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Preposterous   /prɪpˈɑstərəs/  /prɪpˈɑstrəs/   Listen
Preposterous

adjective
1.
Incongruous;inviting ridicule.  Synonyms: absurd, cockeyed, derisory, idiotic, laughable, ludicrous, nonsensical, ridiculous.  "That's a cockeyed idea" , "Ask a nonsensical question and get a nonsensical answer" , "A contribution so small as to be laughable" , "It is ludicrous to call a cottage a mansion" , "A preposterous attempt to turn back the pages of history" , "Her conceited assumption of universal interest in her rather dull children was ridiculous"






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"Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books



... "It's preposterous that they should knock off work without any reason," he once told Morten, when the baker's driver had thrown up his place. "Like your driver, for example—he had no ground ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... preposterous! There are not enough people in Cherokee Strip to give anybody a reputation, good or bad. There isn't a quorum. Why the whole population consists of a couple of wagon loads of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... incompatible); of having followed the system of Pope (of which there is not a word in his works); of having quoted Plutarch, who is not a Christian author; of not having spoken of original sin and of grace. In a word, he pretended that the 'Spirit of Laws' was a production of the constitution Unigenitus; a preposterous idea. Those who understand M. de Montesquieu and Clement XI. may judge, by ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... conscious of her presence—a presence which now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that it was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have amused him. But it did not. The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to disarrange the discipline of his life as well as of his school. The usual vague, far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging during school-hours, dreams that were perhaps superinduced by the remoteness of his retreat and a certain ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... replying. Her first impulse was to reject the proposal as preposterous. The hour seemed very ill chosen. Rebecca was not accustomed to leaving home for any purpose at night, and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... distinguishing themselves. Milton, who must not be named in the same paragraph with others, although he had not yet meditated the sublime work which was to carry his name to immortality, disdained, even in his lesser compositions, the preposterous conceits and learned absurdities, by which his contemporaries acquired distinction. Some of his slighter academic prolusions are, indeed, tinged with the prevailing taste of his age, or, perhaps, were written in ridicule of it; but no circumstance in his ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... cavalier families of that State. The general officer in command at West Point, too, is a colored gentleman, of excellent reputation and qualifications. All prejudice of race, in fact, has now very much disappeared, and is looked back upon as a preposterous error of the past. Indian members of Congress number this session at least seven—two Senators, Cherokees, and five members of the House from the two new States formed from what was once the Indian Territory. The white ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... packed the ship. They filled the corridors. They had crawled into every space where a man could find room to push himself. There were hundreds of them. It was insanity. And it had been greater insanity still for the ship to have taken off with so preposterous a ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... for ever were to have the same privileges. These conditions were on such a scale as no sovereign could readily approve. Columbus's lack of pedigree, and the fact also that he was a foreigner, made them seem the more preposterous; for although he might receive kindness and even friendship from some of the grand Spaniards with whom he associated, that friendship and kindness were given condescendingly and with a smile. He was delightful when he was merely proposing as a mariner to confer additional grandeur and glory ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... A preposterous and affected statue to our left, with the immortal name of Shakespeare below it, has distracted the eyes of our friends, and comments are freely made when we tell them how nearly the bones of the sweet Swan of Avon were brought from Stratford to this burial-place ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... and movements of the Florentine citizens surrounding him; Benozzo Gozzoli's noble naked figure of Noah with his ungainly, hideously dressed figure of Cosimo de' Medici; Mantegna's exquisite Judith with his preposterous Marquis of Mantua; in short all the purely realistic with all the purely idealistic art of the fifteenth century. We may give one last instance. In Signorelli's Orvieto frescoes there is a figure of a young man, with aquiline features, long ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... shade or coloring of this odious foible brings certain and indelible obloquy on the most elegant accomplishments. The blackest suspicion inevitably rests on every thing assumed. She who is only an ape of others, or prefers formality in all its gigantic and preposterous shapes, to that plain, unembarassed conduct which nature unavoidably produces, will assuredly provoke an abundance of ridicule, but never can be an object either of love ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... finger. And then, hand and arm, not too willingly, as it were, obeyed; relaxed and fell to his side. 'You must keep a tight hold, old man,' he muttered to himself. 'Once, once you lose yourself—the least symptom of that—the least symptom, and it's all up!' And the fools, the heartless, preposterous fools had ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... for this preposterous scheme—this product of ignorance and audacity—that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... the common expression for a meal taken between dinner and supper. And, as it perfectly expresses the meaning of the German vesperbrod, I thought myself authorized to adopt it here; particularly as tea, in the mouth of a character, like carpenter Clarenbach, would appear preposterous. The antiquaries of Yorkshire and Lancashire derive the word bagging from the old custom of carrying bread and cheese in a bag, in the afternoon, to the labourers in the fields; and this derivation is not altogether ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland

... relented, and, though unable to prevent the commission of some outrage on the victim, had determined to prevent his death if possible, by the timely interposition of medical aid? The idea of such things happening within two miles of the metropolis appeared too wild and preposterous to be entertained beyond the instant. Then, his original impression that the woman's intellects were disordered, recurred; and, as it was the only mode of solving the difficulty with any degree of satisfaction, he obstinately made up his mind to believe ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... to credit it, over goes the rest of the plot into frank make-believe. And fantasy of this kind consorts but ill with a scheme that embraces such realities as heart-failure and typhus. Not in any case that Miss DELAGEEVE'S plot could be called exactly convincing. "Preposterous" would be the apter word for this society of the Blue-Bean Wearers, in which vague elderly persons wandered about with sadly self-conscious children and talked like the dialogue in clever books. This at least was the impression conveyed to me. I may ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... asks—who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugenie), to say nothing of that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... profuse apologies, excused himself, having pressing duties to perform, and withdrew, first cordially shaking hands. The French were convinced that when William the Elector fled, he had taken with him his money. That he should have entrusted it to another, and especially a Jew, seemed preposterous. Yet such was the case. William had fled, disguised as a civil engineer, carrying with him in his chaise an outfit of surveying-instruments. All of his money had been turned over to Mayer Anselm Rothschild. The many biographers place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... sir," Captain Bayley exclaimed angrily. "What do I care for evidence? Of course he told me a long rigmarole story, but he could not have believed it himself. No one but a fool could believe my nephew Frank guilty of theft; the idea is preposterous, it was as much as I could do to restrain myself from caning him when he ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... too much for so accomplished an adept at the Code as George Washington, and he immediately asserted that such a thing was preposterous, asking with some scorn, as he strutted up and down, "Who ever heah o' one gent'man ripresentin' two in a ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... a little still step forward and peeped down at him. He stood leaning against the face of the rock, gazing out over the hot blue Caribbean, his hat pushed back and his absurd goggles firm and high on his nose. His words and voice were in preposterous ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Jenkinson's claim is perfectly preposterous," he began, "but I won't go into that. The matter is before the courts. What I want to give you is a true statement of that unfortunate affair at the ranch, with which, I beg you to believe, I had ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... that this system should seem preposterous to the average Frenchman in 1788. If the estates should be convoked according to the ancient forms, the two privileged classes would be entitled to twice the number of representatives allotted to the other twenty-five million inhabitants of France. What was much ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... education which he had not, his English could not have been better; but if he had had the usage du monde which as a young man he had not, there would have been a difference. He would not, for instance, have given us the preposterous scenes in Nicholas Nickleby in which parts are played by Lord Frederick Verisopht, Sir Mulberry Hawke, and their friends; the scene of the hero's luncheon at a restaurant and the dreadful description ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest Miss Brooke should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little allayed by the knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst of things. "What has happened to Miss Brooke? ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... to come in the boat. Suspicion said that O'Shea would cause the boat to be towed ashore, and would then take the Captain home by the quicksands. Would O'Shea make him drunk, and then cast him headfirst into the swallowing sand? It seemed preposterous to be harbouring such thought against the cheerful and most respectable farmer at his side. What foundation had he for it? None but the hearing of an idle boast that the man had made one day to his wife, and that she in simplicity ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... not so preposterous, if they had not gone farther; but they neither did, nor proposed any thing, but what had mischief in the design, or the event. One morning, these three fellows came down to the limited station, and humbly desired ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... concern where you are employed is all wrong, and the Old Man is a curmudgeon, it may be well for you to go to the Old Man and confidentially, quietly and kindly tell him that his policy is absurd and preposterous. Then show him how to reform his ways, and you might offer to take charge of the concern and cleanse it of its secret faults. Do this, or if for any reason you should prefer not, then take your choice of these: Get Out, or Get in Line. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... was a policeman's 'nose,' and often obtained payment from Scotland Yard for information regarding the doings of a certain gang of thieves. And yet they actually declare him to be a bad character. Preposterous!" ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... tide upon its sacred shrine. But the Puritan was still a Cromwell and the Cavalier a lord. That people so widely divergent in customs and character could long dwell at peace as one political household were preposterous. The one had his "convictions," the other his "institutions," and neither would yield the right-o'-way. When such opposing trains of thought try to pass on a single track there's going to be trouble sure. The friction, evident ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... and watchful air, and we may well leave him now he is involved in such important service. But with the octroi duty for even a single pheasant at two shillings and sixpence, there are many good feeders who cannot afford to "dine well," and the fuss they make about their eatables is something preposterous. It is a vice—this systematic gluttony—that seems to be steadily increasing in France for the last twenty years, at least in its public manifestation, and moreover it is an ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... automaton, every organ of his body given him, every function arranged for him, brain and nerve, thought and sensation, will and conscience, all provided