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Scurrilous   /skˈərələs/   Listen
Scurrilous

adjective
1.
Expressing offensive reproach.  Synonyms: abusive, opprobrious.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Scurrilous" Quotes from Famous Books



... all the good I can,' says he. 'I thought he had never done any good; let me see him, and let him stand behind me where I sit:' I did so. At my first appearance, many of the young members affronted me highly, and demanded several scurrilous questions. Mr. Weston held a paper before his mouth; bade me answer nobody but Mr. Prinn; I obeyed his command, and saved myself much trouble thereby; and when Mr. Prinn put any difficult or doubtful query unto me, Mr. Weston prompted ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... Turkey, or in the country where I am writing: that it would not be so with me in Great Britain, I confess that I flattered myself. I dwelt securely in this confidence, and gave very little attention to any of those scurrilous methods which were taken about this time to blast my reputation. The event of things has shown that I trusted too much to my own innocence, and to the ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... therewith, seem bent, if possible, on the destruction of Britain, and their own aggrandisement. Are not the daily papers filled with treasonable resolves of American congresses and committees, extracts of letters, and other infamous pieces and scurrilous pamphlets, circulating with unusual industry throughout the kingdom, by the enemies of Britain, thereby poisoning the minds of our liege subjects with their detestable tenets?—And did you not this day see the procession, ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... pair of claws that resemble the handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of 'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... case, and, having dealt with the subject chiefly on behalf of the Close and the admirers of the Close, had made no allusion to the fact that Mrs. Peacocke was a very pretty woman. One or two other local papers had been more scurrilous, and had, with ambiguous and timid words, alluded to the Doctor's personal admiration for the lady. These, or the rumours created by them, had reached one of the funniest and lightest-handed of the contributors ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... with his shaggy beard, and terminated by a military train. No wonder they hooted him, and wrote lampoons upon him. But Julian thought he was performing a solemn duty; he by no means intended to countenance immorality. "Far from us," he says, "be all licentious jests and scurrilous discourse—let no priest read Archilochus or Hipponax." He gives an amusing account of his reception at the celebrated grove of Daphnae, near Antioch, which he visited at the time of the annual festival. He expected to see a profusion of wealth and splendour. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... men of the usual types that are attracted by footlight favorites, and they had pressed attentions upon her, but so long as she had been recognized as the Lady Unobtainable they had not forced their unwelcome advances. Now, however, that a scurrilous newspaper story had associated her name with that of a wealthy man, she began to note a change. The Hammon-Lynn affair was already notorious; Lorelei's part in it led the stage-broken wiseacres to doubt her innocence, and their altered attitude soon became ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... mad dog, denotes that enemies will make scurrilous attacks upon you and your friends, but if you succeed in killing the dog, you will overcome adverse opinions and prosper greatly ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... commercial rights, or of local privilege, or of traditional usage, that the Chinese would exact? Nothing of the kind. It is simply a license, guaranteed by ourselves, to call us in all proclamations by scurrilous names; and secondly, with our own consent, to inflict upon us, in the face of universal China, one signal humiliation.... Us—the freemen of the earth by emphatic precedency—us, the leaders of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... her intense nature added to the inspiration of her recent success in a neighboring State. The results were almost miraculous. Two weeks of steady work not only turned the tide of popular feeling, but created a perfect frenzy of interest in the young orator. Even the Democrats, in spite of scurrilous attacks made on her by some of their leaders, received her everywhere with the warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, and replaced them by her picture, while giving wild applause to all she said. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour. This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake licentiousness for liberty. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... people, in highly-seasoned pleasantry, and in comic songs. Spoiled by the favour which had always sustained him, he gave full licence to his tongue, and by this audacity had rendered himself redoubtable. He was a scurrilous wretch, a great drunkard, and a debauchee; not at all cowardly, and with a face hideous as that of an ugly satyr. He was not insensible to this; and so, unfitted for intrigues himself, he assisted others in them, and, by this honest trade, had acquired many friends amongst the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the full measure of the rest which he coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,—a habit he had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he should ever break himself ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... world. Pat, too, was his most enthusiastic admirer, for he had encouraged his going to spend his evenings in the neat attic rather than crawl to his own miserable abode to be contaminated with the fumes of rum and tobacco, and the scurrilous example of ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... thinking of the old days, I find it hard to reconcile those men and women who lived under the Knickerbocker sway with their newspapers. It is pleasanter to dwell upon the old customs, to picture Mr. Manhattan leaving the scurrilous sheet behind him when he departed from his store or counting house, and repairing with clean hands to the wife of his bosom and his family, somewhere in Greenwich Village, or Richmond Hill, or Bond Street, or ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... be expected, by any man of honour! or feeling, to descend to answer a scurrilous person, signing himself ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B——, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then—and then think of the 'Tempest'—the 'Midsummer ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... With infinitely less Attic salt, but with as much heartiness as Aristophanes could have done, the popular rhymers gave the minister ample opportunity to understand the position which he occupied in the Netherlands. One day a petitioner placed a paper in his hand and vanished. It contained some scurrilous verses upon himself, together with a caricature of his person. In this he was represented as a hen seated upon a pile of eggs, out of which he was hatching a brood of bishops. Some of these were clipping the shell, some thrusting forth an arm, some ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... The scurrilous satire of Kenrick, however unmerited, may have checked Goldsmith's taste for masquerades. Sir Joshua Reynolds, calling on the poet one morning, found him walking about his room in somewhat of a reverie, kicking a bundle of clothes before him like a football. It proved to be ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... Society of the Temple, a group of wits, of all ages, who could take snuff and throw off an epigram on any subject. The bright young man, flashing, dashing and daring, made friends at once through his skill in writing scurrilous verse upon any one whose name might be mentioned. This habit had been begun in college, where it was much applauded by the underlings, who delighted to see their unpopular teachers done to a turn. The scribbling habit is a variant of that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... they brought them and set them up in the inland part of their country at a place called Oia, which is about twenty furlongs distant from their city. Having set them up in this spot they worshipped them with sacrifices and choruses of women accompanied with scurrilous jesting, ten men being appointed for each of the deities to provide the choruses: and the choruses spoke evil of no man, but only of the women of the place. Now the Epidaurians also had the same rites; and they have also rites which ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... they themselves had not yet agreed on; but up that government must. To which end there were many that wandered up and down and were active in sowing discontents and seditions, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the Church and State; but especially against the Bishops; by which means, together with venomous and indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as to believe the Bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructers of God's discipline! and at last ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... the preceding form, with a scurrilous preface and observations. The prayers are given as they stand in the Royal form, but with parenthetical sentences of a most abusive character after almost every paragraph. Thus, after the clause, "Pity a despised Church," the authors add, "You mean the prelates and their ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... published in 1815, having reference to the exile of the detested Corsican to St. Helena. But it was in 1821 that he first made a decided mark. For William Hone—a man who was in perpetual opposition to the powers that were—he drew on wood a remarkable series of illustrations to the scurrilous, but perhaps not undeserved, satires against King George IV., called, "The Political House that Jack Built," "The Green Bag," "A Slap at Slop," and the like,—all of them having direct and most caustic reference to the scandalous prosecution instituted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... any self-respecting people! According to the Minister of Police, the name of Blithers was already a common synonym for affliction—and frequently employed in supposing a malediction. It signified all that was mean, treacherous, scurrilous. He was spoken of through clenched teeth as "the blood sucker." Children were ominously reproved by the threatening use of the word Blithers. "Blithers will get you if you don't wash your face," and ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... at the Club; chairs were broken, bottles smashed, and sporting prints kicked about—all on account of a comical but rather scurrilous speech contrasting Europe with Australasia by a new-comer, a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives, who limped home not long afterwards with a damaged shinbone and black eye. The more ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... just turn over the pages of a book to find fault casually wherever they can—(I've seen them at it in newspaper offices!) or to quote unfairly mere scraps of sentences without context,—or to fly off into a whirlwind of personal and scurrilous calumnies against an author whom they don't know, and perhaps never will know,—that sort of thing is quite useless to me. It neither encourages nor angers me. It is a mere flabby exhibition of incompetency—much as if a jelly-fish should try to fight a sea-gull! ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... substance of the article in the "Mirror" was, I do not know, but it was probably one of those scurrilous and defamatory attacks, from many of which he suffered in common with other persons of prominence, and which was called forth, perhaps, by his activity in the politics of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... all are ignorant) are, indeed, well practised in abuse, and have long learned to call mathematicians and astronomers cheats and charlatans. They freely used their vocabulary for the benefit of De Morgan, whom they denounced as a scurrilous scribbler, a defamatory, dishonest, abusive, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... that it conveyed to my mind some notion of the folly I should commit did I not obey it. I saw at once that did I make an ensample of this scurrilous scandalmonger I should thereby render her the talk of that vile town. So I went on, but very white and stiff, and breathing somewhat hard; for pent-up passion is an evil thing ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... exceedingly unpopular with the masses. Whether this arose from the unaccountable influence he—and he alone—had with his chief, or whether the busy tongues of his private enemies received too ready credence, is hard to say. But so the fact was; and his elevation gave rise to scurrilous attacks, as well as grave forebodings. Both served equally to fix Mr. Davis in the reasons he had believed good enough ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... of our poet's worth have been as diversified as they have been in the main unfair. Alternately lauded as a master dramatic craftsman and vilified as a scurrilous purveyor of unsavory humor, he has been buffeted from the top to the bottom of the dramatic scale. More recent writers have been approaching a saner evaluation of his true worth, but never, we believe, has his real position in that dramatic scale been definitely and finally ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... students at Wittenberg was a certain Simon Lemchen, or Lemnius, a lewd fellow of the baser {503} sort who published two volumes of scurrilous epigrams bringing unfounded and nasty charges against Luther, Melanchthon and the other Reformers and their wives. When he fled the city before he could be arrested, Luther revenged himself partly by a Catilinarian sermon, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... banqueters of both sexes, quaffing the rich wines to strange toasts, jesting, and laughing wildly, singing at times themselves as the myrtle branch and the lute went round, at times listening to the licentious chaunts of the unveiled and almost unrobed dancing girls, or the obscene and scurrilous buffoonery of the mimes and clowns, who played so conspicuous a part in the Roman ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... every human action, word, and thought bears its appropriate fruit, good or evil. Out of the heart proceed three sins of thought, four sins of the tongue, and