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Uninitiated   /ˌənɪnˈɪʃiˌeɪtɪd/  /ˌəninˈɪʃiˌeɪtɪd/   Listen
Uninitiated

adjective
1.
Not initiated; deficient in relevant experience.  Synonyms: naive, uninitiate.  "He took part in the experiment as a naive subject"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Uninitiated" Quotes from Famous Books



... uninitiated should attempt to even mount a machine he should know what it is composed of, and how it is made. His investigation should take in every part of the mechanism; he should understand about the plane surface, what the stresses are upon its surface, what is the duty of each strut, ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... Moeurs,' who are very solicitous about the health of a few of these miserable creatures that live in a wretched lane in the city, whilst they allow the traffic to be carried on in some places as openly as it is in the Strand or Haymarket. Another hospital, which to the uninitiated is far more attractive than the Colentina, is the Philanthropic, a beautiful building of recent construction, containing wide passages and very fine wards, and admirably fitted up with baths and all modern conveniences. The third is situated ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... trace of such a feeling is observable in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism, social and political. In truth, the party classification of American literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in his writings anything countenancing their claim upon him. His sketches of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; and the fourth book of his Knickerbocker ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... Price was the insurance clerk who had attached himself to Hatton and had proved himself to be of real service in many ways. He was an honest man, but he could not box. He came down to the hall one night after I had given four or five lessons, to watch the boys spar. Of course, to the uninitiated eye it did seem as though they were neat in their work. The sight was very different from the absurd exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have said, if he was determined to compliment me, that they had "improved," "progressed," or something equally ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... Whites, formerly of my company, but later in command of Company G, Third Battalion, writes a very entertaining sketch of prison life, which I very willingly give space to, so that the uninitiated may have some idea of prison life, and the pleasure of being called "fresh fish" by the old prison "rats." Lieutenant Whites was a gallant soldier and a splendid officer. He was what is called in common parlance "dead game" in battle and out. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... writer in a spiritualist journal takes me soundly to task for venturing to doubt the historical and literal truth of the Gadarene story. The following passage in his letter is worth quotation: "Now to the materialistic and scientific mind, to the uninitiated in spiritual verities, certainly this story of the Gadarene or Gergesene swine, presents insurmountable difficulties; it seems grotesque and nonsensical. To the experienced, trained, and cultivated Spiritualist this miracle is, as I am prepared to show, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... remainder of the afternoon, nothing occurred in the settlement which need here be mentioned, except the secret and cautiously-made preparations for the proposed action of the night, that, though imperceptible to the uninitiated, were yet actively going on at the village. About sunset, however, the hunter returned from his visit to the chief's; but in a state of no little perplexity and concern, at an event which he unexpectedly found had there occurred. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... see a coast-watcher, up soon after dawn, take a stroll along the beach, even when he is not supposed to be on duty and before he has tasted his morning tea. The family telescope is at his eye, as he wants to get a good look at what the sea has been doing, and what is there. To the uninitiated, it seems to have the same paucity of interest as any other shipless stretch of water; but to this expert it has a story. He notes the clouds, the sun, the very rocks; and they say that his gaze is so sharp that it ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall

... "No, for the uninitiated they were dark words; and even had they possessed any meaning, the men would have believed it was the sickness which spoke out of him. 'There stands the mother with the two children! The one shall fall upon the flank of the enemy and bring me honor and joy. ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... into the dining-room, where there was a standing supper of oysters,—the "institution" of oysters as they justly call it,—hot quails, ham, ices, and most copious supplies of their beloved Catawba champagne, which we do not love, for it tastes, to our uninitiated palates, little better than cider. It was served in a large red punch-bowl of Bohemian glass in the form of Catawba cobbler, which I thought improved it; but between the wine and the quails, which, from over hospitable kindness, were forced on poor papa, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... the rack of death and destruction was a simple stick; not unlike a walking cane, and this seemed so comparatively harmless that an uninitiated observer would ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... matrixes had fallen into place to make a complete line, just the width of one of the columns of the Leader. The compositor looked at the row of matrixes as they were, arranged before him, read it (no easy task to the uninitiated), took out a wrong letter and inserted a right one, and then ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... smooth, white eggs, with their rounded reliefs and tenderly graduated light and shadow, all eyes are judges. But of the exquisite figures showing the various stages of development and the details of structural arrangement, the uninitiated must take the opinions of a microscopic expert: and if they will accept our testimony as that of one not unfamiliar with the instrument and the mysteries it reveals, we can assure them that these figures are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... mercenary scions of the great, a considerable value; and perhaps it is only in the North that it is properly cooked and appreciated. A moor bird requires a particular sagacity in carving, which is a secret to the uninitiated. You may carve it like a common fowl; but the epicure alone knows that it is in the back that the true flavour of the heath is found, and in the North the back is recognized as the chief delicacy, and must be carefully proportioned ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... experienced the intoxication of color which seizes the uninitiated at the door of a picture-gallery? So many staring hues impinge upon the eyes, so many ideas take confused shape and struggle together in the brain, that the eyes grow weary and the brain harassed. It hovers undecided like an insect in a meadow full of ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... spirit of the Jews has preserved the greater part of the original characters carried into Europe by the pioneer Semitic bands. In 90 per cent. of Jews the physical or Semitic characters are apparent to the eye even of the uninitiated Gentile. In the Jewish people we see Nature steering one of her cargoes of differentiated humanity between the Scylla and Charybdis of the modern sea of industrial civilization. And ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith

... reporting everything to the Chief of the community makes it certain that he was supplied with such current information as made his knowledge of public and private affairs appear miraculous to the uninitiated. Even those who supplied that information had firm faith in his supernatural power to kill or cure, and believed with equal ardour in the charms which he taught them ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... these three letters, long a mystery to the uninitiated, but which, filled out and interpreted, signify that philosophy is the guide of life, is one of long standing, the annual meetings of which have called forth the best efforts of many distinguished scholars and thinkers. Rarely has any one of the annual ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... two hasty meals, the operatives will be confined to their tasks. The proverbial facility of the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour. In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the plantation hedge—a shepherd's hut—now presenting an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... my mission, having received sundry private and very confidential letters from Pierce on the same subject. It seemed that Pierce and his boy Fourney had written any amount of private and confidential letters on this to be kept very secret affair. George made himself quite at home. Indeed, the uninitiated might have mistaken him and the cat for fixtures of the establishment. Calling me on one side, he begged I would consider Mr. Buckanan entirely in his hands. In order to bring his speed to the right gauge, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... uninitiated—men and women living outside the pale of royal courts—will deem such things impossible. Let me tell these happy ignoramuses that all through the nineteenth century the princes and princesses of Europe were brought up to the tune of the whip and of physical and mental humiliation. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... were over and the girls found themselves liking the gay young strangers immensely. Their English accent and the way they said, "Bah Jove!" and "Beastly hot weather, what?" fascinated the uninitiated girls, and they were soon imitating their new-found friends with ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... solid figure of a man. It was not the first time that the apparition, under similar circumstances, had been seen by the rest of the household, but for him it bore a message of deeper mystery than for these uninitiated spiritualists; although in man's clothes, his observant eye recognised the face of the spirit; terrible and suggestive truth, it was the face of the vestal Virgin, who, far off in Calcutta, had fluidified in the third temple, and he ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... the first ice we saw, it soon appeared that the training of the uninitiated, like puppies, was to be a very formal and lengthy piece of business. Thanks to an immense deal of water, and very little ice, the steamers eventually towed the "Resolute" and the transport (a lively specimen of the genus), into the Whale-Fish Islands,—a ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... has ever held an allurement for the lay reader, the general public, and the uninitiated, so to speak, and Mr. Brebner has chosen this background for the setting of his story, and has woven around Olive Vaughan, scenes and incidents showing the temptations to which every aspirant for theatrical fame and fortune is subject, and showing too, how, through ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... his ear was pressed closely against the boarding that formed the rather flimsy partition at the side of the bunk. One heard many things in Chang Foo's if one cared to listen—if one could first win one's way through the carefully guarded gateway, that to the uninitiated offered nothing more interesting than the entrance to a Chinese tea-shop, and an uninviting one ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... manifested a very great repugnance to this plant. Very few of them would touch it, and it was known to us by the two bad names, "haughty-man's plaything," and "pick your mother's heart out." In Hanover, as well as in the Swiss canton of St. Gall, the same plant is offered to uninitiated persons with a request to pluck one of the pods. Should he do so the others exclaim, "You have stolen a purse of gold from your father and mother."" "It is interesting to find," writes Mr. Britten in the "Folk-lore Record" (i. 159), "that a common tropical weed, Ageratum conyzoides, is employed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand—Stevens now propounded his direct inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly unconsidered insinuation, by which he drew from the preacher as much as ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... To the uninitiated, words are powerless to reveal the torments of the imprisoned in a modern steel inquisition, rocking and pitching at the mercy of mighty torrents in a mid-ocean cyclone. Mephistopheles, seeking severest punishment for the damned, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... impression of moral disorder. High spirits are the rule, and impropriety is the exception. Even in the auditorium at Steeplechase Park, where the cognoscenti assemble to witness the discomfiture of the uninitiated, there is nothing but harmless laughter as the skirts fly up before the unsuspected blast. Such a performance in England, were it permitted, would degenerate into ugliness; in France, too, it would make the alien spectator uncomfortable. But the essential public chastity of the Americans—I ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... necessary responses. Gregory sanctions the baptism of infants only where there is imminent danger of death. "It is better that they should be sanctified without their own sense of it than that they pass away unsealed and uninitiated." And he justifies his view by this, that circumcision, which foreshadowed the Christian seal ([Greek: sphragis]), was imposed on the eighth day on those who as yet had no use of reason. He also urges the analogue of "the anointing of the doorposts, which preserved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... beside her, and the children at their amusements, very carefully avoiding the table, lest they should shake it and spoil Isabella's drawing. They were proud of their secret, and it was to be part of their business to watch and give notice of the approach of any uninitiated person, from whose sight all tale-telling materials were ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau

... 15th we again reached the steamer. We found her prepared for action, having been much annoyed during the night by the continued Dyak war-yells—sounds, to uninitiated ears, as unpleasant as those of musketry. Having driven away the two principal instigators and abettors of all the piracies committed along the coast of Borneo and elsewhere, and destroyed their strongholds, it now remained for us to punish the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... a few hints as to the pronunciation of Polish words, which otherwise might puzzle the reader uninitiated in the mysteries of that rarely-learned language. Aiming more at simplicity than at accuracy, one may say that the vowels are pronounced somewhat like this: a as in "arm," aL like the nasal French "on," e as in "tell," e/ with an approach to the French "e/" (or to the German "u [umlaut]" and "o ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... who has not been? I have revelled; who is uninitiated in revels? nay, I was mad; at whose prompting but a god's? Let them go; for now the silver hair is fast replacing the black, a messenger of wisdom that comes with age. We too played when the time of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... they clanked into Lahore station—a big-bastioned building, whose solid masonry breathed fire, as literally as any dragon of romance. Within was a great darkness, partially dispelled by hanging oil-lamps; and babel enough to wake the Seven Sleepers. The uninitiated arriving at an Indian railway station are apt to imagine that a riot of some sort must be in progress. But it is only the third-class passenger, whose name is legion, fighting, tooth and nail, for the foot of space due to every possessor of the precious morsel of cardboard ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... peculiar to themselves. Democracy, carried to its furthest limits, is therefore prejudicial to the art of government; and for this reason it is better adapted to a people already versed in the conduct of an administration than to a nation which is uninitiated ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... in ecstasy and rapture, as in some of the old litanies. He hugged the thought that a great part of what he had invented was in the true sense of the word occult: page after page might have been read aloud to the uninitiated without betraying the inner meaning. He dreamed night and day over these symbols, he copied and recopied the manuscript nine times before he wrote it out fairly in a little book which he made himself of a skin of creamy vellum. In ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... has his or her sacred birth-stone or stick. But though every woman, like every man, has her sacred birth-stone or stick, she is never allowed to see it under pain of death or of being blinded with a fire-stick. Indeed none but old women are aware even of the existence of such things. Uninitiated men are likewise forbidden under the same severe penalties ever to look upon these most sacred objects.