for him ready made? And yet he turns upon his soul and wishes to organize that himself! O preposterous and vain man, thou who couldest not make a finger-nail of thy body, thinkest thou to fashion this wonderful, mysterious, subtle soul of thine after the ineffable Image? Wilt thou ever permit thyself to be conformed to the Image of the Son? Wilt thou, who canst not add a cubit to thy stature, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... it is all perfectly preposterous. I don't believe you mean a word you are saying—it is some ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... in its triple aspects, says Paul, constitutes a man a Christian. What correspondence is there between it, in any of its parts, and a carnal ordinance? They belong to wholly different categories, and it is the most preposterous confusion to try to mix them up together. Are we to tack on to the solemn powers and qualities, which unite the soul to Christ, this beggarly addition that the Judaisers desire, and to say, the essentials of Christianity are a new creature, faith, obedience—and circumcision? That is, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... good sir," said Rex, recovering his presence of mind. "You may say what you please as to the manner in which we work, but you know as well as I do that our services are ample payment for the food and lodging which we and the ladies get; and as to their working—why, it is simply preposterous; ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... The preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants, and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... petition writer, in the following terms "Most Honoured and Respected Sir,—Although I am conscious that my present step will apparently be deemed an unjustifiable and unpardonable one, tantamounting to a preposterous hardihood in presuming to trespass (amidst your multifarious vocations) on your valuable time, yet placing implicit reliance on your noble nature and magnanimity of heart, I venture to do so, and ardently trust you will pardon me. Learning that a vacancy of a sepoy ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... thing is preposterous!" exclaimed the ambassador. "The utter absurdity of such a charge would impel me to offer ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle

... say to himself: 'Why should I have to work long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before presuming to write upon the subject, and such preposterous stuff at that! ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... multitudes," it proceeded in pompous style to the statement that the rebels were adding "insult to outrage," for "with a preposterous parade of military arrangement, they affected to hold the army besieged." Gage offered to pardon all who would lay down their arms, except Samuel Adams and John Hancock, "whose offences are of too flagitious ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... How preposterous, that an enlightened community, professing the highest regard for morality and religion, making laws for the suppression and punishment of vice, and the promotion of virtue and good order, instituting societies to encourage ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... have suffered, and laying memorial after memorial before the minister at home. He assures us that it was the justice and the futility of his complaints, that left in his soul the germ of exasperation against preposterous civil institutions, "in which the true common weal and real justice are always sacrificed to some seeming order or other, which is in fact destructive of all order, and only adds the sanction of public authority to the oppression of the weak and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... to his recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the 'Discoveries', is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... but the testimony of Eusebius. This is but one more echo therefore of a passage of which we are all beginning by this time to be weary; so exceedingly rash are the statements with which it is introduced, so utterly preposterous the proposed method of remedying a difficulty which proves after all ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... to keep their score, and a master to be umpire. The Seminary eleven were in all colours and such dress as commended itself to their taste. Robertson and Molyneux and one or two others in full flannels, but Speug in a grey shirt and a pair of tight tweed trousers of preposterous pattern, which were greatly admired by his father's grooms—and, for that matter, by the whole school; and although Jock Howieson had been persuaded into flannel bags, as we called them then, he stuck to a red shirt of outrageous appearance, which was enough to frighten any bowler. Jack ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... very preposterous, that even though his mood was so prosaic and paternal a one, he was absurdly, vacantly sensible of feeling some uneasiness at the brightness of her upturned face. For pity's sake, why was it that he ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... loved man, you would never think of telling him to honor his father and mother. He could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you suggested that he should not steal—how could he steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to bear false witness against his neighbor. If ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... by an article current in all our newspapers, that the loathsome Thomas Paine, a drunken atheist and the scavenger of faction, is invited to return in a national ship to America by the first magistrate of a free people. A measure so enormously preposterous we cannot yet believe has been adopted, and it would demand firmer nerves than those possessed by Mr. Jefferson to hazard such an insult to the moral sense of the nation. If that rebel rascal should come to preach from his Bible to our populace, it would be time for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... any equity," he shook his head. "Oh, I know it seems a preposterous change of view. But at this late day I have made the discovery of the ancient truth that women are different from men. All I have learned of book and theory goes glimmering before the everlasting fact that the women are the mothers of our children. I... I still had my ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... action in the restricted sense in which it enters into Mendelssohn's oratorios, and scenic effects which would tax the utmost powers of the modern stage-machinist who might attempt to carry them out. A mimic tower of Babel is more preposterous than a mimic temple of Dagon; yet, unless Rubinstein's stage directions are to be taken in a Pickwickian sense, we ought to listen to this music while looking at a stage-setting more colossal than any