three of the body, namely, covetous, disobedient, and atheistic thoughts; scurrilous, false, frivolous, and unkind words; and actions of theft, bodily injury, and licentiousness. He who controls his thoughts, words, and actions is called a triple commander. There are three qualities of the soul, giving it a tendency to goodness, to passion, and to darkness. The first ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... the Times are given in Harris, The Trent Affair, to show a violent, not to say scurrilous, anti-Americanism. Unfortunately dates are not cited, and an examination of the files of the paper shows that Harris' references are frequently to communications, not to editorials. Also his citations give but one side of these communications ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... most interesting characteristic to the student of literature must always be the way in which it leads up to, without in the least foretelling, the bursts of eloquence already referred to. Even Milton's alternations of splendid imagery with dull and scurrilous invective, are hardly so strange as Raleigh's changes from jog-trot commonplace to almost inspired declamation, if only for the reason that they are much more intelligible. It must also be ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... sacrament, sacrilege, salient, salubrious, sardonic, satellite, saturnine, schism, scurrilous, sectarian, secular, sedative, sedentary, seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice of individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters among ourselves, augmenting animosity even to the producing of duels; and are, moreover, so indiscreet as to print scurrilous reflections on the government of neighboring states, and even on the conduct of our best national allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious consequences. These things I mention as a caution to young printers, and ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... is to Hogarth and his fellow-Governor at the Foundling, John Wilkes, that my next jotting relates. These strange colleagues in charity afterwards—as is well known—quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in the Times: Wilkes replied by a North Briton article (No. 17) so scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him down to posterity more securely than the portraits of Zoffany and Earlom. Wilkes's action upon this was to reprint his article ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... divided into parties, mine consisting of a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour: ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... that he did not think it consistent with the dignity of that Council to waste any more time over this scurrilous amendment. (Applause.) He was proud to say that it had never even been seconded, and therefore he would put Mr Didlum's resolution—a proposition which he had no hesitation in saying reflected ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... are scandalizing one who is nearer to me than grandfather was to you, and that you sent her a low, scurrilous letter, full of bitter taunts and insults, which ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... to record his estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... shivered and hastily closed the one eye he had opened. Then he valiantly tried both eyes and read by way of a second and happy headline, "The Lord Mayor revives Paganism in London." Sir Simon never knew how he finished that article. It was a most scurrilous attack. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... "Sampson" lay becalmed in the tropics. Barney, though too old a sailor to be cast down by misfortune, nevertheless chafed under his situation. From prize-master and prize-crew he received nothing but scurrilous epithets; and the oft-repeated murmurs of "Rebel rascal!" "Yankee traitor!" "Blow out his brains!" and "Throw him overboard!" made it hard for him to believe the Revolution over, and the United States and England at peace. Even while they thus abused the captain, the rogues were feasting ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... account darkly insinuated in some highly scurrilous and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy. They are docketed as being written "Upon the late Viscount Stair and his family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, a son of the Laird of Househill, and nephew to the said Sir William ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... appeared in the class of emblems when used in designating the conflicting powers of Christendom and Islamism. Emblems do not necessarily require any analogy between the objects representing, and the objects or qualities represented, but may arise from pure accident. After a scurrilous jest the beggar's wallet became the emblem of the confederated nobles, the Gueux of the Netherlands; and a sling, in the early minority of Louis XIV, was adopted from the refrain of a song by the Frondeur ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... intensely friendly of course with our own CURACOAS. But it is other guess work on the beach. Some one has employed, or subsidised, one of the local editors to attack me once a week. He is pretty scurrilous and pretty false. The first effect of the perusal of the weekly Beast is to make me angry; the second is a kind of deep, golden content and glory, when I seem to say to people: 'See! this is my position - I am a plain man dwelling in the bush in ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... grimly populates his hell is not exactly an amiable or attractive figure. Still less so is Milton in those prose pamphlets in which he passes so rapidly, and to us so strangely, from the heights of heaven to the gutter mud of scurrilous personalities. This is a disease from which our more amiable age seems at last to have delivered the world. But Milton has at least the excuse of a long and august tradition, from the days of Demosthenes, equally profuse of a patriotism ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... author of many stupid, slavish, and scurrilous political pamphlets; and, by his demerits, raised to the eminence which ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... boisterous speech, and setting spurs to his horse, he would have galloped off, when I detained him, to ask why he had not informed his family of his present place of abode and situation. My blood had boiled as he spoke, that such rude and scurrilous lips should thus scornfully have spoken my sainted brother's name; passion rose fierce within me, but I thought of him whose name he spoke, and was calm. He swore that he had had quite enough of his father's ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... punishment for the elimination of natural wantonness is the appearance of hideous hypocrisy. Driven from the haunts of the Muses, expelled from the symposia of the wise and witty, the spirit of sexual irreverence takes refuge in the streets; and the scurrilous vulgarities of the tavern balance the mincing proprieties ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... reached New England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and evidently believed what he said too) that if ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... evidently not responsible for the inclusion of her tale in "The Female