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Characterise   Listen
Characterise

verb
1.
Be characteristic of.  Synonym: characterize.
2.
Describe or portray the character or the qualities or peculiarities of.  Synonyms: characterize, qualify.  "This poem can be characterized as a lament for a dead lover"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Characterise" Quotes from Famous Books



... and appropriate in sentiment, deriving much force from the continued repetition of the first line. "In Morven's Mead," by Winifred V. Jordan, is one of a series of fanciful poems all bearing the same title. The present verses show all the charm and delicacy which characterise the whole. "Patience—A Woman's Virtue," is one of Mrs. Eloise N. Griffith's thoughtful moral essays, and is as commendable for its precepts as for its pure style. "His Flapper," by Edna von der Heide, is a clever piece ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... strenuous fashion, this dainty and well-bred piety seemed perilously like Laodicean lukewarmness, while my headlong vigour of conviction and practice often jarred on her as alien from the delicate balance and absence of extremes that should characterise the gentlewoman. She was of the old regime; I of the stuff from which fanatics are made: and I have often thought, in looking back, that she must have had on her lips many a time unspoken a phrase that dropped from them when she lay a-dying: "My little one, you have never made ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... He had nothing very remarkable either in his wit, or his person; but his sentiments were worthy of the fortune which awaited him, when, on the very point of his elevation, he was killed at sea. Never did disinterestedness so perfectly characterise the greatness of the soul: he had no views but what tended to the glory of his master: his credit was never employed but in advising him to reward services, or to confer favours on merit: so polished in conversation, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... in wonder at the narrative. Why had not Mrs. Pendennis married a serious man, he thought—Mr. Tatham was a widower—and kept this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Mr. Costigan's daughter, he would say nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterise her. Mr. Foker here interposed to say he had known some uncommon good people in the booths, as he called the Temple of the Muses. Well, it might be so, Mr. Tatham hoped so—but the father, Tatham knew personally—a man ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... personifications of inanimate Nature only characterise her in her relation to another, and that not man but God. Nothing had significance by itself, Nature was but a book in which to read of Jehovah; and for this reason the Hebrew could not be wrapt in her, could ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... How shall we characterise such a deed? Says Black-stone, "If any one that hath commission of martial authority doth, in time of peace, hang, or otherwise execute any man by colour of martial law, this is murder; for it is against Magna Charta."* [* Commentaries, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... against one of his books, a dream which for a short time restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for ever, led him to musings, which without effort shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterise these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... advanced an age employed on laborious and anxious work, was no doubt attributable in a great measure to the cheerfulness of his nature. He was, indeed, a most happy-minded man. It will be remembered that, when a boy, he had been known in his valley as "Laughing Tam." The same disposition continued to characterise him in his old age. He was playful and jocular, and rejoiced in the society of children and young people, especially when well-informed and modest. But when they pretended to acquirements they did not ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... "concerning which I will candidly acknowledge I am as profoundly ignorant as the most dogmatical theologian possibly can be, I just wish to observe, that the pure and peaceful manners which Homer ascribes to the Lotophagi, and which at this day characterise many nations (the Hindoos, for example, who subsist exclusively on the fruits of the earth), depose very strongly in favour ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... the inner to the outer aspects of the old-time tale is to meet another cause of its value to children. This is the value of its style. Simplicity, directness, and virility characterise the classic fairy tales and the most memorable relics of folklore. And these are three of the very qualities which are most seriously lacking in much of the new writing for children, and which are always necessary ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... feeling in Ulster is strong and immovable. The tens of thousands of Protestants thickly scattered over other provinces feel more strongly still; as well they may, for they have not the numbers, the organisation, the unity which is strength, that characterise the province of Ulster. They hold that Home Rule is at the bottom a religious movement, that by circuitous methods, and subterranean strategy, the religious re-conquest of the island is sought; that the ignorant peasantry, composing the large majority of the electorate, are entirely in the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... which characterise him could hardly be better instanced than in his calling the eminent O'Donovan Rossa "le depute-martyr de Tipperary." In English, if not in French, a "deputy-martyr" is a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... the other. The posterior development is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe; 'it is peculiar to the genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and the 'hippocampus minor,' which characterise the hind lobe of each hemisphere'."—'Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... arterio-sclerosis will supply a vascular apparatus predisposed to arterio-sclerosis; tuberculous subjects will supply germs in which the vital vibrations and cellular solidity will be below the normal, and bring about those degenerate tendencies which characterise the tuberculous subject; those of sanguine constitution will transmit a faculty for vital assimilation and considerable corpuscular production, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... One cannot characterise this attitude otherwise than as a piece of special pleading. The appointment, not merely of the Royal Commission, but of the Select Committees of 1865 and 1890, presupposed a disparity between the conditions in the two countries ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... more or less completely the qualities of those from which they came, and therefore appear to be repetitions of the same cell. This growth, and multiplication of cells is only a special phase of those manifold functions which characterise organised matter, and which consist not only in what goes on within the cell substance as alterations or undulatory movement of the molecular disposition, but also in that which becomes visible outside the cells as change ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... sky, shines for several hours with a brightness and warmth surpassing that of the British summer, and then sinks without a cloud behind the secondary ranges of the Maritime Alps, displaying in his setting the beautiful and varied succession of tints which characterise that glorious phenomenon of the refraction of light, asouthern sunset; when he imparts to the rugged mountains a softness of outline and a brilliancy of colouring which defy description. In the early stages of phthisis, and especially ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black



Words linked to "Characterise" :   mark, differentiate, character, remember, distinguish, think of, characterisation, individuate, define, stamp



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