ever contemplated ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... purposes are wont to anger worldly-hearted men. That a lady of Luxemburg should have such vulgar tastes as to wish to be a Beguine was bad enough; but that Netherlandish wealth should be devoted to support the factious poor of Paris was preposterous. Neither the Duke of Burgundy, nor her uncle of St. Pol, would allow a sou to pass out of their grasp for so absurd a purpose; the Pope would give no license—above all to a vain girl, who had helped a wife to run away from her husband—for new religious houses; ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is preposterous to suppose that household roasting will be continued long in any part of this country, if coffee properly prepared can be had. This is demonstrated by the remarkable advances made in Pittsburgh and other places, where only a few years ago the sales were chiefly in green coffee. Now ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... strange twinges of futile protest. Surely there was a time for all things, and this was the time for coffee and tobacco, not for disconcerting risks and detestable noises. I wanted never to hear our four-inch gun again by day. The idea of its shaking the peace of night to bits was preposterous. Yet a light was reported ahead, a moving light on the lake itself. 'You haven't much time, Craig,' I heard the lieutenant cry to our captain. The engine-room bells rang ominously, there was much puffing and spouting, then we were off. I stole into a safe sort ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... preposterous," said Maskull, opening his eyes wide. "Granted that you are a beautiful woman—we can't ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... is one of them. They provide sixty-eight of the hundred Viceroys; we provide only seventeen. It is a preposterous and intolerable situation. ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher

... stories, sir; I served the King in his wars, but I scorn a braggart, and all these glories are over. I am now a man of peace, and, as I told you, on my way to be married. Am I wise? I do not know, but I sometimes think it preposterous that a man who has been here and there about the world, and could, if he were so meanly-minded, tell a tale or so of success in gallantry, should hamper himself with connubial fetters. But a man must settle, to be sure, and since the lady ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... there really did seem to be more than mere drunken fancy in what he was telling me; for in spite of his muzzy way of telling it, his story had about it a curious air of truth; and yet it all was so utterly preposterous that belief in it was quite out of the question. To make matters worse, when I begged the old man to try to remember very carefully whether or not he really had made a second trip to the bay, or only was telling me about the trip that ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... extinction of licences. Of course, a little money would pass. JOKIM, in Budget Scheme, made provision to enable County Council to buy out publicans. "But to call such a transaction Compensation is", RITCHIE added, his left eye twitching in fearsome manner on CALEB WRIGHT, "preposterous." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various

... power of fascination, and certainly not with the violence of passion which recklessly pursues indulgence. Still, the girl's fault; she had behaved—well, as a half-educated girl of her class might be expected to behave. Ignorance she could not plead; that were preposterous. Utter subjugation by first love; that, perhaps; she affirmed it, and possibly with truth; a flattering assumption, at all events. But, all said and done, the issue had been of her own seeking. Why, then, accuse himself of blackguardly conduct, if he had turned a deaf ear to her pleading? Not ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... the friends she made among the preposterous and impossible creatures, are now part of the mental furniture of every child, and of most children of ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... have believed that Arthur could be capable of anything so preposterous as this behavior," vowed Mrs. Roberts; "and then to come up here and find you wearing yourself to ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... and certainly in no habits of peaceful communication—each tribe of different modes of life, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred in giving no names to their gods, and then have equally concurred in receiving names from Egypt, is an assertion so preposterous, that it carries with it its own contradiction. Many of the mistakes relative to the Pelasgi appear to have arisen from supposing the common name implied a common and united tribe, and not a vast and dispersed people, subdivided into innumerable ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... treason was a crime, and "must be made odious," was welcomed with enthusiasm by the very men who afterwards impeached him. Nor, when we blame these men for trafficking with perjurers and digging up tainted and worthless evidence for the purpose of sustaining against him the preposterous charge of complicity in the murder of his predecessor, must we forget that he himself, without any evidence at all, had under his own hand and seal brought the same monstrous accusation against Jefferson Davis. Davis, when apprehended, met the affront with a cutting reply. "There is one man ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... with which I decked her. It was owing to my own weakness that I indulged in such idolatry. I was too greedy. I created an angel of Bimala, in order to exaggerate my own enjoyment. But Bimala is what she is. It is preposterous to expect that she should assume the role of an angel for my pleasure. The Creator is under no obligation to supply me with angels, just because I have ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... is one of the most important considerations of public speech. How preposterous it is to hear a speaker making sounds of "inarticulate earnestness" under the contented delusion that he is telling something to his audience! Telling? Telling means communicating, and how can he actually communicate without making ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... to Dr. Johnson that a gentleman who had a son whom he imagined to have an extreme degree of timidity, resolved to send him to a publick school, that he might acquire confidence;—'Sir, (said Johnson,) this is a preposterous expedient for removing his infirmity; such a disposition should be cultivated in the shade. Placing him at a publick school is forcing ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... insisting upon some seven discriminations which, even only forty years ago, would have appeared largely preposterous ...
