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Definition of acrimonious:

  • (adjective) marked by strong resentment or cynicism

Sentence Examples:

Not very acrimonious ones, nor very violent, but yet quite sufficiently unpleasant to make him dread meeting his relatives when Laurence was present, for her very real hatred of Marguerite made her seize any occasion to vituperate against her.

In again submitting to Congress a subject upon which public sentiment has been divided, and which has been made the occasion of acrimonious debates in Congress, as well as of unjust aspersions elsewhere, I may, I trust, be indulged in a single remark.

In a converse position, the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend.

Jefferson, unmindful of these circumstances, after some acrimonious remarks on Colonel Pickering, has said, "and even Judge Marshall makes history descend from its dignity, and the ermine from its sanctity, to exaggerate, to record, and to sanction this forgery."

In general, the book represents a vast amount of painstaking thought and an earnest but somewhat confusing attempt to bring light into the somewhat dark places of a much-discussed subject, which has frequently been the source of more or less acrimonious discussion.

As with the earlier True American these newspapers contain much foreign news and correspondence with lengthy reports of legislative activities in Richmond and Washington; and, in addition, an acrimonious and undignified exchange of long-winded and abusive letters in the Mason-McCarty-Mercer controversies.

When subordinate communities oppose the decrees of the general legislature with defiance thus audacious, and malignity thus acrimonious, nothing remains but to conquer or to yield; to allow their claim of independence, or to reduce them, by force, to submission and allegiance.

On the other hand, detractors innumerable arose; his rights to the invention were challenged, in all sincerity and in insincerity; infringements of his patent rights necessitated long and acrimonious lawsuits, and, like other men of mark, he was traduced and vilified.

A sort of impassioned exaggeration reigns in the debates to which the trial of Warren Hastings and the French Revolution gave rise, in the acrimonious rhetoric and forced declamation of Sheridan, in the pitiless sarcasm and sententious pomp of the younger Pitt.

If the disease has arisen from an impoverished state of living, and a consequent acrimonious state of the blood, altering its property, by a change of aliment, and more liberal invigoration of the system, will greatly tend to the promoting a speedy obliteration.

Unquiet, agitated, miserable within yourself, it is to be feared that your temperament will change, that your disposition will become acrimonious, and that the vexatious ideas over which you have so long brooded will sooner or later produce a disastrous influence upon those who approach you.

He had embroiled himself with the ministers of those powers by refusing to give satisfaction for certain alleged injuries to foreign merchants and naval officers, and the dispute became so acrimonious that the European powers finally resorted to the most drastic coercive measures.

His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that "a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth."

A warm dispute ensued, and being maintained with much acrimonious altercation, might have dissolved the new-cemented friendship of those two originals, had it not been interrupted by the old sibyl, who, coming into the parlor, intimated that the doctor waited for them above.

Many expressions which, when society was convulsed by political dissensions, and when the foundations of government were shaking, were heard by an excited audience with sympathy and applause, may, now that the passions of all parties have subsided, be thought intemperate and acrimonious.

There are peculiarities of temperament in the Filipino people which are seldom discussed in detail, but which offer premises for statements and denials, not infrequently acrimonious, and rarely approached in a desire to make those judging from a distance take into consideration all that makes opinions reliable.

The singular resemblance to a circus, already profanely suggested, was carried out by a straggling fringe of boys and half-grown men on the outskirts of the encampment, acrimonious with disappointed curiosity, lazy without the careless ease of vagrancy, and vicious without the excitement of dissipation.

We are represented as the violent, acrimonious, ferocious and sanguinary foes of the slaveholder; when, if he could look into our inmost hearts, he would discover no enmity to him abiding there, but on the contrary, an earnest desire to promote his safety, his honor, and his happiness.

When I first became acquainted with him, he affected indifference to parties; and was ready to praise or laugh at either, as circumstances should happen to direct him: but, when the temper of the times became intolerant and acrimonious, he thought it prudent to take a decided part.

