Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Ken   /kɛn/   Listen
Ken

noun
1.
Range of what one can know or understand.  Synonym: cognizance.
2.
The range of vision.  Synonym: sight.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books



... understood his friend Pancha even as he did his friend Mark. That she could have complexities and reservations beyond his simple ken had never occurred to him. What he saw on the surface was what she was, and being so, the news he was bringing would be as a tonic ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... vain do we try to take the sea's mystery by storm. In vain do we search for its meaning with love. It lies beyond our mortal ken, deeper than ever ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... night boat to themselves, but now and then Susan saw somebody that she knew on board. One night she went in to talk for a moment with Ella Saunders. Ella was gracious, casual. Ken was married, as Susan knew,—the newspapers had left nothing to be imagined of the most brilliant of the season's matches, and pictures of the fortunate bride, caught by the cameras as she made her laughing way to her carriage, a white blur of veil and flowers, had appeared everywhere. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... then have on a suitable gown that will stand rough usage; but I beg of you, Ken, stop tucking that rug around ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... distinguish works of grace from works of nature, which is the essence of historic Christianity, or that we can detect the activity of heavenly influences is also superstition. All such supernaturalism lies beyond our ken. There are three common forms of superstition, all promoted by positive religion: the belief in miracles, the belief in mysteries, and the belief in the means of grace."[4] So prayer is a confession of weakness, not a source ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... "You ken bet I'll not," said the matronly female, who stood half hidden in the humble doorway, from which Dr. Belford had just made his exit. "Lawks, doctor dear, I'll have an eye to him, jest as if he was my very own. It'ud not be me 'at would ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... was forcing his nephew to play checkers or cribbage or cards with him. And, working so hard all day, he was glad to turn in early at night. Social life, therefore—unless you could call high words with a crabbed invalid a form of social life—didn't come within Gilbert's ken. It was work, work, work, and the desire to make ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... attempted surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him it was a ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... coming, thou in light descending O'er the wide land which is thine own 2220 Like the Spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest upon the paths of men!— Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her children here in glory meet 2225 To feed upon thy smiles, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Fifth Avenue—the Park opposite a Corot-like shadow. Aileen was in the music-room strumming indifferently. She was thinking of times past—Lynde, from whom she had not heard in half a year; Watson Skeet, the sculptor, who was also out of her ken at present. When Cowperwood was in the city and in the house she was accustomed from habit to remain indoors or near. So great is the influence of past customs of devotion that they linger long past the hour when the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... dilate upon the dangers of the new disease, the "Epidemic Rag" (which seems to be quite as catching as the mumps), Gill upon the risks of the piscatorial art, or Savage upon an original Polynesian theme, "Zulu Lulu," was to feel like Keats's watcher of the skies, "when a new planet swims into his ken." For the admirer of Spanish customs there was A. E. J. Inglis (O.A.) to sing, as only he can, the Toreador's song; while for the Cockney there was Killick to give, in his own inimitable fashion, that really touching little ballad "My Old Dutch," Ould Oireland ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... engines, which explode and tear out the sides, and the ship goes down like a plummet. As long ago as 1841, the steamer President, with 120 people aboard, crossing from New York to Liverpool in March, vanished from human ken. In 1854, in the same month, the City of Glasgow left Liverpool for Philadelphia with 480 souls, and was never again heard of. In February, 1856, the Pacific, from Liverpool for New York, carrying 185 persons, passed away down to a sunless ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... hour later, and the other boat had also passed from their ken, swallowed up in the little wavelets that covered the surface of the rapidly growing river; for they were now approaching the spot where the mighty flood of the Missouri joined forces with the swollen current of the Mississippi, to boom along toward ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... on this bench, if you will agree. She need never be traced from this point. Let her drop out of the ken of the whole world that knew her. The name can only bring you harm; it has brought you harm. Through it you are threatened with trouble, with disaster. Your whole future is menaced through that name and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken. Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him—for fashion has a way of patronizing genius—and some of his old friends wrote him asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its existence. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... ken Elsie Marley, honey? The wife who sells the barley, honey? She won't get up to serve her swine, And do you ken ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... Lien gar polloi kai epetrimoi emata panta piptousin, pote ken tis anapneuseie ponoio; alla chre ton men katathaptemen, hos ke thanesi, nelea thymon echontas, ep' emati dakrysantas.]