— Progress and History • Various

... out, the destination of this preposterous procession was Bradshaw's Grove, where the entire party spent the day picnicking in the woods and, as reported by several reliable witnesses, playing games. It was not so strange that holidaying boys should play games; the amazing feature of the performance was that Peep O'Day, a man old enough ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... they yelled at him in chorus, Which he minded not a whit; And they pelted him with cocoanuts, Which didn't seem to hit; And then they gave him reasons, Which they thought of much avail, To prove how his preposterous Attempt ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... a flat rock. He was white, and shaking a little. He wanted more than anything else in the wide world to kill George Dalton. Of course in these days such things were preposterous. But he ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... things, are prone to censure managers with great severity, when Theatres, which ought to be held sacred for exhibiting the grandest effusions of the human mind, are prostituted to puppet-shows, rope dancing, pantomimes and exhibitions of elephants, &c. Whatever of censure is due to this preposterous perversion, attaches elsewhere. It falls on those who frequent theatres. Dr. Johnson, in a prologue which he wrote for Garrick, places this idea in the strongest point ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... criticism or its bearing upon history. We may learn from many sources what was the current mythology of the day; and how ordinary people believed in devils and in a material hell lying just beneath our feet. The vision probably strikes us as repulsive and simply preposterous. If we proceed to ask what it meant and why it had so powerful a hold upon the men of the day, we may perhaps be innocent enough to apply to the accepted philosophers, especially to Aquinas, whose thoughts had been so thoroughly assimilated ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... the infidel, was brought before the court and his alleged confession read to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if his enemies were not priests he would know how to deal with them. A second time he was examined and preposterous charges of unnatural crimes were preferred against the order by the king's chancellor, Guillaume de Nogaret. They were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and based on certain statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan of Babylon (Egypt). Again he was ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... good and to me rather sad reason, my lady: the only woman I could marry or should ever be able to marry would not have me. She is very kind and very noble, but—It is preposterous, the thing is too preposterous: I dare not have the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... the least intrusive approach by which I can touch on a topic that must of necessity be a delicate one; yet which may well be a difficulty among Latins like yourself. Against this preposterous Prussian upstart we have not only to protect our unity; we have even to protect our quarrels. And the deepest of the reactions or revolts of which I have spoken is the quarrel which (very tragically as I think) has for some hundred years cloven the Christian ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... trouble, I make another wry face, indicative of disapproval, and suggest that he bring vishner-su. "Vishner-su" two or three of them sing out in a chorus of blank amazement; "Ingilis. Christian? vishner-su." they exclaim, as though such a preposterous and unaccountable thing as a Christian partaking of a non- intoxicating beverage like vishner-su is altogether beyond their comprehension. The youth who has been to the Kaizareah school then explains to the others that the American ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and denying to those who would impose on us for what they are not, even the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... after all. You can fool everybody else, but you can't fool me. You're delighted, man, delighted!' The mere suggestion revolted Mr Pickering. He was on the point of indignant denial, when quite abruptly there came home to him the suspicion that the statement was not so preposterous after all. It seemed incredible and indecent that such a thing should be, but he could not deny, now that it was put to him point-blank in this way, that a certain sense of relief was beginning to ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... merchandise, this shop, this office, this salary, this honour, this home—all this on the one hand, and then our Lord Himself, His call, His cause, His Church, with everlasting life in the other—when it is set down before us in black and white in that way, the transaction, the proposal, the choice is preposterous, is insane, is absolutely impossible. But preposterous, insane, absolutely impossible, and all, there it is, in our own lives, in the lives of our sons and daughters, and in the lives of multitudes of other men and other men's sons and daughters besides ours. Every ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... and went out, wondering and thinking. First, that women were strange things. Secondly—MURDER? Merely because I had planned the duel and provoked the quarrel! Never had I heard anything so preposterous. Grant it, and dub every man who kept his honour with his hands a Cain—and a good many branded faces would be seen in some streets. I laughed at the fancy, as I strode ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... criminality of his attempt in its enormous folly. On the other hand, any common-sensible man, looking at the matter unsentimentally, must have felt a certain intellectual satisfaction in seeing him hanged, if it were only in requital of his preposterous miscalculation of possibilities." ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... "transmission" or "inheritance"; it is not an object, but a method. It must mean the conveying of certain facts, views or qualities, to the last baby born. They might be the most trivial facts or the most preposterous views or the most offensive qualities; but if they are handed on from one generation to another they are education. Education is not a thing like theology, it is not an inferior or superior thing; it is ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... and raised two blazing eyes to her companion's face. "That's the second time. Why do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He did what he was obliged to—that's all: for I should never have let him go. Can't you see how preposterous it is to think that by talking of respectability, and unworthiness, you can make me leave off caring for him?