[120] The sanctity ascribed to the sticks and stones is intelligible when we remember that the spirits ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... flight, . . for it seemed to be universally understood that the venerable Prophet was one of the Circle of Mystics,—persons whose knowledge of science, especially in matters connected with electricity, enabled them to perform astonishing juggleries, that were frequently accepted by the uninitiated vulgar as almost divine miracles. Not very long ago, according to Ormaz, who was animatedly recalling the circumstance for the benefit of the company, the words "FALL, AL-KYRIS!" had appeared emblazoned in letters of fire on the sky at midnight, and the phenomenon had been ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... had lived before them, on opposite sides of the little stream, the branches of which crept through the alder and gum thickets between them, and contributed to make the district almost as impenetrable to the uninitiated as a mountain fastness. The long log-cabin of the Cove-Millses, where room had been added to room in a straight line, until it looked like the side of a log fort, peeped from its pines across at the clearing where the hardly more ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... would have done so; nor would he have enjoyed the chance of showing them that he could respond to the remotest mystic indications, with a muffled adroitness equal to their own, and so encouraged them to commence a language leading to intimacy with a rapidity that may well appear magical to the uninitiated. In short, the man really had the language of the very elect of polite society. If you are not versed in this alphabet of mute intelligence, you are in the ranks with waiters and linen-drapers, and are, as far as ladies are concerned, tail-coated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sound obscure to the uninitiated, and it is true that the plane projection of some of the regular hyper-solids are staggeringly intricate affairs, but the author is so sure that this matter lies so well within the compass of the average non-mathematical mind that he is willing ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... recollect, hereafter, that in any of my future letters, in which I may use [] whatever words may be within the brackets are intended to have no signification whatever to you, only to blind the eyes of the uninitiated. You will find an example at the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... remain as a particular species of dreams with painful content, dreams of anxiety, the inclusion of which under dreams of wishing will find least acceptance with the uninitiated. But I can settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very short order; for what they may reveal is not a new aspect of the dream problem; it is a question in their case of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed a great many dull days. But the dullness of his days pleased him; his melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage, like a healing wound, ...
— The American • Henry James

... a bore by the handsomest couple in the room, and they sit apart, and the uninitiated think they are making love. And they talk so confidentially, and look so amused; they seem delighted with each other. But ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... superb scorn, calculated to convince the uninitiated that he himself had never been a Venetian ragamuffin, gave three long strokes of the oar, which sent the gondola far out upon the Canal, well beyond the reach ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... To the uninitiated I might say that in making picture plays a company, somewhat like a regular theatrical organization, is gotten together. The play is decided upon, but instead of the acts taking place before an audience they are enacted before ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... is practically the same as Alencon with a variation of ground, which, to the uninitiated, appears coarse. A magnifying glass, however, will speedily dispel this illusion. The ground in itself is a marvellous piece of work, each of the sides of the mesh being covered with ten buttonhole stitches. Very frequently a mixed lace of ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... surprise of the others; how could I have known of the existence of these secret and sacred utensils? The men called me aside, and begged me never to speak of this to the women, as these objects are used, like many others, to frighten away the women and the uninitiated from the assemblies of the secret societies. The noise they make is supposed to be the voice of a mighty and dangerous demon, who attends ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... he is called generically, of an Oxford college, is a greater man than the uninitiated suppose.—De Quincey's Life and Manners, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... but experience has taught me that it is often the cakes and ale, so to speak, which attract, while character remains unchanged, or at the best very thinly veneered. There are always exceptions, of course. It is difficult for the uninitiated to realize that men go in for crime as a means of livelihood, and are trained to become expert even as others are trained to succeed in respectable professions. Many grades go to make up a successful gang, and I had great hope of recognizing some youngster's face ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... literary skill might be equal to the difficulty of accurate statement; secondly, the natural reluctance of the religious mind to let the deepest truths be exposed to the vulgar scoffs and criticism of the uninitiated; thirdly, some remnant of the primitive superstition that the formulae of a ritual are magic spells, which would lose their potency if published to the world; and, finally, the natural instinct of a sacerdotal class to reserve the knowledge of deepest ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... term "Turkish," however, nor the designation "hot-air" bath, convey to the uninitiated any idea of the true principle of "the bath," as I shall hereinafter call it for brevity's sake. More properly it is a "heat bath"—a thermal cure. In the ordinary hot-air bath, the heated air is simply ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop

... that it enjoys it too; a sort of continual and immediate revelation. Itself is its own authority. The ultra-spiritualist contains within himself the fulness of the Godhead. He allows of nothing external, unless it be brother spirits like himself. He has abolished nature, and to the uninitiated seems to have abolished GOD himself, although I am charitable enough to believe that he has full faith in GOD, after his own fashion. He claims to be inspired; to be equal to JESUS; nay superior; for one of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... was rather more successful. The room in which it was held was filled to the corners, and exhaled such an odour of wet garments and bread and butter (to say nothing of an incessant clatter of china and bawling of voices) that we found ourselves, as uninitiated strangers, unequal to the task of remaining in it to witness the proceedings. Descending the steps which led into the street from the door—to the great confusion of a string of smartly dressed ladies who encountered us, rushing up with steaming teakettles and craggy lumps of plumcake—we ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... one school institution which nobody forgets who has been to Wrykyn. It is a little confectioner's shop in the High Street. Its exterior is somewhat forbidding, and the uninitiated would probably shudder and pass on, wondering how on earth such a place could find a public daring enough to support it by eating its wares. But the school went there in flocks. Tea at Cook's was the ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... use none but the ashes of hard wood, as oak, ash, maple, beech; any of the resinous trees are bad for the purpose, and