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Distinguish   /dɪstˈɪŋgwɪʃ/   Listen
Distinguish

verb
(past & past part. distinguished; pres. part. distinguishing)
1.
Mark as different.  Synonyms: differentiate, secern, secernate, separate, severalise, severalize, tell, tell apart.
2.
Detect with the senses.  Synonyms: discern, make out, pick out, recognise, recognize, spot, tell apart.  "I can't make out the faces in this photograph"
3.
Be a distinctive feature, attribute, or trait; sometimes in a very positive sense.  Synonyms: differentiate, mark.
4.
Make conspicuous or noteworthy.  Synonyms: signalise, signalize.
5.
Identify as in botany or biology, for example.  Synonyms: describe, discover, identify, key, key out, name.



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"Distinguish" Quotes from Famous Books



... have now set down all those particulars of the treaty with Epernon and the consequent pacification of Brittany in the year 1598 which it will be of advantage to the public to know, that it may the better distinguish in the future those who have selfishly impoverished the State from those who, in its behalf, have incurred obloquy and high looks, I proceed next to the events which followed the King's ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... on the Whig side, was a State senator, commonly known as "Bray'' Dickinson, to distinguish him from D. S. Dickinson who had been a senator of the United States, and a candidate for the Presidency. "Bray'' Dickinson was a most earnest supporter of Mr. Seward; staunch, prompt, vigorous, and really devoted to the public good. One story ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... away, he pushed his way through them and took his share of the work, laughing idiotically from time to time. He had, when he saw that the galleon was sinking, taken off his doublet, the better to be able to swim, and in his shirt and trunks there was nothing to distinguish him from a Spaniard, and none suspected that he was other than he seemed to be—a ship's boy, who had lost his senses from fear. When the work was done, he threw himself on the deck with the weary sailors. His hopes were that the battle ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... rapped out a curse that rattled even in the ears of magistracy; the chin of Flacks the morning lecturer gravitated downwards into the dimensions of a patriarchal beard; and the town-council could distinguish an assortment of audible reproaches to the memory of Mr Kabel, such as prig, rascal, profane wretch, &c. But the Mayor motioned with his hand, and immediately the fiscal and the bookseller recomposed their ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... bestowed. How then was it possible to doubt, that every slave in the Mauritius should receive his freedom, when the only ground alleged for not singling out and liberating this fifty thousand, was the inability to distinguish them from the rest? If ten men are tried for an offence, and it is clear that five are innocent, though you cannot distinguish them from their companions, what jury will hesitate in acquitting the whole, on ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... deal; dresses gay, and even richly, and seems to like his own person very well—no great pleasure this for a lady to look forward to; yet he falls far short of that genteel ease and graceful behaviour, which distinguish your Mr. B. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... life, keep the commandments." And when the young man asks Him, Matthew xix, what he shall do that he may inherit eternal life, Christ sets before him naught else but the Ten Commandments. Accordingly, we must learn how to distinguish among good works from the Commandments of God, and not from the appearance, the magnitude, or the number of the works themselves, nor from the judgment of men or of human law or custom, as we see has been ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... Distinguish Good from Poor Spawn.—This is a very difficult matter, notwithstanding what people may say to the contrary. If we could positively tell good from bad spawn, we would never use bad spawn, and, therefore, with ordinary care, have very few failures ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... Cap'n." Crittenden had been "Ole Captain" with the servants—since the death of "Ole Master," his father—to distinguish him from "Young Captain," who was his brother, Basil. Master and servant shook ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... We are in the clouds, and before we think much about it we are out of them. We see the earth beneath us, like a great circular plain, with the centre a little elevated. Now we see the rivers; the forests begin to define themselves; we can distinguish houses, and we know that we are falling very rapidly. It is time to throw out ballast. We do so, and we ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... much more rich orange than in the type of this species. In the grey phase of S. caniceps that species is so like S. Blanfordii in the colouring of the upper parts and feet that it is almost impossible to distinguish them, but, according to Dr. Anderson, "on examining the under parts it is found that in these phases of S. caniceps they are grey, whereas in S. Blanfordii they are a beautiful rich orange, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... how her sweet bosom, as I clasped her to mine, heaved and panted! I could even distinguish her dear heart flutter, flutter, against mine; and, for a few minutes, I feared she ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the distinction—these different ways being, however, not independent but complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is that good is distinguished ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley

... my own business at all times, and to lose no good opportunity of holding my tongue. Help me not to cry for the moon or over spilled milk. Grant me neither to proffer nor to welcome cheap praise; to distinguish sharply between sentiment and sentimentality, cleaving to the one and despising the other. When it is appointed for me to suffer, let me, so far as may humanly be possible, take example from the dear well-bred beasts, and go quietly, to bear my suffering ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... anything more regular than the sculpturings on every part of it. We find them fretted over with polygons, like those of a honeycomb, only somewhat less mathematically exact, and the centre of every polygon contains its many-rayed star. It is difficult to distinguish between species in some of the divisions of corals: one Astrea, recent or extinct, is sometimes found so exceedingly like another of some very different formation or period, that the more modern might almost be deemed a lineal descendant of the more ancient species. With ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... a cold, clear night, with myriads of stars in the dark sky that seemed to shed a faintly luminous light