—when for months I have lived for nothing else? Do you think one can change one's feelings so easily? Don't you understand that to love a person once is to love ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... jubilantly, with even an air of heroism, crushed under foot the little South African Republics, and hounded down every Englishman who withstood the madness of the crowd. The great, free intelligent people of the United States went to war against Spain with a childlike faith in the preposterous legend of the blowing up of the Maine. There is no country which has not some such shameful page in its history, the record of some moment when its moral and intellectual prestige was besmirched ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... from which, perhaps, all the subsequent misfortunes could be dated. He had known at the time that his father, had he lived, would have condemned the step; but he himself was a believer in fortunate chances. Besides, it was preposterous for a young couple of fashion to continue living in a rambling old house that belonged to neither town nor country, at a time when the whole trend of life was cityward. They had discussed the move, with its large increase of expenditure, from every point of view, and found it one from ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... but several nights, under this roof; for this was a celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence, and Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth in 1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady—not one of the preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning to tell on her—who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... contract with you, for you can't possibly write a drama, cast it, and rehearse it properly for Monday night. Furthermore, you have no pictorial printing as yet. These two gentlemen, whom you have with you, have never been on the stage, and they certainly must have time to study their parts. It is preposterous to think of opening on Monday night, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... of this plan was received in the Commons with extravagant praise by the Irish Whig and Repeal members, nor was any hostility displayed except by the blockhead and bigot, Sir Robert Inglis—a preposterous fanatic, who demands the repeal of the Emancipation Act, and was never yet missed from the holy orgies of Exeter Hall. Out of doors it has had a darker reception; but now that the first storm of joy and anger is over, it is time for the people of Ireland ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... had sent on my baggage by express, and had nothing to worry about Starting at seven, I should arrive next morning at Brussels. I can sleep famously in the cars, and I apprehended no difficulty. Fred, looking as black as a thundercloud, took me to the station, and was preposterous enough to ask me if I was not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... chose poetry for their children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: for this same influencing of the soul—[Greek: phychagoghia] (a beautiful word)—is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of children ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... comfort was, that there was little enough danger of her seeing in the ill-favoured Bolsover cad anything which need make him—Scarfe— jealous. Doubtless she took a romantic interest in this librarian; many girls have whims of that sort. But the idea of her preferring him to the smart Oxford hero was preposterous. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... Remember that. Remember also that gas is half-a-crown a thousand. And understand that we're most economical; we're always turning the lights down, my wife and I. Now then; in spite of this the rascals want me to pay on sixty thousand feet! It's preposterous. We couldn't have got through so much if we had never let a burner or a stove go out day or night. And we're economical! What do you say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... the most hopeful results, have eventually proved to be miserable failures; and if they have not always, or even in any instance, met with the severe punishment that ought to have followed them, it was only because the attempts were too preposterous to have been anticipated by a vigilant foe, and we were too confident in our strength to make the preparation necessary properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... left the rails. Ben must of done a lot of quick thinking that day. He had the bunch over to see the exact spot, and they all stood and looked over to the ice house and said it was incredible; and a director from Boston said it was perfectly preposterous; really now! And Ben kept on reciting rapidly about the details. He said Ed had come down the seven miles in less than three minutes, which was lopping a minute and a half off the official time; and that when picked up he hadn't a whole bone left in his body, which was also ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... no heart to give any woman, John. And even if I were free, I would not give my heart to a woman whose affection had to be diverted from another channel before it could be bestowed upon me. I can't imagine what has put such a preposterous idea into your head, or why it is that you shrink from improving your own chances with ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... pantomime-loving schoolboy. Many have supposed the story of Don Juan a mere fable. I myself thought so once; but "seeing is believing." I have since beheld the very scene where it took place, and now to indulge any doubt on the subject would be preposterous. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... of preposterous theories there is but one thing constant—one thing on which all these theorists are agreed. It is that all this strange stuff is symbolic and shadows forth the impressions and emotions of the artist: represents not nature but ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... leave the rest to the divorce court! Marry for whim and leave the rest to the man. That was the former Mrs. Phillimore's idea. Only she spelled "whim" differently; she omitted the "w." [He rises in his anger.] And now you—you take up with this preposterous— [CYNTHIA moves uneasily.] But, nonsense! It's impossible! A woman of your mental calibre—No. Some obscure, primitive, female feeling is at work corrupting your better judgment! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... consequently spared him not, and so far was my friend from checking my imprudent zeal, that he encouraged it; and what made me the more earnest was, that he held it to be more dignified that he himself should treat such preposterous slander with silent contempt. I laid on most unmercifully also upon the editor of the Times, on the same account, both publicly and privately; by which indiscreet warmth for my friend, I rendered two of the most powerful public writers of the day, and who had the most extensive means of disseminating ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... Territory late in May, and it required but short investigation to satisfy him that any idea of making Kansas a slave-State was utterly preposterous. Had everything else been propitious, climate alone seemed to render it impossible. But popular sentiment was also overwhelmingly against it; he estimated that the voters were for a free-State more than ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... impugning their personal integrity, or justifying the malice of Thomas Cromwell. To judge Henry as if he were a constitutional king with a secure title, in no more danger from Catholics than Louis XIV was from Huguenots, is doubtless preposterous. If the Catholics had got the upper hand, they would have deposed him, and put him to death. In that fell strife of mighty opposites the voice of toleration was not raised, and would not have been heard. Tyrant as he was himself, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... developments. Strange to say, it is most common in large families and among those who pass for friends. We do not envy prosperous enemies with the virulence we feel for prosperous relatives, who theoretically are our equals. Nor does envy cease until inequality has become so great as to make rivalry preposterous: a subject does not envy his king, or his generally acknowledged superior. Envy may even give place to respect and deference when the object of it has achieved fame and conceded power. Relatives who begin with jealousy sometimes end as worshippers, but not until extraordinary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... cites filial duty to me, why shall I not cite paternal duty to him? Why should he confine his entire relations with me in twenty-four years to two preposterous ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... own (for if it contained other gases the spectroscope would tell us), contains often large quantities of the vapor of water, would be as absurd as to believe in the green cheese theory of the moon, or in another equally preposterous, advanced lately by an English artist—Mr. J.T. Brett—to the effect that the atmosphere of Venus is formed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... born? How are we to call the Ruler who laid us under this iron code by the name of wise, and just, or merciful, when we ascribe principles of action to Him which, as a human father, we should call preposterous and monstrous?" Error, however, like disease, is not easily eradicated; but as men get better acquainted with God, those dark and heathenish conceptions regarding him entertained by Calvinists, such as the foredooming of children and men to endless misery, will give place to nobler thoughts ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... Barnaby Rudge was the "compound." There was a third raven at Gad's Hill, but he "gave no evidence of ever cultivating his mind." The novelist's remarkable partiality for ravens called forth at the time the preposterous rumour that "Dickens ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... derived from official documents, of the existence of which it is probable Senor Marliani was not aware, it will be observed at once how extremely light and fallacious are the grounds on which he jumps to conclusions. What more preposterous than the vague assumption founded on data little better then guess-work, that one-fourth of the whole exports of British cottons to Italy and the Italian islands, say L.500,000 out of L.2,000,000, go to Spain, when, in point of fact, not one-tenth of the amount does, or can find its way there—or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... Is it likely that the king would cast a public slight upon my family? From whom had you this preposterous order?" ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... just the view which the ancients took of woman, and the view which people in the East take now; and their judgment as to her proper position is much more correct than ours, with our old French notions of gallantry and our preposterous system of reverence—that highest product of Teutonico-Christian stupidity. These notions have served only to make women more arrogant and overbearing; so that one is occasionally reminded of the holy apes in Benares, who in the consciousness ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... I expect—could I believe—could I even remotely imagine—that, feeling as he did, he would do so ungrateful a thing as to add those quite unnecessary fifteen words to his test?—set a trap for me?—expose me as a slanderer of my own town before my own people assembled in a public hall? It was preposterous; it was impossible. His test would contain only the kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I had no shadow of doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not have expected a base betrayal from one whom ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... after long centuries that gala colossus had been the outcome of the fervour of primitive faith! You found there a blossoming of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them, derived it from the soil in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face. .. Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious similitude; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... I had already devoted much attention to this subject, and I drew a plan for an experimental rifle to burn a charge of powder so large that it appeared preposterous to the professional opinions of the trade. I was convinced that accuracy could be combined with power, and that no power could be obtained without a corresponding expenditure of powder. Trajectory and force would depend upon velocity; the latter must depend upon the volume of gas ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... came back he had wondrous things to tell too—but so preposterous that they disbelieved him quite openly, and told him so. How in London he had seen a poor woman so tipsy in the street that she had to be carried away by two policemen on a stretcher. How he had seen brewers' dray-horses nearly six feet high at the shoulder—and one or two of them with a heavy ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... "A contemptible cad, Sir! a base-born, low-bred cad, Sir! What else could you expect from a fellow of his breeding? The insolence of these lower orders is becoming insupportable. The idea! the very idea! His bank against my family name, my family honour! Preposterous!" ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... that the case was "ridiculous" and "rotten," that the plaintiff would be nonsuited, and the fire-eating Starbottle would be taught a lesson that he could not "bully" the law, and there were some dark hints of a conspiracy. It was even hinted that the "case" was the revengeful and preposterous outcome of the refusal of Hotchkiss to pay Starbottle an extravagant fee for his late services to the Ditch Company. It is unnecessary to say that these words were not reported to the Colonel. It was, however, an unfortunate circumstance for the calmer, ethical consideration of the subject ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... nations. If one or more British warships should be sunk, by some means that we do not at present know, and if the blame could be plausibly laid against Americans, there would be hot-tempered talk in England and a lot of indignant retort from our country. It would seem preposterous that any Englishman could suspect the American government of destroying British warships, and just as absurd to think that Americans could take such a charge seriously. Yet in the relations between nations the absurd thing often does happen. Should ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... mystery of the darkness from which we came and to which we return? What has this clearcut dogma to do with the gentle guesses of philosophy, this optimism with the uncertainty of life and the future—above all, what sympathy has this preposterous exultation with the misery of ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... with the luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be "absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and gratuitous." This new champion stated that "the objections drawn from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a day old, and by the Flood of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... lane for him, divining his incredible intention. If he had not started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he would never have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he would afterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started he was, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grand crises of his life something not himself, something more powerful than himself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the first time he seemed to understand ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... not live. After a delay of three days a physician came. He considered him as attacked with the same scrofulous disorder of which his brother had died at Meudon, and proposed his immediate removal to the country. This idea was, of course, regarded as preposterous. He was, however, transferred to a more airy room; but the change had no permanent effect. Lasne and Gomin did all they could for him, carrying him about in their arms, and nursing him day and night; but ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... hand on the law of Lost Valley. Murders uninvestigated, cattle stolen at will, settlers' homes burned over their heads, their hearths blown up by planted powder when they returned from any small trip, their horses run off—these things had seemed to him preposterous, mere shadows of facts. Now they were down to straight points before him, tangible, solid. He got them from the blue eyes of Tharon Last, the gun woman, and he had taken sides! He who had meant to keep so far out of the ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... window he could not have emerged, as the area intervened between that and the foot pavement; and to see a gentleman scrambling through by that orifice into the principal street of, and from one of the principal houses of the town, whilst all the people were going to church, was a little too preposterous even for Mr Root's matter-of-fact imagination. However, they all peeped up the chimney one after the other, as if an elderly, military-looking gentleman, encumbered with a surtout, for thus he was described, would have been so generous ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... his Wolfe has been often copied in France, Italy and Germany; and it may be said that in this picture the revolution in painting really originated. It would now be reckoned as preposterous in an artist to dress modern personages in Grecian or Roman habits, as it was before to give them the garb of the age and country ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... obsequious mood of mind is prompted by a strong desire to revive the ancient empire of priestcraft and the pretensions of ecclesiastical despotism; to secure readmission to the human mind of extravagant and preposterous claims, which their advocates are sadly conscious rest on no solid foundation. They feel that reason is not with them, it must be against them: and reason therefore ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... lord, I then thought, and am still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false propositions; and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it is a preposterous method to examine it by ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Das, has no end to gain by getting us into mischief. If he had, he wouldn't scruple for a second to cut our throats; but then, there are too many of us. He will probably try to cheat us by making preposterous charges when he gets us back to Toloo; but that's Lady Meadowcroft's business. I don't doubt Sir Ivor will be more than a match for him there. I'll back one shrewd Yorkshireman against any ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen



Words linked to "Preposterous" :   foolish



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