— Hom. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... work. And, indeed, marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was to get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great deal solemner to be single.' He may be regarded as the champion of the married life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-made men, and though he dissents, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... the basket and the knapsack, or whether they ever met in upper air, I do not know. If they but float away and stay away from ken of mortal man, I ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... various male members of their families. Kim was so ill that he could not be immediately moved, so a guard was placed over his house. All were brought to trial at Seoul in July. With Viscount Kim were Kim Ki-ju, his grandson, and Kim Yu-mon. With Viscount Li was his relative Li Ken-tai. The charge against them was, of violating the Peace Preservation Act. Ki-ju aggravated his position by trying to defend himself. The Japanese press reported that he was reported to "have assumed ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... absurd, I may say more impious, than for man, with a ken surrounded by the dense mists of sense, to reason respecting the decrees of eternal justice. You adopt here the same limited view that you embraced in reasoning against the indestructibility of the sentient principle in man from the apparent ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... Lesbia!) or be enough or more? I say what mighty sum of Lybian-sands Confine Cyrene's Laserpitium-lands 'Twixt Oracle of Jove the Swelterer 5 And olden Battus' holy Sepulchre, Or stars innumerate through night-stillness ken The stolen Love-delights of mortal men, For that to kiss thee with unending kisses For mad Catullus enough and more be this, 10 Kisses nor curious wight shall count their tale, Nor to bewitch us evil ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in which he preaches against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and sardonic smile, for whom crimes ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... agreed; and very little was said about it when, a few days later, Desdemona passed out beyond the ken of her friends at Shaws and Nuthill, and for the time ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... beyond mortal ken, Assisted by all the arts of men, A moment's time and the space is passed, And heaven's best gifts at ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... under the tree in the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened him Alick, and the bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God gifted me with him. I found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower muckle for me, sae I came up to London here, and ye ken the rest about me. It was because of being with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live in the hospital here like the rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame noo to my little garret, he will waken up out of his saft ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... Great White Silence, as they call the long winter up here, is broken by the thunder of the ice rushing down to the sea, you, like the rest, will exchange the snow-fields for the gold-fields, and pass out of our ken. Now, I'm not usually prone to try my hand at prophecy; but I am tempted to say, even on our short acquaintance, that I am tolerably sure that, while we shall be willing enough to spare most of the new-comers to the Klondyke, we shall grudge ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... my eyes, and the woman, seeing them, suddenly stopped ironing and exclaimed eagerly: "Ou, mem, ye ken the family; or maybe ye'll hae been a friend of the puir thing's mither!" I was obliged to say that I neither knew them nor any thing about them, but that the child's piteous aspect had ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... scenery who expects to see a Jungfrau float into his ken before he has lost sight of a Mte. Rosa; the architect who expects to find the railway time-table punctuated at hourly intervals by a venerable monument of his art; the connoisseur who hopes to visit a Pitti Palace or a Dresden Picture Gallery in every large city; the student ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... murmuring wind at her ear, and even the faint breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek. She remembered her mother—a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her father's vague speculations in a vaguer speculation of her own, beyond his ken—whose place she had promised to take at her father's side. The words, "Watch over him, Christie; he needs a woman's care," again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night wind from the lonely grave in the lonelier ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte

... air from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess David Black of North Leith, and sic like. Alack-a-day, wha can ken, if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southrons read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm from the heart may be powerful to drive them away; ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... the tall rancher and his glossy mare came Professor Longstreet driving his two pack animals. Just behind him, with much grave speculation in her eyes, came Helen. A new man had swum all unexpectedly into her ken and she was busy cataloguing him. He looked the native in this environment, but for all that he was plainly a man of her own class. No illiteracy, no wild shy awkwardness marked his demeanour. He was as free and easy as the north wind; he might, after all, be ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... I see the haven near at hand To which I mean my wearie course to bend; Vere the main sheet and bear up to the land To which afore is fairly to be ken'd. —SPENSER, Faerie Queene. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... stepmother' of them both, and came back bearing that 'glass of port wine and spices' but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very doorstep that the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered Ann's fate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy-friend; and presently I blamed myself for letting the past over-ride ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... as shore as thar's a God in heaven." And at that moment the door opened and Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the things Jerry had done and ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... find a hundred thousand of us dead; Don't think because yer feelin well you won't be sick no more— Sometimes the reddest pippin has a worm-hole to the core. Don't let a killin' habit grow upon you soft and still Because you think thet you ken throw it from you at your will— Now's ther time ter quit it when yer feelin' brave an' stout— You've lost ther chance to do it When the Light ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... 'em. But I don't love 'em. They're just part of a machine to cut lumber, and it don't matter a hoot in hell to me what they are, or who they are, or what becomes of 'em. I ain't shepherdin' souls like that guy. It ain't in me, anyway. I just got to make good so that some day I ken quit these cursed forests and live easy the way I'd fancy. When that time comes maybe I'll change. Maybe I'll feel like that guy standin' doping over that spread of forest scene. I don't know. And just ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... you an' you let him go!" she breathed incredulously. Plainly such magnanimity was outside her ken. She walked away from him, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... incoherently tried to engage one or two of them in conversation, to learn where the yacht was going—to Southern seas, across the Atlantic?—but they only stared at him as if he were some strange being quite beyond their ken. So he desisted; of course they could not understand him, and, of course, they knew nothing he wished to know. In this prison a sense of motion and direction was ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... companion living there—Mr. Gabriel Pippet, who did much skilful designing and artistic work with and for him; Dr. Sessions, who managed his household affairs and acted as a much needed secretary; Father Watt, who was in charge of the Hormead Mission. At one time he had the care of a little boy, Ken Lindsay, which was, I think, the greatest joy he ever had. He was a most winning and affectionate child, and Hugh's love of children was very great. He taught Ken, played with him, told him stories. Among his papers are little touching trifles which testify to his love ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... infallible indication of ignorance. The wider our experience, and the deeper our knowledge, the more ready are we to admit that there may be many wonders that have never come within the limits of our ken, and about which we know nothing. But, about the key to the cryptogram, what is it? You must tell us that, you know, Saint Leger, in consideration of our own unsuccessful efforts to help you. Besides, the knowledge of such a difficult cipher as that is really ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... sallied forth to battle with lions and tigers. You crave largesse, and the gentlemen favor you with money and jewels." Then the youngest girl laughed and said, "Oh, you pore, innicent bairn, and how do yez ken all this? and how did yez know that Misther Payterson kapes a tiger at all, at all, begorra!" Another young lady said, "Dutchy, I reckon yore daddy is a right smart cunning old fox!" "Madame," replied I, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... Bishop Ken, however, goes too far. Undesirable, of course, death must always be to those who are fairly well off, but it is undesirable that any living being should live in habitual indifference to death. The indifference should be kept for worthy occasions, and even then, though ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... Swankie, with an air of indifference, as he put the gold into his pocket. "I think I've seed it mysel'. It looks like auld Jamie Brand, but I didna ken ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... 'Ye ken,' he said, pausing temporarily and looking at Selwyn, 'yon should be rendered wi' proper deegnity.' With which explanatory comment he finished the last six notes, and solemnly replaced the chart on the ledge behind him, as if it were a copy of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow

... Balderstone, at this moment presenting himself before his master; "and is your honor, then, not ganging hame when Mysie the puir old body's in the dead thraw! Hech, sirs, but its awfu'! Ane of the big sacks o' siller—a' gowd, ye maun ken, which them gawky chields and my ain sell were lifting to your honor's chaumer, cam down on her head! Eh! but it gars me greet—ah! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... his fingers which no fingers are; * Keys of our daily bread those fingers ken: And praise his actions which no actions are, * But precious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... the loss of poems and pictures which have perished, and left of Sappho but a fragment and of Zeuxis but a name, so are we inclined to pity the dead who died too soon to enjoy the great works we have enjoyed. At each new glory that 'swims into our ken,' we surely feel that it is something to have lived ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... "But weel I ken, your Majesty, it canna, mauna be, Yet, God be thanked, I might hae slept wi' ithers o'er the sea, 'Neath Balaclava's crimsoned sward, where many a comrade fell, But now I'll rest on Medway's bank, in sound ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... yet I only laugh, and the little old lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond my ken. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... They could swim, no doubt, when put to it, but it seemed impossible that they could survive so fierce an inundation. Well, the wind ceased, the tide went out at last; and behold, the rails were in full cry, not a voice missing! How they had managed it was beyond my ken. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... in the streets of London; but, if I happen to be abroad, as likely as not I encounter the last person I should expect to find. Why, you remember, I rush over to America for scarcely a week's stay, and there I come across a man who has disappeared astonishingly from the ken of all his friends!' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... sell myself," replied the landlady, "I have had my reward"—the colour faded from her cheek as she spoke—"as all will have who go the same gait. But ye ken, Bobby, it was not for my ain sake, but that my poor mother might have a home in her auld age—and so she had, and sure that ought to make me content." The tears gathered in her eyes, and the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... "I really dinna ken—I positively don't know, as a body may say, how to proceed in this matter. In the first place, if your wife is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... backward from point to point till we reach the moment when, in the nursery or in the schoolroom, some little story told, some little object shown, some little operation witnessed, brought the first new object and new interest within our ken by associating it with some one of those primitively there. The interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten. As the bees in swarming cling ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... their families by other than domestic labor. A disability, the basis of which is the presumed mental or moral incapacity of the subject of it to form a rational judgment on matters within the ordinary ken of human intelligence, carries with it a stigma of inferiority calculated to cause impediment to the entrance on or successful prosecution of any pursuit demanding recognized ability and energy. This presumed incapacity is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... and wicked character, against the best government on earth; and I am free to confess that I am filled with horror when I contemplate the result of this suicidal act on their part, an act that must lead to years of war, as far as human ken can see, and the most fearful desolations in its train. But, gentlemen, there is no alternative. The glove is thrown to us, and we must accept it. If our principles are right, and we believe they are, we would be unworthy of our noble paternity if we were to ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... the death of our Lord, there were churches in Jerusalem, Caesarea, Rome, and the Syrian Antioch. In reference to the latter, Bishop Ken beautifully says:— ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... but refinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer one there was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reaching beyond our power of vision, to find there things beyond our human ken. But whereas the things which she looked at, invisible to us, caused her no dismay, those within our range, the most ordinary and commonplace, filled her with alarm. Her eyes, you may say, communed ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky, Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his birth— That shall be a certain sign Of the end of Monkton's line. Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left master; From mortal ken, from light of day, Monkton's race ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... Nene kadon yuneghrakwah jinesadawen. Niyadeweghniserakeh sanekherenhonh ratikowanenghskwe. Onghwenjakonh niyeskahhaghs; ken-ony rodighskenrakeghdethaghkwe, ken-ony sanheghtyensera, ken-ony saderesera. Akwagh kady ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... no doubt that the look of solemn wonder flitted suddenly from her face, leaving it haggard and fierce, and that like a stab with a dagger she drove the splintering pen into the desk as into the breast of an enemy. So much is known, for there is little done that can be screened from mortal ken. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... truly genial, in fact the only one to whom the art of exciting an interest or inspiring a sympathy could be in any degree imputed. I take this to have meant that he would have adorned a higher sphere—and it may have been, to explain his so soon swimming out of our ken, that into a higher sphere he rapidly moved; I can account at least for our falling away from him the very next year and declining again upon baser things and a lower civilisation but by some probability of his flight, just thereafter effected, to a greater distance, to one of the far upper reaches ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... ordination; aye, taken from the multitudes who so much needed his spiritual guidance and support, may we well exclaim that the ways of our Almighty Father are wondrously mysterious and hidden beyond the ken of our feeble understanding. The great and gifted young priest was truly of that royal race of him, Boroimhe, who was slaughtered by the hand of a desperate assassin, as he prayerfully knelt in his tent, on the battle-field, offering thanks to the Lord of Hosts for victory over the hordes ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... Gaelic, the Welsh and the Picts being termed "P" Celts, and the other races "Q" Celts, because in words of the same meaning the Welsh used "P" where the Gaelic speaking Celt used the hard "C". For instance, "Pen" and "Map" in Welsh became "Ken" (or Ceann) ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... you Gavinia is to hae me." Six miles from home he saw a mud house on the top of a hill, and ascended genially. He found at their porridge a very old lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We shall see them again. "Auld wifie," said Corp, "I dinna ken you, but I've just stepped up to tell you that Gavinia is ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... which have vanished from the close is one in which Charles II. in vain requested Bishop Ken to allow Nell Gwynne to lodge; and one which was erected for her and not pulled down until this century. The cathedral precincts, however, still contain on the southern side several buildings well worthy of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... long, and seven miles deep, and seven miles broad, and he must drain it the next day, or else he would have him for his supper. Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he did no ken what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said, 'I've a worse job ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... John Peel, with his coat so grey? D'ye ken John Peel, at the break of day? D'ye ken John Peel, when he's far, far away, With his hounds and his horn ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... possessed, up to the period of his taking the command of the army in the south, the estates belonging to his family in the Stuartry of Kirkcudbright. Kenmure Castle, still happily enjoyed by the family of Gordon, stands upon an eminence overlooking the meadows, at that point where the river Ken expands into a lake. The Castle was originally a single tower, to which various additions have been made according to the taste of different owners. The Castle Keep is now ruinous and unroofed, but ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... vastnesses within; Apollonius; Moderatus; shall we add, the Nazarene?—So the downward tendency is checked; in the following centuries we see a slow pushing upward,—in the heroic effort of the Stoics, not after Vision—that was beyond their scope and ken,—but after at least that which should bring it ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Arrellano and Ramos, and questioningly they looked back and to each other. The indecision of doubt brooded in their eyes. This slender boy was the Unknown, vested with all the menace of the Unknown. He was unrecognizable, something quite beyond the ken of honest, ordinary revolutionists whose fiercest hatred for Diaz and his tyranny after all was only that of honest and ordinary patriots. Here was something else, they knew not what. But Vera, always the most impulsive, the quickest to act, ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... not know how long it was before the girl became sufficiently, articulate to speak to her. She herself was scarcely articulate for some time. She could only try to find words to meet a need so far beyond her ken. She had never come in contact with a woman ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... doubt marred the white blaze of her realization. From the instant that she had looked up into Jean Isbel's dark face she had loved him. Only she had not known. She bowed now, and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her ken. Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance—to the three times she had seen him. Every look, every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! He had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now a blind, sweet, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... help me to content So many gentle wits' attention, Who ken the laws of every comic stage, And wonder that our scene ends discontent. Ye airy wits subtle, Since that few scholars' fortunes are content, Wonder not if our scene ends discontent. When that your fortunes reach their due content, Then shall our ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... of an old Scotch servant meeting his master unexpectedly in Australia after many years' absence: "I was quite dung down donnerit when I saw the laird, I canna' conceit what dooned me—I was raal glad to see him, but I dinna ken ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... art of sorcery, followed this summons, and flew high into the air. Balaam, however, surpassed him, and took a path in the air on which Zaliah could not follow, and after the former had soared through five different layers of air, he had quite vanished from Zaliah's ken, who knew not what to do. Phinehas, however, came to his aid. By means of a magical invocation he dispelled the clouds that covered Balaam, and then Zaliah forced Balaam to descend to earth and appear before Phinehas. [854] He began to implore Phinehas to spare his life, promising ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... you on the train that I was the victim of an uncanny premonition. I guess that Horatio was right about there being many things outside the ken of our limited philosophy. What psychic whisper from a world whose existence we men of 'common sense'"—he spoke the words sarcastically—"are loath to credit; what inspiration, born of the memory of that story of the case of the Bentley Moors' child in New York, which I told her in words of one ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... will perhaps find it hard to realise this until he remembers that the whole course of recorded history shows us the Germans politically disunited, or for the most part engaged in fratricidal strifes. When they first came within the ken of the historians of Ancient Rome, they were a set of warring