Dunciad," and although the piece itself was entirely innocuous, her daring to raise her head even by accident brought down upon her another scurrilous rebuke, not this time from the poet himself, but from her former admirer, Richard Savage. In "An Author to be Let" (1732) Pope's jackal directed against the members of a supposed club of dunces, presided over by James ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... VOMIT FULL OF BOOKES, etc. From 1570, when Pope Sixtus V issued his bull of deposition against Queen Elizabeth, to 1590, great numbers of scurrilous pamphlets attacking the Queen and the Reformed church had been disseminated by ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... all my life having made it known publicly, though I could hardly have done otherwise. I did not know my public, I did not know England." Here I think she was wrong in confusing England with a few anonymous letter- writers and scurrilous persons; for however opinions may differ upon the act itself, its wisdom or unwisdom, all right-thinking people honoured her for the sacrifice which she had made. They would have honoured her even more if they had known that she had done it for the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... keen discussions, bitter quarrels, and scurrilous and abusive newspaper articles! A bloodless war of squibs, broadsides, pamphlets, and frenzied oratory was ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... to be obliged to keep your sentiments to yourself—for I would not wound Brother by any Ultra-Secession speech, and such could do me no good and only injure him—if he is as friendly with the Federals as they say he is; to listen to the scurrilous abuse heaped on those fighting for our homes and liberties, among them my three brothers—could I endure it? I fear not. Even if I did not go crazy, I would grow so restless, homesick, and miserable, that I would pray for even Clinton again. Oh, I don't, don't want to go! If mother would only ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... than for ages before? Has any man suffered in his liberty, life, or fortune, contrary to law? Stand forth and name him if you can. Tho' the King's person, his family, his government, and his ministers, have been openly abused a thousand times in the most scurrilous and reproachful terms, could it ever provoke him to one arbitrary act or to violate those laws which he had made the rule of his government? Look into the reigns of the James's and the Charles's, and tell me wither these divine and hereditary princes were ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... perhaps that I sent him a few days ago a scurrilous attack on the South by a Yankee ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... the Vicar Apostolic, Dr. John Milner, entitled Merlin's Strictures. Southey retaliated in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1826. In the latter work he addresses Butler as 'an honourable and courteous opponent'—and contrasts his 'habitual urbanity' with the malignant and scurrilous attacks of that 'ill-mannered man', Dr. Milner. In the 'Dialogue' the poet reminds his 'Friend' Southey that Rome is Rome, a 'brazen serpent', charm she never so wisely. In the Vindiciae Southey devotes pp. 470-506 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... scurrilous traitor," cried Rose, turning very red. "So that is how he talks of me behind my back, and calls me an angel to my face; I'll pay him for this. Do tell me, commandant; never ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... epigram on Dr. Fell. He was for a few years schoolmaster at Kingston-on-Thames, but owing to his irregularities lost the appointment, and went to London, where he wrote satires, epigrams, and miscellaneous pieces, generally coarse and scurrilous. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... that "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" might conceivably be charged with being a "reader cheater"—i.e., that it does not play fair with the reader, but leads him astray by means of false statements. Naturally, I feel it me bounden duty to refute such scurrilous and untrue affronts, and thus save ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... satisfaction of not having lived in vain, and of having done something towards the improvement of our common nature; and this at no little expense of time and reputation. The little I have now written is my utmost effort; yet yesterday I thought it necessary to write an answer to a scurrilous libel in The Diary by one Scipio. On my own account he should have remained unnoticed, but our great ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... sole cutlery; but we managed to cut through the skin, and we devoured the oily stuff like famished hounds, sir. We were ashamed; but, as the poet truly observes, 'Necessity knows no law,' and we endured the scurrilous language of the woman when, on the morrow, she found the bottom of the shovel encrusted with dirt and the top thickly coated with grease. That fish ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... He is upon some urgent business for the North, I believe, which he delayed for your sake. Both he and the captain were in my dressing-room before I was up, ahead of that scurrilous clergyman, who was for pushing his way to my bed-curtains. Ay, the two of them were here at nigh dawn this morning, and Mr. Allen close after them. And I own that Captain Daniel can swear with such a consuming violence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to business, and I do not want things to go easy. I believe you said some things of me in your newspaper that were very scurrilous." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... in which a few or many people would hear me; but I was rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged. With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly able, single-handed, to fight my battle against the advantages of superior talent and the trained leadership of men of ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... were certain things, and perhaps certain people, who could be best assailed and suppressed by ridicule. They could be laughed and chaffed rather than reasoned out of existence. Certainly the paper was not established with any idea of profit, nor for the gratification of indulging in scurrilous personal attacks. It only dealt with public affairs and with men in their public capacity. Indeed, I may say that all the men connected with the Town Crier at its starting were interested in the good government and progress of the town, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... technically a contempt, held the punishment inappropriate. In Macleod v. St Aubyn (1899, A.C. 549) it was said that proceedings for scandalizing the court itself were obsolete in England. But in 1900 the king's bench division, following the Almon case, summarily punished a scurrilous personal attack on a judge of assize with reference to his remarks in a concluded ease, published immediately after the conclusion of the case (R. v. Gray, 1900, 2 Q.B. 36). The same measure may be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... register. In Lower Canada, which is essentially France, I recollect the label, "Papier Terrier," upon the door of a public-land-office. A friend of mine, clandestinely and under cover of darkness, removed the label, substituting for it a scurrilous one setting forth "Pasteboard Poodle," an announcement which did not appear to convey any particular idea whatever to the unsettled mind of the haggard provincial chef du bureau, as it flashed upon him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... dozen valuable lives. There was one coil of rope on board which the skipper had bought for cordage on the previous voyage from a homeward-bound English ship, and it was the butt of all the officers' scurrilous remarks about Britishers and their gear. It was never used but for rope-yarns, being cut up in lengths, and untwisted for the ignominious purpose of tying things up—"hardly good enough for that," was ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... German book to bear the name Yorick in its title was a short satirical sketch entitled, "Yorick und die Bibliothek der elenden Scribenten, an Hrn.