated at the tinkling, ancient Collard, Joanna in her pink gown, close fitting to her waist and then abnormally bunchy, with her hair piled high and twisted with a strand of ribbon, with her face flushed, her lips parted and her eyes bright, was a sight from which no man and few women could turn their eyes. Her vitality and happiness seemed to shine from ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... two or three years and there stop altogether, as if a permanent brake were applied to the wheels of their growth. Some higher types may even come to speak connected sentences, and exhibit a certain mild spontaneity, though stupid and slow and abnormally deliberate, resembling the acquired form of thyroid deprivation or insufficiency, for which ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... see that abnormally clear, fresh, semi-transparent complexion, be sure it is a bad ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... remote Mongolian origin, modified largely by the climate, the nature of the country, and probably by intermarriage. In the scale of standard human races the Raots stood extremely low, as can be judged from the accompanying photographs. The women, as will be seen, had abnormally small skulls with low foreheads, and although they looked devoid even of a glint of reason, they were actually fairly intelligent. They had high cheek-bones; long, flattish noses, broad and rounded as in the Mongolian ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... ordinary measure of the organ of perception—that is, the brain—is exceeded, just as nature frequently forms monstrosities in which ONE ORGAN is developed at the expense of the others. Such a monstrosity, if it reaches the highest degree, is called GENIUS, which at bottom is caused only by an abnormally rich and powerful brain. This organ of perception, which originally and in normal cases looks outward for the purpose of satisfying the wants of the will of life, receives in the case of an abnormal development such vivid and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... particular of physiognomy and expression, having in the latter figure a full beard and the peculiar intellectual development of a male sage; she has the hairy breast of the man, with the mammary development of the female, and an abnormally-enlarged clitoris, which was often mistaken for the male organ. The vagina at its lower end was narrow, and the urethral aperture opened into it some distance from its outer opening; otherwise she was sexually a perfect ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... was not a quiet thing; it billowed and curled until it appeared to half-conceal darker shadows, any one of which could be an enemy. Shann remained hunkered on the sand, every sense abnormally alert, watching the fog. He was still sure he could hear sounds which marked the progress of another. What other? One of the Warlockians tracking him to spy? Or was there some prisoner like himself lost out there in the murk? Could it ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... a professional heavy-weight prize-fighter, with an abnormally long reach, holding an amateur bantam-weight boxer at arm's length with one hand and hitting him when and where he pleased with the other. The fact that the little man was not in the least afraid of his burly antagonist and that he got in a vicious ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... young 'squire was not at home. His mother indicated a willingness to convey any message to him upon his return; but Jeb, always contemptuous of women, was in a state of elusive subtlety. Someone in town had lent wings to his already abnormally developed caution in the matter of the application for the appointment of the "gyardeen" for his weak-minded sister-in-law, and had hinted that he might have to swear to her mental condition if he became the sponsor for such a move. Jeb was wily. He had tasted ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... the same time was thoroughly enjoying the peaceful silence of the camp. "That man is an exaggerated schoolmaster, with all the faults of the species abnormally developed. If I once open out on him, he will learn more truth about himself in ten minutes than he ever heard in his life before. What an unbearable prig he has grown to be." Thus ran Yates' ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... it; and Cheyne naturally took the same point of view. But Mrs. Cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. Her boy, who rode rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a keen-faced youth, abnormally silent, who addressed most of his conversation to his father. She understood it was business, and therefore a matter beyond her premises. If she had any doubts, they were resolved when Cheyne went to Boston and brought back a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... on her with a shock, thrilling, terrible, yet not altogether unpleasant. She rose, her hands clenched at her sides and her eyes abnormally wide as they stared in the same direction as the eyes of the two horses held. Yet for all her preparation she nearly fainted when a voice sounded directly behind her, a pleasantly modulated voice: "Look this way. I am here, in front of ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... which there was no eye, succeeded by his passionate volubility and impudence in attaching himself to her in a sort of official capacity. He spoke fluent, but faulty, French, which attracted Suzanne, and, being abnormally muscular and active, in an amazingly short time got hold of all their boxes and bags and ranged them on the counter. He then indulged in a dramatic performance, which he apparently considered likely to rouse into life and attention the two unshaven men in smocks, who were ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... such abnormally keen delight in being remembered, that it is obligatory upon the rest of his family and his friends not to forget him. Kindly messages should be frequent. Trifling gifts frequently are better than large gifts occasionally, unless the large ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... Ladybird—you're going to be plucky and stand up to this like a soldier's wife, for my sake. The Frontier's been abnormally quiet these many months. It will do us all good to have a taste of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... the spring of 1902, were not moulted till the beginning of October. This shows the great importance of pulling out the feathers as soon as they show signs of ceasing to grow, in order to obtain the abnormally long feathers. The central rectrices continued to grow till the beginning of September 1903, when that of the left side was 3 feet 6 inches long, that of the right about an inch shorter. The coverts had ceased to grow ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... man standing out there gazing in at me. I think I have never had so startling a realization. It was a man in white doeskin trousers and blue blazer jacket, with a jaunty linen cap on his head. An abnormally tall, muscular man. And his smooth-shaven, black-browed face with the reflection from the restaurant window lights upon it, reminded me of the apparition we ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... being insane and abnormally irritable, and under a pecuniary illusion, as stated in his certificate: and to his own vast experience. But the fire of cross-examination melted all his polysyllables into guesswork and hearsay. It melted out of him that he, a stranger, had intruded on the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... to help Hilary to catch his train. The enterprise was a failure; it was not a job at which either Margerison was good. They had to wait in the detestable station for another. The annoyance of that (it is really an abnormally depressing station) worked on Hilary's nervous system to such an extent that he might have flung himself on the line and so found peace from the disappointments of life, had not Peter been at hand to cheer him up. There were certainly points ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... warm spring air he was conscious of a certain chilliness. Her level, indifferent tone seemed to him almost abnormally callous. A horrible realisation flashed for a moment in his brain. She was speaking of the man whom she ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... recognize the important truths of life, I was yet insane as to many of its practical details. Judgment being King of the Realm of Thought, it was not surprising that my judgment failed often to decide correctly the many questions presented to it by its abnormally communicative subjects. At first I seemed to live a second childhood. I did with delight many things which I had first learned to do as a child—the more so as it had been necessary for me to learn again to eat and walk, and now to talk. I had much lost time to make up; and for a while ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion's brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work. For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under ordinary ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... console us as we read these later stories of Crabbe. We part from too many of them not, on the whole, with a livelier faith in human nature. We are crushed by the exhibition of so much that is abnormally base and sordid. ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... "Thus I became abnormally developed in my lowest nature. I grew bolder, and from being able to return shy glances at first, was soon able to meet more daring ones, until the waltz became to me and whomsoever danced with me, one lingering, sweet and purely sensual pleasure, where heart beat against heart, hand was held ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn

... the average marriage are a man over-stimulated sexually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally undersexed by the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... left by the previous tenants: broken bottles, old corsets, bones, rusty bedsprings. The dead hen he had taken out first of all, carrying it by one leg. It was a gruesome horror, partly eaten by rats, swollen, abnormally heavy, one side flattened from lying so long upon the floor. He could hardly stand; each time he bent over it seemed as though his backbone was disjointing. After cleaning out the debris he began to sweep. The dust was fearful, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... does happen to develop abnormally, it must be clear that, from the very nature of our existence, some incident can be recalled which will satisfactorily, yet unjustly, bear the blame. It may be confidently said, however, that, for every mother whose fears are realized, hundreds ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... continues for an hour: it takes an abnormally long time to cook abnormally bad food! Long before five the clock of Excelsior rings and the cry of the mill is heard waking whomsoever might be lucky enough to be asleep. Mrs. Jones calls Molly. "Molly!" The ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... short of stature, possessed abnormally long arms, had a heavy moustache, and very hairy, flexible fingers, with which he performed wondrous feats of craftsmanship, but to my fearful imagination he seemed to resemble at times a tarantula ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... when it was wholly animal and took care of itself through what we used to call the instincts. But, as I was saying, it was not danger that Ormond seemed to be afraid of, if it came short of death. He was almost abnormally indifferent to pain. I knew of his undergoing an operation that most people would take ether for, and not wincing, because it was not supposed ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... of bed, carefully opened his knife and made a few judicious slits in the veiling canvas. My senses had become abnormally acute. I seemed to hear every shade of sound within and without the house. I could sense, I imagined, the very positions in which sat the persons in the kitchen below. Even Twinetoes was affected by the tense atmosphere. He murmured in his sleep and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... a little man, topped by an abnormally large head which was part of the penalty he had to pay for his talents. He had a great, broad forehead, and an eye that did not gleam nor express the beauty of his creative mind, but was dull, and lustreless, matching his broken, flattened nose. Indeed he was a tragedy to ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... time since leaving their own world the adventurers found themselves amid surroundings that at least held some semblance of an aspect of familiarity. The scene they faced now might have been one of their own land viewed on an abnormally ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... background of the vault; the result being that the mind is obliged to conceive them as expanded or contracted, in its unconscious attempts to make them always fill their due proportion of space in the various parts of this abnormally ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... we are not coming to that! Trotman says it is a thoroughly severe attack, but not abnormally malignant, as he calls it. It is a matter of nursing, he tells me, and that he has of the best—a matter of nursing and of prayer, and that,' added Adela, her eyes filling with tears, 'I am ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hand glittered in the lamp-light came the mutter of a distant drum on the moist darkness; zu Pfeiffer, abnormally irritable, raised his head, scowled, and muttering that he would have to issue an order to have the drums stopped, bent again to the uncongenial task of finishing the report due for headquarters before ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... young gentleman or lady?" Dr. Clay asked of Pearlie Watson one day when he met her wheeling a baby carriage with an abnormally ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a punt-pole. I thought the river seemed to become suddenly deserted; it grew quite abnormally quiet—and abnormally dark. But I was so deep in reflection that it never ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... better than to get him down," I suggested; "he's most abnormally keen at ferreting out a mystery that promises any news—if any one can learn the truth about ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster



Words linked to "Abnormally" :   abnormal



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