One of those persons was in the employ of each candidate, and, as the struggle was close and somewhat acrimonious, objections were made on the slightest possible grounds, which were furnished in abundance, by the variety of circumstances that disqualified a man for voting in that borough.

On one point, however, they differed; and this difference led to an acrimonious contest, quite disgraceful to Luther, and the greatest blot on his character, inasmuch as it developed, to an extraordinary degree, both obstinacy and dogmatism, and showed that he could not bear contradiction or opposition.

Again, when we consider that the blood is liable to become acrimonious, and thence by its stimulus apt to act upon the coats of its containing vessels, we see demonstratively plain, how the solids are subject to be excited to act upon the very blood that stimulates them.

Johnson knew that Milton was a republican: he says, "an acrimonious and surly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than, that a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth."

He had stood there as a defaulter, to be punished with ten days' cells and the loss of a hardly-earned good conduct badge, for returning from leave in a state of partial insobriety, and for having indulged in a heated and more than acrimonious discussion with the local constabulary.

It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious tempers, who mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm of truth; the ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and for the love of their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the secret desire of dominion.

Both by day and night a funereal gloom envelops the caverns, the pathways and resting-places are meager and so constructed as to be devoid of attraction or repose, and by a skillful contrivance the natural atmosphere is secretly withdrawn and a very acrimonious sulfurous haze driven in to replace it.

Nevertheless, devotion often causes strange metamorphoses, Unquiet, agitated, miserable within yourself, it is to be feared that your temperament will change, that your disposition will become acrimonious, and that the vexatious ideas over which you have so long brooded will sooner or later produce a disastrous influence upon those who approach you.

This was followed by a message more bitter and acrimonious, all of which they treated with silent contempt, until the twenty-eight of September, when they discharged their wrath in an address, in which the Governor was handled most roughly for his attacks on the inhabitants of these islands.

Burning and acrimonious, unrelenting, and at times deadly in its hatred, full of desperate partisanship, and of judicial blindness toward all who belonged to the other side in politics, it was always full of earnestness and originality and tumultuous life, and often-times not only generous, but magnanimous and forgiving.

The only pleasure which they retained and permitted was the singing of psalms through the nose, the edification of long sermons, the excitement of acrimonious controversies, the harsh and somber joy of a victory gained over the enemy of mankind, and of the tyranny exercised against the demon's supposed abettors.

The preservation of an Empire from a formidable combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all its parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship brought out bales of censure from his employers, and while the records of every consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues.

His mere presence there had been strange enough; youth and knowledge and prosperity where for so long there had been nothing but the occasional presence of people who were in mysterious disgraceful difficulties, and no speech but the so quickly acrimonious interchange of those who are trying to carry things off.

The crowd about the post-office received its mail and melted away to town house and country house, to supper at both, and to a review, cheerful or acrimonious, of the events of the day, including the fact that, as far as appearances went, Lewis Rand was yet the President's staff and confidant.

Standing thus, the question of premeditation gave rise to a long and acrimonious controversy in which recriminations and invectives were freely bandied, and which, being characterized, on either side, rather by a determination to uphold a preconceived opinion than by a desire to arrive at the plain truth, naturally led to no satisfactory conclusion.

Then came domestic details, lamentations over the excessive dearness of potatoes, or the length of the winter and the high price of block fuel, together with forcible representations of amounts owing to the baker, ending in an acrimonious dispute, in the course of which such couples reveal their characters in picturesque language.

During the debate I was sitting by Doctor Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it was on that occasion, that, by way of comfort, he told me the story of John Thomson, the hatter, and his new sign.

Jolter, thus baffled in all his endeavors, quitted the Bastille with a heavy heart, and reported his fruitless negotiation to the ambassador, who could not help breaking forth into some acrimonious expressions against the obstinacy and insolence of the young man, who, he said, deserved to suffer for his folly.