—" 1768,8vo (Anspach),[26] which is linked to the quite disgustingly scurrilous ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... into collision with politics, personal as well as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for other accomplishments than those of a recluse scholar, it seemed probable that this great classical critic would be found pedantic and scurrilous; and upon the affairs of so peculiar a people, it was certain that he would be found ignorant and self-contradicting. Even Englishmen have seldom thoroughly understood the feud of the great Parliamentary war: the very word ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... Blackwood is still more scurrilous; the circumstance of Keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple of the jokes of the piece. He is told 'it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"—Milnes' ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... patrician named Michel Steno, having behaved indecently to some of the women assembled at the great civic banquet given by the doge, was kicked out of the house by order of the doge, and in revenge wrote some scurrilous lines against the dogaressa. This insult was referred to "The Forty," and Steno was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, which the doge considered a very inadequate punishment for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... obstruct or attempt to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States, or any language intended to bring ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing

... in the city against him. Addressing the people, he represented that Alcibiades had ruined their affairs and lost their ships by mere self-conceited neglect of his duties, committing the government of the army, in his absence, to men who gained his favor by drinking and scurrilous talking, whilst he wandered up and down at pleasure to raise money, giving himself up to every sort of luxury in Abydos and Ionia, at a time when the enemy's navy were on the watch close at hand. It was also objected to him, that he had ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... planted himself in the road of Postumius and, with a forward inclination, threw him down and soiled his clothing. At this an uproar arose from all the rest, who praised the fellow as if he had performed some remarkable deed, and they sang many scurrilous anapaests upon the Romans, accompanied by applause and capering steps. But Postumius cried: "Laugh, laugh while you may! For long will be the period of your weeping, when you shall wash this garment clean with your blood." (Ursinus, p.375. Mai, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... in parti-coloured tunics, with short caps and bands wound cord-wise round their heads, and girdles bound with gold and silver, and daggers in pouches across their body. And thus they rode on choice coursers to the place of tourney; and so spent and wasted their goods and vexed their bodies with scurrilous wantonness that the murmurs of the people sounded everywhere. But they neither feared God nor blushed at the chaste voice of ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... affected by the attacks made and kept up on him in the public papers. I think he feels these things more than any other person I ever yet met with. I am sincerely sorry to see them." How utterly insincere appears the last clause of this paragraph, compared with the one next preceding it! The most scurrilous of the attacks alluded to proceeded from Freneau, a clerk ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... from such people, the writer was prepared. Does anyone imagine that the writer was not well aware, before he published his book, that, whenever he gave it to the world, he should be attacked by every literary coxcomb in England who had influence enough to procure the insertion of a scurrilous article in a magazine or newspaper! He has been in Spain, and has seen how invariably the mule attacks the horse; now why does the mule attack the horse? Why, because the latter carries about with him that which the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... better than to entertain you with pictures of our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to the vividness and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile our press assures the respectable Briton that Berlin is the most profligate city in Europe, and that scurrilous German novels about the German army will show him what the rotten state of things really is in that much over-rated organisation. But these national amenities are misleading. The bulk of the nation in both ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... would not pay; and I am a printer, sir, and it is on my conscience to tell you I have, in the course of business, been compelled this very morning to receive orders for the printing of various squibs and, I much fear, scurrilous things.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... such depths as these has the Democratic party in this state fallen. Had there ever been the slightest doubt that the Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger will be the nominee for governor of this state, it is now dissipated by the scurrilous attack made upon him—an attack of desperation that must and shall inevitably bring its own reward. Verily a man is known by the enemies ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... decidedly restrained. He mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, scurrilous, self-assertive experts. His impassive periods were always associated with whimsical sensitiveness of being censured if his adventures should miscarry. No one knew better than he that a man in his position could only be popular ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... one scurrilous little journal among the newspapers at whose office Mr. Burchard neglected to call. In their next issue ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... makes them good friends to their own wives. And innumerable other benefits would result if such a law could only be enforced. I can imagine some lusty youth who is standing by, and who, on hearing this enactment, declares in scurrilous terms that we are making foolish and impossible laws, and fills the world with his outcry. And therefore I said that I knew a way of enacting and perpetuating such a law, which was very easy in one respect, but in another most difficult. There is no difficulty in seeing that such ...