the ley will not mingle with the fat. In boiling, to the great mortification of the uninitiated soap-boiler, who, by being made acquainted with this simple fact, might have been spared much useless trouble and waste of material, after months ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... applied to teaching which the uninitiated may be expected to comprehend, and which is openly professed, as in a public confession ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... neighbours. Her thin white feet in toeless stockings and sabots, well-worn woollen petticoat, black stuff jacket, headgear of an old black silk handkerchief, would have suggested anything but the truth to the uninitiated. Here also the unwary stranger might have fumbled for a spare coin. She had a kindly, intelligent face, and spoke volubly in patois, having very little command of French. It was, indeed, necessary for me to converse by the medium of an interpreter. On ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the few journals with whose editors he didn't happen to be quarreling with; he founded both clubs which then expelled him, and periodicals in which he was attacked. Everywhere, and in other ways, he continued to make himself impossible even by his very presence. The uninitiated might interpret his absence from the Caf Klchen as a sign of his inward transformation, if it were not for a poster fixed to ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... the devil or spirits (though he did not dispute there were such beings), but by or through philosophical means, altogether different from the operations supposed necessary to enable witches and wizards to perform actions not easily comprehended by the uninitiated. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... uninitiated army life is very fascinating. The long marches, nights of picket, and ordeal of battle are so festooned by the imagination of the inexperienced with shoulder straps, glittering blades, music, banners, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... member, but I have never really seen anything like a strong desire on the part of the House generally to keep the small quorum together which is necessary for giving the private member his opportunity. To the uninitiated, it is perhaps necessary to say that the sittings of the House are divided into two classes—what are called Government and what are called private members' nights. Government nights are Mondays and Thursdays. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... of the bone. Ike winced "Ah, as I feared. There is considerable comminution and extravasation. Yes, and owing to the long delay, and doubtless to the wet applications which the uninitiated invariably apply, pus. Now, the carbolic solution," to Ike, who was standing with white face and ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... drawing-room. He had walked down to the sands with his aunt and there were assembled various younger members of the Balfour clique, and some whom age and sex ought perhaps to have taught to despise, though it had not, the hoydenish pleasures of 'a sea-house.' A 'sea-house,' for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a deep hole dug in the sand while the tide is out, and the sand taken from the hole is built round in broad, high walls to make the fort resist as long as possible the rush of the incoming waves. It takes hours to make, but ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... occupiers, not the makers of their homes. Few, if any, of the plants are uninhabited by a resentful swarm, ready to attack whomsoever may presume to interfere with it. It is discomposing to the uninitiated to find the curious "orchid," laboriously wrenched from a tree, overflowing with stinging and pungent ants, nor is he likely to reflect that the association between the plant and the insect ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... a common custom in the lower tribes to keep the sexes separate and to distinguish between the initiated and the uninitiated. There are often men's houses in which the young unmarried males are required to live.[880] Women and boys are forbidden to be present at ceremonies of initiation when, as in some instances, the secrets of the tribe are involved. Thus there arise frequently secret associations ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... otherwise; the second witch at once became a similar animal and went with the first to perform the ritual acts which were to follow. The witches were in their own estimation and in the belief of all their comrades, to whom they communicated the fact, actually animals, though to the uninitiated eye their natural forms remained unchanged. This is probably the explanation of Marie d'Aspilcouette's evidence, which de Lancre records ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... himself; these the priests interpreted to the people, but in most cases in so ambiguous a manner that the fulfilment of the prediction could not easily be disputed. During the ceremony, clouds of incense filled the temple, and hid the priestess from the view of the uninitiated, and at its conclusion she was reconducted, in a fainting condition, to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... money matters drove him to the dissipation of society as a relief from solitary care. The delays of the theater added to those perplexities. He had long since finished his new comedy, yet the year 1772 passed away without his being able to get it on the stage. No one, uninitiated in the interior of a theater, that little world of traps and trickery, can have any idea of the obstacles and perplexities multiplied in the way of the most eminent and successful author by the mismanagement ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... "I am myself uninitiated," said Cardinal Bernis, laughing; "some divinity may have taken a seat there, or perhaps it is a sphinx which will from thence give us the solution of her enigma. But let us see what belated guests are now ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... in the zenith. world-wide, widespread, far-famed, extensive; wholesale; many &c 102. goodly, noble, precious, mighty; sad, grave, heavy, serious; far gone, arrant, downright; utter, uttermost; crass, gross, arch, profound, intense, consummate; rank, uninitiated, red-hot, desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c 642; unsurpassed &c (supreme) 33; complete &c 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... tones of speech and modes of action they strive to be as English as possible. Mr. Spalding's aspirations were of this nature. He had uttered speeches against England which would make the hair stand on end on the head of an uninitiated English reader. He had told his countrymen that Englishmen hugged their chains, and would do so until American hammers had knocked those chains from off their wounded wrists and bleeding ankles. He had declared that, if certain American ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... extent, explain the hesitations and anguish of the prophetic warnings, at the cost, however, of other puzzles, a thousand times as hard to solve, which nothing authorizes us to substitute for the actual puzzle, formless and infinite, presented to our uninitiated vision. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... machinery. It is the same ancient story of the atoms; each part and each function endowing the same inorganic chemicals with their own spiritual, magnetic, and physical life-qualities, by what appears, to the uninitiated observer, a miraculous transmutation of matter, but which is, in reality, the evolution of organic form from inorganic materials, in obedience to the Divine law of spiritual progression. Who could stop with exact science? For, when we come to consider the apparent ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... aspirants to get room on which to make their complicated steps; and oh, the precision, regularity, and energy of those motions! Although the piper played with a rapidity which would have convinced the uninitiated of the impossibility of dancing to the time, every foot in the room fell to the notes of the music as surely as though the movements of the whole set had been regulated by a steam machine. And such movements as they were! Not only did the feet keep time, but every limb ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... reckon this journey among the happiest I ever made. I had no knowledge of the character of Swedish scenery, and therefore I was in the highest degree astonished by the Trollh tta-voyage, and by the extremely picturesque situation of Stockholm. It sounds to the uninitiated half like a fairy-tale, when one says that the steam-boat goes up across the lakes over the mountains, from whence may be seen the outstretched pine and beechwoods below. Immense sluices heave up and lower the vessel again, whilst the travellers ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... afternoon. Everything was done at once. The long train moves slowly toward the end of the rails, getting as near to the bare bank as is possible. So soon as she stops, an eager army of workers attack her, with, of course, much wild noise of strange rhythmic chant. To the uninitiated this onslaught of the workers on the train bears all the appearance of a raid, yet, should one watch awhile, it gradually dawns upon one that marvellous orderliness and most studied method underlie every seemingly ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 50, October 21, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... carriage and attitude; no marble rigidity. Black he was, this savage, but not negro. The features were well cut and good. What the hair might be naturally could only be guessed at; the work of a skilful hair-dresser had left it something for the uninitiated to marvel at. A band of three or four inches in breadth, completely white, bordered the face; the rest, a very luxuriant head, was jet black and dressed into a perfectly regular and smooth roundish form, projecting everywhere beyond the white ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... thought that anointed the Dial and these Essays. The very chrism of mysticism trickled along their running-titles, and dripped fragrantly from their pages. Not only new opinions, but new words and phrases, puzzled the uninitiated. Among these were subjective and objective, and the concise, comprehensive Germanisms were assailed as sure evidence of treason or insanity. He who used them was a marked man, and liable to find on the first oyster-shell his sentence of exile from ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... suitable notch for working the steam expansively; the driver's hand is on the regulator, not to be removed for the rest of the trip; the furnace door is thrown wide open, and firing begins in earnest. Here it may not be amiss to state, for the benefit of the uninitiated, that the regulator controls the supply of steam from the boiler, while the lever enables the driver to reverse the engine, or, as we have already stated, to expand the steam by cutting it off before the end of the stroke. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... the same voice again that night, and again stood unseen. Long after midnight he was still tramping the streets on his lonely rounds, when he chanced to pass the Rouen House, which hostelry bore, to the uninitiated eye, the appearance of having closed its doors upon all hospitalities for the night, in strict compliance with the law of the city fathers, yet a slender wand of bright light might be discovered underneath the street door ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As I cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd idea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take upon himself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his opinions to himself, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... direction of their progress, being facts in Nature still, are the signs which, since the Magi saw His star in the East, have never been wanting from the firmament of truth, and which in every age with growing clearness to the wise, and with ever-gathering mystery to the uninitiated, proclaim that "the Kingdom of God is ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... is familiar with the French language, this may seem almost too easy, but I doubt if anybody who knew no language but modern Greek would guess it. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may add that the French word je is pronounced "mwor," thus supplying the ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... back-stays—which, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I may explain, were simply extra ropes intended to take a portion of the strain and so relieve the ordinary back-stays whenever it became necessary to carry a very heavy press of canvas—were already cut and fitted; all that we had ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... forward at once to pay this chief tribute like every one else?" I replied by asking, "How could I know that this was a chief, who had allowed me to remain a day and a half near him without giving me any thing to eat?" This, which to the uninitiated may seem sophistry, was to the Central Africans quite a rational question, for he at once admitted that food ought to have been sent, and added that probably his chief was only making it ready for me, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... forget the common-place jargon of the world, and affect a little ceremony, for Madame Flamingo is delicately exact in matters of etiquette. Touch gently the bell; you will find it there, a small bronze knob, in the fluting of the frame, and scarce perceptible to the uninitiated eye. If rudely you touch it, no notice will be taken; the broad, high front of her house will remain, like an ill-natured panorama of brick and freestone, closed till daylight. She admits nothing but gentlemen; ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... four minutes there was a line of battle on the western edge of the grove, and a charging column was in the road leading to the west, down which the patrols were galloping at a headlong pace. Pickets were rushing in, firing as they came. To the uninitiated it might have seemed a scene of dire confusion. In fact, it was one of perfect order and discipline. Even in the darkness each man knew just what to do and where to go, as he heard the bugle calls and the stern, brief, supplementary orders ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... simply the basis of his credit. He buys blood shorthorns, he buys blood horses, and he sells them again. He buys wheat, hay, &c., to dispose of them at a profit. If he chose, he could explain to you the meaning of contango, and even of that mysterious term to the uninitiated, 'backwardation.' His speculations for the 'account' are sometimes heavy. So much so, that occasionally, with thousands invested, he has hardly any ready money. But, then, there are the crops; he can get money on the coming crops. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... episodes it is an enhancement of Gustave Dore, taking it as a whole, it is a false thing. It is full of apparitions worked out with mechanical skill, yet Dante's soul is not back of the fires and swords of light. It gives to the uninitiated an outline of the stage paraphernalia of the Inferno. It has an encyclopaedic value. If Dante himself had been the high director in the plenitude of his resources, it might still have had that hollowness. A list of words ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... over that distance which separates Cape Cod from Nantucket. If you have not passed most of your days among the Connecticut hills, you pay little attention to that "green-eyed monster," who considers it a part of his duty to prepare the uninitiated for the good time coming. Arrived at the bar, which stretches itself across the entrance to the harbor, our first impressions take to themselves the forms of sundry venerable windmills, church spires and towers, representing various orders of architecture; ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... abode in a hurry. Even Miss Peyton's features might have been called untidy, if such a term could be used in connection with a countenance whose every line was aristocratic. As a rule that lady was able so to control her emotions that the uninitiated were ignorant of the fact that she had emotions. She gave one the impression on that morning in June of having packed her emotions hurriedly, as she had her clothes, and they were darting from her flashing eyes as were garments from ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... were there which we cannot overlook, both of whom had passed through the world with a strong but holy scorn for the errors and failings of their fellow-creatures. One of them was a man of gross, carnal-looking features, trained, as it seemed to the uninitiated, into a