During the debate I was sitting by Doctor Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it was on that occasion, that by way of comfort, he told me the story of John Thompson, the hatter, and his new sign.

In private life, if a fourth person confidentially told one of the three partners in a firm that the other two partners had invited him to join them in humiliating him to the dust, there would have been a pretty brisk, not to say acrimonious correspondence between the proposed victim and his partners.

But this reformer was personally so obnoxious to Henry, on account of the disrespectful and acrimonious style of his answer to the book in which that royal polemic had formerly attacked his doctrine, that no English subject thought proper openly to profess himself his follower, or to open any direct communication with him.

Entirely against his will and, so far as he could see, without any fault of his own, he suddenly found himself the center of a violent and acrimonious controversy respecting the fundamental and sacred rights of freemen which threatened to disrupt society and extinguish the supremacy of the dominant local political organization.

The old maids seem nearest to independence, and most likely to be animated by revenge against masculine authority; they often speak of men with acrimonious vehemence, but it is seldom found that they have any settled hatred against them, and it is yet more rarely observed that they have any kindness for each other.

The discharge now, for the first time, becomes acrimonious; giving pain when it comes in contact with cuts in the finger; and excoriations are produced on all parts in contact with the sloughing ulcerations; as the lips, the cheeks, the tongue, and the adjoining surface of the part where the ulcer is situated.

The failure before Toulon, the disasters in Spain, the nullity of the campaign in Flanders, were made the subject of unbounded outcry in the country; and the most acrimonious debates took place in Parliament, in the course of which violent reproaches were thrown on Marlborough, and all his great services to his country seemed to be forgotten.

From tests, the accuracy of which left no doubt, I learned that this acrimonious bitterness against their suffering sisters was nearly always instigated by a desire to conceal their own defects, to raise themselves, as they thought, by depreciating others, and to lay hypocritical claim to a superior austerity and goodness which was not theirs.

The most acrimonious Tories were forced to admit, with an ungracious snarl, which increased the value of their praise, that he had all the intellectual qualities of a great man, and that in him alone, among his contemporaries, brilliant eloquence and wit were to be found associated with the quiet and steady prudence which ensures success in life.

Every power of oratory was wielded by him in its turn; for he could be, during the same evening, often within the space of a few minutes, pathetic and humorous; acrimonious and conciliating; now giving loose to his indignation or severity; and then, almost in the same breath, calling to his assistance wit and ridicule.

Everything would have ended quietly, and the Resolutions would have passed without a debate, but Gladstone could not stand it, and, urged by spite and mortification, he must needs get up and make a most violent speech, really, though not avowedly, in opposition to Palmerston, and with the object of provoking a long and acrimonious debate.

There is, yet, another distinction to be made between the acrimony of the one, and the softness of the other; the works of the one are acrimonious, and of the other soft, because, the one exhibited personal, and the other, general characters; which leaves us still at liberty to examine, if these different designs might not be executed with equal delicacy.

What she brought up was acid, and so very acrimonious, as to inflame and excoriate her mouth and throat; and the great uneasiness she felt at her stomach upon swallowing any liquor that had the least degree of acrimony, or was more than lukewarm, made it probable that the internal surface of the stomach was affected in the same manner.

These loaded the air with a pungent, acrimonious odor, which set them all coughing, and when they impatiently rubbed the tormented organs of respiration, they but added to their discomfort, for their hands had unconsciously rubbed against some leaves as they passed through, and communicated a burning sensation to their noses and lips like that which cayenne pepper provokes.

The judges and officers of the court were almost entirely without insignia of office, and the counsel employed, I thought, evinced much tact in their proceedings, especially in the cross-examination of witnesses, although they manifested great acerbity of feeling towards each other, and their acrimonious remarks would not, I imagine, have been allowed to pass without remonstrance in an English court of justice.

Those who best knew him can testify of him what has often been asserted of his great father, that they never heard an acrimonious speech fall from his lips; that his whole temper was so controlled by justice and generosity that he was never known to disparage with an envious breath the fame of another or to withhold due praise of another's worth.