— Laws • Plato

... and scurrilous article by a Member of Parliament, urging rebellious natives in South Africa to take heart of grace and pursue with ever-increasing vigour their attacks upon the small and isolated white populace which upheld British rule in that part of the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... however, in the year of the Samian war, the comic drama assumed a character either so personally scurrilous, or so politically dangerous, that a decree was passed interdicting its exhibitions (B. C. 440). The law was repealed three years afterward (B. C. 437) [329]. Viewing its temporary enforcement, and the date in which it was passed, it appears highly probable that the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the occasion of your being in town pass," he wrote, "without acknowledging the gratuitous zeal with which you have done your best to further the circulation of one of the most malignant innuendos, in the way of scurrilous half-assertions, it has been my fate hitherto to meet. Mr. Brown very properly sent on to me the pamphlet you had promptly posted to him. Mr. Pennell, also, I find, you had carefully supplied with a copy—and I have ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... one o'clock in the afternoon. No one was admitted. He was going over accounts with Balbus, I fancy. After this he took a stroll on the shore. Then came the bath. He heard the epigram to Mamurra, (a most scurrilous epigram by Catullus), and betrayed no annoyance. He dressed for dinner and sat down. As he was under a course of medicine, he ate and drank without apprehension and in the pleasantest humor. The entertainment was sumptuous and elaborate; and not ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... offensive expressions and was called to account, he thought it right to go out and stand a shot before he ate his words, but now-a-days that piece of chivalry is dispensed with, and politicians make nothing of being scurrilous one day and humble the next. Hyde Villiers has been appointed to succeed Sandon at the Board of Control as a Whig and a Reformer. He was in a hundred minds what line he should take, and had written a pamphlet to prove the necessity of giving Ministers seats in both Houses (as in France), which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... murmur or whispering, if found out, passeth not without severe rebuke. They detest cards and dice, they shun the sports of the field, and take no delight in the ludicrous catching of birds (hawking), which men are wont to indulge in. Jesters and soothsayers and story-tellers, scurrilous songs, shows, and games, they contemptuously despise and abominate as vanities and mad follies. They cut their hair, knowing that, according to the apostle, it is not seemly in a man to have long hair. They are never combed, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... an equal value sets The stupid mob. From me the worst it gets, And never fails to praise," With vile pretense, The scurrilous author thus his trash excused. A poet shrewd, hearing the lame defense, Indignant, thus exposed the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... learned to wrestle at fairs. He would fight and quarrel for a trifle, and spent his time in debauchery and riotous living. If his parents remonstrated with him, he would raise his voice and abuse them, using scurrilous language. "It's all very well your abusing me for being dissolute and disobedient. But, pray, who asked you to bring me into the world? You brought me into the world, and I have to thank you for its miseries; so now, if you hate dissolute people, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... to the original than the Vulgate version, that those who knew only Latin might understand more fully the meaning of the original—in his old age, when irritated by the course of events, and by his controversies with Luther, consented to recommend this scurrilous pamphleteer to his friends in Scotland. His own letter is not now extant, or, if extant, is not at present accessible; but the answer sent to him by the Scottish king has been preserved, like his letter to Cochlaeus, among the MSS. in ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... opinion of Catholics Luther's greatest offense is what he has done to their Pope. This is Luther's unpardonable sin. Luther has done two things to the Pope: he has denied that the Pope exists by divine right, and he has in the most scurrilous manner spoken and written about the Pope and made his vaunted dignity the butt of universal ridicule. The indictment is true, but when the facts are stated, it will be seen to recoil on the heads of those ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... the custom-houses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and New Orleans, had been swept clear; that violent partisans of Jackson were exclusively appointed, and that every editor of a scurrilous newspaper ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... And be punished for it: Take heed: for you may so long exercise Your scurrilous wit against authority, The Kingdoms Counsels; and make profane Jests, (Which to you (being an atheist) is nothing) Against Religion, that your great maintainers (Unless they would be thought Co-partners with you) Will leave you to the Law: and then, ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... defamer of Charles Parnell never accused the man of promiscuous conduct, nor of being selfish and sensual in his habit of life. He loved this one woman, and never loved another. And when a scurrilous reporter, hiding behind anonymity, published a story to the effect that Katharine O'Shea had had other love-affairs, the publisher, growing alarmed, came out the following day with a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... one of the harmless ballads of 'Bull.' Some of the political ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day. We cannot wonder that ladies of a certain position gave out that they would not receive any one who took in this paper. It was scurrilous to the last degree, and Theodore Hook was the soul of it. He preserved his incognito so well, that in spite of all attempts to unearth him, it was many years before he could be certainly fixed upon as a writer in its columns. He even went ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... Gottlieb and I represented a very objectionable old party who ran a scurrilous "society" paper, chiefly for the opportunity it gave him to blackmail people. His method was the very simple one of publishing some unfounded scandal without using any names, and then to print a paragraph immediately following in which the real names of the parties ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... behaviour, and the inhabitants withdrew their children from his school; but as his means of living decreased, his opinion of his own deserts enlarged; he mistook the cravings of want for spiritual illumination, and so perplexed his mind by reading the scurrilous libels of the day, as to be firmly persuaded that the King was the Devil's bairn, and Archbishop Laud the personal antichrist. A description of church ceremonies thrilled him with horror, and in every prosecution of a contumacious minister his ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... nobles exalt my name to the skies.' He was the bitter enemy of Poggio, and of all who supported the reigning family of Florence. Poggio had the art of making enemies, though he was a courtier by profession and had been secretary to eight Popes. He raged against Philelpho in a flood of scurrilous pamphlets; Valla, the great Latin scholar, was violently attacked for a mere word of criticism, and Niccolo Perotti, the grammarian, paid severely for supporting his friend. Poggio was always in extremes. His eulogies in praise of Lorenzo de' Medici, and Niccolo Niccoli of Florence ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... it was good that he penned the scurrilous article. For I had allowed happiness to lull my radical conscience asleep. It was now goaded awake. I ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... especially true of his tendenz novels and his novels of society. He was a man of strongly marked individuality, fiery, pugnacious, sensitive to criticism, and abounding in prejudices. He was embittered by the scurrilous attacks made upon him by a portion of the American press, and spent a great deal of time and energy in conducting libel suits against the newspapers. In the same spirit he used fiction as a vehicle for attack upon the abuses and follies of American life. Nearly all of his ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... yourself, sire. You have brought out poets as the sun brings out flowers. How many have we not seen—Moliere, Boileau, Racine, one greater than the other? And the others, too, the smaller ones—Scarron, so scurrilous and yet so witty—Oh, holy Virgin! ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood, calumny, and defamation. I am convinced that none of the highly respectable Teachers of ———— has had any participation in this scurrilous transaction, as I consider them to be sober, moral, exemplary well-conducted men, possessed of excellent literary abilities; but this expatriated ruffian and abandoned profligate, being aware of the marked and unremitting attention which I have ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... more than four or five lines in length and was a bitter and most scurrilous attack on Dr. ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in Brazil. As for his old father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour. 'I had always bread for him,' he said; 'he ran away to annoy me. He loved to annoy ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tongues, one and all began to vent wrath on the ill-starred Churchman, talking volubly of his avarice and misdeeds in general. But why, cried one of them, should they be content with so tame a thing as scurrilous speech? Were not men of the sword more doughty than men of the robe? he added; and thereupon a wild shout was raised by the revellers, and they swore that they would sally forth instantly and slay him whom they ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... and rotten to its core; yet even this does less dishonor to Shakspeare's memory than the sequel attached to it. A sort of scurrilous rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so loathsome in its brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its expression, that we shall not pollute our pages by transcribing it, has been imputed to Shakspeare ever since the days of the credulous Rowe. The total point of this idiot's drivel ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... action of the Government was grossly illegal, and declared that it was a blow struck at the freedom of the press. Mr. W. Redmond took much the same ground. Mr. George Wyndham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, spoke of the article as containing "outrageous, scurrilous, gross and coarse remarks," and as using language more foul than that of certain foreign papers which had been so complained of during the year. He had ordered it to be seized because it was guilty of "seditious libel," because ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... caricaturists had not yet left us, this auspicious event immediately gave rise to a coarse caricature,[22] published by Fores, and labelled, A Scene in the New Farce called the Rivals, or a Visit to the Heir Presumptive, in which the scurrilous satirist depicts the supposed mortification and jealousy of other members of the royal family. Her Majesty's father, the Duke of Kent, died nine months afterwards, on the 23rd of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... Burns," exclaimed Moodie, angrily. "He did worse than hide his ten talents in a napkin. I wonder, my lady, you defile your mouth with his scurrilous words." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... has all the libraries in Europe in his head, from the Vatican at Rome, to the learned collection of Dr. Salmon at Fleet-Ditch; but at the same time, he is a cynic in behaviour, a fury in temper, impolite in conversation, abusive and scurrilous in language, and ungovernable in passion. Is this to be learned? Then may I be still illiterate. I have been in my time, pretty well master of five languages, and have not lost them yet, though I write no bill over my ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... he has pinned a most notorious falsehood about a Dr. Aspinwall on his enemies, which must destroy their credit, and will do him more service than what he has yet been able to prove about himself. They have published another pamphlet against his history, but so impertinent and scurrilous and malicious, that it will serve him more than his own defence: they may keep the old man's life so employed as to prevent the prosecution of his work, but nothing can destroy the merit of the three volumes already published, which in every respect is the best ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Government, assembles, and for half an hour you would be diverted with their different sentiments and proposals. There is one who has a knack at squibbs, as they call it, and he has a table and chair with a pen and ink before him, to write scurrilous papers, and these are sent directly to Mr. Raikes. I wish to God that it was all ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... was a scurrilous abuser of the government. Vespasian once said to him, "You want to provoke me to kill you, but I am not going to order a dog that barks to execution." Cf. Sen. Ep. 67, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... 1583, and proceeded by methods which Burghley himself held to be too inquisitorial. A good deal of indignation was aroused, and the Puritans were in effect made more aggressive, their attacks on the existing system culminating in 1589 in the distinctly scurrilous "Martin Mar-prelate" tracts, which were so violent as to produce a marked reaction. This on the one side, coupled with the partly genuine and partly mythical plots of the ultra-Catholics on the other, brought about sharp legislation ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... the reason, Torvald. It is for your own sake. This fellow writes in the most scurrilous newspapers; you have told me so yourself. He can do you an unspeakable amount of harm. I am frightened ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... I am a forger, and a money-lender; I am on the staff of the Norwegian Punch—a most scurrilous paper. More, I have been blackmailing Mrs. HELMER by trading on her fears like a low cowardly cur. But, in spite of all that—(clasping his hands)—there are the makings of a fine man ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various