to earth, bright enough at all events for Micky to distinguish the figure of a girl walking slowly ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... than 1651, though there are here and there vestiges of architecture anterior to the middle of the seventeenth century; the hiding-place, however, is not among these, and looks nothing beyond a very deep cupboard adjoining one of the bedrooms, with nothing peculiar to distinguish it from ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... development of my own inner nature, Charley, at least, walks faithfully in the moral twilight which his early training vouchsafed to him. His fidelity to B—— Station is like that which ought to distinguish somebody's wife—I forget whose, but no matter. The mere ownership of the property is a matter of perfect indifference to Charley. When the place changes hands, he is valued and sold as part of the working plant, without ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... been telling him, drunk and sober, that it is my opinion also as to what truth is. Only I, with Protagoras, distinguish between ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... listened to the silence, and could hear nothing but the distant shouts and laughter of the Chouans, who were drinking in the gardens and dividing their booty. He turned the corner to the fatal wing before which his men had been shot, and from there he could distinguish, by the feeble light of a few stray lanterns, the different groups of the Chasseurs du Roi. Neither Pille-Miche, nor Marche-a-Terre, nor the girl were visible; but he felt himself gently pulled by the flap of his uniform, and, turning round, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... there be of what is false? or what does any one remember which he does not comprehend and hold in his mind? And what art can there be except that which consists not of one, nor of two, but of many perceptions of the mind? and if you take these away, how are you to distinguish the artist from the ignorant man? For we must not say at random that this man is an artist, and deny that that man is; but we must only do so when we see that the one retains the things which he has perceived ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... said, and turning to Tartarin, whose eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, could distinguish her pale and pretty face beneath her mantle, she ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... the sea in the distance. I say nothing of Wolgast, which seemed to lie just beneath their feet, with its princely castle and cathedral perfectly distinct, and all its seats laid out like a map, where they could even distinguish the people walking. Then her Grace bade them ascend to the upper story, and look out for Stettin, but they sought for it in vain with their unassisted eyes; then her Grace placed the tubum opticum before the Duke, and no sooner ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... overteek them, or perhaps be there by the upper road before them. If any of you has a fancy for the other sister, I'm not the man that will stand in your way; but in order to encourage you to do your dooty, I now decleer that it is the man who will best distinguish himself among you that must get her. You all know what you are to do. The old tyrant, root and branches, is to be cut off, and his second daughter secured to me. You have been told the password for the night, and if you find any men among you that knows it not, put him instantly to death as ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... phrase it was described as "many stripes and no stars." Few measures were omitted to heighten the shock of contrast. No notice was taken of papers forwarded to Government, and the man who attempted to distinguish himself by higher views than quarter-deck duties, found himself marked out for the angry Commodore's red-hot displeasure. No place was allowed for charts and plans: valuable original surveys, of which no duplicates ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... firmament displayed, With such an undiscerned swiftness hurled About the steadfast centre of the world; Against whose rapid course the restless sun, And wandering flames in varied motions run. Which heat, light, life infuse; time, night, and day Distinguish; in our human bodies sway: That hung'st the solid earth in fleeting air Veined with clear springs which ambient seas repair. In clouds the mountains wrap their hoary heads; Luxurious valleys clothed with flowery meads; Her trees yield fruit and shade; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... flew back hotly to Rand's cheek. It was Mornie's voice. By leaning over the ledge, he could distinguish something moving along the almost precipitous face of the cliff, where an abandoned trail, long since broken off and disrupted by the fall of a portion of the ledge, stopped abruptly a hundred feet below him. Rand knew the trail, a dangerous one always: in ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... into the desired shape, and the other neatly polished over nearly the entire surface. The surfaces are somewhat whitened from decomposition, but within the rock is nearly black, and the eye could not distinguish it from a dark slate. The material is shown by microscopic test to be a volcanic tufa. These examples were evidently intended for more delicate work than the preceding. The shapes of the specimens illustrated in Figs. 21 and 22 indicate a still different use. ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... village for refreshment, when all at once there fell the most terrible shower of hail and rain, accompanied with thunder, that ever was heard;—this determined them to go into the wood for shelter:—the storm continued till night, and it was then so dark, that they could distinguish nothing:—they wandered, however, leading their horses in their hands, for it was impossible to ride, hoping to find some path, by which they might extricate themselves out of ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... those found in the State of Ohio, where, during a residence of seventeen months, I made the closest investigation my time and duties permitted. In Ohio, the number of mounds, including enclosures of different kinds, is estimated at about 13,000, though it requires the greatest care to distinguish between the mounds proper and those subsequently erected by the Indians. In some parts they are very close together, which is strong evidence that these regions were densely populated. In others, a solitary mound, with adjacent burial mounds, gives ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth

... his attitude toward me was one of flamboyant familiarity; altogether I should say a young man of forward tendencies, shallow, flippant, utterly lacking in the deeper and finer sensibilities which ever distinguish those of true culture, and utterly disregardful of the proper and ordained conventionalities. In conversation he is addicted to vain follies and meaningless witticisms, and his laughter, in which he is prone to indulge without due cause so far as I can ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... moon shining across the huge oleander beneath which I had again taken cover, I listened intently. But De Gex speaking with his guest was too far off for me to distinguish anything he said. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... strenuous days indeed for all concerned, and especially for the defenders; for the fighting usually began with the dawn, and continued all through the day as long as there was light enough to distinguish friend from foe; while, so far as the Izreelites were concerned, they were obliged to maintain a watch all through the hours of darkness, in order to be prepared for the surprise night attacks which the savages sprang upon ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... brought out to the trenches at about three o'clock. The bombardment on the left, like a terrific thunderstorm, rolled on till dusk. A few aeroplanes flew overhead, looking like huge birds in the blue sky. As yet the troops found it very hard to distinguish the Germans from the English, although several pamphlets had been ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... belonging to the third class, and one or two others who had either arrived late, or taken advantage of the little additional license given the first few days to stay beyond their usual bedtime. It was too dark to distinguish faces, but the figure of Frank Digby, who had managed with great pains to climb the mantelpiece, and was delivering an oration, would have been unmistakable if even he had been silent;—who but Frank Digby could have ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... and a year after confederation was accomplished he accepted the position of lieutenant-governor of Ontario. Mr. Macdougall had an unsatisfactory career as a minister, with an unhappy termination. He was clearly out of his element. Mr. Tilley was described as a Liberal, but there was nothing to distinguish him from his Conservative colleagues in his methods or his utterances, and he became the champion of the essentially Conservative policy ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... similarly too those which are duly executed but subsequently rescinded by loss of status may be said to be revoked. However, as it is convenient that different grounds of invalidity should have different names to distinguish them, we say that some wills are unduly executed from the commencement, while others which are duly executed are either revoked ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... take, ere speaking of the need for Avataras, and it is this: when the great central Deities have manifested, then there come forth from Them seven Deities of what we may call the second order. In Theosophy, they are spoken of as the planetary Logoi, to distinguish them from the great solar Logoi, the central Life. Each of These has to do with one of the seven sacred planets, and with the chain of worlds connected with that planet. Our world is one of the links in this chain, and you and I pass round this ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant

... cautiously. He could see lights within, but the shades were drawn and he could distinguish nothing. Once he thought he heard sounds of a struggle in the house, but he could not ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... door and entered. There were neither candles nor lamp in the room; but through the projecting window, which was open, there came the faint gleams of the starlight, by which one could distinguish a female figure seated on a low stool in the middle of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... always been very grateful to the creator of Sherlock Holmes. It is the merest pedantry for a man to defend himself with a shamed face for his light reading: it is enough that he should be able to distinguish between the books which come and go and those which remain. So far as I remember, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and John Inglesant came out somewhat about the same time, and there were those of us who read them both; but while we thought the Hansom Cab ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... small and single Magnifying Glasses, and casually viewing a parcel of white Sand, when I perceiv'd one of the grains exactly shap'd and wreath'd like a Shell, but endeavouring to distinguish it with my naked eye, it was so very small, that I was fain again to make use of the Glass to find it; then, whilest I thus look'd on it, with a Pin I separated all the rest of the granules of Sand, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... was very handsome, of course, with very little to distinguish it from the many fine rooms of her friends. Yet when Graeme stood for a moment near the folding-doors, exchanging greetings with the lady of the house, the remembrance of one time, when she had stood there ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... majority of horses ridden in these events are well bred Australians, which, taking them all round, are the best jumpers I have ever seen. Some "country-breds" are fine fencers, but Arabs, delightful as they are for hacking, rarely distinguish themselves across country. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied by several theories and philosophies; whereas to find the real truth requireth another manner of severity and attention. For as Aristotle saith, that children at the first will call every woman mother, but afterward they come to distinguish according to truth, so experience, if it be in childhood, will call every philosophy mother, but when it cometh to ripeness it will discern the true mother. So as in the meantime it is good to see the several glosses and opinions upon Nature, whereof it may be everyone in some one ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... distinguish the qualities, which are the same in both parents, from those that constitute the differentiating marks in every single cross. In respect to the first [252] group the cross is not at all distinguished from a normal fertilization, and ordinarily these ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... supposed to be matters of absolute demonstration, were not only essentially different, but in contradiction to one another. Again, therefore, the opinion was resumed that the intellect of man possesses no criterion of truth, being neither able to distinguish among the contradictions of the impressions of the senses, nor to judge of the correctness of philosophical deductions, nor even to determine the intrinsic morality of acts. And, if there be no criterion of truth, there can be no certain ground of science, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... early in the morning, when it was pitch- dark and you could see nothing, not even your own hand; and then lie watching as time went on till the light came gradually creeping in at the window? If you have done this you will have noticed that you can at first only just distinguish the dim outline of the furniture; then you can tell the difference between the white cloth on the table and the dark wardrobe beside it; then by degrees all the smaller details, the handles of the drawer, the pattern on the wall, and the different colours ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... a prodigy when a young man, and there seemed little to distinguish him from any other young nobleman who went about the city in dandified apparel with hair oiled and perfumed,—but Caesar had quietly made up his mind to be the first man in Rome and to surpass all others in greatness. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... near the door, prepared for flight. It was growing light, and with the daylight our courage revived. First Willis, then John and I, went back to the hole in the floor and peeped down; but it was too dark to distinguish any object. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... in a voice so trembling that at first they could hardly distinguish his words, "I believe that God, who often seems insensible and deaf to the things of this world, keeps, on the contrary, His piercing eyes constantly on us, and only remains thus careless in appearance in order to ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... and thoughtful. They felt that something threatened to disturb what seemed to be the only possible life for them, yet were unable to distinguish its features, and therefore powerless to resist it. The same instinct which had been born of their wonderful spiritual likeness told them that Ruth Bradley already loved Jonathan: the duty was established, and they must conform their ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... speak of "the York Rite," as though it were the oldest and truest form of Masonry, but, while it serves to distinguish one branch of Masonry from another, it is not accurate; for, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a York Rite. The name is more a tribute of reverence than a description ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... with marked distinction by the queen, and also by the king, who was careful to show his approval of her entertainments by the share which he took in them; and, as he paraded the saloons arm-in-arm with her, to distinguish those whom she noticed, so that, to quote the words of one of the most lively chroniclers of the day, their example seemed to be fast bringing conjugal love and fidelity into fashion. She even persuaded him to depart still further from his usual reserve, so as to appear in costume ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... serious and dignified impressiveness. This man, though, did not have the eagle-bird eye with which the detective of fiction so often is favoured. He did not have the low flattened arches—frontal or pedal—which frequently distinguish the bona-fide article, who comes from Headquarters with a badge under his left lapel and a cigar under his right moustache to question the suspected hired girl. About him there was nothing mysterious, nothing portentous, nothing inscrutable. He had a face ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... childish, at least appears so to an English lover. Besides it is modern French Comedy—for which, by the by, we want a word to distinguish it from the toto caelo different Comedy which Shakespere and his contemporaries worked up into their Tragedy with such felicity of action and reaction. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... that every day stretched farther and farther into and across the waste seemed, in the wideness of the land, pitifully foolish. Looking back over the lines, the men who set them could scarcely distinguish the way they had come. But they knew that the stakes were there. They knew that some day that other, mightier company, the main army, would move along the way they had marked to meet the strength of the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... about—the mist and the coming night made it impossible to distinguish objects with any distinctness—but he saw the garments of a woman fluttering among ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... not always been taken to distinguish between the different periods of his life. He aged rapidly at the close of the Revolution; his reserved manner and a certain "asperity of temper," as Hamilton called it, greatly increased; and some years afterwards, when President, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... valuable works; a third vol., Hist., etc., sous le Consulat. M. le Capitaine DESBRIERE, Projets de Debarquement, 2 vols., 1901, a phase of the great war told with all the care and lucidity which distinguish the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... more subservient to the use of man than he whom Livingstone first knew as Graham's assistant, and afterward used to call playfully "Sir Paraffin." "I have been obliged to knight him," he used to say, "to distinguish him from the other Young." The "other" Young was Mr. E. D. Young, of the Search Expedition, and subsequently the very successful leader of the Scotch Mission at Lake Nyassa. The assistant to Dr. Graham still survives, and is well known as Mr. Young, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... than fifty thousand. Such an aggregation would consume days in passing a given point, and in case of a stampede, all other animals in its path were doomed to destruction. A herd of buffaloes quietly grazing was sometimes difficult to distinguish, when viewed from a considerable distance, from a low forest; their rounded bodies and the neutral tint of their shaggy coats giving them the appearance ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... scarcely worth finding, and struck me as an odd, dislocated fragment. The front consists only of a portal beside which a tall brick tower of a later period has been erected. The nave was wrapped in dimness, with a few scattered lamps. I could only distinguish an immense vault, like a high cavern, without aisles. Here and there in the gloom was a kneeling figure; the whole place was mysterious and lopsided. The choir was curtained off; it appeared not to correspond with the nave—that is, not to have the same axis. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... which he had thrust into her hand and held it to her eyes; but her hand shook, and for a moment or two she could distinguish nothing; then, as the mist passed away and her hand grew steadier, so that she could see Sir Stephen, he bent down and said something to the lady sitting beside him. She looked round, and Ida saw distinctly, and for the first time, though fashionable London ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... dispirited were the enemy, that the sight of the red-coated Sepoys of Knox, whom they could not distinguish from English, induced them to abandon Rajahmahendri in all haste, although it contained a strong mud fort, with several guns. The Godavery is two miles wide, and all night the passage of the river in boats continued; and when, at daybreak next morning, Knox broke into the town, he found fifteen ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... gets no further. The Chamber is already filled with shouts and jeers. "Maul halten!" (shut your mouth!) bursts from a dozen places in the Conservative and rational Liberal and Centre benches. "'Raus mit ihm!" (throw him out!) is another angry taunt which I can distinguish in the bedlam. Liebknecht has been howled down many times before under similar circumstances. He is not terrified to-day, though his face is pale with excitement and anger. He stands his ground. His right arm is extended, a finger levelled accusingly at the Right and Centre from which imprecations, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... with less violence?" asked the aged man. "As they fight they exchange invectives and threats. I do not distinguish their words, but they are angry ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... my understanding, there was a hellish vocal hum. Now and then I would recognize the subdued voice of a friend; now and then I would hear the voices of some I believed were not friends. All these referred to me and uttered what I could not clearly distinguish, but knew must be imprecations. Ghostly rappings on the walls and ceiling of my room punctuated unintelligible mumblings ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... fish, and is given without any ceremony. Thus Bennillong's child Dilboong was so named after a small bird, which we often heard in low wet grounds and in copses. An elderly woman who occasionally visited us was named Mau-ber-ry, the term by which they distinguish the gurnet from other fish. Bennillong told me, his name was that of a large fish, but one that I never saw taken. Bal-loo-der-ry signified the fish named by us the leathern-jacket; and there were two girls in the town named Pat-ye-ga-rang, a corruption of Pat-ta-go-rang, the name of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... drunk; and she was too young to distinguish between vintages. When she had been sober she had feared intoxication. Now she was drunk, she thanked ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... many men, so that no one of her friends is without some proof of her affection, so let him who wishes his benefits to be prized consider how he may at the same time gratify many men, and nevertheless give each one of them some especial mark of favour to distinguish him ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... factor in Ski-ing. On a fine day when visibility is good, it is easy to distinguish between the rise and fall of country ahead and, therefore, to be prepared for decrease or increase in speed. Some days when the sky is clouded, it is practically impossible to tell what is coming. This difficulty is increased in a narrow valley when the ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... [aside. The story of his death was well contriv'd; [to her. But it affects not me; I have a wife, Compar'd with whom cold Dian was unchaste. [takes her hand. But mark me well—though it concerns not you— If there's a sin more deeply black than others, Distinguish'd from the list of common crimes, A legion in itself, and doubly dear To the dark prince of hell, it is—hypocrisy. [throws her from ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More

... labored to prove that man acts only in obedience to preordained decree, and can of himself do nothing good; yet their logic charges him freely with the guilt of sinning by necessity. I cannot for the life of me distinguish between fatalism and predestination. Either binds us with the same chain of necessity, in thought, word and deed, from the cradle to the grave. To escape this charge, fanaticism can only add a few links to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... of times—one time with another. He's a sort of fillah ... a sort of fillah you can't exactly describe. Very unusual sort of fillah!" Mr. Pellew held his cigarette a little way off to look at it thoughtfully, as though it were the usual sort of fellow, and he was considering how he could distinguish Mr. Torrens from it. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed on would proclaim ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... by the actions of the dog, which was of the true Scotch breed, that something extraordinary was passing outside the tent, seized his rifle, hastened out, and was just in time to distinguish a human figure on the opposite bank of the Jackal River, which, on seeing him, took to its heels ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... here in three clauses three stages which we may venture to distinguish as the fountain, the basin, the stream. 'God is able to make all grace abound toward you';—there is the fountain. 'That ye always, having all-sufficiency in all things';—there is the basin that receives the gush from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Establish'd Custom in these latter Ages, for all Writers, particularly the Poetical, to shelter their Productions under the Protection of the most Distinguish'd, whose Approbation produces a kind of Inspiration, much superior to that which the Heathenish Poets pretended to derive from their Fictitious Apollo: So it was my Ambition to Address one of my weak Performances to Your Lordship, who, by Universal Consent, are ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... I have had several letters from Milicent since her marriage, and that she either is, or pretends to be, quite reconciled to her lot. She professes to have discovered numberless virtues and perfections in her husband, some of which, I fear, less partial eyes would fail to distinguish, though they sought them carefully with tears; and now that she is accustomed to his loud voice, and abrupt, uncourteous manners, she affirms she finds no difficulty in loving him as a wife should do, and begs I will burn that letter wherein she spoke so unadvisedly against him. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... would take us into a wood so wild and thick that no roof was visible through the trees. We learned, like innocent pastoral people of the golden age, to know the several voices of the cows pastured in the vacant lots, and, like engine-drivers of the iron age, to distinguish the different whistles of the locomotives passing on the neighboring railroad. The trains shook the house as they thundered along, and at night were a kind of company, while by day we had the society of the innumerable birds. Now and then, also, the little ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... take their places—Duke and Duchess, secretary and priest, valet and maid. I saw the station-master bow them into the carriage, and stand, bareheaded, beside the door. I could not distinguish their faces; the platform was too dusk, and the glare from the engine fire too strong; but I recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head. Had I not been told who she was, I should have known her by those traits alone. Then the guard's whistle shrilled out, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... There is much to learn from her, particularly as to work, for what she effects is really marvellous." In his work called "Winckelmann and His Century," Goethe again said of her: "The light and pleasing in form and color, in design and execution, distinguish the numerous works of our artist. No living painter excels her in dignity or in the delicate taste with which ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... deal has been said about Napoleon's pride; but in discussing the matter it is necessary to distinguish between two very different personages,—the man as he appeared in public, and the man as he was in private. In public, he was obliged to display more majesty than any other sovereign. The novelty of his grandeur made additional formality necessary. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... in the act, but in the movement of the will, of which the act is but the outward symbol. We must carefully distinguish between sin and temptation. No temptation is sinful, however strong and however vividly presented to the mind. Sin only comes in when the will makes the choice of the worse alternative. A sin in thought is an act of inward choice, the deliberate indulgence ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... jerking, that Jenny had a carriage to command admiration. The resemblance between the sisters was ordinarily not noticeable. It would have needed a photograph—because photographs, besides flattening the features, also in some manner "compose" and distinguish them—to reveal the likenesses in shape, in shadow, even in outline, which were momentarily obscured by the natural differences of colouring and expression. Emmy was less dark, more temperamentally unadventurous, stouter, and possessed of more colour. She was twenty-eight or possibly twenty-nine, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... rose-coloured sarsanet, as a canopy to keep off the morning beams, which were already rising high. Cushions of silk, interchanged with others covered with the furs of animals of the chase, were arranged round a repast, which a Norman cook had done his utmost to distinguish, by the superior delicacy of his art, from the gross meals of the Saxons, and the penurious simplicity of the Welsh tables. A fountain, which bubbled from under a large mossy stone at some distance, refreshed the air with its sound, and the taste with its liquid ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... had been ignorant of, but also enabled me ...to see into the most secret Springs which gave rise to the Actions I had either heard, or been Witness of—to judge of the various Passions of the Human Mind, and distinguish those imperceptible Degrees by which they become Masters of the Heart, and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... measured, graceful minuet, compared to a generation who dance the whirling waltz, the stormy skipping galop, and the furious cancan! In the opera the tragic hero could dance a sarabande, and even in choral songs of the church the ear of the eighteenth century could distinguish dance music. Matheson made (1739) out of the choral song "When we are in dire distress" a very danceable minuet; out of "How beautifully upon us shines the morning star" a gavotte; out of "Lord Jesus Christ, thou greatest gift" a sarabande; out of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... as a matter of fact, at the mercy of our illusions, and the proof of this is that in many cases nothing is easier than to take in Nature by devices which she is unable to distinguish from the reality. I shall never forget the daughter of Marzin, the carpenter in the High Street, who, losing her senses owing to a suppression of the maternal sentiment, took a log of wood, dressed it up in rags, placed on the top of it a sort of baby's cap, and passed the day in ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... done his last work. The unnatural positions he had been obliged to take had so strained the muscles of his neck that on the street he had often to look straight up at the sky to rest himself, and things on a straight line in front he could not distinguish. Eyes, muscles, hands, refused ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... Agelastes spoke more plainly: "Young man," he said, "rejoice in an honour so unexpected, and answer henceforth to no other name save that of Edward, by which it hath pleased the light of the world, as it poured a ray upon thee, to distinguish thee from other barbarians. What is to thee the font-stone, or the priest officiating thereat, shouldst thou have derived from either any epithet different from that by which it hath now pleased the Emperor to distinguish ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... valley was light and dry, and the movement of animals over it raised great clouds of dust, that rendered it very difficult to distinguish friend from foe; and as I was now separated from the main column a considerable distance, I deemed it prudent to call a halt until we could discover the direction taken by the principal body of the Indians. We soon learned that they had gone up the valley, and looking that way, we discovered ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... slow, for half the crowd insisted upon shaking his hand and exchanging a few words with him. Clumsy Swedes bobbed their heads, dark-browed foreign laborers whose nationality it was hard to distinguish showed their teeth and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... future Prime Minister of Bulgaria, was arrested and accused of Serbophilism, he declared: "I am neither Bulgar or Serb; I am a Yugoslav!" ... For at least a generation Zagreb will remain particularist, zealously preserving the differences—personal, social and religious—which distinguish her people from the dominant Serbs. The Croat officers who burned with shame at the Archduke's murder on Bosnian soil, the Croat regiments that in 1915 marched into Belgrade with bands playing and their colours flying, the Croat officials whose bread and salt came from the Habsburgs in ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... I could make you an imitation in paste which nobody could distinguish from the original, I can amply understand that you desire to veil from your husband any sacrifices that are ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... near him, is a portrait of one Kettleby, a vociferous bar-orator, who, though an utter barrister, chose to distinguish himself by wearing an enormous full-bottom wig, in which he is here represented. He was farther remarkable for a diabolical squint, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... Wherever I use the word "general" as descriptive of an electric current used in the bath, it is not as a characteristic, but merely to distinguish it from the instances where ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you love: else you might come to love both