tribes who banded together only under the pressure of overwhelming danger; and such was to be their fate for well-nigh two thousand years. Their ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... where are the signs of the raider Who swam to our ken like a kite, Who swore he had played the invader And knocked us to bits in the night; Who pounded these parts into jelly From Mile End, he said, to the Mall? For the man who should know (J. J. KELLY) Can't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... to dinner to-day: Peter Fraser, Ballantyne, John Blackwood, and Mr. Russel. Immense preparations are making in the establishment, "on account," Mr. Kennedy says, "of a' four yon chiels being chiels wha' ken a guid dinner." I enquired after poor Doctor Burt, not having the least idea ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... "'Deed, I dinna ken about that, father," said my mother, helping me to a plateful of fried sillocks. "If it's danger you're wantin' the laddie to seek, he's seen o'er many dangers already, I'm thinking. It's nearly drowned he was, only a week ago, in the Barra Flow, swimming ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... have, accordingly, ventured to elicit the end of a hexameter from the Greek letters of the MS., of which no satisfactory account has been given, and to read Itaque dixit statim "respublica lege maiestatis [Greek: ou soi ken ar' isa m' apheie] (or [Greek: aphie])." The quotation is not known. Antiochus Gabinius was doubtless of Greek origin and naturally quoted Greek poetry. Sopolis was a Greek painter living at Rome (Pliny, N. H. xxxv. ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... so, that Babel noises, Losing all course and ken, And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices Should never wake again To shock a world of modulated voices And ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... Thou seek'st that holy realm beneath the sky— Where Freedom dwells in gardens ever green— And blooms the Youth of fair Humanity! O'er shores where sail ne'er rustled to the wind, O'er the vast universe, may rove thy ken; But in the universe thou canst not find A space sufficing for ten happy men! In the heart's holy stillness only beams The shrine of refuge from life's stormy throng; Freedom is only in the land of Dreams; And only blooms the Beautiful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for it might have been noticed that she often looked off her work, and towards the scrap of road that lay within her ken. Joe Egan was at his cousin's elbow, and a few other lads and lasses made a rough circle. But old Mrs. Joyce, and old Mrs. Ryan, and old Paddy Ryan, and old Felix O'Beirne had established themselves on a low grassy bank at a little ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... Scotland must hae them, Robert Burns is mair than enough. As to mathematics, there's naething against them. A study that is founded on figures is to be depended upon; it has nae flights and fancies. You ken what you are doing wi' figures. When is this ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... They say his first wife, whom he married while he was still in business, was a niece of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the day, and his second wife, whom he married after he had retired to live on his earnings, was a half-sister of good Bishop Ken's; but I do not pretend to vouch for the truth of these statements. Now, about your father. I cannot do what you ask—I cannot in conscience. Will you ever forgive me, 'little May'—that is what your father ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... constantly recruited from Europe, the race rapidly degenerated. With no resources at their back, except the charity of Europe, the Crusaders yet had dreams of worldly aggrandisement, which included in their ken the whole of Egypt and Syria. The Second Crusade of 1146-9 came, not to conquer, but to support and defend this already tottering kingdom. It did that kingdom more harm than good, for it drained Europe of its potential pilgrims, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... he fared. Not even a rumour reached the coast of success or failure. When he had crossed the mountains that divided the British protectorate from the lands that were to all intents independent, he vanished with his followers from human ken. The months passed, and there was nothing. It was a year now since he had arrived at Mombassa, then it was a year since the last letter had come from him. It was only possible to guess that behind those gaunt rocks fierce battles were fought, new lands explored, and ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... Freedom of the Will.' The laws of criticism, which it is their purpose to establish, are derived from the inmost nature of man; the scheme of morality, which they inculcate, soars into a brighter region, very far beyond the ken of our 'Utilities' and 'Reflex-senses.' They do not teach us 'to judge of poetry and art as we judge of dinner,' merely by observing the impressions it produced in us; and they do derive the duties and chief end of man from other grounds than the philosophy of Profit and Loss. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... He compared his feeling when Braybrooke had suggested Seymour Portman as a husband for Lady Sellingworth with his lack of feeling about Miss Van Tuyn and her bronze, and he was almost startled. And yet Miss Van Tuyn was lovely and certainly did not want him to go quite away out of her ken. And, when she chose, she had made him ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... Interview between Penn and Sidney Preston pardoned Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons The vacant Sees filled Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury Conduct of Sancroft Difference between Sancroft and Ken Hatred of Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the Nonjurors The new Bishops Sherlock Dean of Saint Paul's Treachery of some of William's Servants Russell Godolphin Marlborough William returns to the Continent The Campaign of 1691 in Flanders The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ony on us can say of oursel," said Malcom, showing the doctrinal bias of his mind, "but I ken fra' yer bonnie face ye ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... o' lands wi' brighter skies, Where freedom's voice ne'er rang; Gie me the hills where Ossian lies, And Coila's minstrel sang; For I've nae skill o' lands, my lads, That ken nae to be free; Then Scotland's right, and Scotland's might, And Scotland's hills for me— I'll drink a cup to Scotland yet Wi' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... swift contests, and how she had sinned through the counsels of her much-sorrowing sister, and how with the sons of Phrixus she had fled afar from the tyrannous horrors of her father; but she shrank from telling of the murder of Apsyrtus. Yet she escaped not Circe's ken; nevertheless, in spite of all, she pitied the weeping ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... crops before their time, by reason of the rarity of rain and the sore sorrow that is fallen on this city." Quoth the other, "Wottest thou not the cause of this affliction?"; and quoth the first, "No! and, if thou ken it pray tell it me." Rejoined the other, "Yes, I wot it and will tell it thee. Know that I have heard from one of my father's friends that our King slew his Wazirs and Grandees, not for aught of offence ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... the ship and his comrades with him. Four, three, and two, they simultaneously strive to enter without delay. Full soon was the sail spread and the anchor of the barque weighed. Those on land, who were sore at heart for the lads whom they see departing, follow them with their eyes' ken as far as they can; and so that they may watch them the better and the further, they go off and climb together a high peak by the shore. Thence they watch their sorrow as far as they can see them. They gaze at their own sorrow in sooth; for great ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... found—if found at all—to depend upon purely natural laws—laws fixed and undeviating in the very constitution of things, and which would have worked as well a thousand years ago as to-day. The supernatural is entirely excluded from the investigation, for that is a world beyond humanity's ken, into which no mortal may peer. If the world of disembodied spirits have any connection whatever with these wonderful and mystical phenomena, the question must ever remain as perplexing and mysterious as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... at home, sir. My grandpapa used to love it very much. His wife's father was a great friend of good Bishop Ken, who wrote it; and—and my dear brother used to love it too;" said ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... times a brave man need not be ashamed to die—the time has long elapsed when cravens perish. But the very brave, the physically as well as mentally brave, fight on to the end, instinctively. And so Dan fought. He knew that Virginia Howland hung on his arm—but the fire had gone from his ken; he was fighting something, that was all he knew, or cared, since it was for her. Once the red sheet enveloped them for a flashing second, but the merciful wind came to save. It could not last long, though. Dan's arm weakened about the limp ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... any positive proof of a bona fide marriage preceding it, had shocked him into bitter remorse for having left her, an unprotected waif and stray, to the tender mercies of the world, and now she had passed out of his ken, and he could not but ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... at length. "I'm no saying 'at ye're no a humorist. I ken fine ye're a sarcesticist, but there's other humorists in the world, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... inquiry George had made induced him to relinquish all hope of influencing him at that time. He saw how he had fallen; and he needed no prophet's ken to behold his future course, unless he turned from the path he was now ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... solution: we came out of the burning nebulae just as our horse and dog, but why we are men and they are still horse and dog we owe to some Power, or, shall I say, to the chance working of a multitude of powers, that are beyond our ken. That some Being willed it, designed it, no; yet it was in some way provided for in the constitution ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... beam, Their rapture and their anguish break that heart Which loved them, and must love for ever now. Let thy great sphere of splendour, ring by ring For ever widening, draw new seas, new skies, Within my ken; yet, as I still must bear This love, help me to grow in spirit with thee. Dawn on my song which trembles like a cloud Pierced with thy beauty. Rise, shine, as of old Across the wondering ocean in the sight Of those world-wandering mariners, when earth Rolled flat up to the Gates of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... a matter beyond Andy's ken. He could not even find a petition in his prayer-book suited to that occasion. Mr. Townsend had assured him that it would meet every emergency; but for once Mr. Townsend was at fault, for with the sound of Ethelyn's angry voice ringing in ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... a vast mysterious forest, without village, path, or white inhabitant, stretches inland far and away beyond the utmost ken of man. There the towering pines range themselves in ever-receding colonnades upon a carpet smooth and soft as ever hushed the tread of Sultan's foot. Dripping from their topmost boughs the sunlight's splendor flickers on the floor, as if it stole through chancel window of some cool cathedral ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... that ought to be essentially short, must he clipped. In fact, aural observation and lingual exercise are the only sure means to the end; so that a Scotchman going to a well for a bucket of water, and finding a countryman bathing therein, would not exclaim, "Hey, Colin, dinna ye ken the water's for ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... of the colored people for this generous gift was adopted with enthusiasm, and the inspiring exercises came to a close with the praises of God in the well-known words of Bishop Ken: "Praise God, from whom ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various