severe and sanctified expression by the sheer force of religion. His face was full of godly intolerance against everything at variance with the one thing needful, whatever that was, and against all who did not, like himself, travel on fearlessly and zealously Zionward. He did not ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... to this room, but after some search the uninitiated Hebrew found some stairs of acacia-wood leading up through a wooden tower. He climbed and climbed, but when he looked through the loopholes, he found himself always on a level with the roof of the domed room. But he continued to ascend, and after he had again ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... either—unless the stranger is properly vouched for. The best theaters in Vienna are small, exclusive affairs, privately supported, and with seating capacity for a few chosen patrons. Once he has quit the public cafe with its fine music and its bad waiters the uninitiated traveler has a pretty lonesome time of it in Vienna. Until all hours he may roam the principal streets seeking that fillip of wickedness which will give zest to life and provide him with something to brag about when he gets back among the home folks again. He does not find ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... of book-collecting which we must study before we may graduate in book-lore. To the uninitiated the word 'bibliography' conveys little more than a mere writing about books. But it is a vast study, and, if we are to become proficient in it, one that will occupy ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... re-writing, however, much of his work in the margin of the manuscript, and also adding to, and polishing, each chapter in proof, for no writer pays more attention to style and chiselled form than the man who has been called the French Dickens, and whose compositions, to the uninitiated, would seem to be ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... of superlative skill, all this would have seemed to an uninitiated observer like Bob an easy task, were it not for the misfortunes of one youth. That boy was about half the time in the water. He could stand upright on a log very well as long as he tried to do nothing else. This partial skill undoubtedly had lured him to the drive. But as soon as he tried to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... of John Sewell's epic history sit lightly on paper; easy words for Sewell, once the collection of data was over, to write; not very significant words for the uninitiated and casual reader who does not see the irresistible forces beneath them. But consider the full meaning of these words, and glance for a moment at the two figures conjured up by them. We see Hawk Carse, a man slender in build, but with gray eyes and lithe, strong-fingered hands and cold, intent ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... directed towards the latter aim. It is intended to convey to the ordinary reader and to the uninitiated student some conception of the general principles of thought which economists now apply to economic problems. The writers are not concerned to make original contributions to knowledge, or even to attempt a complete summary of all the principles of the subject. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... men on board — all the officers — who were acquainted with the situation, and were thus in a position to parry troublesome questions and remove possible anxieties on the part of the uninitiated. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... the Eastern side of the structure, and when he reached the front of the Somerset, he sought for a way in which to use his implement. A scaling ladder, it may be explained to the uninitiated, is about eight feet long—a single fire-proof bar, on which are short cross-pieces. At one end is a curiously curving serrated hook, which is used for grappling on the sills of windows or ledges above. It is the most useful weapon ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... is that human beings can develop their potential spiritual powers; that, if they do, no phenomenon will be impossible for their liberated wills, and that they will perform what, in the eyes of the uninitiated, will be much more wondrous than the materialized forms of the spiritualists. If proper training can render the muscular strength ten times greater, as in the cases of renowned athletes, I do not see why proper training ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... is not infrequently a little dull, especially to the uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with the spiritual ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... admit the Queen's morning draught of spiced milk, borne in by one of her suite who had to remain uninitiated; and from that moment no more confidences could be exchanged, until the time that Cis had to leave the Queen's chamber to join the rest of the household in the daily prayers offered in the chapel. Her dress and hair had, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... opponent in yesterday's trading may be lined up alongside the day following, fighting with instead of against. It is all in the day's business and the strenuous competition on the floor, into which the uninitiated visitor reads all manner of animosity and open anger, is a very misleading barometer to the actual ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... secretary to his college club, in seeking out all freshmen, even if their thews and sinews were not muscular models, and inducing them to aid the glorious cause by becoming members of the club. A Bump-supper - that is, O ye uninitiated! a supper to commemorate the fact of the boat of one college having, in the annual races, bumped, or touched the boat of another college immediately in its front, thereby gaining a place towards the head of the river, - a Bump-supper was ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... devotion of stamp collectors to their hobby has puzzled and excited the uninitiated. The ordinary individual, especially the man who has no soul for a hobby of any kind, regards it as a passing fancy, a harmless craze, a fashion that must have its day and disappear, sooner or later. But the passing fancy has endured for nearly half a century, the harmless craze still serves its ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... particularly at soirees and dansants near the first line. In fact, some of the more careless dressers who have neglected to provide themselves with it have suffered severely, and been roundly snubbed. While it is at best an ugly piece of facegear and extremely difficult for the uninitiated to adjust correctly, its intricacies should be mastered at the earliest opportunity by ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... his lips. It was a pleasure to her to learn from that exhaustless store of worldly knowledge. To the world she would do her best to assume omniscience in its ways, but to him, in her present mood, she liked to play the ignorant, uninitiated little thing. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... community, and as this book is humbly put forward for anyone interested in marriage to read—in short, for everyone who will read it—I propose therefore to enlarge somewhat on this theme for the benefit of the uninitiated majority. A great many men would never dream of allowing their wives to go out at night alone with other men; why, I cannot pretend to know, since they surely cannot insult their wives and their ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... condescended on the Saturday evening to hum, whistle, and too-too over the tune—of his own composing—that was to be the admiration of the whole parish on the succeeding day—we were henceforth to be as the uninitiated, and left to find out, and follow, as we best might, the very eccentric windings of his Sunday's asthmatic performance; which always went at the rate of three crotchets and a cough, to the end of the psalm, which he took care should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... The uninitiated express their astonishment at a sneeze so mighty, and enter the inn. The women of the dining-room come peeping into the ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye appear so much more expensive than the real thing. Everybody looked very dashing and very young, except about the eyes. Most of the eyes that glanced at Jill were weary. The women were nearly all ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... simple as it may seem to the casual observer, requires, more than any other photo-mechanical process, skilled hands in its different manipulations to keep it up to the standard of perfection. The following short description will give the uninitiated sufficient enlightenment to think ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... novice, indicative of the change from youth to manhood. While the teeth are being knocked out an instrument known as a bull-roarer, which consists of a flat piece of wood with serrated edges tied to the end of a string, is swung round so as to produce a loud humming noise. The uninitiated are not allowed to see this instrument. Women are forbidden to witness the ceremonies under pain of death. It is given out that the youths are each met in turn by a mythical being, called Thuremlin (more commonly known as Daramulun) ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated commits impiety The hierophant divulged the mysteries to the ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock

... investigation, having learned the lesson that the reverence of the mysteries is best preserved in silence? How was it proper to parade in public the teaching of those things which it was not permitted the uninitiated to look at? ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... uninstructed observer. The profound investigations of the chemist into the ultimate constitution of material nature, the minute researches of the physiologist into the secrets of animal life, the transcendental logic of the geometer, clothed in a notation, the very sight of which terrifies the uninitiated,—are lost on the common understanding. But the unspeakable glories of the rising and the setting sun; the serene majesty of the moon, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through the heavens; the soft witchery of the morning and the evening star; the imperial splendors of the firmament on ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... most interesting country to the professor of the natural sciences. Great mineral treasures will certainly be one day discovered here; the number and diversity of its stones is striking even to the most uninitiated. It abounds in hot and salutary springs. To the botanist it offers great varieties of plants, little if at all known; and the zoologist would find here, amongst the animal tribes deserving his attention, besides several kinds of bears, wolves and foxes, the celebrated sable ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... that Simon used the one, three, five, and seven syllabled or vowelled names, and that the Greek terms were substitutes that completely veiled the esoteric meaning from the uninitiated. ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... arms, hands, excitable faces, rapid vociferations, all come in play, and the element of pantomime performs its part in assisting the human voice as naturally as among the Italians of Syracuse. To the uninitiated the biddings here are as unintelligible as elsewhere, sounding to ordinary ears like the gibberish of Victor Hugo's Compachinos. But the comparative quietude of this Board renders it easier to follow the course of the market, to detect the shades of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... exploit, the red, green, and yellow liveries could have done what they would with the uninitiated Romans. Captain Cooke's arrival at Otaheite; the first steamer seen on the Nile; the introduction of gun and gunpowder amongst people hitherto hunting or making war with bow and arrow,—are only parallel cases of that enthusiasm mixed with awe, with which the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... fact that during last year (1892) in Singapore alone 426 prostitutes left brothels and went into private houses, and in the same period 148 left private houses and entered brothels. The wealthy Chinese in the Straits Settlements keep up very large establishments, and the uninitiated visitor cannot fail to be surprised at the number of young women in the quarter assigned to the servants. They are employed on house work, and keep the magnificent furniture and wardrobes in splendid order, and in many cases they make cakes and sweetmeats which are sold ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... questioned further, only to find that every imaginable contingency, and some that were not at all imaginable to the uninitiated, had been absolutely provided against by the genius of the inventor. And everything from the gasoline engine to the hand-pump was as compact and ingenious as the mechanism of a watch. Moreover, the boat was not crowded; we ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... was the headquarters of the magicians of the country. Levitation and ghostly disappearing hands were on every side. The shelves in the back of the shop were full of nickel, brass, wire, wood, and papier-mache contrivances, new and strange to the eye of the uninitiated. Yet it was all as systematic as a ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... To the uninitiated regarding the "grousing" of camels, I should explain that it is a peculiar noise which comes from their long funnel necks early or late, and for what reason it is difficult to tell. Sometimes the sound is not unlike the bray ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... this open treatise upon the art of delivering and teaching of knowledge, the author lays down, in the most impressive terms, the necessity of a style which shall serve as a veil of tradition, imperceptible or impenetrable to the uninitiated, and admitting 'only such as have by the help of a master, attained to the interpretation of dark sayings, or are able by their own genius to enter within the veil'; and after having distributed under many heads, the secret of this method ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... dominoes, &c., adjourning from time to time to some cafe for the purpose of eating ices or sucking goodies, and where any trifling conversation or dispute is carried on with so much vivacity, both of tongue and of fingers, that the uninitiated become alarmed with apprehensions of some serious quarrel. Others again, who are ladies' men, or of domestic habits, either go home or meet at some friend's house, where they all sit in the front room on the ground-floor, with the windows wide open to the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... mould of Kantism, or at least clothed in its garments, these productions, to readers unacquainted with that system, are encumbered here and there with difficulties greater than belong intrinsically to the subject. In perusing them, the uninitiated student is mortified at seeing so much powerful thought distorted, as he thinks, into such fantastic forms: the principles of reasoning, on which they rest, are apparently not those of common logic; a dimness and doubt overhangs their conclusions; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... Dr. Von Finck, who attends most of the polite company at Baden, drove ceaselessly about the place that day, with the real version of the fainting-fit story, about which we may be sure the wicked and malicious, and the uninitiated, had a hundred absurd details. Lady Clara ever engaged to Captain Belsize? Fiddle-de-dee! Everybody knew the Captain's affairs, and that he could no more think of marrying than flying. Lady Clara faint at seeing him! she fainted before he came up; she was always fainting, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... alien experience, if you picture it.