... with you, Monsignor," quickly replied Carmen. "Scurrilous attacks upon the Church but make it a martyr. Vilification returns upon the one who hurls the abuse. One can not fling mud without soiling one's hands. I oppose not men, but human systems of thought. Whatever is good will stand, and needs no defense. Whatever is erroneous must go. And there is no ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... comedians ballad-singers; when fools lead the town, would a man think to thrive by his wit? If you must write, write nonsense, write operas, write Hurlothrumbos, set up an oratory and preach nonsense, and you may meet with encouragement enough. Be profane, be scurrilous, be immodest: if you would receive applause, deserve to receive sentence at the Old Bailey; and if you would ride in a coach, deserve to ride ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... which is, "That he was free from all obscene speeches, which is the chief cause of making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre, in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ashamed of." He lived in friendship with the famous Ben Johnson, as appears by ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... Certainly few English journalists have equalled in ability Louis Veuillot, and few papers have exercised so great an influence over the clergy of the Church as the Univers at the time when he directed it; but no one who read those savagely scurrilous and intolerant pages, burning with an impotent hatred of all the progressive and liberal tendencies of the time, shrinking from no misrepresentation of fact and from no apology for crime if it was in the interest of the Church, could fail to perceive how utterly out of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... had played at Drury Lane. But, on the whole, it is satisfactory to know that his early experiences did not, of necessity, include those of a strolling player. Some obscure and temporary connection with Bartholomew Fair he may have had, as Smollett, in the scurrilous pamphlet issued in 1742, makes him say that he blew a trumpet there in quality of herald to a collection of wild beasts; but this is probably no more than an earlier and uglier form of the apparition laid by Mr. Latreille. The only positive evidence of any connection ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... thing lightly enough, partly because you were too persuasive, and mostly, I honestly think, because that scurrilous Gordon Hallock laughed so uproariously at the idea of my being able to manage an asylum. Between you all you hypnotized me. And then of course, after I began reading up on the subject and visiting all those seventeen institutions, I got ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... time I ever had anything to do with politics, more than to be a delegate to the county convention two or three times. I mention it here, because of the chance it gave Dick McGill to rake me over the coals in his scurrilous paper, the Monterey Centre Journal, that most people have always said was never fit to enter a decent home, but which they always subscribed for and read as quick as ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... scurrilous denunciation never affected me. His life by Sir Wemyss Reid reveals how Mr. W.E. Forster flinched under the vituperation levelled at his head. But he was not an Irishman, least of all a Kerry man, and so he never felt the fun of the fray, the grim earnest ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... spirit of insolent defiance, of outrageous violence, rose into fresh life at the challenge of persecution. A Protestant hung a string of puddings round a priest's neck in derision of his beads. The restored images were grossly insulted. The old scurrilous ballads against the mass and relics were heard in the streets. Men were goaded to sheer madness by the bloodshed and violence about them. One miserable wretch, driven to frenzy, stabbed the priest of St. Margaret's as he stood with the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... baggage," concluded Leon. "You shall smart for this. I will weary out your life with persecutions; I will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, it shall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word - I will put you in a song - a scurrilous song - an indecent song - a popular song - which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through these spars ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... advice, calculations of majorities and prophecies of victory, written at the last moment in unquenchable faith, to be read now with a weary smile of irony. Here too were honest, admiring condolences. "Better luck next time"—"Never despair," and so forth—side by side with anonymous and scurrilous gloatings over his fall. Once he laughed out loud: a zealous student compared him at length and in detail to Cleon, and ended with an ode of triumph which, he said, would appear in the press the next day or so. Medland pushed ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... as may be found on the surface of the globe, are still conscious of their origin, though they possess added virtues of their own. 'The New York Herald,' as conducted by James Gordon Bennett the First, modelled its scurrilous energy upon the Press of our eighteenth century. The influence of Junius and the pamphleteers was discernible in its columns, and many of its articles might have been signed by Wilkes himself. But there was something ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... as a cigarette roller, earning $4 a week. Here she was subjected to constant insolence and scurrilous language from the foreman and the men working with her. Her eyes turned black with contempt when she spoke of this offence—"Oh" she exclaimed, "I thought, 'I am poor, but I will never in my life be so poor as to ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... Saurin, with Duigenan, with Lord Eldon, and even with Lord Norbury. O'Connell early perceived in Peel his most dangerous opponent, and a strong personal enmity, which was as much due to profound differences of character as to differences of policy, grew up between them. A scurrilous attack of O'Connell on Peel in 1815 was followed by a challenge, and a duel was prevented only by the arrest of O'Connell. The antipathy between the two men was never mitigated. O'Connell said of Peel that 'his smile was like the silver plate ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... have one at my court, madame; the lieutenant of police would have done well not to have named her to you." "Thanks to him, however, I shall now know whom I ought to mistrust. I know also who is the author of the two scurrilous paragraphs." "Some scamp, no doubt; some beggarly scoundrel." "A monsieur Ledoux." "Ah, I know the fellow. His bad reputation has reached me. It must be stopped at last." So saying, Louis XV went to ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... tragedy of "Pope Joan," in which he revives the old fable of a female pope, and loads her with all the crimes of which a priest, or a woman, could possibly be guilty. Shadwell's comedy of the "Lancashire Witches" was levelled more immediately at the papists, but interspersed with most gross and scurrilous reflections upon the English divines of the high church party. Otway, Lee, and Dryden were the formidable antagonists, whom the court opposed to the whig poets. Thus arrayed and confronted, the stage ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... Paracelsus. In return for unmeasured abuse of his predecessors and contemporaries he has been held up to obloquy as the arch-charlatan of history. We have taken a cheap estimate of him from Fuller and Bacon, and from a host of scurrilous scribblers who debased or perverted his writings. Fuller(4) picked him out as exemplifying the drunken quack, whose body was a sea wherein the tide of drunkenness was ever ebbing and flowing—"He boasted that shortly he would order Luther and the Pope, as well as he had done Galen and Hippocrates. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood. That would have been a simple case of awakened sensibility. But she continued to disparage him to his face and to me. She was venomous—scurrilous in her abuse. Yet only with the greatest difficulty could I persuade her to let me share the watch that must be kept over him. She called him an infamous black wretch, in tones befitting her words, but I could not get her to leave him even ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson



Words linked to "Scurrilous" :   scurrility, abusive, offensive



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