... declared that he was not safe, that he must take flight. Barelli, of whom he had always spoken with the most brotherly affection, had turned against him. He and other false comrades had entered into a plot to murder him, and at the time of writing he had fled from their ken and was in hiding in some remote and populous district, awaiting the arrival of money which would enable him to return to Europe. Then, later on, there arrived another letter from Lisbon, disconnected ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... see why I shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an' if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when other folks ken live in big houses an' ride ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... never happens), as well as by similar collections of the same kind. And the special connexion of this device with a company of pilgrims might, as has been well remarked, have been suggested to Chaucer by an English book certainly within his ken, the "Vision concerning Piers Plowman," where in the "fair field full of folk" are assembled among others "pilgrims and palmers who went forth on their way" to St. James of Compostella and to saints at Rome "with many wise tales"—("and had leave to lie all their life after"). But even had Chaucer ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... tell of lore They taught him underground in shrines all dim, And of the live tame reptile gods that wore Gold anklets on their feet. And after him, With fairest eyes ere met of mortal ken, Glorious, forgiven, might speak the mother ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... subject of fomentations and bandages. The old woman hesitated to tell, but after a little pressing she said, in half apologetic tone,—"Weel, mem, it was na Ivor's fau't, but the day before yesterday he cam in—fou—ye ken he's fond o' his glass, mem, an' he was swingin' aboot his airms, poor falla, an' withoot the least intention, his haund cam doon wi' sik a ding on my heed that knockit me doon. But he kens na aboot it, so ye'll no speak o't to ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... company of believers. They teach the passive virtues—patience, resignation, long-suffering, and so far realise the painter's ideal of earth as the portal to heaven. Certain spheres were beyond his ken. The marriage of Cana did not for him flow with the wine of gladness; he had no fellowship with the nuptial banquet as painted by Veronese. His pencil shunned the Song of Miriam and the Dance of the Daughter of Herodias; it could ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... to the physical worlds around it; but it finds itself compelled to glance further afield, and to construct hypotheses as to the nature of the matter and force which lie in the regions beyond the ken of its instruments. Ether is now comfortably settled in the scientific kingdom, becoming almost more than a hypothesis. Mesmerism, under its new name of hypnotism, is no longer an outcast. Reichenbach's experiments are still looked at askance, but are not wholly condemned. Roentgen's rays have ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... worked to a charm. He rose to the corresponding role as a trout to a fly, but poor Gordon was only too thankful when the companionship and conversation became more general. The superior young lady from the metropolis was beyond his ken. Little Nelly Bolivar's sweetness and quaint humor filled his ideals to far greater satisfaction. He had met Nelly first at Severndale and several times since with Mrs. Harold, who had often invited her to spend the weekend at Wilmot, where she had looked to the young girl's ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... thing could be, then the foundations upon which we stood were shattered. But one little law! Back in my mind was buzzing the enigma of the Blind Spot. They were woven together. Some law that had eluded the ken ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... the knotted oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends— The thirst ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... hpawn(fan) san than san san san 6 tol tal to laiya(lia) (hin)riw thro thrau ynro threi 7 kul pul phu a-laiya (hin)iew (hum)thloi ynthla ynniaw ynthlei (alia) 8 ti ta ta s'te(su'te) phra humpya humphyo phra humpyir 9 kash tim tim s'ti(su'ti) (khyn)dai hunsulai hunshia khyndo khyndai 10 kan kel ken(ko) kao ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... generally ended his evening beside her. Now his manner, for all its courtesy, seemed to tell her that those times were done; that she was four years older; that she had lost the first brilliance of her looks; and that he himself had grown out of her ken. Helena's young unfriendly eyes had read her rightly. She did wish fervently to recapture Philip Buntingford; and saw no means of doing so. Meanwhile Sir Richard, now demobilized, had come back from the war bringing ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Ken" :   sight, grasp, range, compass, Ken Kesey, knowing, cognizance, reach



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com