[1] Solipsism has always been the evident implication of idealism; but the idealists, when confronted with this consequence, which is dialectically inconvenient, have never been troubled at heart by it, for at heart they accept it. To the uninitiated they have merely murmured, with a pitying smile and a wave of the hand: What! are you still troubled by that? Or if compelled to be so scholastic as to labour the point they have explained, as usual, that oneself cannot be the absolute because ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... shelter. The burn across his chest was not his only brand, for Ross noticed another red stripe, puffed and fiery looking, which swelled the calf of one leg. The man studied Ross closely, and then his fingers moved in a sign which to the uninitiated native might have been one for the warding off of evil, but which to Ross was the "thumbs up" ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... the uninitiated it is, I suppose, a tiresome, bewildering uproar. And yet every component, every note of this great harmony, has a special meaning for the engineer; moreover, the smallest dissonance is detected at once, even though he be almost ready to doze. So finely attuned to the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... which threatened to develope into a thoroughgoing love-feast. The light was rather dim, voices grew low, cheeks came perilously near, and hands met caressingly. Of course it was nothing but the love of God that moved them, yet it looked like something else; and the uninitiated spectator of "the mystery of godliness" found it easy to understand how American camp-meetings tend to increase the population, and why a Magistrate in the South-west of England observed that one result of revivals in his district was a ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... not our province to decide or even to discuss the points at issue. Uninitiated laymen may perhaps be pardoned for hearing in all this din of battle but the echo of the Schoolmen's guns. Whether the two-year-old baby who dashes his bread-and-butter on the floor, in wrath at the lack of marmalade, does it because of a prevailing effectual tendency in his nature, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... effective mode of terminating a money trick is to pass the marked coin into the center of a large ball of Berlin wool or worsted, the whole of which has to be unwound before the coin can be reached. The modus operandi, though perplexing to the uninitiated, is absurdly simple when the secret is revealed. The only apparatus necessary over and above the wool (of which you must have enough for a good-sized ball), is a flat tin tube, three to four inches in length, and just large enough to allow a quarter or ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... none of you have heard of Long Street. As far as I am aware it is not known to general fame. It is typically a back street of the business of a city, that is, the ventages of its buildings are darkened most often by packing cases and bales. Behind these ventages are metal shoots. To one uninitiated in the ways of commerce it would appear that these openings were patterned for the multiform enactment of an Amy Robsart tragedy, with such devilish deceit are the shoots laid up against the openings. First the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... palate of the "General Reader" will recognise a new and piquant flavour. In places the manner suggests an Anglo-Indian BRET HARTE, and there is perhaps too great an abundance of phrases and local allusions which will be dark sayings to the uninitiated. But the stories show a quite surprising knowledge of life, a familiarity with military, civil, and native society, and a command of pathos and humour, which have already won a reputation for the author. Few can read ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... sweet. Mr. Sibbald, in his "Chronicle of Scottish Poetry," has admiringly preserved more than enough of it, and seems to find a sort of national savor therein, such as delights his countrymen in a haggis, or the German in his sauer-kraut. The uninitiated foreigner puts his handkerchief to his nose, wonders, and gets out of the way as soon as he civilly can. Barbour's "Brus," if not precisely a poem, has passages whose simple tenderness raises them to that level. That on Freedom is familiar.[263] But its highest merit is the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... element of all life and being, have had few, or no exponents who have ever attempted to treat them from any basis which can be called philosophical, or which could ever serve as a guide to one uninitiated in their occult phases. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... they do not like the place they won't live there, and that's flat! It is probable that Maidstone, where Lady Howard de Walden resides, may be specially suited to their needs, but her ladyship's gardener knows how to turn a lucky chance to the best account. Some of his plants have ten leaves!—the uninitiated may think that fact grotesquely undeserving of a note of exclamation, but to explain would be too technical. It may be observed that the famous Swan orchid, Cycnoches chlorochilon, flourishes at Maidstone as nowhere ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... seem to the ordinary uninitiated mind to be a stretch of the imagination; but if we are to believe Mr. Cornish, the old practised gunners on our coasts, who make the cries of our wild fowl a life-long study can almost understand them as well as human speech. See “Animals, their Life and Conversation,” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... armed forces of one of the Allies, had a disastrous effect upon the situation throughout Siberia. If Semianoff and Kalmakoff could, with Allied help and encouragement, openly deride the Omsk Government's orders, then it was clear to the uninitiated that the Allies were hostile to the supreme Russian authority. If Semianoff and Kalmakoff can wage successful hired resistance to orderly government at the bidding of a foreign Power, why cannot we do so, to retain the ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... the Russian women of the fashionable world are very decorative. Our first impression of this type was in Paris, at the Russian Church on Christmas (or was it some other holy day?) when to the amazement of the uninitiated the Russian women of the aristocracy appeared at the morning service hatless and in full evening dress, wearing jewels as if for a function at some secular court. Their masculine escorts appeared in full regalia, the light of the altar candles adding mystery to the glitter of gold lace and ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... son; under the old kings the fire, of which I spoke figuratively to you—the poet—was enclosed in brazen walls which the people passed stupidly by. Now I see breaches in the old fortifications; the eyes of the uninitiated have been sharpened, and one tells the other what he fancies he has spied, though half-blinded, through ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the neighborhood gossip? But the pupils were in almost unanimous opposition, because Mr. McNanly's unheralded advent at any one's house resulted frequently in the discovery that some favorite child had been playing "hookey," which means (I will say to the uninitiated, if any such there be) absenting one's self from school without permission, to go on a fishing or a swimming frolic. Such at least was my experience more than once, for Mr. McNanly particularly favored my mother's ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... the fall as it whirls through the air. Poor animal! Instead of roping it by the horns, you nearly jerk its tail off! There are very many accomplishments that seem easy in the hands of an expert and which prove most difficult to the uninitiated, but I think the throwing of the lasso can claim more mysteries than ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... past evil uses seemed ineradicably written over every part of it, as past crime and torment remain ineradicably written on the human face; the mind imbibed from it terrifying ideas of deadly treachery, of secret atrocities, of frightful refinements of torture, which no uninitiated eye had ever beheld, and no human resolution had ever been powerful ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... leave off their singing, the others keeping it up the while with increased vigor, and strike into the shout step, observing most accurate time with the music. This step is something halfway between a shuffle and a dance, as difficult for an uninitiated person to describe as to imitate. At the end of each stanza of the song the dancers stop short with a slight stamp on the last note, and then, putting the other foot forward, proceed through the next verse. They will often dance to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... south of Washington Square, a little to the west of Broadway's great artery of traffic. A decorous and unbetraying door, bearing only the modest sign, "The Neptune Club," and a narrow stairway leading to an equally decorous and uncompromising hall, gave no hint, to the uninitiated, of what the great gloomy walls of the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer



Words linked to "Uninitiated" :   inexperienced, inexperient



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