alike; or even the weaknesses without the virtues. You might end by liking Overbeck and Cornelius as well as Angelico. However, I have perhaps been leaning a little ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... main narratives enter into the composition of Genesis; that in the first of these is generally used as an appellation of the Almighty the word "Elohim," and in the second the word "Yahveh" (Jehovah); that each narrative has characteristics of its own, in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other; that, by separating these, two clear and distinct narratives may be obtained, each consistent with itself, and that thus, and thus alone, can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and contradictions in Genesis ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... and philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. It is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really and originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce. And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite legible in their hearts. They had still ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... He did not even answer me. If he had he would probably have pointed out to me that I was wrong. What lay below us, a small part of the B.E.F., was an army, if discipline, skill, valour, and unity are what distinguish an ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... all you saw or heard while passing through. Why should you worry about your condition? Are you not good enough? You have come hither from respectable parents, perhaps received Christian baptism, and can easily distinguish between right and wrong. Why should cruel daggers now pierce your heart? What you have done or expect to do is surely pleasing to your God. If you belong to the church, you are doubly safe. Let time change, or worlds fall, ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... cry which is sounding in our ears now is no cry of terror or of disappointment, and the men who join in it are all of one mind; yet the cry is none the less bitter or heartrending. As we listen to it, we can distinguish the shrill voices of women mingled with the deeper ones of men, and we notice also, that, although the cry is one of sorrow and distress, there is a deep ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... funk, it was overruled, and we went to the oars with renewed vigour. After some hours pulling we had the satisfaction to find that although the masts of the ship were scarcely visible we were certainly drawing nearer to the land, and could occasionally distinguish waves breaking on the rocks. The coast apparently was quite uninhabited, with no sign of life on land or sea. We had evidently been working against the tide or some current, for we had been rowing steadily from 9 to 4, which would have ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... kind of syrup derived from the maroon-colored fruit of the sumac. There were similar small cups on the table filled with lemonade, and here and there a decanter of Madeira wine, of the Marsala kind, which some prefer to, and many more cannot distinguish from, that which comes from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... bitter that the whole are named by the Boers the "bitter watermelon". The natives select them by striking one melon after another with a hatchet, and applying the tongue to the gashes. They thus readily distinguish between the bitter and sweet. The bitter are deleterious, but the sweet are quite wholesome. This peculiarity of one species of plant bearing both sweet and bitter fruits occurs also in a red, eatable cucumber, often met with in the country. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... leaving was whether or no he had succeeded in rendering himself unrecognizable, for he could not trust to this experience, weakened by the fact that this old friend was a photographer. With him it was a matter of business to note the typical traits that distinguish one face from another, and in a long practice he had acquired an accuracy Madame Dammauville could ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... reef for we could not venture too close unto land it having every appearance of a gale from south or south-east either of which blow in on the shore. This reef I named Lady Nelson Reef from our so narrowly escaping being on shore on it, this however is only to distinguish it from others for I have not the least doubt but it is what Mr. Bass gave me a sketch of, the latitude and longitude so well correspond with his. I fancy also it is what was seen in the Martha schooner in 1799 along with the land, all of which ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... nothing, apparently, to distinguish breakfast that morning from a dozen other breakfasts that had gone before. Keith and his father talked cheerfully of various matters, and Susan waited upon them with her usual briskness. If Susan was more silent than usual, and if her eyes sought ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... mantles and shrouding hoods; they had borne with them, through the subterranean passages of the crypt, leading to the vaults, a coffin so exactly similar in workmanship and inscription to that which contained the remains of their late companion, that to distinguish the one from the other was impossible. The real one, moved with awe and solemnity, was conveyed to a secret recess close to the entrance of the crypt, and replaced in the vault by the one they had brought with ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... and training undoubtedly were. He had one of the most perfectly trained ears for bird songs that I have ever known, so that if three or four birds were singing together he would pick out their songs, distinguish each, and ask to be told each separate name; and when farther on we heard any bird for a second time, he would remember the song from the first telling and be able to ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey

... a man's head rose stealthily above the slide of the companionway. He fastened a steady gaze on the sloop. The distance was now too great for the boys to distinguish his features, but a sudden idea struck ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... When breakfast was ready, Peter relieved him at the helm, and he went below. I heard him talking to Marian, and she answered him with spirit. Though I could not distinguish her words, I was sure that she was protesting against his cruelty to me. In about half an hour he returned to the helm again, and my fair cousin followed him, either ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... one—oppression, misery, and wrong. But in detail faults and graces were so interwoven, that the offensiveness of the evil was disguised by the charm of the good; and even the Irish vices were the counterfeit of virtues, contrived so cunningly that it was hard to distinguish their true texture. The fidelity of the clansmen to their leaders was faultlessly beautiful; extravagance appeared like generosity, and improvidence like unselfishness; anarchy disguised itself under the name of liberty; and war and plunder were decorated by poetry as the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... taller than himself. Suddenly turning toward the musicians, the boy protested. He did not want to dance the "llarga"; he wanted to dance the "curta." The "long" and the "short" were the only two dances known on the island. Febrer had never been able to distinguish between them—a simple variation of rhythm, otherwise the music and the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... distinguish him from his son of the same name), early became known as a talented writer, and especially as a poet and dramatist. His first published work appeared in 1823; then came volumes of poems in 1825, 1826, and the drama of "Henry III." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... we will simply recall some few of its characteristics. Doubt has been thrown upon the answer attributed to Arnauld-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, when he was asked, in 1209, by the conquerors of Beziers, how, at the assault of the city, they should distinguish the heretics from the faithful: "Slay them all; God will be sure to know His own." The doubt is more charitable than reasonable; for it is a contemporary, himself a monk of Citeaux, who reports, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... at the two-spanner; it was rather far behind, and he spoke to their driver bidding him go slowly till it caught up with them. By the time it did so, they were so close to it that they could distinguish the lines of its wandering and broken walls. Ever since they had climbed from the wooded depths of the hills above Carlsbad to the open plateau, it had shown itself in greater and greater detail. The detached mound ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... speed. Consequently the sun is sometimes a little ahead and sometimes a little behind any average time. You cannot manufacture a clock which will run that way because the hours of a clock must be all of exactly the same length and it must make noon at precisely 12 o'clock every day. Hence we distinguish clock time from sun time by calling clock time, mean (or average) time and sun time, apparent or solar time. From this explanation you are ready to understand such expressions as Local Mean Time, which, in untechnical language, signifies clock time at the place where you are; ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... 6th of the calends of March, sexto calendas; the preceding, which was the additional or intercalary day, was called bis-sexto calendas,—hence the term bissextile, which is still employed to distinguish the year of 366 days. The English denomination of leap-year would have been more appropriate if that year had differed from common years in defect, and contained only 364 days. In the modern calendar the intercalary day is still added to February, not, however, between the 24th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... reported on "radiant matter" in 1879. It is actually electrons, but he failed to distinguish them from ordinary atoms. Thompson ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... "Can't distinguish at a distance," said the doctor;—"one doesn't know whether it's a midge or a dragon-fly. How is ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... has a smaller charge of powder than the ball cartridge, and five cannelures encircle the body of the shell at about the middle to distinguish it from the ball cartridge. It is intended for use on guard or in riot duty, and gives good results up to 200 yards. The range of 100 yards requires a sight elevation of 450 yards, and the range of 200 yards requires all ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... cousins who, in the mighty battle of life, were compelled to fight amongst the rank and file. One of these poor cousins was a Miss Priscilla Paget, who at an early age had exhibited that affection for intellectual pursuits and that carelessness as to the duties of the toilet which are supposed to distinguish the predestined blue-stocking. Left quite alone in the world, Priscilla put her educational capital to good use; and after holding the position of principal governess for nearly twenty years in a prosperous boarding-school ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... the village stands the old 'hawthorn-tree,' built up with masonry to distinguish and preserve it; it is old and stunted, and suffers much from the depredations of post-chaise travelers, who generally stop to procure a twig. Opposite to it is the village alehouse, over the door ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... ask me," said Rampson with asperity; then correcting himself quickly, and with a rather ghastly smile, "I say, you two did distinguish yourselves to-day." ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... Grove House was not to any of them the pleasantest of affairs, on those occasions when it was Mrs Grove's intention to distinguish herself, and astonish other people, by what she called a state dinner. Graeme, who was not apt to shirk unpleasant duties, made no secret of her dislike to them, and caught at any excuse to absent herself with an eagerness which Fanny declared to be anything but polite. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... the darkness into the lighted room, Maud could not distinguish any object at first, and only heard as in a dream Dame Coppins's words, "Be calm, Mistress Maud, for he is very weak, I trow." Then, looking across the room, she saw some one lying on a bed with hands eagerly outstretched towards her, and a ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... had borne her part admirably. When she came out on the stage for the first time, on Saturday night, she had faltered. For a moment, the sea of upturned faces had terrified her, and she could distinguish nothing but a formless blur. Then, all at once, Billy's red-gold hair and clear blue eyes had detached themselves and caught her attention, and she flashed upon him one glance, half proud, half appealing. He smiled back at her broadly and waved ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... accidents of Turkish politics been rendered ineffective; and the actual work of Zionism rests now upon the policies of the Opportunist wing, although the creation of a State, autonomous in as great a degree as possible, is the cardinal aim of the Zionists, and must be, in order to distinguish the movement from a ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various



Words linked to "Distinguish" :   sort, comprehend, know, discriminate, compare, classify, perceive, know apart, characterise, sex, individualise, stratify, decouple, sort out, label, singularise, demarcate, class, singularize, key, distinction, dissociate, characterize, place, single out, contrast, individualize, resolve, qualify, assort



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