Doubtless the men who come out of this great war, the common men, will bring home an accentuated and acrimonious patriotism, a venomous hatred of the enemies whom they have missed killing; but it may reasonably be doubted if they come away with a correspondingly heightened admiration and affection for their betters who have failed to make good as foremen in charge of this teamwork in killing.

Southern men and Southern women would again have been feasted and feted at Northern hotels and watering places, and again have given tone to Northern opinion, while new and especial reasons would have seemed to exist for opposing countervailing influences, as unnecessary agitation, and causes of the retention of acrimonious feeling between the two sections, which had now resolved to live in amity with each other.

The part he played in public affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all those who favored it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale that came on the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places against the Queen and her lighthearted company.

That Sir George was alive to the importance of attacking this place, and of destroying the means there possessed by the enemy for increasing their marine, and for carrying on from thence their offensive operations, will appear evident from the measure which will be immediately adverted to, and which has drawn upon the Commander of the forces the acrimonious censure of the Reviewer.

It is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused.

Ann Hutchinson, with a vast conceit of her superior holiness and with the ugly censoriousness which is a usual accompaniment of that grace, demonstrated her genius for mixing a theological controversy with personal jealousies and public anxieties, and involved the whole colony of the Bay in an acrimonious quarrel, such as to give an unpleasant tone of partisanship and ill temper to the proceedings in her case, whether ecclesiastical or civil.

Slink, had caused him to make remarks of a decidedly acrimonious nature in reply, and as these had in their turn been faithfully carried to the object that had drawn them forth, a bitter feud was engendered, the result being that the neighborhood was frequently provided with amusement by the verbal combats of the two cobblers, for, while physical encounters seemed pending, as yet there had none taken place.

In Lower Canada the same acrimonious temper of mind is not observable amongst the people, excepting indeed in those few parts of the country where inhabited parts of the states approach closely to these of the province; but here appears to be a general disinclination amongst the inhabitants to have any political connection with the people of the states, and the French Canadians affect to hold them in the greatest contempt.

In this case, those means must be used which will attenuate and subdue this acrimonious humor, lessen its quantity, and carry it off by the urinary passages; and this cannot be effected with advantage, but by ingredients of a balsamic quality, which, while they act with efficacy, will also mollify and sheathe the parts, and preserve them from the results which a chemical action of the corrosive matter would otherwise produce.

Anthony, with her adoption of semi-masculine costume, just sufficiently masculine to render it unfeminine and nothing more, or Lucretia Mott, with her impracticable theories of "women's rights," presented in such form as to be repellent to all the better attributes of true womanhood, could win but ridicule, good-natured or acrimonious, as their portion; yet, in a sense, they were the leaders of the great movement which in altered guise was to come as a preponderant question of its day.

In a day when Sarah Bernhardt was the fashion in tragediennes, she had a still method all her own, a manner of appearing quietly on the stage, seemingly as impersonal as a part of its setting; then gradually dominating it, not only by the magic of her great golden voice and imposing height and presence, but by a force, which the critics, after long and acrimonious controversy, agreed to be an emanation from the brain.

For myself, I can only say that, from the moment I began to unravel his character, the most slighting and even acrimonious expressions that I could have heard he had, in a fit of spleen, uttered against me, would have no more altered my opinion of his disposition, nor disturbed my affection for him, than the momentary clouding over of a bright sky could leave an impression on the mind of gloom, after its shadow had passed away.

Evelyn would have been better satisfied, had Sir Barnard's sense of national grievances been equally strong but less acrimonious, yet he was pleased to find that these grievances were now more than ever become a kind of common-place bead roll of repetitions: of which their being so familiarly run over by the Baronet was sufficient proof: for a people that are continually talking of the evils that afflict them are not, as Sir Barnard and others have supposed, dead to these evils.